Posts by sd-7

24

The Apostate Boogeyman--a figment of JW imagination

by Londo111 in

apostates are a figment of the jw imagination.

not necessarily the dictionary definition of the word apostate, which simply means a person who leaves their religion, for by that definition everyone who leaves a religion to become a jw is an apostate--but the jw conception of the apostate, both as an individual and as a 'group' is imaginary.. .

for starters, the watchtower goes beyond the definition of merely leaving the religion, if a person disagrees with a doctrine or practice of the organization, even if they dont voice it, that is a thoughtcrime called apostasy.

sd-7

One person mentioned that perhaps it could transmit outside the Kingdom Hall and apostates could be listening in.

Hate to break it to you, but...come closer....YOUR MEETINGS ARE PUBLIC! YOUR WEBSITE IS ON THE INTERNET! That kinda means everyone could be listening in if they wanted to. DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUN!!

Yeah, I think the way this term is used, if anything it sparked curiosity within me--what threat could such 'apostates' possibly pose to people who had 'the truth'? Why was the Society so afraid of them? Why did they never really debunk apostate ideas in the literature in detail, so as to protect the flock?

Because those labeled Apostates must be shunned and there is no venue to express dissenting views or for those to air legitimate questions and

concerns publicly—is it no wonder an “apostate” has to be careful or “subtle” in how they express themselves? If they legitimately believe the

Watchtower is not teaching the truth and wants to reach family and friends with this message, what recourse do they have?

Therein lies what is integral to making people dissatisfied with the organization--the dialogue is always one-way, top-down, and there's really only a set of pre-programmed responses to every situation. At a certain point, human beings start to want something other than pre-packaged nourishment, know what I mean?

There's no good reason to be angry and bitter all the time about it all. But when you see the reality, research it all for yourself, and see the very clear deception, yeah, you get angry, especially when you see how vigorously a lie can be defended by people who haven't figured it out yet. It's tough.

The other thing is...JWs are used to something being 'offered'. Thus they reason that, because of course there must be an organization that is 'the truth', logically apostates should have started their own gig.

First, if it's about Christianity, why reinvent the wheel? The religion's already been started, no need to start it over because nobody has it all right.

Second, to say the least, disproving a lie or several lies or exposing a false shepherd/false prophet--that is 'something'. As in any matter of merit where there could be some uncertainty, figuring out what's not true is at least as important as figuring out what is true. Sometimes you have to get past 7 lies to get to one truth. If you just relax and think you've already got all the truth, that's usually when you're in the most danger as far as spiritual things or any sort of pursuit. If you stop thinking, it's much easier for 7 new lies to sprout up and hide amongst the truths you've already found--complacency can be more dangerous than the lies themselves.

Good post.

--sd-7

7

Emotional Abuse - 10 signs to watch out for in a relationship

by sd-7 in

jw
friends

http://shrink4men.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/10-signs-your-girlfriend-or-wife-is-an-emotional-bully/.

the above link explains it well.

i've probably encountered it before, but i think it warrants a mention once more.

sd-7

http://shrink4men.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/10-signs-your-girlfriend-or-wife-is-an-emotional-bully/

The above link explains it well. I've probably encountered it before, but I think it warrants a mention once more. In reading that list, I feel like it was recounting the last 3+ years of my life...

Especially for born-in JWs who maybe can't as readily identify emotional abuse, I think it's vital to be aware of the signs and be careful about forming new relationships too quickly once you're free of the Borg. It's important to understand that in its own way, an abusive relationship takes on the dynamic of a cult, with the abuser taking on the role of cult leader. This happens to men and women, sadly, and the effects can be pretty heavy.

Well, we're all so very busy, so...time to go.

--sd-7

11

3rd Annual Memorial of Freedom--Will You Attend? Also, 'When Prophecy Fails' by Leon Festinger

by sd-7 in

jw
friends

sd-7's 3rd memorial of freedom falls on sunday, march 10th, 2013, at sundown.

check your local news for when sundown happens in your area, so that you may pass the emblems--chocolate milk and pop tarts--in observance of liberation from the watchtower.

for review, the pop tarts represent one's body, which will no longer sit in a kingdom hall.

sd-7

sd-7's 3rd Memorial of Freedom falls on Sunday, March 10th, 2013, at sundown. Check your local news for when sundown happens in your area, so that you may pass the emblems--chocolate milk and Pop Tarts--in observance of liberation from the Watchtower. For review, the Pop Tarts represent one's body, which will no longer sit in a Kingdom Hall. The milk represents...hmm. Blood you can now donate to the Red Cross if you want? I forget. Guess I better research it. Don't feel like it right now. Been under the weather lately. Picked up a cold from the pediatrician's office, I think. Or maybe my stepdaughter, I can't be sure which.

