@Jensus: those videos are no longer available in the US. Must wonder what kind of propaganda those things must be that even the far left YT blocks them (there are laws against Russian and Chinese government propaganda content farms in the US).
Anony Mous
JoinedPosts by Anony Mous
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115
Vice President Kamala Harris…your thoughts??
by minimus ingood pick?
bad pick?
helpful to president biden?
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115
Vice President Kamala Harris…your thoughts??
by minimus ingood pick?
bad pick?
helpful to president biden?
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Anony Mous
This Kamala?
https://youtu.be/UbDK0z5V0UQ?t=42
Hah, look at me from 3 years ago “she will be in charge soon”
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Interesting that the other cult-cousins are going thru nearly identical hemmoraging of members.....
by WingCommander ini still read on reddit.
(though no longer post) occasionally, i'll venture over to the ex-seventh day adventist (sda) sub and catch up a bit.
it's been a long time.
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Anony Mous
I’ve seen similar things. The in-between half-Christians (JW, SDA, Mormons and many progressive churches) are seeing a serious drop but the more “Catholic” and Evangelical churches, even Orthodox Jews are seeing a comeback.
It seems people do look for and need a sort of guidance in their life, it used to be that this was prevalent in your community and even if you didn’t attend church you still had those values imposed. But since then society rejected all those rules leading to modern issues.
Whatever you think of a specific religion, there is value in ancient wisdom, getting together with your community and the closer you stay to that originalist message, people are attracted to that and people see through more and more when people use that to divide and serve themselves like politicians and cults like JW do.
You don’t have to believe literally in any of the message, I don’t think many people do, but it is necessary to get together with your neighbors and have a base of morals to start from.
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So a JW can date an unbelieving person...
by silentbuddha inbut the entire congregation is not to be informed or mark the person.
the only repercussions are that the individual who is aware of it can decide to "mark" them and not go to the local club or bar with the individual, but they are still obligated to go door to door in the ministry with them, and even speak to them at the kn as if nothing is wrong and not feel obligated to tell anyone else?
this is crazy.. so they are also basically saying that a person can carry on a romantic (but none sexual) relationship with an unbeliever and still go out in service and participate in meetings?
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Anony Mous
This is fairly easy to find out. As many know, ignoring a direct command from the Bible is a DFing offense (see elder book)
https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/jw-dating/
Christians who want to marry are commanded to choose only a fellow believer. (1 Corinthians 7:39) Jehovah’s Witnesses view this command as referring not merely to a person who respects our beliefs but to one who shares and practices those beliefs as a baptized Witness. (2 Corinthians 6:14) God has always directed his worshippers to marry only those of the same faith. (Genesis 24:3; Malachi 2:11) This command is also practical, as modern researchers have found.
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August WT: DF'ing renamed "Removed." AKA: GB re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic
by WingCommander inso: the mystery has been clarified as to more "new light" / clarifications of decades old doctrine and procedure.
august watchtower has finally been leaked.
disfellowshipping?
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Anony Mous
To people ‘in the know’ it may not be that much of a difference, but to outsiders it definitely is.
Disfellowshipping is something that is generally reserved to the highest scandals in a church (public censure) and doesn’t happen in response to minor sins or disagreements. Basically it is only acceptable if a sin is very severe without regret and very publicly known. To many Christian denominations the refusal of giving communion as punishment for minor sins is in itself a major sin.
Removal means basically you stopped going to church and they dropped you off the rolls, it happens all the time and is just an administrative thing.
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Italy goes after Protestant religions re taxes due
by blondie inhttps://cne.news/article/4320-small-church-in-rome-goes-to-the-big-court-in-strasbourg-to-find-justice?push=null .
the evangelical church in rome will move to strasbourg to seek justice from the european court on human rights (ecthr) to eliminate the huge tax burden.
in the meantime, protestants all over the world are amazed by what is happening in italy..
