not a captive

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Posts by not a captive

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  27

  When was the last time somebody proved you wrong and you admitted it?

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  intellectual honesty and personal integrity depend on a fine point.

  can you accept being wrong and admit it?.

  nobody wants to be wrong because we have to trust your view of things to survive and prosper.

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  not a captive

  Family life--hey, Finger.
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  65

  Have your views on gays changed over the years?

  by laverite in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  some questions....feel free to answer any or all of these.

  have your views of gay people changed over the years?

  do you have or have you ever had gay friends?

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  not a captive

  No, early on I grew up around an inter-sex person and when a JW first tried to tell me homosexuality was a choice I already knew that things can misfire before birth and so I asked them ,

  "Can a person be born with a cleft palate or are there Siamese twins born?"

  "Yes"

  "Then you can be born with your gender I.D. mixed up." A lot of JWs didn't like the idea that some people have that problem. It kind of cuts to the core of a lot of things. It might even make you sympathetic to a gay person!

  --I don't say some do not choose. And early sexual abuse can disorient some I have known. But it seems to me that most don't choose.

  Someone I know well is in a same sex relationship. I think it would have made me uncomfortable if I had known ahead of time because I felt so self-conscious about every move I made--not ina healthy way either. But recently she asked, "What did you think of me while you were a JW?" I said I relied on the Bible and the teachings of Jesus to guide me even then.

  It is important for me to be free to talk about Jesus not lifestyle. What a person does regarding Jesus is up to them. If we come to follow Jesus we all end up looking at ourselvef --and asking questions of our God and of ourself.

  I will treat people as Jesus showed me to treat them.
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  61

  What does Jesus do all day anyway?

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  without sounding crass or being impudent or deliberately caustic i'd just like to know one thing.. what does jesus do all day, exactly?.

  is it interesting for him?.

  is it productive?

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  not a captive

  michelle,
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  61

  What does Jesus do all day anyway?

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  without sounding crass or being impudent or deliberately caustic i'd just like to know one thing.. what does jesus do all day, exactly?.

  is it interesting for him?.

  is it productive?

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  not a captive

  Everyboby is entitled to his own opinion and his own Jesus.
• 
  27

  When was the last time somebody proved you wrong and you admitted it?

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  intellectual honesty and personal integrity depend on a fine point.

  can you accept being wrong and admit it?.

  nobody wants to be wrong because we have to trust your view of things to survive and prosper.

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  not a captive

  I've had to apologize to individual family members because the religion I went into was wrong and created distortions for my children and others growing up. I'm sorry for the harm it did to them. I've got a big family.

  I see people that knew I was a staunch Witness and it is not enough to say it was a bad place to take or look for faith and worship-- but I try to undo the residue of my previous stand.

  There are a few people and a few "doors" I want to revisit and tell them how I appreciate their integrity in rejecting my offers.
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  13

  Arkansas Floods

  by snowbird in

  1. social
  2. current

  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37637416/ns/us_news-life/?gt1=43001.

  purplesofa?.

  john doe?.

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  not a captive

  Mama Syl, I'm okay, too!
• 
  61

  What does Jesus do all day anyway?

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  without sounding crass or being impudent or deliberately caustic i'd just like to know one thing.. what does jesus do all day, exactly?.

  is it interesting for him?.

  is it productive?

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  not a captive

  Darth: People can (and do) do good for goodness sake! Not for reward, not to activate the Jesus super power in their life, Just for the sake of doing good cause its the right thing to do.

  It is a point well taken. My husband does good for his neighbors, helps them get up firewood, helps doctor somebody's sick cow, helps a stranger whose beat up old car won't start in a Dollar General parking lot. He has a messed up attitude about Christians from his own issues as well as bad circumstances as a foster child. Stuff Charles Dickens wouldn't write about. His foster "parents" took him to church as a final destructive act. My husband watched the wretched way these Christians treated --not just him--but others in the community. His childhood connection with God was not personal, not strong.

  My husband does not call himslf a Christian.

  But, just for the sake of this discussion, I want to say that I am suspecting that Jesus looks on my husband differently than that and I am thinking that I should regard my husband's faith in a new light. I have been through a bewildering process over the past two years--about the Scriptures and Jesus and Christianity. I am almost ready to say with full conviction that I have been wrong all my life about Christianity.

  What does Jesus do all day long? I think he is working hard to convince us or at least me that I am wrong about what a Christian is really.

  Maybe he has been working to have the literate and educated Christians get over themselves. I mean, we have not been able to do any good with scholarship and "accurate knowledge"have we? We carefully avoid the thing that would make us a laughing stock yet is essential to enter his kingdom: We have to become as little children.

  But little children are sometimes abused. Like my husband was. When it happens to your body it can happen to their faith. What about that?

  My husband told me he wanted to hear from God once he was grown up, and was turned loose from foster care. Through a largely unplanned series of events (involving rodeoing, a badly fracture leg, and a subsequent sabbatical from horses) found himself killing time waiting for his leg to heal at a university near his mother's apartment. Something about that time in life made him deperate to know if God was there. He wanted a sign.

  Nothing happened. All his prayer and anguish of soul produced nada. The small childhood faith became a cynical blackhole of disillusion. But he went on, graduated with honors, married and proceded to make a life and career without God.

  This unfortunate non-event in his life shows up time and again as the prime point of contention in our own tumultuous marriage. My own flimsey Catholic faith was rocked by his disregard for Christian niceties, which I found enchanting--at first. I merrily ignored all religious and social decorum and plunged into an illicit affair with him until his long-distance marriage finally broke and I had this troubled man all for myself.

