Posts by garybuss

16

Question about "Status" in WTS

by GoodnessGracious in

so if a witness has an ubm .

.

does that limit how high they can go in the society ??

garybuss

Hi GoodnessGracious,

If I want a Witness to know something, I keep it a secret from them. A Witness is more inquisitive than a cat. They can't stand being ignored or ignorant. My policy is, I don't tell a Witness anything. If they ask me something related to the Witnesses I tell them I can't tell them.

I left the group way before my wife did and I sort of ignored them until the Witnesses started shunning me. That didn't go over well at all. After they started shunning me, I punished her for being a Witness, and I made it tough for her to be a Witness. Before the shunning started I was sort of indifferent about it.

I'd ask her if she wanted to go out and eat Thursday night and she'd say no. So Thursday night came she got ready to go to the meeting and I was getting dressed, she'd ask where are you going? I'd say, going out to eat. Remember I asked you and you said no. And I'd go without her. . . . week after week.

I started to reward myself because she was going to the meetings. I'd go out to eat every Thursday with a club I belonged to. If she had a weekend assembly, I'd take a weekend trip out of town to somewhere she liked. Pretty soon, I didn't care if she went to meetings or not, I had a better life now than before and more friends.

I took week long vacations without her and I had a better time than if she'd have gone along. She wanted to live separate lives, I was living a better separate life than her.

16

Question about "Status" in WTS

by GoodnessGracious in

so if a witness has an ubm .

.

does that limit how high they can go in the society ??

garybuss

You wrote: "I thought Id be more understanding than this."

It sounds to me like you're very understanding. You're living with a nut who would abuse your child and you understand that. That's not a fault. Withholding pragmatic medical treatment from a child is the worst kind of child abuse in my opinion. One of the worst things that can happen to a child on this planet is to have a Jehovah's Witness parent in my opinion.

I wouldn't live with a believing, practicing Jehovah's Witness and if I had a minor child, I wouldn't let a believing Jehovah's Witness within 100 miles of the child. I wouldn't let Witness grandparents within 1,000 miles.

I don't debate a believing Jehovah's Witness. It's a waste of my time. It's like trying to reason with a drunk. You won't get anywhere, and they won't remember what you said anyway.

Usually the worst enemy a child has is the parent(s). Usually the worst enemy of a family are relatives. Witnesses love death. Their group is based on death and death is a reinforcement for them. They can't be trusted and there's never an exception to that.

37

I may lose my wife because of Disfellowshipping

by freedomfighter in

have only been out of the organisation for 2 months and the wounds still run deep.

particularly hard is the fact that my wife and 8 yr old son are now divided in our beliefs.

we cannot go out as a family with our old friends like we use to.

garybuss

I'm a firm believer that all marriage problems are marriage problems. Working on religion is just another way to not work on the family problem. There is no real religion problem.

Anything that tries to divide a family is never a part of the family solution, it's part of the family problem. Having a relationship with a person or a group outside the marriage is called an extramarital relationship. Those don't strengthen or support the family, they weaken and divide.

So if my wife were having an extramarital relationship with a person instead of with a book printing corporation, would I support her in continuing the affair? Or would I take some pragmatic steps to achieve a satisfactory resolution?

Think of what's sustainable and then take rational steps to establish and sustain that.

6

At the gates...

by carla in

skeeder brought this up and i have been saying that to my jw for years now, these things were done in public at the gates (re: wrongdoing) my jw never seems to have a good answer for me.

he claims that it would be gossip to have jc's in public or for anybody to know what goes on.

at times my jw does not have the correct party wt line and i do not recall a wt that deals with this issue of 'at the gates'.

garybuss

The last time the Society did a public trial and published the results, they got sued and lost.

9

If not shunned by family, why stay away?

by 4mylove in

i was chatting with a friend that is a very active witness.

lazy, but active.

i actually went to school with her brother but she and i have gotten very close these past few years.

garybuss

How does the Witness family treat other former Witnesses? If they snub them because of their religion or lack of religion, they're bigots. Maybe I don't like hanging out with bigots and people who snub people important to me.

