you can expect it from the congregation, but from a spouse?
there is just something very wrong with that.. .
Oh, my JW mother told me years ago that there is no such thing as unconditional love, not from Jehovah or anyone else, and expecting that is wrong. I've gotten that from many Witnesses, though, not just her.
Hello THERAPY! People like my mother keep therapists very busy. They should give the Witnesses a kickback for all the business they give them.
one year sober.
got bombed today.
really upset at myself.
I'm in ACOA, I try to understand my own addiction. I know now what triggers mine, I think that's important.
Mine isn't booze it's food and tranquilizers. I had to break my Xanax habit a few years ago, I was relying on it to keep panic attacks away and it gets where it doesn't work anymore.
Mine is triggered by Nov. 18, I usually go pretty nuts jonesing for a tranquilizer or sometimes, even booze (although I can't drink enough to get drunk, I'm alcohol intolerant and it just makes me sick as a dog instead of drunk after one glass) that whole month. That's the day my daughter died and I started panicking at everything that reminded me of it, even subtlely.
Xanax acts just like booze but it doesn't make me sick, which is why I love it.
i know many catholics and other religion say and make water baptism a requiremenet to get saved and get your sins forgiven, but how does the society see water baptism?.
do they also baptized in three name or just only in jehovah name when baptizing a jw?.
is only the elders allowed to get baptized or anybody can get wet?.
The questions you answer before being baptized are all about dedication to Jehovah and to the Borganization, not about Christ's forgiveness.
The WTS is not in the forgiveness biz, they're in the "free labor for our publishing company" biz.
i think that because i never made a formal prayer like they say your supposed to before getting baptized.
i never said yes to the questions they asked at the convention before i got dipped.
i just went through the motions.
I learned the baptism questions by rote like a parrot. I never could follow some of the doctrine logically, but I could memorize it. That seemed to be good enough when I was 15.
I don't think of my baptism as valid either. If the Witnesses in general do, they'd have to prove it to me. After all, they're the ones who say we don't baptize children, but do it anyway, as long as the "child" is in their teens, although I have heard of younger occasionally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_god_delusion.
the god delusion is a 2006 bestselling non-fiction book by british biologist richard dawkins, professorial fellow of new college, oxford, and inaugural holder of the charles simonyi chair for the public understanding of science at the university of oxford.. .
in the god delusion, dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.
You know what convinced me there was a pedophile problem? JW.net, the Witnesses own news site on the web.
They have all the news on every case ever filed against a Witness and there are so many there, I couldn't read even a small part of them in a couple of days.
Where there's smoke there is fire.
Besides, I did personally know an elder in Utah who was DF'd for incesting his own two daughters and raping his daughter's little friends who came over to spend the night on weekends.
They thought they could cure him with the Bible and DF ing him, but unless you use one as a brickbat to emasculate a pedophile, that's not going to work.
It was only after they caught him doing it again while DF'd that his family finally turned him into the legal authorities. I know that the policy now is to let the law deal with this if discovered, but they should do that even if it's suspected, which is what they often fail to do, especially if it's an elder.
Of course, in my 34 years of being a Witness, I saw elders get away with many things they were merely counseled for, or put on restriction for, that they wouldn't hesitate to DF someone else for, because they chewed the scenery and professed repentance.
Gee, I wish that worked for some of the other people I know who did that...seemed to mostly work for elders. And that is my first hand experience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_god_delusion.
the god delusion is a 2006 bestselling non-fiction book by british biologist richard dawkins, professorial fellow of new college, oxford, and inaugural holder of the charles simonyi chair for the public understanding of science at the university of oxford.. .
in the god delusion, dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.
I think Richard Dawkins is a tool, but I tend to believe in evolution. The medical science I use tends to not work unless the basic biology underlying it is correct, and that's based to some extent on evolution.
Since I discovered you can be a Christian and believe in facts like evolution too, these kinds of discussions no longer interest me as I've taken the time to resolve them factually, logically and emotionally.
I suggest you do the same. You'll sleep better without all that cognitive dissonance screaming in the back of your brain.
Besides, it was rather disillusioning for me to read "The Science of God" by a Jewish physicist/rabbi and discover that the Witnesses latest creation book literally has stolen whole paragraphs from it, back many years ago when I still was trying to be a good little Witness.
Nothing in there is new...if you never read anything else, they just can let you assume they thought of all this stuff by themselves. No wonder you keep using cut and paste discussions, that's the Watchtower Society's idea of "scholarship" too.
You've learned from the "master" all right.
one year sober.
got bombed today.
really upset at myself.
Did it work? Getting bombed, I mean. Did it fix that bad feeling for more than an hour or so?
I'm betting not.
When you figure out why you felt bad, that'll work better. Sounds like something you just didn't feel like dealing with, I'm guessing.
updating,.
it is confirmed that cynthia will be signing the papers this morning to remove ray from life support.
if anyone has posted their address on the internet, it is requested that you remove it for the safety of cynthia and those who are with her.
Man, I didn't need to hear this ever.
it seems that many of the 'jw" apologists who find their way on here are similar.
coincidence?
here is a sample from the rulebook they all use:.
I see you have been studying the creature in it's unnatural habitat for years now. You are the Jane Goodall of JW Apologists.
does anyone else have the same problem.
when i'm alone, i am constantly thinking about all the clever things i'm going to say if visited by the elders, but when i actually get confronted, these things never come to mind, and i keep spitting out drivel like some dumb idiot.
after they leave, i rethink the conversation, and i'm furious over all the oppotunities i've missed to put them in their place.......damn it!!!!!
Try visualizing them as they are without the suits on...usually janitors.
I find that helps put their "wisdom" in the proper perspective.
Not that there is anything wrong with being a janitor, but I can't think of how that qualifies you to be an authority on spiritual matters, except JW BIZARRO world.
My dad was an elder and even he used to laugh about "Secrit Elder Stuff" which is nothing except procedure made up by the WTS. It has nothing to do with the Bible or doctrine, they know as much about that stuff as you do, maybe less, because they're so busy with procedural and organizational crapola.
In JW BIZARRO world, elders are parental figures and we have many implanted taboos about arguing with parents, it's disrespectful, etc.
Just remember they're all legends in their own minds and it seems to help.
It's a good idea to de-mythologize your parents too...they're actually mere mortals who do all sorts of dumb things, and you can love them in spite of that, really, unless they're horrible nasty disturbed people, in which case, it's fine to avoid them like the plague.
