Hats off to you!!
It's great to see people move ahead. A degree is no small task...and an engineering degree at that!! This is one thing you will not regret. Keep posting your progress...it helps inspire those of us in the same boat.
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well, i've finally gone off the edge...after getting an aas degree in 2 years while working full time, i went and enrolled today to start working on a 4 year bs degree in engineering...i hope to get into the aerospace engineering masters program...heaven help me!!!.
tb
Hats off to you!!
It's great to see people move ahead. A degree is no small task...and an engineering degree at that!! This is one thing you will not regret. Keep posting your progress...it helps inspire those of us in the same boat.
in the 7/15 wt i dont recall the exact page, i dont have the magazine here at work but there is a chart that lists blood, what components are up to you and which ones are not allowed at all.
anyway its very odd because they list which ones christians should avoid from left to right, i.e.
red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma, etc.
We all know how the WT likes to condition JWs to defend their beliefs about blood transfusions (or anything else for that matter) by saying 'it's a personal decision', when it's really not...
Why then, write this article which, in no uncertain terms, tells dubs that blood and its 4 primary components are hands down UNACCEPTABLE? It seems likely that in a court case, when a dub tries to pass off their no blood decision as a 'personal choice', this article flies in the face of such a claim.
Why would the WT give ammo to its enemies? Is it that stupid? Maybe the need for some comprehensive revisitation of doctrine outweighed legal needs for a moment?
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/04/1086203613032.html?oneclick=true#.
the princess and the showgirljune 6, 2004. .
anywhere i go they say, 'oh my god, you're number one, aren't you?
Maybe I'm the only one to think this....
I believe the WT absolutely loves the Williams sisters. The society needs high-profile, successful people to at least claim to be JWs. It helps to negate the (accurate) perception that this is a cult. The Williams sisters lend public credibility to this thing.
That's why the WT will tolerate the flag-wrapping, and probably a whole lot more from these two - for the sake of the JW image. It's quite interesting to see how much these two can flout the typical dub lifestyle. I'd love to see the WT backed into a corner and have to do someting about the Williams girls. They'd be so reluctant to make any negative move. Venus and Serena do more for the WT public image than a thousand lawyers or spokesmen could.
a "circuit" (northern california area including south of sacramento and foothills) had only half of their expected attendance at the 10-11 april circuit assembly.
only some 600 from a circuit of about 1100 were present to the dismay of the district and circuit overseers responsible for the assembly.
of major concern was how to foot the bill for the event which is funded by member donations.
Remember, now...
this is a buisness we're talking about.
Assemblies will continue up until the moment they become a financial liability. At that precise moment, Jehovah will give 'new light' indicating that assemblies are no longer needed.
As long as the WT can make a nickel over those few days, assemblies will continue. Money dictates policy and doctrine. So, to all those lurking JWs here, tired of the expense and hassle of assemblies? Just stop dropping money in the contribution boxes - and assemblies will go away. 'Spiritual food' be damned...they've got to make money.
Oh yeah, and you can bet that if the WT could cut a deal with the facilities to take a portion of the concession dollars, those stands would be OPEN.
i can?t believe it?s going to be 30 years.
june 1974 was the year i really dedicated myself to jehovah.
because, although i had been baptized two years before, it was this moment in time that i really saw the love and power of jehovah?s organization.
"Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it....."
Paduan,
I'm not sure what your intent was here, but I'd like to know...please expostulate.
This sad, sad monologue seems like it could've been written by a million different witnesses, some of whom, I am related to. They've written off this life. It's over, if only because the WT says so. They're as lost to me as I seem to them.
There's still time for the others. I hope I have the patience and understanding to help when the time is right. To take this precious gift of life and waste it serving a publishing corporation...I think, is a crime and punishment unto itself.
The wages of sin is death? Maybe so...but I can think of fates worse than death. I love you anyways, Mom.
i got baptized in 1986, when i was 17. i got df'd in 1992, when i was 22.
(april birthday.. df'd early in 1992.... .
i don't want to sound like i am complaining about this next part because i actually have a very happy life right now with very few exceptions/concerns.
They annonced that I was DA'd as an unbaptized publisher
Mav,
I didn't know they could do that. Is that official policy? I thought that DAs and DFs were reserved for bapitzed JWs only. I'm curoius because I quit before being bapitzed, hoping I could salvage a relationship with my dub family. Avoid the label & they're not obligated to shun me, I thought. Now I'm wondering just what was said about me from the platform.
Anyone, feel free to chime in about this....
HYBRIDOUS
i don't want one more u.s. soldier to die for the iraqi people.
it's now obvious to me that the international community was right.
the people of iraq do not deserve to live in a free society.
To Roy's point, the idea that the US can go anywhere in the world and transform a dictatorship into a democracy seems ill-concieved, especially now.
I've held the notion that unless an oppressed populace is ready to fight and die for their freedoms all by themselves, they probably arent ready to handle those freedoms presented in any other manner. I'd put Iran way ahead of Iraq on the list of potential democracies. If oppressed people are ready to lead their own revolution against tyranny - I say help them out. This was clearly not the case in Iraq.
The US had better learn the difference here, or many unfortunate situations will follow this one.
my question to you: why does god permit evil?
this is not a bait but something i'd really like to get your view on.
thanks.. bradley
Bear with me...
Consider the situation at mankind's 'creation'...God(knowing good and evil) and mankind(not knowing good and evil). If God's goal is to bring creation closer to him/her self, perhaps mankind could only eventually become 'God-like' through experiencing, and understanding evil.
my anger at the wt has been bubbling over.
under the surface.
i didn't even know what was wrong with me.
Czar,
So much of what you wrote is familiar to me, unfortunately. I live every day with those 'triggers' at arms-length. Sometimes, one goes off....usually, they don't. It's a constant effort to get past the hurt and be as happy as I can be.
I love my family to death, yet my relationship with them will always be altered by the fact that I'm not a JW. I present the situation to myself like this:
My life could've gone down one of two roads...the JW road, or the non-JW road. The JW road would've afforded me the best possible relationship with the family, but my life would be unliveable. So, that optimal relationship with the family comes at a cost. A cost I am unwilling, really unable to pay. Actually, the immense burden the JW life would have imposed on me would have made me so miserable as to negate the benefits of happy family life.
So, here I am. I do the best with what I have, concerning them. And really, could I have it any other way?
Would I trade what I now have, what I now know, to have my brainwashed family happy with me? No way - not ever. I have chosen the better road, the truer path. I am closer to being at peace with myself and the universe than I ever could have been as a JW. That life simply prohibited the personal growth necessary for me to have to make this life worth living.
I guess it all starts with working to make something out of your life to be happy with, and concentrating on that. My happiness as a JW would have been dependent on swallowing bullcrap and selling it to my mind, telling myself that false things were true. I would have killed myself. One thing the JWs did each me is that lies are NO DAMN GOOD. That much is true.
Realize what good things are in your life, and then go through it in your head, and see if it would've turned out the same for you as a dub. The family thing is the price we pay for knowing the TRUTH about the 'truth'. Given the choice to do it over again, I would make the same one every time.
recently, an article appeared in broadcasting and cable magazine concerning the show "who wants.
to be a millionaire?".
apparently, the show isn't having as much success in russia because "people over.
Maybe oversimplified, but...
'Misery loves company'...
Never as true as in the Kingdom Hall...