even elders can be part of the new jw lite brigade these days.
they don’t need to go on door to door anymore and there is no requirement for anything really.. taking meeting parts is all dead easy you could turn up on the day with zero preparation because it’s all in the meeting workbook.. quarterly elders meetings are just old men having a good old natter just like old men do down the pub.. congregations could be likened to pubs or bars these days just without the drinks, those come at other times.. no need for territory maps, these almost went away with covid letter writing now they are extremely slow getting finished as those who still go door to door only do ten mins.. you could even voice your questions these days about things the gb say and then just say “we can’t be dogmatic we just don’t know”.
i predict they will say this about 1914 soon..
The way I see it, JWLite kinda defeats the whole purpose of staying.
Full participation - which includes subscribing to the belief system - is crucial in shoring up the mental conditioning of the average rank-and-filer…
…but the more a still-in picks and chooses what he wants and rejects what he doesn’t, the faster that conditioning wears off, and full unsubscribing becomes inevitable.
You can’t help but reach the point where you wonder why you’re keeping any of it at all.
I could be wrong.
"the new study indicates that the oceans that covered the entire planet in water were at least 300 metres deep.
they may have been up to one kilometre deep.".
yet, some secularists say they are sure that the earth was never completely flooded with water above the tops of mountains as described in genesis.
SeaBreeze is one of those rare XJWs who are still Biblical literalists.
Usually it’s the opposite…
…most XJWs have already concluded that not everything in the Bible can be taken literally, and it’s a significant factor in their exit.
https://nltimes.nl/2023/12/11/jehovahs-witnesses-suing-dutch-state-discrimination .
the jehovah’s witnesses have sued the dutch state for discrimination, the religious organization informed trouw.
they consider it discriminatory that the government investigated them, but no other religious organization, for their handling of sexual abuse cases.. utrecht university conducted the investigation involved, following publications in trouw in which sexual abuse victims within the jehovah’s witnesses described what happened to them, and published the results in january 2020. utrecht university concluded that 60 percent of sexual abuse victims were very critical of how the jehovah’s witnesses handled their cases, scoring the handling a 1 out of 10. many victims were traumatized by how things were handled, the researchers said.. sander dekker, then the minster for legal protection, ordered the investigation at parliament’s insistence because the jehovah’s witnesses failed to arrange an investigation themselves, as the catholic church did at the time with the deetman commission.. the jehovah’s witnesses cooperated in the utrecht university investigation but unsuccessfully tried to stop the publication of its results.
You, too. 😊
i had a day off today and needed to get some errands done in my local town.
2 carts have allocated here but i never ever see anyone out, even on very nice days.
70% of the congregation don’t work.
Seriously though, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
The way things seem to be going, by the time the Tower crumbles, all the decent ones worth helping will have already figured it out and well into their WTexit.
😏
i had a day off today and needed to get some errands done in my local town.
2 carts have allocated here but i never ever see anyone out, even on very nice days.
70% of the congregation don’t work.
ElderBerry - “…When you think about it, JWs are some of the best people on Earth. You know they are the most honest and trustworthy people…”
Stick around a while and read a few experiences. You might change your mind. 😄
i been reading quite a few experiences on reddit lately, and their seems to be a common theme coming up….
…dialed-up-to-eleven shunning of xjws by their witness relatives.. it reminds me of back in the day, listening to some of the over-the-top vitriol displayed by hard-core loyalists when the topic of evolution or apostates came up….
…i was gobsmacked when i finally realized these guys weren’t offended and indignant because they thought it was lies….
FFGost - “…Some of the most hysterically vicious comments I’ve ever heard were JWs ranting, sometimes at a meeting, sometimes in a private setting, about either gays or evolution… Just solely directed toward, as you noted, persons or concepts that very likely, on some level, they hoped were wrong but maybe weren’t.”
It’s funny… concluding that evolution was true was, in retrospect, one of my first big wake-up moments.
I just realized something in retrospect… I think seeing how threatened they were back then made me wonder if there wasn’t actually something to it…
…i.e., I became a little more open to the possibility.
By the time I realized that the WTS used all the same misquotes, logical fallacies, and semantic pretzel-twisting (the sleazy lawyer’s go-to grab bag of courtroom tactics when a case goes south) as “Worldly” creationists, I was primed.
If you have to cheat to defend your beliefs, your beliefs don’t deserve to be defended.
i understand he intimated that the faithful slave was not the only spokesman for jehovah god.
he also intimated that corporal punishment was not advocated by the wts.
we're these lies or deception or did they represent the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?.
I just remembered a long time ago when an older sister I once knew was constantly complaining about how the federal government had “banned” corporal punishment.
Eventually, I got so goddamned sick of hearing it I finally said, “wow, you must’ve really liked it, considering how much you complain about how you miss it” (paraphrasing, but not much).
The look on her face was fucking priceless.
More importantly, I said this in front of the whole bookstudy group and did not get in any trouble for it…
…and she never brought the subject up again.
https://nltimes.nl/2023/12/11/jehovahs-witnesses-suing-dutch-state-discrimination .
the jehovah’s witnesses have sued the dutch state for discrimination, the religious organization informed trouw.
they consider it discriminatory that the government investigated them, but no other religious organization, for their handling of sexual abuse cases.. utrecht university conducted the investigation involved, following publications in trouw in which sexual abuse victims within the jehovah’s witnesses described what happened to them, and published the results in january 2020. utrecht university concluded that 60 percent of sexual abuse victims were very critical of how the jehovah’s witnesses handled their cases, scoring the handling a 1 out of 10. many victims were traumatized by how things were handled, the researchers said.. sander dekker, then the minster for legal protection, ordered the investigation at parliament’s insistence because the jehovah’s witnesses failed to arrange an investigation themselves, as the catholic church did at the time with the deetman commission.. the jehovah’s witnesses cooperated in the utrecht university investigation but unsuccessfully tried to stop the publication of its results.
If your religion intentionally sets its followers up for martyrdom…
…they’re not genuine martyrs.
not sure if this has been posted or not, apologies if it has.
i did a quick search and did not see it.
https://archive.md/5zcdi -a sunshine coast jehovah’s witness figure accused of horrific sex crimes has been remanded in jail for fresh offences which allegedly occurred the same day he attended court.. and https://archive.md/r2o6x -a sunshine coast jehovah’s witness figure who allegedly used his position in the church to sexually assault young men has been arrested by police.
When you spend decades alienating and ostracizing people of genuine value… eventually, all you’re left with are the shitty ones.
And then you’re stuck with ‘em… effectively enabling them… ‘cause you can’t get anyone better.
what if the truly unthinkable happened and the tower went down?
perhaps the irs swooped in and claimed fraud and padlocked the headquarters and kingdom hall doors?
or the gb took the money and ran to a nice non-extradition country to live out their years?
The majority of JWs aren’t particularly violent (passivity is promoted - if indirectly - in WT rhetoric, after all), so I’m not too worried about angry loyalists seeking retribution…
…but I’d be surprised if some of ‘em didn’t at least try to blame “apostates” for the Tower crumbling (as logically - and from the WT’s POV, theologically - impossible as that is).