Anyway, that said, I wanted to recommend, as Steve Hassan recommended not too long ago during his video with our dear Dogpatch, Randy Watters, the book 'When Prophecy Fails' by Leon Festinger. I've been reading it and I'm about a third of the way through and it's really fascinating. Very technical as far as details, but still an interesting study.

I'm reading now about Stacy Keech, I believe the name is, and the UFO cult she led. What was interesting was her prediction, based on being told by 'Guardians' or 'Sananda' or whoever, that flying saucers would appear on a specific date in specific locations visible to everyone. However, when it didn't happen, rather than seeming to realize her prediction had failed and perhaps calling into question the legitimacy of her beliefs, she latched onto a totally different set of events that seemed to strengthen her belief that the alien communications were real--that of encountering a man she believed to be a sort of Jesus/Messiah/alien person?

The other thing was the mention in the book of another book written in 1949 that directly mentions JWs and (apparently unrelated, uh, ha ha) UFO cults, called 'These Also Believe' by Charles Braden. Anyone ever seen or read that one? I'm going to see if I can find it. Very interesting that a book about JWs, which Festinger described as being 'objective', was written that far back. Not surprising given the 1914 and 1925 and all the other dates put out around that era.

Rather than seeing the failure of the proclamations, the early Bible Students just turned their attention to a new message or a new preaching campaign or both. Looking forward to the next date, and the next, and the next, until...what, exactly? They recognize that they were wrong, though generally the literature can't seem to be clear about who exactly was wrong, just naming the entire entity as having wrong expectations, not so much the people who printed the expectations. But the point is that the lack of fulfillment of all these clearly-foretold-in-scripture dates doesn't make them question it all, they as a whole just turn their attention to either making more recruits or looking forward to the next date (or next generation or next iteration of the next generation, in this case).

Well, I just thought it was a good read, especially relaxing because it's not about JWs so I get to be a bit more objective about the issues.

So...winter storm passed over my area with nothing but a cold rain. Guess I shouldn't have stayed up so late tonight. Going to have to go to work...

Well, take care.

--sd-7

80

I am totally confoused who is the Faithful and Discreet Slave Class?

by booker-t in

i have been hearing and reading on websites about some "new light" jws are saying concerning the faithful and discreet slave class.

it sounds like the same information they have been saying for years.

i was always taught the faithful and discreet slave class is the annoited governing body members dispensing food at the proper time for the non annoited jws.

sd-7

This reminds me of a song, the Society's teachings are "just like a maze, where all of the walls all continually change."--John Mayer, 'Daughters'.

The reason the original poster might have been confused is, well, probably most JWs thought this was already the case anyway, that the Governing Body was the 'faithful slave' in its entirety. This seems to overlook the technical details of it and the problems it causes.

I especially like how the 'evidence' and 'facts' are pointed to in such clear, reasonable, scriptural detail! It seems that facts and evidence are pretty much like a magic crystal ball that shows you whatever you want to see. You just speak it and it becomes factual and supported by evidence. I wonder who spoke into the 'speakwrite' to make that article, anyway?

What's particularly odd is something that creates another conundrum. If the 'faithful and discreet slave' is preparing the spiritual food, why is the 'slave' always referred to in the third person? Clearly, the writer of the articles in the literature is not a member of this 'slave', or else they'd be saying 'wisely, you should submit to our authority' instead of 'wisely, we should submit to the slave's authority'. Or perhaps the real truth is that it would be much more obvious that something is up if they said 'you should submit to our authority'. 'We should submit to the slave's authority' makes it sound like they're on your side, and we're all obeying this entity over there, rather than just you and the rest of the drones obeying them.

The other thing is, why even do this? Their authority has been absolute for a long time. Nobody's made a Reformed JW org, dissenters and deserters are hunted down and shot. Is there some invisible power struggle between the other 12,000 anointed and the Governing Body so that they felt a need to make themselves exclusively the 'slave'? It makes no sense.

Particularly bizarre was reading a GB member saying that "we love this teaching". As if their feelings about it should matter; if it's true, your feelings one way or the other are irrelevant. And a person who's just changed a doctrine to make sure he's in a position of absolute power over 7,000,000 people is hardly going to hate the teaching, is he? It'd be like a football player hating his $100 million contract...yeah, he'll hate it all the way to the bank, he will.

