i was wondering about the jw attitude towards getting tattoos.. redditors suggest that the only jws who have them would have got them before they were baptised.. jw.org gives a meally-mouthed "true christians wouldn't" response.. but no-one (that i've seen so far) answers the question i'm actually asking: is getting a tattoo after being baptised a disfellowshipping offence?.
if not disfellowshipable, how would a typical jw congregation treat someone who got a tattoo after baptism?
would they really treat it like it is a conscience issue?.
@Destin, the article you quote clearly indicates it is not acceptable. Would you get disfellowshipped for it, maybe not, but someone who intentionally establish independence, drawing attention, identity or control over their body, it is clearly implied they do not see that as acceptable. You would be reproved and considered an immature Christian according to other articles in the WTLIB.
As a CO once told me, if the GB says they give you a suggestion, you should take it as an order.
now that they no longer have to report hours do they still need a territory guy?
maps?
etc...?.
Territory maps? I thought these were phased out over 10 years ago, as government privacy concerns mounted. I know we stopped having them where I was for various legal reasons, the maps were handed out to individuals after removing them from their plastic folders with the Watchtower logo.
remember the spotlight movie?.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ae250e9e-8f1a-45bb-b757-47c0149cafb3.
as a kid mum told me usa was warned about the coming pearl harbor attack.. 9/11 and covid-19, history repeating.
The reason Israel wasn’t ‘ready’ is because they have seen significant international pressure to leave those areas. The UN and left-wing US Presidents have consistently pressured Israel to give Hamas more and more leeway. Just look at what the Biden admin tweeted while these terrorists were murdering civilians, Biden government stooges tweeted against Israel to do any retaliatory strikes.
Even as Biden is funding the Iranians, the US and the left wing parties even in Israel’s government have been claiming for the past 20 or so years that Muslims in Palestine have on average moderated against significant military action - see for example this Princeton article https://dataspace.princeton.edu/handle/88435/dsp018p58ph03z and other left wing outlets have been saying this lie repeatedly https://carnegieendowment.org/2012/11/18/long-road-to-moderate-hamas-pub-50068
That is why there were such protests lately in Israel against the government, nobody had seen any serious actions from the terrorists for decades, yet the government wanted to keep readiness like mandatory military service, while the left wing groups in the government were saying amongst other things this was not promoting for peace and discriminatory against LGBT (you know, you might get some real men if you give young men a purpose).
Moreover, this was predicted would happen when Biden released 15B to Iran in the last few weeks. They just weren’t expecting Iran to be so quick and bold about it, because this attack will now be pushed back and hopefully Israel will finally rid the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip of terrorists and reclaim its territory. Not sure what Iran’s goals were here, they weren’t ready to take on the Israeli military, they just wanted it to be symbolic for religious reasons.
People will have to learn, groups like Muslims, like JWs and other extremist religions will never moderate, they will change their tactics, but the underlying problem remains, the drug of control too powerful for their leadership to give up.
matthew 5:41 (nwt) "...and if someone in authority compels you into service for a mile,* go with him two miles.".
a member of the roman occupying forces could command a local to carry their pack for a mile.
the local was thus pressed into a form of military service.
@Earnest: I think the point being made here is that the JW cult leaders have on various occasions had various prescriptions about this conscientious objector thing. In my lifetime you initially couldn’t do anything including civil government service, you had to go to jail regardless of the options offered, even though government employment separately from a conscription alternative was permitted. It made no sense, but I know people that were in jail for anywhere from 1-10 years until it was eventually declared in the 90s that JWs could do work for governments in lieu of military services, this had the effect that people were serving in jail while the JW policy had changed, and they were then side-stepped for various duties because they couldn’t do certain things (eg. be the accounts elder) with a criminal record due to newer guidance from WTBTS.
And then before I left in the 2000-2010s you were permitted to accept a full time job in civilian service for police/military units as long as you didn’t carry a weapon. Those people that served hard time and got a record for the rest of their lives were very bitter about these changes.
The question is about the fact that ‘no light’ declared various things when Jesus/Paul was pretty clear that you could be conscripted into aiding the government.
IMHO everything you do for government from paying taxes to conscription into the military is a form of government aid. Money is fungible, most of your income tax money does not go toward helping other people or building roads, there are separate (road and fuel) taxes for that so the idea that somehow it’s okay to pay your taxes but not aid in the military is backwards.
this is going to break the hearts of a lot of uber-jw's!
reddit has now removed the video link of samuel herd telling jw's they will no longer have to report time or placements - just tick a box which says "active.".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akdshyx79rm&t=13s.