  Five years into it,I knew I was in way over my head. I would have prayed but I couldn't find access to God. I knew I had discarded him very consciously for my man. But I figured there had to be a way back in, a loop-hole for the truly desperate. (I had even had a face-to-face with a priest over my activities--not helpful). I laid seige to God. It started in the fall, around September and lasted through to a cold, frozen spring.I even read a Bible. But I broke before God did and gave up. It was after that that I "heard from God". It was an experience that I have struggled all my life since to understand in terms of the Christianity I was raised with--I only knew two things though: He was there , He was incredibly kind.

  The miracle that occurred was over thirty years ago. And as recently as today I wanted to confirm what has always puzzled me. It is that my husband was not affected much by my own conversion. I asked him as I was writng this post: Remember that winter? What did you think of that experience that changed my life?

  My husband, recalling those days, says it was distant from him. He was the only adult around me all that time on our mountain farm and those days did impact our future in many regards but past conversations on the subject brought him to anger. His words are kinder toward me now , but he says basically the same thing now as he told the children we had as they grew up--"Your mother got a great big case of cabin fever back then."

  So back to the topic. I'm 58 and my husband is 77. We have been through a lot and have put each other and our children through a lot--I put everyone through the JWs and I have a lot to atone for. I think Jesus has been trying to get us to listen to his teachings-- to stop trying to cram God into the broken mold of religion, the old wineskin. It never hold for my husband and me . It breaks over and over again for us. And my own attempts to express Christianity in the terms that are purely intellectual fail not just in his ears but in my own.

  But I have been changing as I "listen to Jesus" like a stupid little child. I stopped worrying about making theological sense to others, and my faith has come clean for me. And, to get a little personal, it has opened the door to a new relationship with my husband. We talk over faith and the existence of God--a no-no in the past. There has been respect and laughter. Our kids are amazed. I told my husband this morning that I am thinking that while my faith and happiness has grown this past year it has made me a ridiculous Christian--both to other Christians and to non-Christians as well. Some do not even consider me a "true Christian" at all.

  And Jesus being busy? I think he has a lot to do to teaching us to accept his help--including me and my "un-believing"husband--become a child in heart so we can relearn the simple childish joy of faith and love again.
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  11

  Why Jehovah's Witnesses?

  by e-watchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  who are jehovahs witnesses?

  are they the true worshippers of god the true light-bearers, as the watchtower society claims?

  what makes jehovahs witnesses so special?

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  not a captive

  I got nothin to say in this thread, ya'll said it already.

  You bin answered, e-watchman.
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  347

  Why do all intelligent Christians disobey Jesus?

  by StoneWall in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-slagzjmdu.

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  not a captive

  DD,

  I try to get the drift of Jesus' teaching and go in that direction. You are the stickler for only scripture. It is very interesting to me that you assume Mark 10:21-26 has a happy ending somewhere. Why assume the rich young gets saved?It is in the scriptures as it is.

  But I am certain that we have other examples of Jesus loving the unsaved. The widow's son of Nain is not fully established as saved, the demonized child was cured but we have no evidence that he was saved. We run into trouble if we try to follow Jesus around and sort out the saved from the damned aand the loved from the not loved.

  A large problem I have with "election", "predestination" is the same problem I have with "accurate knowledge" 1Tim.3:7 and "taking in knowlege" Jn. 17:3 in the NWT Bible. The Bible translations are heavily Calvinistic. They have the spin on them. I posted the information on that earlier on this thread. Not only that but these were later teachings than the early church dealt with--no aposltles were into it like Calvin. J.Calvin couldn't have had much holy spirit. As I understand it, Calvin saw to the burning of heretics. A grisley Christian, he. Not the right spirit.

  A problem I see that I likewise hard to deal with is the teaching I heard in a Calvinistic Baptist Church was one that naturally occurs from predesination is that God planned the fall to make his mercy manifest. I have a problem with that. "God saw that it was very good?" except that it wasn't good at all.

  What practical value is there in forcing people to claim one of the many kinds of predestination men have thought up?

  Paul said he resolved to know nothing else but Jesus Christ and him crucified/impaled. I figure Paul got his fill of disputes aplenty.

  What does all this "doctrine"matter?
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  32

  Did You Experience THIS When You Were Awakening From Mind Control?

  by mentallyfree31 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  back in december, when i awakened from the wt mind control - i would wake up for several weeks in the middle of the night thinking "what are you doing?

  you know the witnesses have the truth".

  every day or so these thoughts would return.

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  not a captive

  I knew they wouldn't let me have my own conscience back. I didn't realize that's what I wanted. But it was.

  They wrapped everything up with a scripture so I had to just realize that they would look me square in the eye and tell me black was white. And in the course of a year I became a ghost. I had to realize that God gave us freedom--even to be wrong. But all the Branch or the elders or the C.O. or my friends could say was: Faithful and Discreet Slave.

  I creeped me out!

  I went to a counseling session that my oldest daughter paid for... but I knew it was worse than a counselor could do. I wouldn't answer my phone, didn't go where witnesses might be. No meetings. Then it got better once the Branch answered my letter.

  And it was passive aggressive BS. And , it took a few months, a few more meetings with elders that didn't care about Jesus, Jehovah or me. The FDS. Sick.

  I am happier than I have been in my life.