Posts by HB

15

Jehovah's Witnesses on BBC World Service radio

by jw news 2017 in

it is supposed to shape every facet of the lives of its 8 million followers around the world.its beliefs set it apart not only from non-believers and other christian faiths.but what has emerged in recent years is an alleged catalogue of sexual abuse that has gone unreported and unpunished due to this adherence to the literal word of god.david cook meets the survivors of years of abuse who say their claims were ignored because of the lack of two witnesses to the crime, a major law of the organisation which it says is enshrined in the bible.jehovah’s witnesses deny they shelter any abusers but he will hear how some alleged abusers were allowed to remain part of the organisation because of the lack of witnesses.he will also investigate how this insular worldwide community is responding to mounting pressure to turn over decades of testimonies which could expose thousands more cases of abuse... "~ quoted text, and video image, from the web page:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p056p7wgaudio of the programme:'heart and soul ~ witness protection' ~ broadcast on bbc world service at13:32 uk time, on 30th june 2017© copyright bbc world service © copyright bbc heart and soul

HB

A friend, who is generally not at all interested in religion and never had any dealings with JWs (beyond saying 'no thanks' at the door), sent me the youtube link to this, suggesting I should listen.

She was shocked and thoroughly disgusted at what she had learned, partiicularly about shunning, the two witness rule and the whole attitude of the organisation to abuse victims,. She wanted to spread the word.

I think my friend's reaction will be typical of many non-JWs who listen to the programme or podcast.

It's satisfying that, the harmful aspects of this religion are becoming more and more widely known by the general public.

The illusion of JWs as a benign, well meaning, if slighty weird and irritating group is, at leastt in the UK, fading quite fast now, thanks to the internet and other media.

24

FFA - 4H - Conscious matter or not allowed?

by Jennifer Lehrer in

i was baptized 4 years ago, i have 2 little girls who love their bunnies, so this year we reached out to 4h and started our own 4h group - this was after asking the elders for counsel.

none provided.

now after doing this for 3 months i am being brought before a judicial committee for neutrality.

HB

I have never been a JW but I joined this forum several years ago when a young friend started attending the local Kingdom Hall. You might be interested in her story as it relates to your situation in several ways.

My friend was 20 at the time and her study conductor had deceptively reassured her that she would NOT have to give up being a member of Girlguiding (the UK version of Girl Scouts), which I understand is in some respects similar to the club your daughters are part of.

My friend was a leader with the Brownies and whilst being 'love bombed' by the JWs, she was initially told it would be fine to continue being a Guiding volunteer provided she avoided meetings where Christmas and Easter Crafts were part of the programme and she mustn't join in with singing Happy Birthday to the girls.

Of course things started changing as she studied more and was approaching baptism. The thumb screws were tightened, but the Elders were clever, they desperately didn't want to lose their new recruit, as it was a rare prize to have a new young member who was not 'born in'.

So rather than forcing her to leave Brownies, she was strongly 'encouraged' to understand that it would be better to resign from the Brownies because it was taking her away from fully dedicating her life to Jehovah, and of course she did not want to displease Him. So believing it was her own decision, she reluctantly on principle resigned her membership of Girlguiding.

Long story short, eventually she could not cope with the controlling rules of the WT organisation, and left the JWs after much suffering and depression. She realised the WT Organisation controlled her lifestyle, her behaviour, what she could wear, which information she was allowed to read, what she did with her spare time, even what books, music and ornaments she could own, and finally they even controlled her thoughts and emotions. She had joined a high control cult-like organisation.

Having happily broken all ties with the JWs, she is now a volunteer with Girlguiding once again and gains far more from that than she ever did from her membership of the WT Organisation.

Sending you wishes for clarity of mind as you face this situation, and I hope that if you are forced to choose between the 4H group and the Watchtower, whatever you do, you will put the happiness and welfare of your daughters as your first priority. x

28

Report from Japan

by wifibandit in

jw
friends

anon in japan says:.

i served in the third circuit of shikoku japan.

a few years ago, a well-known theocratic family disassociated.

