do you feel left out because you aren't going door to door distributing kingdom news # 37?.
.
Mine was delivered Saturday morning. I was all ready to engage, but (a) they didn't try to start a conversation, just said they were "delivering" these tracts to the neighborhood, and (b) they were a pair of barely-adolescent girls who clearly didn't want to be doing this. Their watchful parents were standing down on the sidewalk.
Now, if the parents had been at the door, I'd have tried to engage.
As for the tract: Nothing new.
Jankyn
i am a nonjw.
i posed a couple of very straightforward questions to my mil and asked if she or any other jw would please explain them to me?
i've read alot of jw material from this time period and i find very little in the way of clarification.
You've just come up with the best summation of the situation I've ever seen. I'm going to use it every chance I get.
According to this reasoning then if I put on a Chicago Bulls uniform #23 and walk onto the Chicago Stadium court and declare that I am doing what Michael Jorden did, then I must be the modern day Michael Jordan? This is a joke right?
Unfortunately, many JWs would in fact believe you were the modern-day Michael Jordan, no matter how poorly you play, if the Watchtower said it.
Jankyn, oh-I-wish-it-were-a-joke class
how did you feel when you read the wts when you were still in the org.
after the fist couple of years of being in, i avoided it as much as i could.
it was like reading a day old newspaper over and over again.
What's funny is that, because I stopped attending in about 1976 or so, I "remember" the literature as being more serious and in-depth that it was--or is. Since I was only sixteen, it seemed pretty "deep"--if not all that well-founded.
Now, when I pick up literature (I just got a copy of The Bible: What Does It Really Teach? off a street-witness the other day), I'm appalled at how badly written it is. Was it always that simple-minded? I dug out my old Truth book and took a look. The answer: Yep.
Nothing changes except the dates.
okay, some of you might have read about my conversation with the elderly lady that was doing street witnessing in conyers, ga. this experience happened this morning ... just looked at the clock, yesterday morning .
i walked out of the local tag office (where we register our vehicles and acquire license plates for the cars) and there sat an elderly lady with current magazines.
being in somewhat of a hurry, i tried to walk a more direct path to my vehicle ... but she thought i was avioding her.
Justitia, the same thing crossed my mind. Here in Sac, the JWs do a lot of "street witnessing" on the downtown mall, where the homeless, junkies and street kids congregate. They leave their old mags with the folks down there, and I've seen the homeless then try to sell the literature in order to raise change.
Now, Auld Soul was actually talking to her, so he'd be in a better position to judge this case. But I don't assume that the person hawking the literature is a real JW--at least in downtown Sacramento--unless they meet all the rest of the qualifications (dress, glazed eyes, general lack of urgency b/c a junkie trying to raise cash is VERY urgent about selling those mags!).
Jankyn
i just want to let you know about my new website.
i was raised jw and disfellowshiped at 16. along with a few of my own experiences that i relate, i interviewed fourteen people raised jw for my senior thesis in college.
after quite some time i have finally gotten it up on the internet.
I'll be sure and check it out!
Jankyn
"a right to speak freely is not the same as a right to be heard" discuss.
Well, I never would have discovered their music if it wasn't for the "backlash." I listened, I liked, I bought. Others listened, hated, and burned. That's freedom.
I also listen to Steve Earle, James McMurtry, Nanci Griffith--see a pattern? Left-leaning alt-country. It's good stuff, if it's your bag. If not, there's always Toby Keith. Free country, right?
Jankyn
untitled document <!-- .style1 {font-family: verdana} --> education and the watchtower understandably, this is one of the more controversial subjects involving.
individuals and the watchtower society.
the reason being is that on the.
To be fair, it helped more than hindered until I was about 10 years old. That's when critical thinking usually starts to develop.
Before then, my JW upbringing led me to read early and often. It also created familiarity with Bible stories--and yes, that's huge cultural knowledge (the critic Northrup Frye called the Bible "the great code of western literature"--so it helped in that area a lot).
In terms of literary studies, I was familiar with the concepts of metaphor, imagery and archetypes.
However, after about 5th grade, it was useless.
Jankyn (Ph.D. in English)
i had to travel to another newspaper owned by the company i work for to learn some of their software today.
it's an open office with everyone in one room, and we had a lot of interesting conversations on all sorts of subjects.. at one point a reporter made a comment about a photo he was running, and noted that the woman had made comments that it was only with the help of the lord that she had been able to move her radio shack store to its new location.
one of the other reporters said that it was good that jesus had died on the cross 2000 years ago so that he could be available to help her out.
Oh, Seeker, that analysis of the birthday doctrine is priceless! I shall use it at every opportunity!
Jankyn
often i hear jws claim that people leave the borg because they cannot follow the rules, implying that anyone who leaves lacks character, self control, and/or moral values.. often i hear jwd posters--me included--say the myriad of rules in the borg is one of (not the only) reason they would not follow the org.
virgochick said it well in the "how do you feel about the name j----?
" thread:.
I think that even "good" JWs can't follow all the rules. They just want to follow the rules, and pretend they're following the rules, and so everyone agrees that they're good JWs. After all, if they all agree on something, it must be true, right?
I certainly think this describes my mother. She can't possibly follow all the rules--if she did, she wouldn't have her children and grandchildren in her life at all, and her health would be even worse than it is. But she wants to follow all the rules, and she pretends that she's following all the rules, until she has even herself convinced that she is following all the rules. The human mind is a magnificent thing; its powers of delusion are remarkable.
The problem arises when some either can't (and many have described abusive situations that were simply unlivable) desire to and pretend to follow the rules, or won't (as in, "did the math and became apostate") desire to and pretend to follow the rules.
No one can follow the all the JW rules, not even the best little goody-two-shoes-I-wanna-be-an-elder-or-at-least-an-elderette JW. The difference is that some pretend they do, and thereby allow the organization to control them by controlling both their behavior and their self-image (as so aptly pointed out above).
Jankyn
continuing saga of my elderly parents:.
mom has a broken shoulder (now 8 wks!
) and still can't use it at all.
My mom and my aunt both "take meetings by phone" a lot because of health issues. They love it, mostly I think because they don't feel the pressure to participate, but can still be counted as active.
Then there's the whole listening-to-the-talk-in-pajamas thing.
Jankyn
