The reward for me is the freedom to think and reason for myself... to not be told what to think... to no longer live in fear of being "found out"... and to not live a lie. Living a lie is a soul sucking self destructive way to exist....
joeblow
JoinedPosts by joeblow
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31
what are the rewards for not being a witness any longer
by Curtains inif the carrot and stick aspect of being jehovahs witnesses upset you how do you reclaim your desire for reward?
i'm assumng that you all agree with me that feeling rewarded is a basic human desire.
how much effort do you think we should put into trying to make our lives rewarding?
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110
A Concerned Elder Speaks
by Franklin Massey ina lot of talk has centered around information dispensed at the recent km schools.
many brothers feel there is a "tightening up" taking place.
i had a recent experience that you may find interesting.. after the meeting i was working with our cobe on some congregation tasks when out of nowhere he said, "have you looked up any extra information about higher education since the km school?
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joeblow
I'm one of the rebels that got a university education... the ONLY one in the congregation I grew up in. Seriously, I'm the only one of the various children that were there in the 70's and 80's that was "allowed" to go to university... and that was only after I spent almost 4 years post high-school convincing my parents to allow me to go. Yah, I know I could have just gone at 18... an adult etc etc, but university is expensive, and I absolutely had to have their buy-in and support to be able to manage it. I paid for it myself through loans etc, but I still needed help (they filled my refrigerator with food once per month during my university years, and helped put gas in my car).
The flak I took for my decision to go to university was stupid... I wasn't "marked" but I certainly was treated differently... not in a good way. but I survived :-) It was actually one of the things that convinced me I was not cut out for cult life.
The scary thing is now, even with my BSc, it's not enough in the real world. The vast majority of jobs I am looking at now all require a Masters (minimum) or PhD (preferred)... granted I'm looking at some very specialized jobs (that I'm qualified for through experience but not formal education) in very specific parts of the world, but the reality is... getting any job above a "janitor" usually requires a lot more than just a college diploma. It's a tough fast paced life out there, and you have to keep up.
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23
Mammoths, Mastadons, Siber Tooth Tigers
by NewChapter inso, i've been thinking a lot lately about the chinks in my "spiritual armor" and my journey from jw to atheist.
i realize now it all started with a mastadon.
i visited one of my favorite places, the natural history museum, where i stared contemplatively at lucy.
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joeblow
The funny thing about stories and myths is that there is usually a tiny grain of fact at the very core... a real story that over the generations (real generations not JW generations) are changed, forgotten, invented, reinvented, changed again and so on. Maybe the flood is one of those stories....
Why do I say that? Well... think about the region it was written in/about... roughly where modern day Turkey is right? Plus or minus, but roughly that area.... bordering what is now the Medeterranian. There is an interesting theory that I saw a few years ago about the formation of the Med... which would amount to a massive flood of water pouring into the region from the Straits of Gibraltar. Hmmm.. so a major flood in the area... which would appear to be so huge that it was their whole world.
Oh wait.. it was 5.3 million years ago.. nevermind :-) The Flood was "clearly" only a couple thousand years ago. Haha... OK, I'll stop stirring the pot now.
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56
THE MOST THRILLING MOMENT of your life.....?
by Terry inhere is the most thrilling moment of my life.. i got to meet my film composer heroes john barry and miklos rosza at the beverly hills writer's guild theater for a seminar on filmmusic.. i was 30 years old at the time and going through my "you look like clint eastwood" stage.
(i'm trying to explain my crazy hair!).
i chatted with them and got them to sign my albums.. what was your most thrilling moment?.
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joeblow
For me it was stepping off the airplane and into the warm African sun, taking a deep breath of the tropical air... and feeling like I was home for the first time in my life.
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23
Did anyone else find this intriguing/fascinating about this year 2011 and the year of your birth?
by StoneWall inby now you've probably seen the following dates tossed around that will happen in this year:.
but something i wasn't aware of and my brother-in-law showed me about the year 2011:.
take the last 2 digits of the year of your birth and add it to how old you are/will be in this year(2011) and it should always equal 111.. to illustrate, i was born in 1967 and will be 44 this year.