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Anony Mous
I’m not opposed to governments going after scam church registrations for tax purposes. Even if Italy were to pursue a group because religious reasons, that would be something that may be bad, but it is allowed in Europe. The EU does not guarantee freedom of speech or religion, you must overthrow and redraw the constitution for that to happen.
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The August 2024 Watchtower controversy and potential further changes
by ukpimo inas an educated guess, the august 2024 watchtower may be delayed because 2 complicated subjects need to be discussed in this issue which haven't yet been approved to be included in the revised shepherding textbook.
perhaps the revised shepherding textbook must be finalised before this watchtower is released publicly.. the 2 subjects may be as follows:.
how to shepherd and appoint brothers based on the removal of the hour requirements, getting to know the brothers instead (does this mean prioritising appointing men who have auxiliary pioneered during the co visit and campaigns or men who are regular pioneers?).
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Anony Mous
@slimboyfat, any reduction in congregation is huge as each congregation consists of about 75-100 people. 2% of thousands is a big number, multiplied by 100, that is a ton of people that aren’t being replenished.
I know back in the day, it was a huge blemish on the reputation of the elders and a scandal if their congregations shut down, as it was almost always for gross misconduct and a loss of blessings was to blame. Every time a congregation closes another 10 or so elders and servants are forever “marked” to many of the older generations.
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Consequences for actions. A high fat / sugary diet
by joe134cd ini 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.
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Anony Mous
I don’t agree with your prior example of someone becoming addicted to meth. If you actually ever left the organization, then you would find you lose everyone instantly. Your friends, family, support structure, perhaps even jobs and business opportunities, you literally become one day to the next alone in the world. Now some people will react to that by doing drugs or other things including suicide.
You say, if only they adhered to JW’s standards, that wouldn’t be a problem, sure, but then you also have to accept all the other things. It is the no true Scotsman fallacy however, because as soon as anyone makes a mistake, they are no longer JW and you say they should’ve just been perfect.
People being pushed into destructive life choices because they are being shunned by their family is at least partially blamed on the same policies you say are inherently good. Even worse, the constant pressure to ‘be good’ to the extent that even normal relationships are suppressed (whether those are sexual or not) is the cause that some people react by ‘being bad’. You don’t find such moral swings in other religions, you stop going to church is rarely if ever the cause of an immense psychological swing, except in cases of severe abuse. And there is plenty of scientific evidence to back up the fact that prior persistent abuse at any age is the cause of self-harm and destructive life choices.
My opinion is that the overall morality of JW’s is lackluster and is the cause of many harms, including the idea of ‘good’ things, the emphasis on not smoking, the emphasis on not having relationships with unbelievers is the cause of many problems, it is not virtuous, because you’re not doing it for the right reasons and obviously, when those reasons disappear, so do the restrictions. If you are told your entire life, your family will abandon you and our god (the WTBTS) will judge/kill you if you do this bad thing, then if your family and god does abandon you, there are no more moral restrictions on the bad behavior.
In other religions, you are told the same thing, but not because your family will stop talking, but because God will be disappointed, but forgiveness being the key there, they actually encourage people to come forward with their issues. It is why most churches have support groups for various things from abuse to smoking to alcoholism and drug use, that is their role in society after all and is a net benefit, you will be accepted and have a road to recovery if you make a mistake. JWs will let you or even cause you to fail and then they will curb-stomp you for whatever problems you may have as a result, people that made a mistake in JW-land are often permanently marked even women and children that are abused by a husband/father often are marked ‘damaged goods’ or having been the cause of the abuse.
The fact you can find a few good pieces on a maggot infested slab of meat does not make it a good steak. You’re basically arguing that if the outcome of an action is good, the action is good, then let me give you the example of the people that go in the justice system or police because one of their family members was murdered, outcome good, therefore murder good?
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Consequences for actions. A high fat / sugary diet
by joe134cd ini 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.
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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.
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Consequences for actions. A high fat / sugary diet
by joe134cd ini 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.
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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.