HB

I don't think the JW policy of shunning would go down well in Japan.

I have a Japanese friend (not a JW), and he has explained how one of the strongest 'pillars' of society there is loyalty to family and duty to parents.

It is a very strong and long standing tradition in their culture that grown-up children will physically care for and financially provide for ageing parents, and it would be a deeply shameful to neglect that duty. My friend is astounded and appalled to see that in the west, elderly people are often put into care homes and visited by their offspring once a week or less. He had no choice but to cut back on his working hours as a lecturer in Osaka University when his parents became frail, but did so willingly.

I guess for Japanese JWs, cutting off communication with family members if someone is disfellowshipped would be an even more traumatising and problematic than in western cultures.

62

Would You EVER Go Back To Being A Jehovah's Witness?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i could never understand why some people who know the truth about the "truth" ever go back.

once you understand all the hypocrisy and negatives, i would think it's almost impossible to go back!.

HB

Following on from Stan's first comment, I am interested in a slightly different twist to this question.

What would be your "price" to go to meetings for just one year and pretend to be either a loyal JW or an interested and sincere 'truth-seeker'?

For many of you I guess no offer of money would suffice, as integrity and sanity is of greater value.

However, suspend reality for a moment and imagine that a government secret service agent offered you a million tax free pounds /dollars/euros or whatever, to attend all KH meetings for a year and make friends with an elder who the authorities are interested in and report back.

Forget any ethical or practical issues, it's just a theoretical question of what your price would be.

If you'd say no to a million, would you do it for 5 million? Or more or less or not at all? They say everyone has a price but maybe that's not true.

I've personally never set foot in a Kingdom Hall and even the thought of going there creeps me out, but I'd do it and act interested for a year for £50,000. It would be hard but that's a fairly good income for the time spent.

However, I don't have past traumatic JW issues to deal with and have been 'vaccinated' against WT indoctrination and lies by this forum, so I'd be able to treat it just as an acting job, and no more.

I'm interested to know how much others would do it for?

182

Words for the Day; please share

by compound complex in

jw
friends

greetings, word lovers:.

in my job, i work with words and wrangle them into shape, well, in a manner of speaking.

one word might be mistaken for another, a word with either a similar or identical sound.

HB

Just spent a pleasant half an hour reading this thread.

It appears that no one has yet mentioned the classic poem 'The Chaos' by Gerard Nolst Trenité.

The poem contains about 800 irregularities found in English spelling and pronunciation, and was originally an appendix in the author’s 1920 textbook intended for foreign language students “Drop your foreign accent” .

It's a little long to copy the whole thing here, but you easily can find the full poem on the internet (both written and spoken). Bear in mind there a few different versions around.

I have added the first four verses and the last to give a flavour for anyone who hasn't come across it before:-

Dearest creature in creation

Studying English pronunciation,

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy;

Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;

So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,

Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

Just compare heart, hear and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word.

Sword and sward, retain and Britain,
(Mind the latter, how it's written).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say-said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid.

………………………..

Finally, which rhymes with tough,

Though, through, bough, cough, dough, or enough?

Hiccough has the sound of sup…

My advice is: GIVE IT UP!

9

Why did Jesus need to experience a human childhood?

by HB in

i've never been a jw and haven't ever studied the bible or theology so it may be that there is a simple answer to my question that i'm not aware of, in which case, please forgive my ignorance.

however i have wondered about this for quite some time and have scoured the internet but i can't find any mention of the topic.

maybe someone here might enlighten me.

HB

I've never been a JW and haven't ever studied the bible or theology so it may be that there is a simple answer to my question that I'm not aware of, in which case, please forgive my ignorance. However I have wondered about this for quite some time and have scoured the internet but I can't find any mention of the topic. Maybe someone here might enlighten me.

