Posts by neverendingjourney

39

The real dividing line isn’t between apostates and apologists it’s between...

by slimboyfat in

excellent observation from zizek about communist regimes: they didn’t care if people accepted the ideology or took it seriously, so long as people acted as if the ideology was true, that was the important thing.

in fact the regimes were deeply suspicious people who took the ideology too seriously.

people who took the ideology seriously were dangerous because they were prone to noticing the inconsistencies and flaws in the system.

neverendingjourney

Even though I was born in, my parents were inactive, so when I bought into the religion during my teenage years, it was almost as if I were a recent convert.

There was a young elder who took me under his wing. He, too, took the doctrine very seriously and we'd spend hour after hour discussing Watchtower teachings. That elder was disfellowshipped a month after I got baptized, though.

From that point forward, there weren't too many people, even elders, who wanted to engage with me. The vast majority of Witnesses would get very uncomfortable when I brought up doctrinal matters. Some even got angry. It was through social pressure that I eventually relaxed and learned that I was kind of on an island. I backed off for the most part.

Eventually I did find a few like-minded JWs, but that kind of "deep spiritual" discussion was largely unwelcome.

I think a lot of it coincided with Fred Franz's advanced age and eventual death. It seems that during the Franz era, JWs were encouraged to at least pretend to be Bible scholars, but that faded away once he was too old to hold any influence. Things started to dumb down considerably staring around 1990.

50

Did you EVER falsify your report card ?

by Chook in

every single watchtower soldier lied to god out of fear of the brooklyn popes..

neverendingjourney

I used to pioneer with some one who got really behind on his "time". Well close to the end of the service year, this person started putting 175 hours per month. No one believed these were true hours, but how could anybody prove it?

When I was a 17-year-old regular pioneer there was a 19-year-old pioneer in my congregation who I knew was faking his hours. I'd rarely see him in service. He'd often oversleep when we were supposed to go out together, and I'd have to go get him out of bed.

He was always careful to ask how many hours I had put in so far in the service year so that he would always be only 10 or 20 hours behind my pace. Then in August he all of a sudden wanted to go on vacation and lo and behold he somehow had managed to finish his 1,000 hours one month early. This was going to be a well-earned vacation without worrying about having to complete his time. Meanwhile, I had to put in a 12-hour service day on August 31st to finish out the service year.

Within a year he was publicly reproved for sleeping with a married sister.

50

Did you EVER falsify your report card ?

by Chook in

every single watchtower soldier lied to god out of fear of the brooklyn popes..

neverendingjourney

it makes know there is real reason to believe that much of the WTS reports are phantom

Even if the hours were "legit," very little time is actually spent talking to people. Back when I was a regular pioneer and meticulous about counting time, I'd spend maybe 30 minutes actually talking to people for every ten hours I reported.

I imagine the ratio of time counted vs. time spent talking to people is even more exaggerated now that cart witnessing is a thing.

50

Did you EVER falsify your report card ?

by Chook in

every single watchtower soldier lied to god out of fear of the brooklyn popes..

neverendingjourney

I started off being incredibly meticulous about maintaining time. I'd keep a notebook, round to nearest 5 minute interval and exclude any time spent on breaks, regardless of how inconsequential.

This approach pissed off nearly every Witness I went to service with, especially other regular pioneers. I discovered quickly that nearly everyone of them was knowingly exaggerating their time. With some of them, their justification for counting time the way they did went beyond farce. I've shared some of those stories here over the years.

During my final two or three years with the Witnesses, I would write down a few hours on a time slip every now and then. Sometimes I just hadn't kept good records and guessed. On some occasions I just didn't care and wanted to avoid being labeled as an "irregular" publisher. As someone mentioned above, the elders did not care. They lied about time themselves. The congregation secretary didn't want the hassle from the circuit overseer, so he was more than happy if you "estimated" a few hours every month.

12

Once Upon A Time In ... Hollywood (My review)

by Terry in

jw
friends

once upon a time in... hollywood my review.

i rode my bike through 3-digit temperature and watched quentin tarentino’s new film.the title harkens back to sergio leone’s trilogy titles.. i wanted to see it for personal reasons.

the time span covered is the background to much of my life.

neverendingjourney

I'm just glad there's still room for this kind of movie. With all the societal and technological changes over the years, Hollywood is reluctant to invest in movies unless they come with a built-in audience (remakes, reboots, sequels, adaptations).

Thanks goodness for Tarantino and his ability to still make a mini-event out of original and zany storytelling.

27

It was all GREEK to me

by Terry in

jw
friends

around 1976 i got the wild idea i'd like to learn greek (for my study of the christian greek scriptures and to 'get to the bottom' of whether i was wasting my time being even a token jehovah's witness.

) i would read the actual text and avoid my denomination's opinion commentaries, you see.. .

i learned the characters in the greek alphabet rather quickly and started reading an interlinear (english/greek) bible aloud - practicing my enunciation.

neverendingjourney

I was raised a JW in the 80s and was baptized and briefly became a regular pioneer in the 90s.

