It's my understanding that medically prescribed marijuana is OK to use -- PRESCRIBED, as in a Doctor.
I'm curious about this. If this is true, this would be a big deviation from the JW organization I used to be a part of.
neverendingjourney
JoinedPosts by neverendingjourney
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Random Thought on Drugs/Tobacco Being Sinful Under JW Doctrine
by neverendingjourney ina friend of mine was telling me about her recent trip to peru.
she said she had trouble with the altitude in certain areas of peru but the locals offered her a tea derived from the coca leaf and that helped tremendously with her symptoms.. i began to think about how i would have handled the situation as a jw given that coca contains an alkaloid that is used to produce cocaine.
in its natural form, the content is very low and the locals use it as a stimulant similar to coffee.. however, as a jw i would have probably refused to drink it viewing it as something similar to a product derived from tobacco leaves.
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neverendingjourney
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Random Thought on Drugs/Tobacco Being Sinful Under JW Doctrine
by neverendingjourney ina friend of mine was telling me about her recent trip to peru.
she said she had trouble with the altitude in certain areas of peru but the locals offered her a tea derived from the coca leaf and that helped tremendously with her symptoms.. i began to think about how i would have handled the situation as a jw given that coca contains an alkaloid that is used to produce cocaine.
in its natural form, the content is very low and the locals use it as a stimulant similar to coffee.. however, as a jw i would have probably refused to drink it viewing it as something similar to a product derived from tobacco leaves.
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neverendingjourney
All based on perception. Why would a tea from tobacco leaves be considered wrong? I'm not even sure most JDrones would follow you down that path. It's just tea...
I suspect you're right, but it's because as JWs we were taught to turn off our logical thinking and accept JW doctrine unquestioningly and become unwavering advocates for JW teachings. If there hasn't been a WT article condemning it, then why worry about it?
I was not your typical JW in that regard. I wanted things to make sense. That's what eventually led me to wake up. There were far too many things that didn't add up and I couldn't keep repressing the doubts.
For example, I remember panicking about dental procedures because my gums might bleed and I might unwillingly swallow my own blood. I don't know of too many other witnesses who even gave that a second thought.
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Random Thought on Drugs/Tobacco Being Sinful Under JW Doctrine
by neverendingjourney ina friend of mine was telling me about her recent trip to peru.
she said she had trouble with the altitude in certain areas of peru but the locals offered her a tea derived from the coca leaf and that helped tremendously with her symptoms.. i began to think about how i would have handled the situation as a jw given that coca contains an alkaloid that is used to produce cocaine.
in its natural form, the content is very low and the locals use it as a stimulant similar to coffee.. however, as a jw i would have probably refused to drink it viewing it as something similar to a product derived from tobacco leaves.
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neverendingjourney
A friend of mine was telling me about her recent trip to Peru. She said she had trouble with the altitude in certain areas of Peru but the locals offered her a tea derived from the coca leaf and that helped tremendously with her symptoms.
I began to think about how I would have handled the situation as a JW given that coca contains an alkaloid that is used to produce cocaine. In its natural form, the content is very low and the locals use it as a stimulant similar to coffee.
However, as a JW I would have probably refused to drink it viewing it as something similar to a product derived from tobacco leaves. I'm not sure if there's an official WT policy on this tea, but my instinct tells me there probably is.
So that led me to the next thought, prescription pain medications are often opiates and differ from heroin only in their dosage (from what I understand). However, they are quite common and I'm not aware of the WT having any doctrines against the use of prescription opiates.
If prescription opiates are okay, why would medicinal marijuana not be okay? If marijuana were legalized, would the JWs allow its use if recommended by a physician? Almost certainly not. It seems they're backed into an illogical corner on that one and it's not something I had ever spent much time thinking about.
What's the line and when does a substance go from being okay to sinful because it harms the body? What is it about drug use that's sinful? Obviously, the Bible doesn't address marijuana, cocaine or any other modern drugs. Is it the illegality? If so, why is tobacco sinful? Is it its long-term health consequences? If so, why aren't all-you-can-eat buffets sinful?
This was the kind of thing I would just let "Mother" decide when I was a JW because the GB is God's channel or whatever, but it doesn't make any sense when you start trying to break it down.