Do the Witnesses initiate contact and invite me to functions the same as Witnesses relatives? Or do they make me initiate contact and segregate me from their Witness friends and other Witness family members? How do they treat me? Are they condescending or arrogant?

If they don't initiate contact, if they segregate me, or if the're self righteous, any one of those is offensive to me and I don't go out of my way to see offensive people.

Another thing is, I don't like stepping over dead bodies to visit people and I'm not good at walking on egg shells when I visit people.

31

What did Jesus mean by "this generation"

by Fisherman in

what did jesus mean by "thisgeneration" ?.

34 truly i say to you that this generation will by no means pass away until all these things occur.

in all 4 gospels, every time that jesus said "this generation" he was refering to his contemporaries, the people that lived in his time.

garybuss

The Watch Tower Society owns the Jehovah's Witness religion, not the other way around as they teach.

The Witness theology I was raised with was only based on the claims made by the "Society", such as, "It happened this way because we say it happened this way", or, It's this way because we say it's this way". Claims made aren't supported by reality or facts, the're defended by threat of sanctions.

If I want to understand the "Society" it's pretty easy by looking at just the few tactics they use. The key rules are:

A. Treat us as if we are never wrong.
B. If we are ever wrong see rule "A".

Now that they have established the ground rules . . . policy, laws, and doctrine are easy since the Society can't be held accountable or questioned.

Opinions aren't presented as opinions, they're presented as fact and policy.

1). The Society looks at select Bible texts as having 2 or more applications. They call these the "types" and the "anti-types", or the typical and the atypical. A perfect example of this are the generation speculations.

2). Parables are shopped and some are ignored, some are left as parables, and some are turned into prophecy. The best example of this is the parable of the 3 slaves. Write this one out and flow chart it. Tell me what's missing.

3). The Society takes a legal approach to it's Jehovah's Witness religion and the political government they run closely resembles the Fascist model. The Society itself looks more like an IBM business model than a religion.

4). Enforcement of policy is not done by the Society but is done by willing friends and relatives using social, economic, and emotional blackmail. Threats are carried out by cooperative friends and relatives.

5). The only way I've seen the Society itself takes visible action against a non employee member is secular action through it's legal department.

In my personal experience with the Witnesses:
a). teachings are nothing more than an excuse to print product and have meetings.
b). if my friends are all Witnesses, I don't have any friends.
c). if my relatives are Witnesses I can't trust them.

25

Comments You Will Not Hear at the WT Study (12/2 CONSCIENCE)

by V in

your comments are appreciated too!

thanks for all the support.. .

garybuss

17) Of course, we are in a better situation now. We have the entire Bible

(written by Jewish Rabbis, added to by Catholics, canonized by Catholics, hand copied by Catholics, preserved by Catholics, and stored at the Catholic Church headquarters.)

41

Watchtower Farms plans millions in expansion

by Grammy in

watchtower farms plans millions in expansionhttp://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?aid=/20071129/news/711290360

garybuss

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=900+Red+Mills+Rd,+Wallkill,+NY+12589,+USA&sa=X&oi=map&ct=title

11

Who is classed as a "Non-Believer"?

by freedomfighter in

this issue came up back in 1994 when i met my wife to be.

i was baptised and she had been brought up as a witness and had baptised witness parents.

problem was she was unbaptised.

garybuss

There's a slight chance the elder was telling you not to marry anyone the elders can't control. An unbaptized person is immune to virtually all the social sanctions, the trials, the shunning, and the weasel tricks like withholding "privileges" that the elders use to manipulate people. The counsel was really more of a punishment for HER for not getting baptized than counsel for you.

Every time you're looking at an elder you're seeing a miracle . . . you're seeing a weasel talking.

8

What definiton of generation would you use for the anointed living today?

by truthseeker in

from feb 15, 2008 wt.

15today, people who don't have the spiritual understanding think that there is nothing of "stunningly observable" as to the signs of jesus' presence.

they reason that all continues as before.

garybuss

They just changed the Bible. It used to say "this generation will by no means pass away", now it says, "the anointed will by no means pass away".

They changed two words in the Bible. Big deal! They've changed a lot more than that. Look at all the "Jehovah's" they added to the New Testament.

The underscore is, they can do whatever they want with impunity.