Parousia was thrown around by "spiritual brothers" who had a grasp of "deep spiritual matters," but it wasn't regularly brought up by the rank and file. For them, it was "deep spiritual stuff," like most 1914-related topics, that was beyond their grasp.

14

How to Recognize the One True Religion

by Vanderhoven7 in

how to recognize the one true religion.

it freely adds to the word of god to fits its doctrines.

it splits up families over birthday celebrations .

neverendingjourney

IS IT THE ONE TRUE RELIGION:

Do you think it's the one true religion -------------> It's not the one true religion

Do you think it's not the one true religion ------------> It's not the one true religion

Are you unsure of whether it's the one true religion ---------------> It's not the one true religion

21

Anyone drop out of high school or not focus on grades becuase the end was near

by rockemsockem in

i dropped out with 3 months left to go of the 12th grade.

my uncle offed me a job and the end was only a few years away.

my mother even though she was dyed in the wool at the time said she would only go along with it if i took a correspondence course out of american correspondence school out of chicago.

neverendingjourney

Home schooling is still popular. I have a couple nieces being "home schooled" by my idiot siblings.

My parents only had an elementary school education, so I don't know how much of this to put on the cult and how much I should blame my parents for their own lack of imagination, but I showed a gift for school from a very young age. But to my parents it was just a novelty. They'd laugh at how I would get straight A's and was being pestered by school administrators to submit to specialized testing. It was a curiosity to them, nothing more.

30

Why do CO's refuse to strip Elders of their position?

by Tenacious in

in several congregations i attended many elders were downright evil and flat out drunk with power.. many times i personally knew of things done by them that would have been a disfellowshipping offense had they not been elders.

and even though many times these issues and spiritual atrocities were reported to the co's and hq they would many times (if not all the time), get off with a mere slap on the wrist or a forced apology.. why do you believe elders are so protected?.

my theory is the authority integrity within the congregation.

neverendingjourney

they're scraping the bottom of the barrel more and more just to find guys just willing to take the job in the first place.

When I was a child in the 80s, there was a caste of professional ministerial servants in my congregation and in neighboring congregations. These were men who had been faithful, but who weren't particularly skilled or respected. The vast majority weren't really interested in being elders. A few did, but they were usually the type of men who didn't seem to be made of "elder material."

In the mid-90s, these men started getting promoted to elder. The first guy was a professional MS who'd been badly wanting to be an elder for a long time. I seriously believe his IQ was barely above mentally retarded. Nice guy, but incredibly dim-witted. Before long, the old elder group of the 80s had largely been replaced with this new crop. A lot of the 80s elders burned out. Some developed health problems. Others had dysfunctional families that caused them to be removed from the position.

By the time I left in the early 00s, the elder body had become a joke. It completely lacked the gravitas that the body had in the 80s. After I left, I started learning that they were elevating just about any male with a pulse. Guys who'd just been hanging around the KH for years leading double lives were being elevated first to MS then to elders. The only criteria seemed to be a pulse, regularly reporting time in field service, and no recent judicial action.

I thought it couldn't get any worse, but it somehow did.

30

Why do CO's refuse to strip Elders of their position?

by Tenacious in

in several congregations i attended many elders were downright evil and flat out drunk with power.. many times i personally knew of things done by them that would have been a disfellowshipping offense had they not been elders.

and even though many times these issues and spiritual atrocities were reported to the co's and hq they would many times (if not all the time), get off with a mere slap on the wrist or a forced apology.. why do you believe elders are so protected?.

my theory is the authority integrity within the congregation.

neverendingjourney

This has a lot to do with it. When my father was a quite new as a CO he removed a number of Elder’s, a lot to do with domestic violence. The previous CO knew of the accusations but was afraid to do anything, particularly since in many of the congregations the elders were related and would back each other up.

There was a guy in a neighboring congregation whose father was an uber elder PO. The kid led the model JW life, baptized at 12, pioneer at 17, MS at 18, Bethel at 19. After two or three years at Bethel he abruptly left, purportedly to "serve where the need was greater," but he kind of dropped off the radar not too long after that.

Fast forward about 10 years and I found him on Facebook and his page made clear he was no longer a JW. I reconnected with him and it turns out what led to his awakening was an incident with this father. His father, the uber elder, had been beating his wife. Finally the Bethelite got up the courage to tun him in to the elder body. The elders did nothing. The father remained as PO.

This started getting him thinking how the organization could possibly be run by holy spirit, he gave himself permission to think critically, and that was the beginning of the end.

This elder was one of the cruelest men I've ever known. He led the judicial committee that disfellowshipped a good friend of mine. I was a witness at this JC and when he told me they were going to disfellowship him, he had a giant smirk on his face. I'll never forget that look.