its been a long time, but i am back for more chat.. hi to all who remember me from the old h20 (except youknow) is he here ?.
im am still a nonattender.
yeeeeh.. the evil elder who tried to remove me and my brother got removed himself !.
Yes, You Know is here, slimeing around from post to post. In fact, we have a few of that type bonehead posting here. They are breathtakingly illiterate, and mind-numbingly anti-intellectual. JW lackeys, that's what they are. And I'm in favor of ignoring them totally.
Welcome
ft
My $0.02
what made me the most ill at the district convention.
the public talk had to be it.
although the drama was a close second.
As much as I hate to have to believe it, I continue to think that religion is an emotional phenomena, especially as it is practiced in cults like the Jay-Dubs.
All the logic, all the facts, all the reason in the world will not move these people. If the entire governing body were to sign a mass confession, there are those who would reject it and continue to make excuses.
Remember when Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's ship hit the sand back in 1988? Remember all the things they had been doing and that they made confession to? Remember? The double-booking, the waste, the fraud, the lying, the deceit, the JAIL TIME for Jim?
I was working on a contract at the IBM Software Development Labs in Atlanta at the time, and there was a database administrator there who was a Jim and Tammy Faye BIG believer (hard to believe, I know. DB administrators are by definition very organized in their thinking, very logical, very rational). Anyway, even after Jim was found guilty and led away in CHAINS on national television, this woman was making excuses for the Bakkers; claiming it was all a big misunderstanding caused by the machinations of Satan. And she continued to send them money! I mean this woman tithed to those con artists even after all that.
So don't worry too much about what would happen to the old folk who can't deal with the idea that the Borg is actually a buncha crooked old men. They're going to avoid that cognitive dissonance at all cost.
And, to continue beating this dead horse, as much as I like and respect Ray Franz, when he organized a pretty large group of ex-JWs in a meeting held in Alabama back in the late eighties, they got together in their convention hall and the first order of business was to choose - I swear - a governing body!! And the folks who came reserved their seats by putting magazines over the backs of their chairs! From beginning to end it was like going to any garden variety circuit assembly. Of course the content was somewhat different, but the form was exactly the same.
Anyway, don't sweat it for the old folk. They'll bounce back.
ft
My $0.02
i feel the need to ramble.. as some of you may have detected, i at times have doubts and questions about the personality and qualities of god and the bible.
however i am still clinging to a good amount of my faith in their goodness.
this is why i am now, as some of you have in the past, studying deeply and looking for myself into what the bible says.
Perhaps you'll remember in connection with these verses that the JWs said that "this is no time to quibble withe the words of Jesus." Quibble? Well. They also said, "The evidence is in. ALL of it." And of course from there they wove another of their well-known prophecies; you know, the ones that are 100% - 100% failures.
But you hit the nail on the head with your statement that you were never "allowed" to see what is now so clear to you. More importantly in my view you've realized as so many of us have, that you cannot be walked on unless you lie down first.
Congratulations! You're getting up off your back and standing erect as is the right of each and every child of God. Keep it up, you're heading in the right direction.
Franc
My $0.02
i now realize that the reason i left was because i just couldn't deal with all the important issues: http://www.greatcrowd.com/159ubb/forum22/html/000161.html.
expatbrit
I poked around in that site for awhile. Man! Is there any danger of being cloyed to death?
Also noticed that the thread on Prince was closed by some holier-than-thou moderator.
Reminds me of an old saying, "The mind is like an umbrella, it only works when it's open."
ft
My $0.02
the tale of the five officers (2000) .
when ms. k. was slowly raped and murdered by a common thug over the.
course of 1 hour and 55 minutes, in plain sight of five fully-armed.
Actually, I thought the five officers represented liberal points of view.
ft
My $0.02
i'm a "long time listener", "first time caller".
i've been eavesdropping on this site for a couple of months now, trying to detach from my beliefs engrained in me for forty years (since birth).
i've finally got the time and the ambition to share my story with you all, since you've so gratiously shared your story with me (electronically).. i'm a 4th generation jw, or perhaps i should say "i was a ..." (old habits die hard).
You need the WTBTS like you need another nostril.
I'm going to work right now, but I just had to post and say Hi to you. I'm certain that by the time I get home tonight, you'll have tons of responses and won't need mine. But my story is close to your own and I'd like to share it with you. Keep in mind that when you want ONE THING from the Borg, you make yourself their slave. One thing. Anything.
In the meantime know that there IS life after the witnesses and abundant life at that. You've taken your first step into a vastly larger reality. Congratulations.
Francois
My $0.02
a 99 wt had an article entitled "does god work in crooked ways", and one of the scriptures discussed in it was exodus 4:11.. nwt.
at that jehovah said to him: "who appointed a mouth for man or who appoints the speechless or the deaf or the clear-sighted or the blind?
then the lord said to him, "who has made man's mouth?
A primitive god for a primitive people.
My $0.02
hello everyone, i am new in the forum.
let me introduce myself: i_am_an_idiot.
why use that handle?
I_Am:
Welcome to our site.
Please remember that Jesus said that there are only two commandmdnts to guide your life: 1) love God with a whole soul, and 2) love your neighbor as your self.
There is nothing else commanded of you by Jesus; not going to meetings, not reading "bible literature", not going door-to-door, not attaching yourself to a particular organization, nothing.
Nothing could be more simple.
Just as soon as someone begins to add burdens to being a christian as noted in the above paragraph, you will know that you're being mislead. Especially when these burdens are accompanied by complex, long-winded explanations about why there are many other things you must do in order to qualify.
Peace & Love,
Francois
My $0.02
what are the lives of ex-jws really like?
the wts tells jws one thing, but is what they say reality, or fantasy?.
a common technique used by the wts to express their viewpoint while avoiding the truth of the matter is to focus on the specific and imply that it is the general.. let me explain: do you know of any ex-jws who were disfellowshipped for immorality?
Seeker, you've done an execellent job of defining propaganda. And that's exactly what the WTBTS is up to, not only in their remarks about ex-JWs, but in all their publications whether magazines or books and tracts.
In this effort, they are the perfect reflection of Joseph Goebbels, their ideal teacher and spiritual father and for whom they are the present-day anti-type.
Those of us who left for principled reasons of conscience, that is to say the majority of us, actually occupy the moral and ethical high ground. We refused to be little cookie-cutter windup dolls engaged in spreading propaganda for an immoral religious cult.
I think we deserve, each one of us, that award Bush I started, the thousand pints of Lite, um, thousand points of light award.
Francois
My $0.02
recently, it seems that elders are being treated , not merely.
as a priviledged clergy class, but as something more.. "made" guys!.
in movies about the mafia (goodfellows?
Very well said.
Indeed it is true, what the Borg has been telling us all these years, that one bad apple does indeed spoil the entire barrel.
There's a lot of money at stake when the JWs go down the tubes - and they must. That's not going to happen without a big, epic struggle. Your metaphor of "made" men may be more accurate than you think. People who rip the cover off the Borg may well be in mortal danger. You don't think it could come to that?
Silly boy.
Francois
My $0.02
