Posts by MrMonroe

18

Brother, Sister

by B_Deserter in

the witnesses refer to each other as "brother" or "sister.

" this is supposedly because they are a "spiritual family" and this is supposed to encourage that feeling.. but how often did you refer to your biological brothers and sisters by their title?

when i was playing in the yard with my little brother i wasn't yelling "catch the ball, brother _______!

The use of the term has great power to control. I recall sitting at a meal with some other JWs and daring to propose a line of thought that was rather liberal, though still a reasonable interpretation of the Bible. A jumped-up young "elder" at the meal glared at me and said, "That sounds like apostasy, brother." It was a sharp reminder that I was part of the Club and I'd damned well better follow the line.

It used to rankle me no end when, sitting at the weekly Bible Study meetings at someone's house, the conductor would be chatting with everyone using their first names, then he'd call the meeting to order and say, "Brother X, can you read tonight and Brother Y, can you open with prayer?" As if God wasn't watching until we switched to Brother and Sister.

Yes, it's all about control.

16

God's Love book - Prologue examined

by Mad Sweeney in

eventually i would like to do a deconstruction on the entire book but for now, lets start with the prologue, which claims to be written by the governing body of jehovah's witnesses.

if anyone feels this is useful, please let me know.

] in your life and thus keep yourself in gods love .

MrMonroe

Furthermore do not expect simple black and white rules on matters of conscience... Jehovah thus entrusts us with extraordinary freedom."

What the ...? This is a Watch Tower book and you're not going to give us black and white rules? Oh, I get it. We're ignoring for the moment all those pharisaic laws you've given us, demanding complete obedience to Brooklyn. Out of pure love and brotherly concern you did carefully define for us which piddling areas of our lives are still determined by conscience and that's what we're talking about. Yep, compared with all those rules, that is certainly extraordinary freedom. Er, within limits the Governing Body has set, of course. We don't want people going and thinking for themselves, now, do we?

You whackers! Yes, God does entrust us with extraordinary freedom. Why then, do you set yourselves up as masters of our faith and override that freedom with your own laws?

7

looking for scans of The Golden Age 1925-1929 and later

by processor in

there are many scans of the golden age available in the internet, but no single issue from 1925 to 1929. is there a reason for that?

does simply no one have these issues?.

it seems that these issues contains lots of ridiculous articles.. stephan.

MrMonroe

Try this:

www.archive.org/details/WatchTowerBibleandTractSocietyofPennsylvaniaWatchTowerpubs_0

11

Current WT Library CD

by grewupjw1969 in

im looking for the current cd if anyone has it and is willing to burn me a copy.

i am willing to pay for it along with shipping.. .

grewup.

MrMonroe

I've downloaded it from that address and it works fine.

15

Was the policy change to equate DA to DF because of Ray?

by teel in

as ray says in the last chapter of coc, before 1981 da was quite different from df.

"persons who resigned were not treated the same as those disfellowshiped", they were not shunned for example, except when the dad person enters into politics or military.. i put it on account of humbleness that ray says he doesn't think they changed the policy just to use it against him, he probably feels he wasn't so significant as to warrant such a far-reaching change.

but it seems way too convenient that the policy change came at that exact time, too much of a coincidence.

MrMonroe

I knew I had this quote somewhere ... Heather and Gary Botting, in "The Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses" (1984) quoted the September 15, 1981 article and commented: "The magazine article might have been written specifically for Franz." They note that the article was "studied" on October 25, 1981, and on November 5 two elders visited Franz to tell him they were laying a formal charge against him. The change in policy could well have been introduced for the sole purpose of providing the "technical infaction" (as Time magazine called it) for which Franz was ultimately expelled.

15

Was the policy change to equate DA to DF because of Ray?

by teel in

as ray says in the last chapter of coc, before 1981 da was quite different from df.

"persons who resigned were not treated the same as those disfellowshiped", they were not shunned for example, except when the dad person enters into politics or military.. i put it on account of humbleness that ray says he doesn't think they changed the policy just to use it against him, he probably feels he wasn't so significant as to warrant such a far-reaching change.

but it seems way too convenient that the policy change came at that exact time, too much of a coincidence.

MrMonroe

The change in policy was announced in the September 15, 1981 WT. Under the heading, "Those who disassociate themselves", it read:

Persons who make themselves “not of our sort” by deliberately rejecting the faith and beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses should appropriately be viewed and treated as are those who have been disfellowshiped for wrongdoing.

End of quote. No scripture to support the change in policy, no nothing. Franz was already in a state of friction with the WTS; his landlord and employer had submitted his letter of disassociation in March 1981. The announcement of the change in attitude towards DA'd people was published in the September 15, 1981 WT and two months later Franz was put on trial for (retrospectively) breaching that direction.

5

"Knocking" Director, Joel Engardio, wonders why JWs bother to adhere to a no-blood theology

by AndersonsInfo in

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/02/witnesses_blood_and_spiritual_complications.htmlwitnesses, blood and spiritual complications begin blogger thumbs end blogger thumbs by joel p. engardio.

writer, documentary filmmaker.

blood transfusions and jehovah's witnesses make dramatic stories.

