another shooting, this time 14 kids dead more wounded and a teacher dead.
i am all for the second amendment and this does not change my mind.
but i do hate this kind of thing, makes my stomach turn.
I've never heard of anyone shooting up an animal shelter.
It's not the guns, it's the targets.
There's no statement to be made about one's miserable life...
or political power to grab
by attacking the animal shelter.
This is a misfit lashing out at the society that let him be so...
i can see it that watchtower will become an online/tv based group with just con-vention hall$.. field service would be letter writing and phone preaching, door to door is done.. watchtower will have pay to view programs and still ask for donations after all that.. zoom meetings are here to stay.
kingdumb halls will be sold off except for con-vention venues, or need for new ones$.. df'ing will continue.
the craziness will continue.
Nothing will change. All doctrines are made lite version now, and jw's are in for the social structure.
I think this is largely true, but then it creates this irony whereby fervent adherence and confirmation of every trivial bit of doctrine is necessary and enforced for membership approval...
but nobody really knows what it all is...
There seems to have been created: an incongruity, concerning the import of actual (current-Light) doctrine: 'Believe it! Even when we're not sure what IT is!'
I dunno, maybe it's all just my wishful thinking. I don't want to be self-deceptive, but this DIS-junction would seem to be a liability, at some not-too-distant point.
yep, the vacation is over, it's time to go to work------for free!
😭😢😓😰😡.
https://www.jw.org/en/news/jw/.
'Rona represented perhaps the first time in decades (if not ever) that being a JW had a more-mainstream/manageable burden...
Weary JWs are not likely to quickly forget that relief.
I expect that we will hear reports/anecdotes about congregation attendance plateauing at a fraction of previous numbers. More KH selloffs are inevitable. Even a messy war can't/won't inspire the fear they've enjoyed in the past.
The malaise is quite palpable. This will have to be a controlled descent.
update some upstanding jw are experiencing social isolation isnt that what df and da people feel?reap sow karma..
Of course they understand it...
That's why they're so strident about using it
This shows what an unloving organisation this is.
You're not wrong about this. But can you point to an 'organization' that IS loving? I can't. At the end of the day, it all just comes down to people, and the choices they make about who they will listen to, and what they will do.
We talk about the WT like it's our arch-enemy for the hurt we've experienced at its direction...but people (our 'friends'/relatives) have chosen to LISTEN and OBEY.
The WT can't throw you in jail or garnish your wages. All they can really do is level DISAPPROVAL at you and call you a 'bad person'. It's our (supposed) friends and relatives that have chosen the WTs approval as more important than us.
That's the bottom line. Hold individual JWs accountable for their actions. Each one makes a choice. Everyone in the cult CHOOSES to be in the cult, just as much as we have CHOSEN not to be.
The WT is a great and evil scam, no doubt. But our real battle about the shunning policy is with the JWs that believe what the WT says and obey it, even at our expense. Without belief they they 'speak for God' and adherence to their utterances, who would even care what stupid crap the Tower has to say about anything?
We must acknowledge they worst of the situation before us. The shunning works only because those who shun value the WTs approval over their relationships. And this is why most JWs (IMO) are miserable, sick, and lost. Because an Organization cannot love, no matter how much you bow & scrape...so ultimately, they HAVE no real relationships.
do you think the jdubs will start up the door whacking again one day?.
there has to be many inside the org that are dreading having to do that again and as for the general public seeing this, it’s hard to imagine.
.
Because they don"t like or appreciate it when you ask questions exposing them. They shy away when confronted, or can't answer.
Yes, of course this 'ministry' has always been geared towards those people who just need to be fed cheap and simplistic answers to life's hard questions.
The world where info is hard to come by...we don't live there, anymore. All sorts of info (good & bad) is cheaply available, to answer ANY sort of need. Point is, there are even fewer folks out there, who are so destitute of thought & direction so as to make them likely targets of the JW 'ministry'.
As has been parsed out before, the 'ministry' isn't really about making converts. It's about keeping the believers busy doing what the cult says to do. Given that, the 'ministry' could easily become focused on letter writing, or the like, and it would neatly serve it's purpose for the cult.
It would give the Dubs their work/sacrament + association. It lets the elderly stay engaged. It lets folks dodge the awkwardness of cold-knocking on doors uninvited. Win-Win-Win.
friendly and good gorby smiled and waved towards 2 local jw's yesterday, and they turned with an angry face their back to me.
