Posts by Half banana

12

Guilt as Motivator

by LifesNotOver in

jw
friends

i've just come across this idea: i've been feeling guilty about not contributing more to this forum, given all the help i've received here.

i feel guilty that i haven't had it as bad as so many of you.

i feel guilty that i didn't have any jw family/friends that shunned me when i left.

Half banana

Lifesnotover, you have like JWs and all religious people, been motivated by unnecessary guilt. Religion trades in guilt!

Let me encourage you to realize that instead of guilt you can congratulate yourself for having had the courage to give up the dreadful JW cult and your old life and now you can redeem your liberty to enjoy your life as a free human agent.

As Flipper says it is indeed hard to rid ourselves of this indoctrination and it does take time but eventually you will lose the guilt and you will become a whole and happy individual......... if you aim for it!

All the best to you, you can do it!.

12

Intelligent Disobedience

by George One Time in

did you notice the expression "intelligent disobedience" in the febuary 2017 broadcast (at 7:30)?.

it was used with the illustration of a guide dog for blind persons, that sometimes has to disobey it's owner.. what a fine example for us!

.

Half banana

George, the things now being found in recent GB patter such as this subject of “intelligent disobedience” can be read as a trend.

In contrast with the black and white dogmatism which historically describes the Watchtower cult and which in the past had made decisions for true believers simple to make; the push seems to be towards “think for yourselves”.

One conclusion could be that the WT writers are actually thinking at a primitive philosophical level and exploring the consequences of moral choices independent of WT dogma. This is unlikely!

A second thought would be that a sense of despondency is pervading the org and the writers are unwittingly or even deliberately betraying the authoritarian norms of cult control methods. Possible but perhaps not yet!

I think a more likely interpretation is that they are creating a defence to their critics in the courts against the charge that they are dictatorial in all of their dealings. By printing or publicising a recommendation to use common sense or even disobey them could provide contrary legal evidence that the GB are not totalitarian. Contrary that is, to the standard WT practice, which is still expected, for absolute obedience.

What the GB print or broadcast is not necessarily what JWs do. JWs are driven to conform by the existing, historically molded cultural norms which are enforced socially and by elder opinion at the congregational level. Interpretations are always done in solidarity with the local group-think.

No doubt the impending landslide of litigation because of their dire handling of sex abuse problems, figures heavily in the minds of the GB. What the GB think can be deconstructed from what they demand in the Watchtower.

To actually adopt an anti-WT directive and have JWs making their own moral choices would truly be the thin end of the wedge for GB authority and would permit the downfall of the cult. Let’s hope the litigation forces this.

15

Spiritual paradise or proverbial straitjacket?

by UnshackleTheChains in

noas a current or past jehovah's witness, do you / or did you feel part of a spiritual paradise with full liberty in christ as the watchtower society/organisation describes?.

or do you / did you feel you were wearing a proverbial straitjacket in the sense you feel / felt restricted and controlled by the watchtower society / organisation?.

Half banana

JWs are indoctrinated to believe they are experiencing a "spiritual paradise" but how many really and truly feel or felt that to be true? So your question is a good one Unshacklethechains.

Diogenesister you mention one of my very favourite films Dr Strangelove, it is a glorious satire with great cinematic crafting. Yes the USSR sat like a black cloud over western culture for forty years after WW2.

Waton: "bunch of stunted clones"! They've not changed have they?

It's like a club for which you pay a terrible price for membership. We all had to jump about in straitjackets with a bunch of other mentally stunted clones, smiling and all believing this is what God wanted you to do.

52

JW Convention 2017

by Disassociated Lady 2 in

.

Half banana

The convention should be a runaway success with the memorable image of witnesses fleeing as fast as they can......................

5

Divine Punishment???

by Saethydd in

i was recently at a sunday watchtower, reading one of the novels i have on my ipad to help me get through the dreadfully boring event.

every once in awhile though i'll glance at the article just in case anyone is peeking at my screen, and in the article, i noticed these paragraphs.. 3. how did exile in babylon differ from the slavery the israelites had experienced in egypt?.

3 what the prophets had foretold came to pass.

Half banana

The Israelites were never enslaved en masse in Egypt the first place, they lived next door and got work at Goshen just to the east of the Nile delta. Had they really been "captive" the Egyptian records would have told us. There was no exodus either!

We have to remember that the Bible is mainly a collection of magic yarns to entertain and frighten the peasants.

Golden hemorrhoids--what a joke!

24

We deserve to die

by elfgoblin in

at the meeting today, we were reading the watchtower and this elder apologetically said to such a degree in regards to romans 5:12 that "we humans are not worthy of any mercy from jehovah.

we shouldn't even have free will because we can't possibly do anything good enough to please jehovah.

we don't even deserve life because of sin.

Half banana

If you are on the inside of an abusive cult, it is very hard to see the power play at work.

However the teaching that we are “good for nothing slaves” and that we deserve to die, is an expression of the leader’s quest to have totally compliant followers.

The Pauline Christianity of the NT led the way for the power-hungry cults that came afterwards to demean the followers and elevate the religious authorities.

The psychology of abuse leaves individuals affected without a sense of self worth, without a realistic view of the world and without having developed the necessary individual identity and sense of purpose in life, to flourish as a free human agent.

This abuse is performed on an industrial scale among JWs.