Anyway, just a random thought that entered my mind over a decade after I stopped being a JW.
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Lloyd Evans' New Book - Is It Really Necessary?
by pale.emperor inso lloyd evans will shortly be releasing his new book how to leave the jehovah's witnesses.
i do enjoy his rebuttals and the stuff he manages to get hold of and leak.
but i'm struggling to understand what he could possibly write to merit a whole book.. all info on how to leave is right here on this forum.
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neverendingjourney
I stopped going to meetings in 2005. I bought Crisis of Conscience in 2007.
The first few JW-related books I read were excellent: CoC, Apocalypse Delayed, In Search of Christian Freedom, The Gentile Times Reconsidered. It started going downhill from there.
The last JW-related book I read was something called the Four Presidents of the Watchtower Society. It was written anonymously and contained various unsubstantiated allegations. It read like a giant blog post from a random person sharing rumors we've all read about over the years on this forum.
I don't begrudge anyone trying to make a few bucks off a book. The book-writing process is probably cathartic for a lot of people. I just don't expect the quality of any of these recent, self-published JW books to be very good.
By the way, the following book is one of the best books I've read, even though it's not strictly about JWs. It's written by a former evangelical christian who left a high-control denomination. The author went on to become a psychologist.
https://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Fold-Former-Fundamentalists-Religion/dp/1933993235
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Hunt begins for legion of ‘missing’ children being educated at home
by rebel8 ina person who used to post here is quoted in this article.. i hate to be a biotch, but since this has happened multiple times here, let me just say this: please do not be an asswipe and "out" her here because it would connect her real name to her username on this forum, and all the highly personal stuff that goes with that.
disclosing that is her decision, not yours.. ok, now that we have that out of the way, here's the article.
it's pretty great to have the political and religious radicalism connected to dubbery in this way.
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neverendingjourney
My idiot brother is about to home school his 12 year old daughter. My brother is a closet alcoholic and his wife is a cold hearted woman who never loved him yet married him out of a sense of religious duty. My brother had "status" back then.
My niece is emotionally stunted and socially awkward. She can't make friends or get along with peers at school. So obviously the answer is to take her out of school. This child won't have a chance. She'll grow up and her future will be completely dependent on some "brother" marrying her and taking her out of the house. She won't have an education or social skills to make it on her own.
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New Member Of The Governing Body 24 Jan 2018
by pale.emperor injust seen this announced on reddit:.
ken cook was announced today at morning worship as the new member of the governing body.
i dont recall him from the broadcasts, but he was formally a helper on the writing committee as per https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/governing-body/.
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neverendingjourney
He kinda looks like a fat Keith Olbermann
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Couple of real gems in the WT study for this upcoming weekend
by sir82 insince blondie seems to still be on sabbatical, i'll take the liberty of highlighting a couple of "gems" from this week's upcoming study, from the article "reject worldly thinking".. from paragraph 12:.
is it true that succeeding in a secular career that offers power and prestige leads to lasting happiness?
remember that the craving to control others and the longing to be admired are the desires that enticed satan, but he is angry, not happy.. .
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neverendingjourney
Is it true that succeeding in a secular career that offers power and prestige leads to lasting happiness? No. Remember that the craving to control others and the longing to be admired are the desires that enticed Satan, but he is angry, not happy.
Let's be real here. This is in support for their anti-college view.
There are about 400 people who work for my company in my office building (it's an international company, but we have a big office in my city). Roughly 90 percent of the employees here have bachelor's degrees (including most of the administrative staff). About 40 percent have advanced degrees (master's or higher). Do they think we all get to control people? Do they think we are all prestigious? The vast majority have no interest in any of that. What they do have an interest in, though, is taking care of their families financially.
To be fair, I don't know how much of this is coming from a deeply cynical place and how much of it is just a product of sheer ignorance. I grew up in a Spanish language congregation full of immigrants and didn't really ever interact with any college-educated JWs. I remember when I was around 18, I met a recent JW convert who had a two-year associate's degree. Man, I thought that guy was something else. He had an associate's degree! I used to talk him up all the time and he'd be visibly embarrassed by it
Maybe these dingbats know so little about the real world that they imagine everyone out there with a college degree is living some kind of luxurious hedonistic lifestyle. Spoiler alert: Most people with college degrees are barely earning income above the median.