.
has something changed regarding faders recently?.
Jws have short memory when it comes to who is brother or not cause of df arragment. It's been TWO years without meetings. How Many JWs You think remembers with persons came to kingdom hall? 😁 Two freaking years online. How they ever gonna return from this.
I am seeing this similarly. The lack of lateral/sideways enforcement of the JW life (applied thru regular KH associations) has really got to cost the cult. The burden of enforcing 'No-Association' slides unevenly toward the Elders. Energies flag. Old friendships persist without the ecclesiastical efforts to stomp out heresies.
I'm trying to put my finger on how best to say this. Maybe this isn't perfect:
Not meeting in a KH, that is - being a (mostly) online religion - perhaps serves to remove a measure of poison from a given DFing. Maybe because not being at a KH on the regular increases ambiguity of a given JWs status. It might let a person play with the process, to some extent; lets them dodge Elders and nosy 'friends'.
friendly and good gorby smiled and waved towards 2 local jw's yesterday, and they turned with an angry face their back to me.
.
has something changed regarding faders recently?.
Technically, to be an "apostate" you would have had to be a JW to begin with then "turn away" from it, but the "real" (functional) definition given above does not have anything to do with whether someone used to be a JW or not.
Thanks for that. I stand warned that I'd better continue to exercise EXTREME DISCRESION when talking with the JW relatives.
As it is now, I avoid the subject of religion, but mom likes to talk about all the people I used to know back when I was a kid going to the KH. I suspect she's hoping that I'll feel that I have a real connection with those folks and somehow have a change about what I've come to 'believe'.
If they are wound so tight that any resistance or challenge to any belief renders one unfit for association, then who are they going to be left to talk to? Each other? Where is this going?
I think I answered my own question.
friendly and good gorby smiled and waved towards 2 local jw's yesterday, and they turned with an angry face their back to me.
.
has something changed regarding faders recently?.
My guess would be that the cult is coming down on association with apostates. So it would be like when they came up with the dumb ass marking people who were not strong in the cult...
Yes, I think you are right about the WTs biggest concern. JWs can't withstand contact with critics. That's why they've been warned off concerning interacting with 'apostates' online, even if done in good faith as a WT defender/apologist.
The thing is...what's an 'apostate'? Right here, right now, in January of 2022...what exactly is a apostate?
Is it...any former JW who disagrees? Is it...any critic at all who dares question YHVH's 'channel'?
You see, in former times, the word 'apostate' was reserved for a very specific and select group of people. I think as time goes on, the WT has to keep massaging the definition, so that a greater number of enemies fall under the scope, and the WT can leverage that fear into avoidance.
Once upon a time, a person would have HAD to have been a former, baptized JW at one point to go 'apostate'. Is that definition still in use? Or might a former unbaptized publisher now qualify, even though I was never 'really' a JW?
friendly and good gorby smiled and waved towards 2 local jw's yesterday, and they turned with an angry face their back to me.
.
has something changed regarding faders recently?.
It is a fader paradise these days. Being in covid and not having to go to KHs.
Yes, it's never been easier to attempt this move. Some folks disagree on the propriety or usefulness of this idea, but I don't fault someone for trying.
I was under the impression that language has appeared in the Watchtower that states Jehovah's Witnesses should treat those who intentionally stop associating (i.e. go to meetings, etc.) as those who disassociate themselves.
This is 'official' policy, but this is increasingly difficult to implement since there's no lateral enforcement of JWs rules via association at the KH.
If someone's association is assessed via a Zoom Meeting...maybe brother/sister so & so attend some other Zoom Meeting w/ some other congregation. Maybe someone is Zooming on to feign attendance and instead watching a ballgame.
There is now a substantially LARGER imprecision concerning what it means to be a 'Good JW'. I recommend all to take full advantage of this. This might mean a possible extraction for people who would otherwise NEVER have the courage to exit.
do you think the jdubs will start up the door whacking again one day?.
there has to be many inside the org that are dreading having to do that again and as for the general public seeing this, it’s hard to imagine.
.
They'd better be careful.
Implementing a return to D-2-D Witnessing might very well do more harm than good.
Seeing how many JWs are very comfortable with the suspension of D-2-D ministry and lack zealous enthusiasm for resuming...that might be a dangerous morale killer.
The GB ought to be reluctant in serving up a real-time candid snapshot of JW fatigue.
