Not being overtaken by bitterness must be a daily struggle.
Mickey Mouse, you hit the proverbial nail fair on the head!
Bill.
it's been 12 years since i first read ray franz's books and the scales came off my eyes.
by that time i was in my forties.. since 2002 i went back to school and have worked with 3 very professional organizations.
but my biological clock is ticking away and while my peers are looking forward to retirement, i am only beginning.
Not being overtaken by bitterness must be a daily struggle.
Mickey Mouse, you hit the proverbial nail fair on the head!
Bill.
it's been 12 years since i first read ray franz's books and the scales came off my eyes.
by that time i was in my forties.. since 2002 i went back to school and have worked with 3 very professional organizations.
but my biological clock is ticking away and while my peers are looking forward to retirement, i am only beginning.
After finishing another 12 hour shift and then having to come back to several hours work on the Advanced Diploma course that I am currently doing, I could volubily curse the WTS to hell and back again - just about every night.
However, I figure that the energy required could be put to better use, so I don't!
I resent the JWs anti-education slant as much as anyone, and would have as much reason to do so as anybody else:
- having been prevented from even starting the Engineering Degree course, and then 12 months later being made to abandon the apprenticeship that I had just started (I was later able to pick up a mature age apprenticeship in a related skill, but an still struggling to catch up what I missed out on through not being allowed to attempt the degree course).
However, it need be recognised that all too often with life in general, we by necessity often have to go about things in circumstances that are less than ideal. As others here have noted, it is mainly a case of making the best you can out of an unsatisfactory situation (and trying not to get too consumed by bitterness during the process!)
My observations anyway.
Bill
im curious, how many people on here had belonged to another church, or have enough knowlege of one.
to have thought the kingdom hall was a better option?
the wt articles often in the past, critisized other churches as being full of false christains, i have one from 1955 that rips on the roman catholic church.. not that they are free of guilt, but, i thought, gee, how many of these critisizers ever went to a small church to make that judgment?.
I wouldn't have claimed to be a regular church attender, but certainly used to go along to the odd Sunday church service (both Anglican and Presbyterian). Prior to that, my mother used to make sure us children went to the local Sunday School - which, for her was easy enough to enforce, given that she was one of the teachers!
However, I could never quite see the point of it all. Then, in the mid-1960s, my grandmother became a JW. Unfortunately (looking back on it now) what the JWs said seemed to have relevance. Between that and their bible written in modern English (at a time when the mainstream churches were still using the King James version, with its Archaic English), I got myself snared!
Bill.
thankfully my parents are converts so they aren't wierd.
seemed pretty popular by all accounts.
they are "popular" jws even now.
I grew up in a sparsely populated district, in which eccentric persons were not uncommon (they were usually referred to as "characters", and one could write a book - perhaps even several - about som eof the eccentric characters I knew).
However, the ones I encountered "in the truth" were something else again, and I agree with kneehighmiah and others that the religion of the JWs attracts more than its share of strange people.
Just one question, though, about something you said:
"My parents sent me to college and told me to take what the watchtower said with a grain of salt."
Knowing that to be the case - as they obvioulsy do - how is it that your parents still remain with this religion? As W.C. Stevens, in his 1968 book "The Inside Story of Jehovahs Witnesses" expressed it:
"No other religious group would demand so mauch from its followers, in return for so little."
Bill.
and you know what?
i am never going to argue about the babble or witchtower comic book fairy tales ever again.
a big f to the lot of them.. whew - feels good doesn't it?.
Way to go!
Bill
just curious if there are any members from tasmania, australia?.
keep yourself annonymous if you wish, but im just curious.. pm me if you prefer.. .
.
stuckinarut,
I presently live in Tasmania (just outside of Launceston).
Bill.
http://chronicle.com/article/era-in-ideas-terrorism/128490/.
his conclusion, .
"even when they are not rooted out by states, terrorist groups carry the seeds of their own destruction.
JeffT,
British General Lord Richards, recently retired as their Chief of Defence Staff, is widely reported as noting that ISIS is not just a terrorist organisation, it also fields large conventional forces. As such, it will require conventional forces to defeat it. Further, in his view, these will certainly need to include ground forces - airstrikes on their own will not be sufficient (particularly those confined to within the borders of Iraq.
Unpalatable as it may sound, in the opinion of this senior army officer of 42 years military experience, the only way that ISIS can be defeated (let alone destroyed) is for the West to commit itself to an all-out war in the Middle East. According to Richards, an alliance with Russia would be necessary, as would the need to carry military operations across the border into Syria (there would be little likelihood of success if ISIS can take sanctuary in a neighbouring country).
Lord Richard's views are being widely reported at the moment (both in our Australian newspapers, and others). He may well have a point!
Bill.
page 15.
"take for example a christian couple in asia.
in their younger years, they admired those who could afford to own a house.
WT writers have honed the art of writing in such a way that it's easy to read into their words things that aren't explicitly stated.
Ain't that a fact!
- e.g. 1975
In those years, anybody contemplating buying a house was regarded as barking mad - "why buy a house, only to have somebody take it off you" (i.e during the Great Tribulation).
Bill.
i am having a discussion at work with the jw's.
should you spank a child to make them understand or do you reason with them.
they both agree with spanking.
The problem, even when spanking seems to "work", is that you've just taught the child to obey based on fear.
More than anything else, children learn by imitating both adults and other children. (i.e. "Monkey see, monkey do"). You can talk, talk, talk until you are blue in the face, but it is what they see you doing that makes the most lasting impression. Using corporal punishment to make them do what you want is the quickest way to teach children to do that very same thing. I have often observed this trait in persons who grew up in families in which (particularly) the father was a regular martinet, and in which the older children were often used to also keep there younger brothers and sisters in line. Not surprisingly, these individuals grew up believing that there was only one way in which to interact with other people, and this was:
"if ya don't do what I want you to do, I'm gonna bash ya."
A real intellectual approach to life.
Bloody great!
Bill.
this thread is dedicated to my friend blondie when she asked "why the pay day loan shop woman had so much access to jws".
in 1993 the jehovah's witnesses in ventura, santa barbara, san luis obispo, monterery, stanislaus, san fransisco, alemeda counties were spreading word of the miracle worker of money from san fransisco.
word traveled throughout the circuit overseers, district overseers telling everyone these brothers in san fransisco were paying 15% for "180 days loans"without any risk, most of these jws were elders and cos and dos, it was only among them the scam remained to create a "in crowd feeling" and left out non elders setting up the sheep for something special down the road!
For the most part, average JWs are rather gullible.
Exactly!
Bill