Posts by Anony Mous

12

Consequences for actions. A high fat / sugary diet

by joe134cd in

i want to illustrate my point about where many x-jws go wrong.

to illustrate, imagine a morbidly obese person goes on a calorie restricted diet.

subsequently he loses the excess calories and his health improves.

Anony Mous

But if you still adhere to the so-called principles, don’t you by extension still fall under the power of the GB? These rules were invented by men, they have no grounds in reality, obviously you rejected the men and some of the rules, so you must reject everything that is connected to that. This is interesting, because you adhere to a religion as a snapshot in time, eventually you will fall outside the acceptable (outside the Overton window so to speak) as the men make up and adjust more rules. So the question is which snapshot do you accept and if so, why?

If you reject the principle that the current GB is appointed by God (which you must, since if you accept they are appointed by God and reject them, that is worse than an unbeliever) then you must reject the principles that go along with that.

To go with your analogy, you find out the doctor has been giving you advice on diet that benefits his family’s food and drugs company and is actually providing you with toxic substances instead. You decided to reject that doctor, but still keep shopping at his company. If you think the Bible or even JW at some point had good advice, or a kernel of truth, you must investigate fully what is and what isn’t introduced by the GB for the sake of their own benefit.

12

Consequences for actions. A high fat / sugary diet

by joe134cd in

i want to illustrate my point about where many x-jws go wrong.

to illustrate, imagine a morbidly obese person goes on a calorie restricted diet.

subsequently he loses the excess calories and his health improves.

Anony Mous

@Joe: who says it is not advantageous? Smoking both weed and tobacco can be advantageous, tobacco, cigars and marijuana have long been recognized for their medicinal properties. There is a link between smoking certain types of cigarettes and increased chances of lung and other cancer, but it is not a guarantee and only relevant if you live past 60 which back when the ban was passed wasn’t that high of a chance.

Christmas is not about gifts for most, it is for children to learn positive associations with religious traditions, for adults it should be about Christ, denying the birth of Jesus or preventing people from the mass and communion with Christ is a rather big sin for most Christians and is antithetical to both first century Christians and the teachings of Jesus (communion is supposed to be done by all Christians at least weekly and on all holy days, not reserved to 144,000 for one day in the year).

The thing you are hitting at is that because JWs make certain issues taboo, they are encouraging especially young and curious people to see what the fuss is all about. Both inside and out, JWs are much more sexually aggressive, have more affairs and divorces than the average religious person in ‘the world’. That is caused by restrictiveness rather than compassion on the issues, so it is better to hide behavior which creates secretiveness and snowballs into risky behavior. I was more worried about getting caught with condoms than that my partner would talk, so we didn’t have condoms, I knew the other person would remain quiet, but a box of condoms is condemning outside of the parties with the secret. There are societies where you can be sure that your secret sex life will remain hidden, these are again, more risky than just picking up a regular person at the bar.

12

Consequences for actions. A high fat / sugary diet

by joe134cd in

i want to illustrate my point about where many x-jws go wrong.

to illustrate, imagine a morbidly obese person goes on a calorie restricted diet.

subsequently he loses the excess calories and his health improves.

Anony Mous

It depends on the restrictions and their motives. You are talking from the assumption that because you can find some good in a set of rules, that all the rules are making sense or that some rules maybe have a desired outcome, therefore the rule is inherently good.

As other people point out, there are other Christian and non-Christians that RECOMMEND the same set of rules, they do not REQUIRE the rules.

For example, smoking weed or talking to people that do “bad” things, has a strict rule in the JW org because they do not want you socializing with people at large and bring bad advertisement to the organization, not because they care for your health or safety, because that is belied by other rules (blood, field circus etc). If you can’t smoke because it may kill you but you can’t also save your life in an acute situation, those rules contradict each other logically and morally.

13

Kingdom Hall Insurance

by NotFormer in

that the wt "self insures" kingdom halls has come up in occasional conversations on here.

how exactly does that work?

do they* actually set aside a portion of the monthly remittance from each kingdom hall and save into a pool to cover damage etc.

Anony Mous

Self insurance isn’t exactly a bad model but yes, the WTBTS abuses it. They do not pay for insurance but sure will claim government payouts in case of natural disasters and the like. And yes, when damages happen, there will be a call for donation for the repair, which often is met and then completed with free labor.

11

Dating in the KH-funny stories.

by QuestioningEverything in

jw
friends

my 28y old nephew was dating a 'sister' from another congregation.

he recently bought his own home.

i stopped by there to drop off something.

Anony Mous

With my first wife, we had some great chaperones as well, the first time we were together they basically dropped us off at the mall and told us not to do anything too bad, one time her mother made her ‘worldly’ sister chaperone us at home she basically said - you guys do whatever you want once the mother had left for work. I spent the night at my cousins home that also was worldly, same “you want to sleep together, awesome”. I arranged one time for a tourist spot that we ‘missed the last train’ and we didn’t ‘stay in the train station for the first train’ and the hotels were all full (but there are other places besides hotels, I remember a very squeaky metal bed above a bar).