On the other hand, nobody will be able to prove in court that someone was part of a congregation anymore. It is a requirement as a JW to go door-to-door, you proved that by turning in a report every month and most of the hours were supervised by an officer of the corporation or his delegates, so elders were often on the hook for child molestation that happened during service hours.
Now there is no longer any paper trail, was so-and-so a JW - we don’t keep track of that. Did they do something during supervised time - we don’t keep track of that. Did they ever go in service - we don’t keep track of that.
It will also be more and more difficult to document the decline of the organization. The reduction in Bible studies and apparent results has been a stumbling block to active Witnesses and a laughing stock to the ex-JW and other outside observer communities.
i hear of a plenty of personal testimonies of abuse but it is harder to prove organizational complicity.
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The evidence is that the organization has been convicted and voluntarily paid out many settlements to cover up child abuse. So yes, there is plenty of legal evidence which jurors have decided the WTBTS is liable for.
i haven't posted on here for years.
i also don't frequent this forum like i used to.. i have posted my story before, like 8 years ago.
i have been a baptized witness for the last 30+ years, but have not attended meetings in the last 15 years.
The R&F have softened up significantly against the No Blood policy, partially because the WTBTS has gotten into big trouble over the years. Based on a cursory review of the jw.org articles, the emphasis has been significantly reduced so people slowly start to forget what the rules are.
Also, most likely you didn't even violate "current" WTBTS guidelines. It's easy to assume that JW's refuse all blood product transfusions, but that's not so. I forgot when it changed exactly, but the rules have indeed loosened up.
MOST blood product transfusions currently in use during routine procedures are actually acceptable to JW's. The things they reject (whole blood) is rarely used in a modern Western hospital's medical setting, perhaps in a military field hospital they still do vein-to-vein transfusions, but organizations like Red Cross breaks up donations into their components and has done so for a long time to allow for a larger distribution of a single donation.
The reason the JW's got a bad rep in the 80s and 90s is because they refused at one point ALL blood products, but then they slowly added more and more fractions to the point that effectively with few exceptions, the JW's no longer have a ban on blood-derived products used in modern medicine.
"jesus related 30 - 50 parables/similes.
can you name just one which was to be understood as a prophecy?
utterly amaze them by showing that there is one - allegedly!.
@EasyPrompt: I am telling you the meaning of the words as they are written in the original languages and linguistic rather than theological analysis.
The fact you believe things based on the words from an old-English translation and subsequent interpretation of the English words by some 19th century swindler is rather irrelevant to the conversation of whether in some religions (actually, only the Millerite group of religions believes in an apocalyptic Jesus) Jesus was taken up as a seer/spiritualist, the original text does not support this and if it did, as with everything, the Jews would’ve noted that Jesus was a spiritist or practicing witchcraft/divination as the few times seeing into the future is actually mentioned in the Bible (eg. Solomon consulting with the witch of Endor) it is actually really bad.
The Bible specifically has an ordinance against wizards (literally translated, seeing into the future) as it denies free will (if the future is defined, there is no free will).
"jesus related 30 - 50 parables/similes.
can you name just one which was to be understood as a prophecy?
utterly amaze them by showing that there is one - allegedly!.
Sure, allegedly, not a single Bible scholar takes this as a prophecy. It’s easy to fit yourself into a position, if you can rewrite the history to fit.
In reality, the Bible doesn’t have a single prophecy, everything is written about the past. It’s a book of ancient stories, not a single writer claimed directly to be a prophet as we understand it (diviner or seer) the modern word prophet is most often mistranslated from the original text, the word translated into prophet in English (Navi’) actually has the meaning of proclaimer or announcing, more along the lines of (religious) story teller, not ‘seeing into the future’.
this is a topic discussed in a current article in the hongkong based asia times*.
find it at: https://asiatimes.com/2023/09/nones-still-no-match-for-us-christian-nationalism/.
the claim is made in the article, that near 30% of americans are non-believers, and that this number is increasing.
It seems more and more people are becoming religious to me, you have about 2M “imports” just this year which are primarily Catholic. A lot of younger people are recognizing the need to have a religious community for their children to grow up in and the childless left wing politics has become a religion in and of itself, complete with their saints, priests, even prayers and doctrine.
