do you feel that something has changed within god's organization?
have you noticed that in the past several years there has been a more authoritarian spirit displayed in the publications and from the platform?
i am in the beginning stages of a fade away and wanted to express my thoughts.
Nice post...sums it all up
The leadership knows all of this, that is why the grip tightens..
They cut them off from education and the internet at every turn, as they know what happens once people start asking questions, they find out the WT doesn't have the right answers after all
i have seen ads for women looking for men that love the lord, that,s ok. you have something in common.
but i have notice that can be a big mistake.. for example, my brother is a widower and have tried dating women in his.
church.
I think marrying only in the borg is just another control tool.
If a woman marries outside the religion, her husband is going to pressure her to stay at home on weekends, weeknights etc. You know, live a normal life.
Ditto for a man, what woman wants her man to waste his time away from home leading a cult?
The borg counts on them reinforcing each other. Any marriages outside instantly weaken commitment to the cult
i read that some are quite happy that another gb bites the dust.. i think of my "faithful" elderly jw mother who helped many many families come into the "truth".
she's an intelligent woman.
however, she's blinded by her beliefs (being in a cult).
i just found out that the named my father an elder in his congregation.
which i find suprising for many reasons, but thats another story.
anyway my brothers & sisters invited me to go out to dinner with them and the families, in honor of my fathers new appointment, (2 of my bro are also ms, and had similiar "parties" after appointments).
Maybe print him off a copy of the new elders book. Have i bound up nicely for him and get the little gold embossing on the bottom with the date he was appointed and his name. Tell him you thought it would be nice for him to be able to read up on all the rules before his real book gets delivered from brooklyn.
maybe that would be a wake up call!
i was thinking and i know this is really out there, and i am not becoming paranoid.. i thought about the terrorist , what is told to these people to move them to blow.
now some may say, no way that can happen with the jw,s.
talking about us apostate only, not the rest of the world.
They don't have the guts to do anything like you suggested.
DFing was their method in the past to silence the opposition. Unfortunately for them, the internet came along, now there is no way to keep the genie in the bottle. They can DF people and some will come back simply because they still think it is the truth. But now, more people get DFd then come here or to other sites for support. Then they find out about the lie and they never go back.
They don't have the courage or the stones to face the real truth head on. That is why they don't really advertise their message through the media. That is also why they don't debate leaders of other churches over doctrine, because they would get destroyed in a biblical debate. Instead they pound on the rank and file to go out and waste more time recruiting. They tell the publishers to target those who are down and out, rather than engage in a real debate on the scriptures.
Mountains of evidence continue to pile up against them each time they publish a new watchtower, book or DVD and so called apostates get a hold of it and call them on their lies.
i've got some probably-not-so-original musings about why nobody would actually want to "live forever on a paradise earth.
" these are the sorts of things that probably make every jw kid (or adult) have some doubts, because the problems are so obvious.
the standard jw answer of "it doesn't say in the bible what will happen, we'll see when we get there" or "wait for the new scrolls to be opened" are totally inadequate because the problems involve the very concept of eternal life in paradise.
The whole concept of perfection joined with free will is impossible for me to accept. If everyone is perfect (and cannot) sin then how in the world is there any free will.
For example, if Adam and Eve had not sinned then they would be in theory living today. But along the line some of their offspring would have sinned, even down to this day. So what happens? Do they die off slowly while everyone else stays young?
Same would hold true in JW paradise. Their take is that after 1000 years everyone left is perfect, but they still have free will. So after say 100,000,000,000 years of growing carrots and petting pandas, at least a few of them are gonna say "Screw it" and start having sex outside of WT rules right? Then what? Time to start killing them off too?
I enjoyed your questions....all valid points that no JW could honestly answer.
background; my son a agnostic, baptize but never df.
the jw member of the family.
knows his view.
Facebook is another genie they cant put back in the bottle. Its going to be especially damaging to them over the next "generation" (i mean real generation not the 150 year WT overlapping generation) as kids open FB accounts at around 10 years and information flows freely.
Pahpa, i dont think there is an "official" view on FB as in that company mentioned in the WT. They usually have their CO and DO heavys work anti-facebook rants into the assembly parts resulting in the sheep deactivating their accounts for a week or two, then they get bored and reactivate them once the guilt trip fades.
do you ever pray?.
have you felt, "what the heck?
it's worth a shot"?.
Probably been a good year and a half for me, pretty much coincides with when I was DFd....
I have no doubt that I could spout off with a "wonderful" prayer full of JWisms like "thanks for the faithful slave" with five seconds notice. That hard wiring is probably going to take a decade to erase.
i have been reading through djeggnog's posts.
this man is a wt doctrine expert, it's scary.. i think him, and a lot of wt junkies i know believe in this wacky theology so much because they have literally tomes of analysis on it.
every argument we have every come up with (and some we have not) seem to have been discovered by the wt leaders and incorporated into their immense theology.. the problem is, that it is littered with fallacious logic and outright falsehood.. but the devout members (like djeggnog) stand by the whole because they are so proud of the comprehensive theology they have created.
OBVES, when in 2011?
I'm trying to schedule my two week Mexican vacation for next year and want to make sure I get it in before Armageddon....
Usually the big, fat smile on our face gives us away!
