i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.
i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.
i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.
COMF & SIXOF NINE
I misread 'serial rape-murder' and interpreted it as 'serial killer' - my apologies. No nothing good in this act or any such acts. I was trying to speak of persons and not activities, obviously I failed and confused the issue. My apologies.
Where do we go from here?
Stepped on
i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.
i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.
i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.
SixOfNine
A night with little rest, perhaps my mind is in underdrive. Perhaps you might kindly simplify the point Comf was making and fill in the blanks for me -
What comf is saying is..............
Thank you - step
i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.
i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.
i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.
think41self
I appreciate your giving me the benefit of the doubt and I largely agree with your comments.
More than twenty years ago I fell in love with a woderful woman whom I subsequently married and is the light of my life. The few years before that, I had through my own research concluded that the WTS was flawed in much of its scriptual interpretation and I was ready to leave and get on with my life. I felt it incumbent upon me to try and share this information with my fiance but met with negative reactions ( to say the least) and withdrew recognising that you cannot win this type of war overnight and certainly not by confrontation. I had two choices to marry, or to leave the WTS. I married and have no regrets. Very gradually over the next 20 years I slowly brought my wife to the realisation that perhaps what she had firmly believed to be true for such a long time was not. As of today, she no longer believes in the WTS exclusivity as Gods tool and is furious at the wasted years. She shares much of the anger that seems to be the prevelant on this board and could probably add a few choice words of cussing of her own to the many that I have seen. We all go through this, I did many years ago. But anger, while understandable and neccessary in short measure, does not lead to spiritual growth. We are ready to leave the WTS but we will do this on our own terms not theirs.
So no, you have not been duped by me think41self. I do not have the time to put much discussive input into the board but I do read and thank you for at least giving me the chance to explain myself without judgement.
By the way the 'Hillary Step' as most mountaineers know is the final obstacle to reaching the peak of Everest. At this stage many climbers fail and it needs supreme effort to break the chains of exhaustion and move to the top.
step
i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.
i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.
i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.
COMF
Thank you for your comments. I am not sure that I fully understand what you are trying to say but I will give them some space and thought.
i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.
i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.
i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.
FARKEL you write:
: you are viewing me as a 'soft' target well, you are playing darts without a board.
With that simple statement, you just betrayed yourself. No JW would ever make a statement like that.
Actually Farkel I do owe you an apology. My comments were actually generic in nature and intended to be read within the context of the reaction by some to my original post. I did not intend to imply that you were viewing me a as target but I accept that this is how my comment could be read. That apology being made, what precludes the average JW from understanding and using the term ‘soft’ target, dart or dart board? I have trouble following that one. Can you honestly and confidently say that you know what 6,000,000 people would say in these circumstances?
As to my being a ‘Trol’, not absolutely sure what that means but I presume it is not supposed to be complimentary.
I have no reason to mislead you about who I am. I also have lived long enough to learn that nobody ever wins a point by arguing Farkel. What results from arguments are entrenched positions and I have seen enough damage from these over the years. Your comment about my not being so ‘clever’ is a little silly. If I were trying to be clever, I certainly would not be risking my exposure on this board. It is probably one of the least clever things that I have ever done but it has been done in good faith.
As an Arab proverb once said ‘cleverness is good - but patience is better’. In time as my circumstances unfold you will see that you are wrong in imputing flawed motives to my input here.
TINA you write:
It sure is. The majority of other religions,businesses,political parties,etc. do not enforce medical policies that endanger and kill,as the wts does.
They do not tear families apart with an emotional and psychological abusive shunning policy.
Putting religion aside,the others do not claim to speak for god.
Tina - With respect your statement above is inaccurate Even in North America a health policy seems to be enforced that allows people to die on trolleys because they could not afford medical insurance. Take a close look at the modus operandi of governments of China, many African countries, Haiti, South America, some areas of India and Burma, parts of the Balkans and Russia etc.etc. Who was it that deliberately sent Aids contaminated blood to Africa? My own nation the UK. My original argument Tina is where you find organisation, ANY organisation, you find some sort of pain. I have seen nothing that disproves that
Hs,
Actually,Im rather well traveled,and I stand by what I said in my posts. I always take the global view......the atrocity you saw in the middle east is comparable to the atrocities perpetrated by the wts: the Malawi political card disaster
innocent children dying due to a specious and nonsensical medical policy. SO please dont take the high road with me
Please note your own comments posted above Tina and you will note the contradiction in your own position. I you feel that a person presenting a view contrary to your own has taken the ‘high road’ with you, then you seem to have just swapped one set of extreme slogans for another.
Step
i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.
i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.
i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.
ISLANDWOMEN,
Thank you for your welcome. One last post.
Though I do not wish to judge, I do not see the GB being Christ's right hand. What I was saying, if you read my post carefully, is that THEY are absolutely convinced that they are the right hand of Christ. If that issue is not understood nothing else about the WTS can. Once they are convinced of this point they are able with impunity to take on the mantle of dictators, scriptual interpretors et all. and even more sinister misuse Truth to protect the boundaries of what THEY SEE as the truth.