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Older JW: not happy
by Gorbatchov inthis week i visited my sick father in law.. then an old elder from my far away congregation came in for coffee.
did not see him in 15 years.. nice chat.
had a lot to say, is alone, his sick wife disabled and away from home.. he told me: "living alone is so hard.
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neverendingjourney
Neverendingjourney -- If she had had a MILLION$ in the bank, the JWs would have been instructed to see that she was visited, cared for, and they'd have even had a Bethel lawyer help some local lawyer draft her Will. Witnessed it here locally on two occasions. Others (those without money) couldn't even get a visit from the Eldubs when they were on their deathbed.
She had a will that left everything to the JWs, but she ended up burning through her modest estate once she was admitted to the nursing home. You have to pay from your own assets first and then Medicare/Medicaid takes over.
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Older JW: not happy
by Gorbatchov inthis week i visited my sick father in law.. then an old elder from my far away congregation came in for coffee.
did not see him in 15 years.. nice chat.
had a lot to say, is alone, his sick wife disabled and away from home.. he told me: "living alone is so hard.
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neverendingjourney
I wrote this on another forum a while back:
My mother became a caregiver for an elderly sister in a neighboring congregation. She had gotten baptized at one of the giant conventions in NYC in the '50s that were always prominently featured in JW literature. She and her husband both got baptized there and they had a special-needs son. They put off having any other children until after Armageddon.
She was at various times a pioneer and was very well liked in the circuit. Even in her old age, her faith was palpable and she was a genuinely good person. She even had a picture on her mantle of one of her favorite young people, even though she had later "left the truth."
She had been a polio survivor and my mother got paid to spend something like 15 hours a week taking care of her, some kind of government program. By the time I met her, both her son and her husband were dead. She didn't have any close contacts with family because back then you had to cut ties with them if you wanted to be a Witness. She didn't need them. She had "the friends" at the kingdom hall. That's all she needed.
This sister's health started failing pretty quickly and she got to the point where she had to get around in a wheelchair. She required special assistance to get to the kingdom hall. The elders made a list and schedule of people whose responsibility it was to pick her up from her assisted care facility. Before long, the no-shows started happening. It would take her about 2 hours to get ready and she'd sit in front of the assisted living facility waiting for her ride that never came.
The elders finally gave up. It was too much of a burden on "the friends" to have to pick her up. So they started making her attend the meetings over the phone. This began to quite literally kill her slowly. All of the joy and light in her eyes went away. She was a shell of her former self.
About six months later she was moved to a full-on nursing home and she never attended another meeting after that. The elders were tired. The woman needed a lot of attention. She had no one other than the JWs, but the elders were already bogged down with all of the responsibilities and time constraints that come with it.
She died and there weren't very many people at her funeral. She was buried next to her husband. She gave her life to the organization and at the very end of her life, there was nobody there to repay her for her sacrifices.
To this day I still shed a tear when I think about her.
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Why did the Governing Body come behind the curtain?
by RULES & REGULATIONS inin the movie the wizard of oz, while the whole yellow brick road gang was being addressed by the great and powerful wizard of oz, the dog toto ran off to the side, pulled back on a curtain, and showed that a normal-looking humbug of a person was operating cranks and levers.
for a short while, the normal-looking man kept yanking levers and cranking cranks, and said into the microphone (which made the great and powerful wizard speak the same words) "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
i am the great and powerful wiz .
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neverendingjourney
The latest Governing Body was stacked with "Ted Jaracz Yes-Men." He and the gang put a bunch of organizational ass-kissers in, so they could retain power with a voting block. WELL, THEY ARE FREE OF TED NOW, able to think for themselves, only they don't think for themselves.
In any normal organization, this leadership vacuum would leave it vulnerable to a coup by a younger charismatic up-and-comer.
Whether it happens with JWs remains to be seen. Decades of GB worship will make it hard for a wannabe, modern-day JF Rutherford to successfully pull it off.