This repressive power from the leadership and denial of individuality for the followers is found in all high control cults. Abuse breeds abuse. The leaders abuse the adults and the adult JWs comply to the cult norm and abuse their offspring by getting them baptised into the cult before they have a chance to express their own feelings.

Ok everyone dies, nobody is exempt but death is not a punishment or a political tool, it's not a matter of "deserving it" it is just nature, if you were born; you also die.

10

Hello and and introduction to Virtue Signaling

by WobblyVern in

hi all - perhaps a brief intro from me would be appropriate..... i hail from essex, england.

a 2nd generation witness never knowing any other life and from a large and mostly devout family.

i was disfellowshipped in 1993 aged 21 and the worldly girl i met, got pregnant and married (in that order) is mother to my 3 grown children and grandmother to our beautiful baby granddaughter.

Half banana

Hi Wobbly, welcome to the site! I'm also a Brit. So glad to see how you escaped the cult and have a proper united family. Well done!

Your comparison with Mormonism is apt, they are a nutty cult like JWs are. This matter of "signalling virtue" within the congregation is practised to a fine degree at the Kingdom Hell as well as in Mormon temples. The idea is to get other members to believe you are a gung-ho super zealous believer and that way you get to climb the hierarchy ladder. The higher you go the more respect you get!

The new dimension in Watchtowerland is total faith in the sacred mystery of the divine appointment of the JW org, not belief in the Bible or Big J or Jesus... what you need to do to get noticed is to agree with the decisions of the GB "Whether they make sense or not".

Mindless loyalty is all you have to show...........

Loved the Laura incident Pete Zahut!

25

Watchtower No.3 2017 - The Four Horesmen

by pale.emperor in

this is the first time i've read through a watchtower magazine in about a year.

although i've been our only 8 months it really git me how crazy i must have sounded when i was a jw talking to non jws.. while other bible based religions talk about the 4 horsemen and back up their theories with other scriptures or historical evidence, the watchtower have taken so such steps.

1914 is thrown in there as if it's universally agreed that jesus started ruling since then.. even when i was a jw i never really understood why, if the pale horse represents jesus, why is he first?

Half banana

Believe what the Watchtower says on this and you can believe anything. . .hocus pocus is far more entertaining than reality.

33

Apparently, William Tyndale was an early J-Dub?

by My Name is of No Consequence in

my wife and son were watching the january broadcast and one of the segments was about william tyndale.

william tyndale was a bible translator in the early 16th century.

i always knew that the org held men like tyndale, john hus and john wycliffe in high regard.

Half banana

It is dead easy to pick heroes and claim they “are one of us”.

Witnesses constantly crave evidence for connection with holiness and that's why Tyndale has been labelled a JW. No one other than a witness would make this connection!

Certainly Tyndale was sincere and paid for it with his life-- but he would shudder to be part of the JW cult.

It is he Watchtower organisation, even with internet communication, who still live in the Dark Ages.

9

A little stock-taking on the JW org. 2017

by Half banana in

the governing body of jws claim without any justification that they alone are holders of a sacred key to divine knowledge and that their history indicates appointment by the almighty creator with the job of giving the world of their privileged information, especially on the time of the biblical “last days.” .

ok they use bible illustrations to explain this with the idea that the “master” has “domestics” who are fed by them but this is always a matter in contention.

they think the illustration is important but can never get a handle on who is who and when it is.

Half banana

It’s true the SS Watchtower is not imminently sinking but it is old and needs a refit to stay afloat. Of course scrapping is an option but if a venture makes money to the tune of one $billion a year and has eight million devotees; why stop?

One very good reason that it should be dismantled is that the JW organisation is the things I have already called it including downright wrong, misleading and harmful.

But business is business, even if the governors, mainly for tax purposes, call it a religion. As the wise entrepreneur CT Russell knew; God’s Holy Spirit and blessing comes down in Dollar bills. The history of the WTBTS and its associated companies has only survived by being ‘blessed’ in this manner. The doctrines and mad prophecies are fluid, what the Watchtower offers is a ticket of hope for the hopeless, it’s all yours-- but it‘ll cost you! And what a price! You pay for it with your life and your soul. Don’t ask the wrong questions (you will learn what they are when you join). It is demanded of you to give your all to this organisation and it’s hard to believe it when you put into print but that does includes your conscience.

So if the org is not dying because it is very rich what is going to happen?

It is evolving already and we have the evidence in it changing from a publishing enterprise to becoming another TV evangelist voice. Like Bob Dylan: it has gone electric. It is using internet IT to spread its paranoid message.

After Russell’s time when the Watchtower brand was up for grabs there were breakaway members who drew upon the Adventist roots of Russell and tried fusing a more socially aware religion along with the eschatological imminence at hand (they still exist).

The Watchtower trustees however went along with the strict “organisation first and last” approach and forget the welfare of the punters. So if we compare the success of modern Adventists with JWs there is a good reason for the former to flourish and the latter to struggle. With JWs the subtext is “jam tomorrow” but with Adventists and Mormons for that matter, they have jam today.

They can have not only a community of like minded believers but a financial and social safety-net with an ethos of healthy and wholesome living to boot. Livin’ the dream hey? Mormon theology is patently contrived and Adventism is the same as the JW delusion which has permanently to move the goal posts forward.

My feeling is that JWism has had its day, the internet unlike the Watchtower, takes no hostages. If the organisation ever was, it isn’t sexy anymore; in fact its ugly side is being exposed to public glare. It will be forced to concede to modern ethical practice but this will emasculate it.