(Looking at the bigger picture, the answer to my question is actually easy, i.e. the stories in the bible are merely illogical mad made myths, but for the purpose of this question, it’s necessary to go with the theoretical premise that the bible is true).

So the question is: Why did Jesus have to start life on earth in the womb, be born, and grow through babyhood, childhood and teenage into manhood?

What did this achieve? Why could the purpose of His life on earth not have been fulfilled by arriving as a fully grown adult? If his second coming will be as an adult, why could his first not also have been? Jesus’s mission, his preaching, miracles and eventual death were all undertaken as a grown man.

The potential answer that God wished Jesus to experience as many facets of human existence as possible, in order to understand human nature, doesn’t quite work. There were many very important aspects of life Jesus did not have any experience of, such as being married, being a parent, etc, and he missed out completely on one of the most common and basic human experiences – i.e. being female, with all that that entails. Also he was a perfect man and had God as a father, so he could never have completely experienced the essence of the human condition anyway. But he could have discovered for himself the trials of being poor, hungry and oppressed etc even if he had arrived fully grown.

It would have been easy for an all-powerful God to organise sending his adult son to arrive (in Bethlehem or wherever) around 30CE, and give him a head full of the necessary knowledge for negotiating the middle eastern culture and religion. If Jesus suddenly appeared from the sky in a blaze of light in front of a large crowd, and then started preaching and demonstrating his ability to heal the sick and perform other miracles, his ‘Son of God’ persona would have been clearly evident, so he would not have needed to travel around gathering followers, he could have stayed in one place and people would have come from far and wide just to catch a glimpse of him. I guess the Romans would have wanted to kill him even more.

Another critical point, to be the perfect ransom sacrifice, Jesus was supposed to be equivalent to Adam who arrived on earth as an adult, not a baby. Adam must have been given basic knowledge by God in order to survive, so why not do the same for Jesus?

Jesus coming as an adult would be far simpler; it would avoid the complex mystery of how exactly Mary’s ovum was fertilised and whose DNA was in the 23 chromosomes normally supplied by the father. And it would have avoided the trauma for Joseph of hearing his fiancée was pregnant, and presumably Mary's shame of being unmarried.

I can't think why was it necessary for Jesus to have earthly parents and a childhood, as nothing important seems to have been gained by this. God would have simply had to give different ‘inspiration’ to the Old Testament prophets so that rather than foretelling that the Messiah would be descended from David , the prophesy would be that the Saviour would come from Heaven.

If Ive missed something and there is an explanation more satisfying than just that ‘it's a mystery and God knows best’, I'd like to understand it.

40

Do you air on the side of caution?

by compound complex in

well, that would be an airer.

it's all in how we hear the spoken word.

when a little boy, one fellow thought "world peace" was "whirled peas.

HB

A 'philosophical' ditty, sung as a four part round, to the tune of 'Frere Jacques':

Life is butter, life is butter,

Melon cauliflower, melon cauliflower,

Life is butter melon, life is butter melon,

Cauliflower, cauliflower.

(Life is but a melancholy flower)

4

Door knockers

by HB in

not sure if this has been posted before, but it made me smile...... .

HB

Not sure about the cartoonist who drew it, but no offence to anyone intended by me in posting this.

I just liked the irony of atheists wearing shirts and ties (depicted like clichéd Mormons and JWs with rather gormless faces) going door to door, but with no message to promote.

4

Door knockers

by HB in

not sure if this has been posted before, but it made me smile...... .

HB

Not sure if this has been posted before, but it made me smile.....

82

incident going on in central london

by Ruby456 in

jw
friends

unfolding now - could be terrorist.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/22/man-shot-police-outside-parliament-officer-reportedly-shoots/.

HB

There are usually a couple of JW carts right opposite the Houses of Parliament on the corner of Westminster Bridge by the tube station entrance. I have spoken to some of them in the past.

If the JWs were there today, I hope they are safe, but they would be literal 'witnesses' to a real event and in this case, their witnessing could be of actual use.