Posts by Bungi Bill

20

Biblical Injunction To 'Spare the Rod' And Spoil the Child' or 10 Reasons Not To Hit Your Child

by frankiespeakin in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltoyjvslwgg.

http://www.naturalchild.org/jan_hunt/tenreasons.html.

in 37 countries 1 around the world, it is illegal for a parent, teacher, or anyone else to spank a child, and 113 countries prohibit corporal punishment in schools.

Biblical Injunction To 'Spare the Rod' And Spoil the Child' or 10 Reasons Not To Hit Your Child

by frankiespeakin in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltoyjvslwgg.

http://www.naturalchild.org/jan_hunt/tenreasons.html.

in 37 countries 1 around the world, it is illegal for a parent, teacher, or anyone else to spank a child, and 113 countries prohibit corporal punishment in schools.

Bungi Bill

Some excellent points made there, particularly the one about how nearly all dangerous criminals were beaten as children.

In recent times, some have tried to rationalise the bible's statements about the "rod" and discipline by claiming that it is really referring to a shepherd's "staff" -which is an implement used for guiding sheep, rather than striking them with. However, other verses in the bible book of Proverbs are explicit about "striking" or "beating" with this same "rod", thus making it abundantly clear that corporal punishment is indeed being prescribed there!

Yet other bible verses also indicate that the "rod" and the "staff" are two separate things - a point that has been picked up by a different bible commentators.

Where I come from, a shepherd's staff is known as a "mustering stick", and would normally consist of a length of manuka 5ft-6ft (1.5-1.8m) long. Besides being used as an extension to the shepherd's arm when guiding a group of sheep into a pen or through a gateway, the staff has a variety of other uses, too:

- e.g. as a extension handle for hanging the billy from over an open fire when making a brew of tea at "smoko" time. Or when driven securely into the ground, it can be used for tethering the sheepdogs to overnight in the mustering camp. Also,when climbing up a steep slope, the staff makes a handy trek pole. Likewise, when fording a swift-flowing river, the mustering stick helps keep ones balance.

The shepherd's staff (aka mustering stick) is truly a versatile implement! One thing, however, it has very limited use for is in striking something with -it is a little too long and a lttle too unwieldy for that.

Not so the "rod". It is a shorter device, which these days is most likely to consist of a length of black polythene water pipe, 2ft -3ft (600mm - 900mm) long and used specifically for administering blows to cattle while "persuading" these to advance along a race, or up a ramp into a stock crate.

No amount of rationalisation is going to alter the fact that the bible is indeed recommending the use of corporal punishment in the discipline of children. We are now living in the 21st Century (or at least, we are supposed to be!). It is therefore surely time to pension off guidebooks that were written by primitive civilisations one step removed from desert nomads - and that still reflect the harshness of that environment.

Bill.

70

Feeling sad over a wasted life in watchtower

by wannaexit in

jw
friends

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.

Bungi Bill

Not being overtaken by bitterness must be a daily struggle.

Mickey Mouse, you hit the proverbial nail fair on the head!

Bill.

70

Feeling sad over a wasted life in watchtower

by wannaexit in

jw
friends

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.

Bungi Bill

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

6

how many non born ins ever attended a church?

by sowhatnow in

jw
friends

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?.

Bungi Bill

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.

41

What really woke me up: I started noticing most JWS are weirdos..

by kneehighmiah in

jw
friends

thankfully my parents are converts so they aren't wierd.

seemed pretty popular by all accounts.

they are "popular" jws even now.

Bungi Bill

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.

12

IT IS ALL SHITE !!

by hamsterbait in

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?.

Bungi Bill

Way to go!

Bill

8

Are there any members here from Tasmania??

by stuckinarut2 in

jw
friends

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.. .

.

Bungi Bill

stuckinarut,

I presently live in Tasmania (just outside of Launceston).

Bill.

23

Pinker on Terrorism .... Self-Defeating

by jgnat in

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.

Bungi Bill

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.

67

December 1,2014 watchtower saying buying house is bad

by hoser in

page 15.

"take for example a christian couple in asia.

in their younger years, they admired those who could afford to own a house.

Bungi Bill

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.