MrMonroe

This double talk was also discussed by Oregon bioethicist Osamu Muramoto in his article, "Bioethics of the refusal of blood by Jehovah's Witnesses, part 3" in the Journal of Medical Ethics, 1999 (Google it if you want to read all his fascinating and forthright papers on the subject). He noted that a public agreement was made in March 1998 between the WTS and the Bulgarian government at the European Commission of Human Rights. In the agreement, the WTS declared that its members "have free choice" to receive blood transfusions "without any control or sanction on the part of the association".

Futher on in his paper, Muramoto wrote:

A WTS official in (a subsequent) BBC interview argued that a JW who accepts blood would never be automatically disfellowshipped. If he expresses remorse and repentance before a judicial committee, he will not be punished with the most severe religious sanction. He also argued that unrepentant JWs who received blood are disfellowshipped not because of the fact that they received blood, but because they abandoned the doctrine of the religious organisation.

Muramoto points out the hypocrisy in the statement: the end result for any JW who exercises his "free choice" and chooses to accept blood is expulsion and shunning. A JW on the talk page of the Wikipedia article on Jehovah's Witnesses has similarly argued that Witnesses are free to choose on the issue of transfusions. This is clearly the new party line for the public, but it's a hollow claim indeed when anyone who makes a choice contrary to WTS teaching is booted out.

30

Let's Watch How We Walk (A jw email I just got today)

by Tired of the Hypocrisy in

jw
friends

is it based on anything else out on the net and redone to fit the jws?.

good example of how our conscience should be trained by jah!

let's watch how we walk.

MrMonroe

I've heard two urban myths delivered from the platform as "experiences" ... an elder who introduced a meeting with a fabulous experience he'd just heard about a man who saw a car broken down by the side of the road ... lent the driver a tyre ... had a call from his bank manager .... home loan has been paid off by a benefactor ... "you have friends in high places" .... it was Bill Gates he'd helped. I checked Snopes when I got home and that story had been going round since the 1930s and Howard Hughes was the earlier benefactor.

At a circuit assembly in Queensland I heard a tale of a Gold Coast pioneer couple who saw a Mercedes being advertised in the paper for $10 ... it was the wife of a philanderer whose husband told her she could sell the car and give him half the proceeds ... the pioneers picked up the car for $10 and were obviously blessed by Jehovah. I moved to New Zealand where I was amazed to hear an identical experience had happened in Auckland, with the exception that this time it was $20 and the car was a BMW. The audience lapped it all up and clapped like performing seals.

I always wondered how many of those experiences were either invented or recycled urban myths. Thank God (again) for the internet.

52

THE FINAL VERDICT IS DELIVERED!!!

by Hobo Ken in

jw
friends

this is the final of my series of podcasts in which the 3 circuit overseers decide my fate as a jehovah's witness.. my blog- deathorobedience.blogspot.com.

podcast 12 the final verdict- play the audio.

also available free on itunes (just search on itunes).. .

MrMonroe

It went a little something like this "Ok, Matt, let's put aside the compelling evidence that the decision to disfellowship you for saying Jesus is to be worshipped was a miscarraige of theocratic justice. So, how do you believe "faithful slave" is being used by Jehovah on earth today?" -- that's all they care about.

That's so true. A year ago my wife and I spent an uncomfortable few days with friends of ours interstate where we knew the issue of our decision to stop going to meetings would be raised. And it was, in a heated, very emotional and very long discussion, although we were resolute in our decision not to give him any reason why we left. We wanted to give him no ammunition. He could die wondering. And the weird thing was my good friend (or so he'd always been until our decision to withdraw from The Club) suddenly asked my wife, "Do you believe Jehovah is using the faithful and discreet slave as his organization on earth today?" It was such an insanely loaded question, brimming with assumptions and dangers, that it stopped us short. My wife stalled for time and I managed to change the subject and he never came back for an answer.

I have never stopped thinking about the question. Where did he get it from? Had someone suggested he ask it? It's a carefully framed question designed to trap. (Is there a "faithful and discreet slave"? Does God use "an organization"? If he does, who says it's the WTS?) Is this a question elders are instructed to ask?

44

Watchtower May 15,2010 "Brothers Sow to the Spirit and Reach out"

by hoser in

looks like they're almost begging for elders and ms's.

take a fresh look.

the need for overseers and ministerial servants is greater today than ever before.we.

MrMonroe

I recall moving to a new congregation after having "served" as an MS in my previous one. I was working Saturdays, so I could do "only" an hour of witnessing Saturday mornings before I had to leave for my job. Sundays was never much fun because the pioneers all teamed up and left me to work with the smelly old women who had nothing else to do with their life. My monthly total was about eight hours. One arrogant young elder asked me if I was keen on becoming an MS again. I told him, sure ... I did actually like to help people in the congregation. He told me, "Well, if eight hours a month is all you can do, you're really wasting your time, because it's not enough."

It was actually a revealing, and ultimately helpful, response. I immediately decided that if I was wasting my time spending eight hours a month annoying people at the doors, I could just as easily waste only an hour a month and claim I was doing two. I never reported more than five hours a month from that day. It was one of those eye-opening moments that, looking back, helped to pave the way for my eventual exit.