As I think about it, it's confusing even to me. It addresses some problems in the original teaching, but just ends up creating others. Given how high they are on themselves, one would think they would relish the chance to explain how awesome they are and how great it is that Jesus appointed them despite his not having done any kind of check-in to see if they were providing food at the proper time. You know, the kind of food that doesn't leave masses of people vomiting, foaming at the mouth, and collapsing backwards out of their chairs dead and all.

But really, the 144,000 are left in the same boat they were in before this change in terms of the big reward--you see, all but maybe 40 or 50 of them has never been supplying any kind of spiritual food to anyone, since they weren't working at HQ writing the articles. So they basically get the same reward for doing none of the work that the 'slave' was supposed to do. I guess that's why the Governing Body gave the lazy bums the boot!

And since governing is another word for ruling, a certain 8 men have already begun their rule, really. I don't really recall any Bible verses about Christians governing each other. Here I thought it was just the rulers of the nations that did governing, but we were supposed to strive to be the lowest among brothers, to serve, not demand obedience to rules we just made up.

But this is kind of stupid in the end. Jesus asked one effin' question. A QUESTION! Read it again. This is not about 8 men in upstate New York in the year 2013! Read the context of this verse. Jesus already started making illustrations by the time he got to this verse. I mean, by this logic, the Governing Body could just as easily have been the 'discreet virgin class' (oh, wait, that's my title as Editor of The Beast-Tower) or the 'one man taken out of the bed class' or something.

Well, here's one thing I'm not confused about. There is no faithful and discreet slave class. The word 'class' is not in the verse at all. It's an add-on. Because there is no faithful and discreet slave. No man can declare themselves as such because you have to prove yourself faithful in the eyes of the Master, not just claim you are in the eyes of fellow slaves and then do whatever you want because the Master hasn't done anything to stop you. It's a goal that every Christian aspires to, to be faithful and discreet in carrying out what Jesus wants done--not the knocking on doors or placing of non-Bible literature, but the helping of those in need and the teaching people about Jesus and what he did for mankind.

If this one verse didn't exist in the Bible, C.T. Russell would've just picked another one, and Rutherford would've taken advantage of whatever verse it was, and this would be a totally different discussion about the same ultimate subject: men abusing power and abusing people.

--sd-7

37

A conversation about universal sovereignty

by outsmartthesystem in

"well osts, satan, through adam challenged god's right to rule......so god had to let it play out to show that he really should be the one ruling mankind.

both the angels and humans needed to see this.

me - why couldn't god have allowed adam's children to remain perfect?

sd-7

Meanwhile...

ANCIENT JERUSALEM 587 B.C.

Nebuchadnezzar's army approaches the already-destroyed Jerusalem.

"May the king live to time indefinite! To our surprise, it was found that upon our arrival, Jerusalem had already been destroyed!"

"What? When did this happen?"

"Precisely twenty years ago, my lord the king."

"Burn all the evidence. In fact, burn every record for the last twenty years! Go to Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon, and burn every record, everywhere, for twenty years! Let there be no proof left remaining, or it will mean your soul! Go forth!"

...And so that, friends, is how Jerusalem was destroyed...

--sd-7

175

Were you Stalked or Chased After Once you Exited the JW's by Elders ?

by flipper in

jw
friends

i tried to fade off the map by moving 30 miles initially in 2004 after i exited in late 2003 .

the first several years they didn't bother me.

i ran into a elder from my former congregation in late 2005 in an antique store - he tried telling me i was wrong for stopping attending meetings.

sd-7

Ah, but here's an interesting story that just got jogged in my memory. My mom was stalked by a JW elder, back when she was still fairly new amongst them. The elder apparently followed her to her mother's house (my grandmother's house), and was concerned she might've been visiting some random man, but I guess once he realized that wasn't the case, he moved on. To my knowledge she was never directly confronted about it, but it was evident to her that this elder was following her. Kinda creepy, in hindsight. Really creepy, in fact.

Funny. I remembered asking her once, "You're telling me that in the 20+ years you've been in, you haven't seen anything that seemed out of place?" No, she said. I guess being stalked by an elder must not have readily come to her mind in that moment, but certainly we'd seen our share of weird stuff together over the past two decades. Ah, well.