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joeblow
It's amazing how many people are sucked into the whole "wonder" of this... I've seen that email being passed around over and over with everyone being all wigged out by the "phenomenon"... but the minute you point out that it's nothing special... just simple algebra they go blank.
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joeblow
My partner makes a steamed chopped spinach that I absolutely love (it's a favorite from the coutnry she grew up in). She chops it really fine, rinses it, and then sets it in cold water for a few minutes, drains the water and drops it all into a hot pot with some butter and salt... it sizzles and steams away for a few minutes (only a couple) and is served immediately... usually with fish. Oh, and it has to be fresh picked spinach... the one with the huge thick leaves, not the baby spinach that the supermarkets always have.
It's simple, but tastes great... especially with the fresh fish.
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13
How is the transfer from a congregation handled by the elders?
by trevorbv inif any of you were elders how is the transfer from a congregation handled?
how do elders know where to send the proclaimer's file and letter of recommendation?
does it go through the local branch if in the same country?
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joeblow
Interesting that they felt it necessary to note explicitly that there is "...no need to mention past judicial action unless the offense involved child molestation...".
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42
In your hall, how many converted to a JW from door to door in the last 10 years?
by just n from bethel inin mine that would be a big fat zero.. there have been a handful of teenage baptisms of jw children.. one that really was a foreign language group transfer.. but in the last ten years - there has not been one single convert from the d2d ministry.. btw - my congregation has had over 10 pioneers (real ones that actually do d2d, including elders) for the last decade.. not one.
10 x 70 hours a month x 120 months = 84,000 hours ... results = 0.. also most of our pioneers are pretty good at the door - some half way decent teachers.
one is sub co and another often is called to teach ... wait for it ... pioneer school!!!.
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joeblow
If I look at the congregations in the area where I grew up... the one I attended as a child, the ones friends attended (say... 5 or 6 congregations)... exactly zero people came from D2D work. Not in just a few years, but as far back as I can remember... say... mmmm.... 1975ish until today. Some were small rural congregations, others larger city congregations... Congs grew from people moving in... others shrunk from people moving out. Almost all are "lifers" who were born-in. The young people attending are all raised as JWs. The old people who've been there forever are the only ones I know who were brought in from D2D work... Loads of pioneers putting in the hours every month... not even getting any studies. In my "home" congregation, the only studies reported were with family members. Basically fake studies to boost numbers.
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Do you notice a difference in new relationships out of 'the truth'?
by New light for you inits 3 years since i (we) left, we somehow didn't have a committee or anything, but were able to leave with no friends, but still able to have contact with my jw mom.
in these 3 years of "learing" how to get and have friends that aren't witnesses its been quite the learning curve.
how do you meet people?
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joeblow
None of the people I call friends are JWs. I don't miss the "friendship" of the JWs who I used to think of as my friends... I realised that the friendship was purely because they felt an obligation to be friends, and nothing more. When I moved away from where they live, the friendship immedately stopped - they don't even rate as aquantances. Non-JW friends kept in touch, and even now... over 15 years later, they (the non-JW friends) still call to chat, send emails etc.
It takes work to build up friendships.. but like jamiebowers said, the "worldly" ones will last a lifetime
@ele_lux: crashing on a sofa is easy :-) I've done it in several places... China, Uganda, France etc. All with people I've never met before except through the Couchsurfing website.
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31
Danger JWs, your KH is falling apart in front of your eyes!
by moshe init seems to me that the kh's in many areas have lost the critical mass they need to stay healthy and to expand.
loss of their youth and loss of ministerial servants makes it obvious that these khs are doomed.
maybe not this year, but before this decade is out we will see many closings and subsequent mergers of kh's to the point that it is obvious to jws that they have become a has-been religion.
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joeblow
There are still jobs in the area I grew up in.... particularly manual trades. it's the high tech jobs that are completely missing in the area. Since it's a rural area, you have farming, and the labor industries that surround that... local shops, petrol stations, cattle auction houses, natural resource mining... it's a fairly active area. The funny thing is, with all the activity in teh area... the mining, the farming, the supporting businesses, the majority of the Witnesses there supported themselves as... janitors.
The denial is clear though, and that really hit home when I visited that cong in the city my family lives in.