One girl I dated for a summer after that we ended up meeting behind her grandparents house in a cemetery on a nightly basis. My second wife was slightly more strict, but by then I was more adult so I had my own place and we both had jobs that we did lots of ‘overtime’ (unpaid lol).

Actually dating ‘worldly’ people, I think was much more behaved than JWs. You set boundaries on when, what and where on the first date. JWs just bring so much attention to it it becomes exciting and taboo to the point you try to find a spot to ‘experiment’ any chance you get.

17

How has 3 years of inflation affected WTC?

by ThomasMore in

the current u.s. administration and the fed says inflation is hard to tame.

it was over 9% at it's peak.

one of the greatest increases is price of food, something that everyone feels to some extent.

Anony Mous

You’d think they have enough money with all the stuff they have been collecting and not spending. Also, inflation compounds and is still at 4-5%, food inflation was higher than 9%, it went to 15% in one month, whereas overall inflation came to 30% in the past 3.5 years, food inflation has gone over 50% in the same time period.

I thought these days they were using temporary workers that have to bring their own because of it.

15

WTS NEW USE OF TECHNOLOGICAL, SATELLITE ACCESS

by blondie in

jw
friends

https://freshangleng.com/34262/how-jehovah%e2%80%99s-witnesses-are-making-content-available-to-people-with-limited-or-no-internet-access .

satellite and others for those who cannot access internet!

spread the word (ha).

Anony Mous

They are paying for them. That is how the WTBTS works, the congregation is told what it costs and must raise that amount of money, then that goes towards the World Wide Work and is earmarked so the branch knows what they ‘purchased’. If you cannot or do not raise the amount of money, then you don’t get the equipment. And that is true for everything, the projectors/TV, the audio equipment, chairs, lecterns and table on the stage, they all have a price tag, you want it, there is a price list. Even the publications had a price tag, despite the donation, internally they handle a price list which must come from donation, if you didn’t provide the money (I was in a poor black inner city congregation, donations to the WWW averaged $1000/month for 120 publishers), your literature counter would be frequently out of stock for things like bibles, while you could go to another congregation and find they got boxes with the stuff every month.

Again, I have seen the accounting, I was doing it and this was part of my awakening, the previous brother that did the job had also left “for apostasy” and so was my assistant recently reinstated after he had been running accounts before that (I assume he came back for his family). If you ever want to wake up honest hearted people, make them do accounts at the Kingdom Hall, RBC or Conventions - the last one was what gave me the most evidence, I personally oversaw the second day after lunch counting money session (this was still 3 day conventions) and we counted over $10,000, a quick deduction is that you collected more than $15-20k at that point. Day 3 they told us we had collected $8000 and were short, the CO then sent a ‘bill’ to the congregation for the expenses through the elders.

15

WTS NEW USE OF TECHNOLOGICAL, SATELLITE ACCESS

by blondie in

jw
friends

https://freshangleng.com/34262/how-jehovah%e2%80%99s-witnesses-are-making-content-available-to-people-with-limited-or-no-internet-access .

satellite and others for those who cannot access internet!

spread the word (ha).

Anony Mous

@listener: then why do they lie about the cost and not simply say the program costs are $$. Everything in WTBTS world has a price tag and the congregations are forced to donate to a goal before getting what they want. You want a Kingdom Hall, better raise the amount of money it costs from the congregation to build it or you get nothing and then you get as a congregation practically a 15 year loan to pay off after which they’ll sell the property from under them and tell you to raise more money. I have the branch price lists for lecterns, audio equipment etc from when I was running the local building committee, and all of them, together with cars are JW or WTBTS owned businesses and they are marked up significantly.

15

WTS NEW USE OF TECHNOLOGICAL, SATELLITE ACCESS

by blondie in

jw
friends

https://freshangleng.com/34262/how-jehovah%e2%80%99s-witnesses-are-making-content-available-to-people-with-limited-or-no-internet-access .

satellite and others for those who cannot access internet!

spread the word (ha).

Anony Mous

https://www.jw.org/en/library/series/how-your-donations-are-used/A-Small-Box-That-Delivers-Spiritual-Food/

$75 for a wireless router that costs $33 on Amazon (incl free shipping)

https://a.co/d/32kIElM

A $4 monthly subscription for a USB stick with “spiritual food” that costs $1.42 per 100 when branded.

Oh, and the software they use is free (OpenWRT), I use other models from this brand myself at home.

And from their website, they had sold a few thousand in 2020, this must be a great revenue stream.

24

What is the monthly stipend that the bethelites receive every month?

by StephaneLaliberte in

what is the monthly stipend that the bethelites receive every month?

does any one has an actual number?

Anony Mous

So about a decade ago I know it was about $100 for a “young” bethelite, and they got allowances for travel and clothing. Married and people that had been there for long times, they have a system of overseers etc got more.

There was great emphasis from the branch that the congregation assigned would be supporting their travel as well, which off course was not give it to the bethelite but send it as part of world wide work.