--sd-7

175

Were you Stalked or Chased After Once you Exited the JW's by Elders ?

by flipper in

jw
friends

i tried to fade off the map by moving 30 miles initially in 2004 after i exited in late 2003 .

the first several years they didn't bother me.

i ran into a elder from my former congregation in late 2005 in an antique store - he tried telling me i was wrong for stopping attending meetings.

sd-7

I wasn't really stalked, as finding me didn't require any effort by the elders, since I live 5 minutes down the road from a Kingdom Hall. I got a visit from elders or at least a check-in from them maybe every September since I left? They want to know if I have any desire to be reinstated and if so, if I know what the procedure is. It's pathetically predictable. I get that it's their job, they're instructed to follow up with people they've thrown to the wolves and ask if they want to be brought back to the wolfpack (not a contradiction somehow, trust me), but one would think they would use some elder-brain judgment about it.

It's amounted to mild annoyance or upset over just seeing these people who sort of traumatized me in their judicial committee. Especially the chairman--it seems like he has a nearly personal thing against me, you know? I can't figure why, since he never even got to know me at all before the committee since I was new to their congregation.

I can't tell if he might've invented a scenario where I was this abusive, womanizing husband who had previously seduced my wife into premarital sex and then commanded her never to tell the elders for fear of some dire consequence from me. That kind of thought could easily surface when you don't know someone, and I don't know what the elders from my old KH said if they wrote a letter about me when I moved. One would think it was horrible, despite having served faithfully for nearly two decades without serious sin up until then.

I'm just grasping for straws here, but it's just that at the end of the judicial committee, when he was discussing my fate with the other elders, I've honestly never in my life heard an elder sound so pissed off, literally shouting down the other two elders. I can't help thinking he wanted to dive over the table and throttle me for having the audacity to question the organization.

To my knowledge, though, only thing they do is keep calling back on me every year to see if I've finally gotten tired of my undying spiritual thirst and want to come on back to the desert...

--sd-7

18

Why you CAN'T make sense of it.

by baltar447 in

jw
friends

going through an dealing with a mentally ill spouse (living hell, long story, pm me if you want details), and talking to others who have dealt with the mentally ill, i've come to an epiphany.. you cannot make sense of "crazy".

that's why, when you get out of the wt, get out of the mind control, and try to reason with your loved ones or friends, it will not work.

we are dealing with people under mind control and i believe that is a close cousin of mental illness.

sd-7

Honestly, I recognize I'm a little crazy. I also understand that the process of ending one's belief in the WT can't be done to just anyone. I understood from the beginning that no one I knew would believe me. Because they were all satisfied by their cult experience, whereas I was not. I had too many unfulfilled promises, too many cold, heartless words I read or heard said to me by people I trusted, too many problems with no solutions to be found beyond the stale, inhuman words in their literature. Ultimately, that is the key.

So it makes sense to me. It's just hard to accept, that's all.

--sd-7

24

Daily Text for February 28, 2013 !!! ENJOY !!!!!!!!

by DATA-DOG in

thursday, february 28. jehovah will make known who belongs to him.-num.

16:5. korah lost sight of the fact that jehovah was directing the nation of israel and consequently failed to show loyalty to those whom god was using.

how much wiser it would have been for korah to wait on jehovah for a clearer understanding or for adjustments if those were really needed.

sd-7

Can we acknowledge the position of those taking the lead among us and submit to directions we receive?

But wait, I thought serving God wasn't about emphasis on stuff like position, you know--isn't that supposed to be what separates JWs from Christendom, that they're all brothers and there's no clergy class? Oh. "You may not have noticed it--but your brain did." They've convinced you that they're not lording it over you, and in doing so have made it all the easier for them to lord it over you.

The tutor--the Law--was supposed to lead the spiritual children to Christ, and then they were supposed to grow up. The Society has become the tutor that doesn't seem to know how to get to school. Or has intentionally gotten lost because he realizes that once the students find Christ, he'll no longer be in charge of them. Hmm. Wonder which one it could be?

--sd-7

19

For anyone unsure as to whether JW's are a cult..please read...

by lostinnj83 in

if the informaiton i am posting is redundant or has been posted, please forgive me.. i know we are all at different stages of this journey.

for me i am still "in" but working towards being out and leaving.

any one in this position or who has been here knows how diffucult of a time this can be.

sd-7

When I first started studying Dr. Robert Jay Lifton's research, and really I only heard of it while reading Steve Hassan's book 'Combatting Cult Mind Control', I was just...stunned at how it all fit the JWs. It made me realize, they could have killed us all and we would have gladly gone over the cliff. It's a hurt that never fully heals for me.

Long before I ever began to question my beliefs, I probably watched a TV movie or two about cults and I'd said to myself, if I ever found out I was in a cult, or if the JWs ever asked me to do anything crazy, I'd leave. Little did I know I'd actually be faced with that decision. I'm just glad I made the choice to leave. Once you know for a fact that they're doing this, you know you have to get out for your own safety.

--sd-7