I hope that this clarifies the point that I was attempting to make.
COMF - serial-killer! Well if he keeps a tidy garden and pays his taxes, that's some good isnt it. Every man or women is capable of anything and we all have good and evil carefully balanced within us, even you Comf, is the point that I was trying to make and by which I stand.
Definately my last post this morning.
i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.
i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.
i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.
FARKEL,
Thank you for your kind welcome and reasoned thoughts. Actually Hitler liked some people too! He seems to have spent his last hours in the bunker making sure his cleaning lady and secretary had a life pension and NO I am not defending Hitler. The post that I sent to Tina will I hope also clear up the issue as to whether I am here to defend the WTS. I am not. If you are viewing me as a 'soft' target well, you are playing darts without a board. The paths that many of you have walked since the internet revolution have been walked by others before you and not just JW. I read a book many years ago containing the thoughts of a Catholic priest who became disgusted by the excesses of the Catholic Church and left in disgust, writing an 'apostate' book. His experiences were starlingly familiar to my own at the time and mimicked many that I have read on this board. It was written in 1895.
Anyway, its turning light here, the sunset in the morning for me, so I will retire for now.
i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.
i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.
i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.
Tina,
If you feel that within my posting I am defending the WTS or the teachings that set it aside from Scriptual Truth, you have reacted rather than read. From Masada to Mons anybody who yields their conscience to others will either become a victim or make a victim. With all respect, your views of political parties and other religions seem to be based on a rather narrow Northern American viewpoint. I was in a Middle East country in the 70's when an innocent young women, who had comitted adultery was beheaded. It was a sickening sight a product of an extremist religio/political system that thrives today. Apart from a few notable exceptions, starting with an innocent Christ, I see no innocence in any human structures or systems but I see many innocent individuals attached to them who need love and patience.
i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.
i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.
i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.
COMF
No I am not 'FRIEND'
i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.
i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.
i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.
I am a new to posting on this board though I have been actively reading your posts the past while and I thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that I have enjoyed thinking on. I am still an active JW, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances. I have served in a number of countries in Europe as a Pioneer and Elder over the past three decades. I realized many years ago, in fact in the mid/late 70’s, that what the WTS basically represented was just another extremist Christian philosophy, one of many around the planet. Like extremists in any situation, the WTS by definition will always feel the need to guard its borders by any means for the ‘good’ of their adherents. As long as we have a voice and are convinced about our own ‘truth’, then we are all open to behaving as extremists ourselves and frankly even some posters to this board are not exempt from the very motivation that seems to have driven the WTS since the 20’s. Any who feel the that GB are motivated by anything other than a total conviction that they are Christ’s right hand will never understand their mentality and subsequently their entrenched modus operandi. These men are very hardworking, deeply committed and totally convinced that they have the enormous responsibility of taking care of Christ’s interests upon the earth. This is not a viewpoint that can be reformed, as it is one that the very premise of an exclusive organisation is built upon. The WTS are unhappily caught on the barbed wire fence between Judaism and Christianity and are having great difficulty disentangling themselves from the theological turmoil that they have created. The ‘pattern of healthful words’ has become a turgid mantra that many seem to be finding harder to utter with each passing day, though it has to be said that most Witnesses are in my experience not terribly interested in doctrine.
Extremism and conviction walk as dangerous companions in any facet of life, whether this be pro-religion or anti-religion, pro-WTS or anti-WTS and unfortunately it seems that the damage done to many of you by your experiences within the WTS has left with deep emotional issues and many others with challenging practical problems to contend with in life. This is very sad and my heart goes out to you all, I am sorry for what has happened to you. I am especially sorry for those who have had their love and affection for God and Christ blighted by their association with the WTS. Unhappily, I am quite sure that these experiences can be duplicated by many others caught within equally extremist philosophies, both political and religious throughout history. Thankfully many of you are young and will find your own road in life once some sort of closure is achieved, to the older ones, who strangely seem more philosophical about their experiences in the WTS, I salute your instincts to survive and polish the crown of your collective wisdom.
I appreciate that it may puzzle most of you as to how I have been able to be part of and indeed support an arrangement for so long when I have been well aware of its theological and social flaws. As time passes I will try to explain this issue, so please bear with me. Needless to say, I have found in life that nothing is completely good nor completely bad. Some of the most wonderful good hearted people I have met have been JW’s and some of the most spiteful and deceitful that I have rubbed shoulders with have also graced this strange collective edifice. Is this experience any different from any other organization, religion, business, political party, neighborhood, indeed individual? I suspect not. Every man or woman is capable of everything and I feel that motives are absolutely everything in life. It is our true motives for which we will be judged and as an attempting Christian I wrestle with this issue daily as all of us, Christian or not should. Somehow, we must all find a way to leave this world a better place than we found it and we can address that aim wherever we choose to stake our claim. Looking forward to getting to know you better.
Bless you all
‘Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted’
