Posts by Sulla

40

Random thoughts about the organization. In 20 years.....

by stuckinamovement in

jw
friends

many people will scoff at the thought that the org will collapse.

i agree that it will never collapse but the crumbling has begun.

think about the following.....they have a serious lack of potential future leaders.

Sulla

Sir82, I think the reconfiguration of congregations like I outlined may actually be pretty effective. We're talking about sort of a "flow" process, and those are sometimes very responsive to smallish changes. But, maybe not.

As for perks, your point is well-taken. But it seems to me you could give MS or Elders more of what they want, which is power, prestige, a feeling of being insiders, etc. I mean, how do you keep a corporation in line? Well, you pay the guys at the top a boatload of cash to keep all the underlings in a frenzy trying to hit the jackpot. Similar sort of thing here, maybe: reverse a little of the "post apostasy" tightening and paperwork and let Elders get back to running with a little more autonomy. I suggest the problem with too few MS is not that that particular job sucks (it has always sucked) but that the Elders' job isn't good enough.

40

Random thoughts about the organization. In 20 years.....

by stuckinamovement in

jw
friends

many people will scoff at the thought that the org will collapse.

i agree that it will never collapse but the crumbling has begun.

think about the following.....they have a serious lack of potential future leaders.

Sulla

Those are real problems, sir82, but by your own admission, they are not unprecedented (in terms of elder-MS ratio). And, anyway, the leadership of local congregations has always sucked, on average. But nothing here can't be solved by reducing congregation numbers by 20% or something: five congregations become four congregations, and you distribute the Elders and MS as appropriate. Problem solved.

Plus, there are all sorts of levers you can pull to get more MS and Elders: you can make the requirements lower, you can make the jobs easier, you can make the perks better. I guess I think it is a problem that they can manage just fine instead of some sort of harbinger.

40

Random thoughts about the organization. In 20 years.....

by stuckinamovement in

jw
friends

many people will scoff at the thought that the org will collapse.

i agree that it will never collapse but the crumbling has begun.

think about the following.....they have a serious lack of potential future leaders.

Sulla

"There are plenty of men who want more responsibility within their congregations"<----everything i read, hear, and see points to the opposite of this

Yeah, there may be fewer, but that's because the JWs are used to extraordinarily high levels of participation. Don't know what the numbers are, but a congregation of 120 or so might typically have 8-10 elders and a similar number of MS. Nobody else operates with that sort of ratio. They could easily absorb considerable reductions in the size of elder bodies.

And their efforts to come up with anything new are just reactionary and don't seem to be well planned. They flip-flopped on "generation" a couple of times until they decided on the current "generations" teaching... which even the faithful JWs are unable to understand. WT still hasn't updated Reasoning or Insight to reflect that change, so it might get further "refinement". They've abandonned the King of the North and destruction of false religion it would seem. Freddie could fill books with all sorts of "prophetic" speculation. Now they just recycle this month's magazines from last year's articles with a few word changes here and there, and top the magazine off with an article about some endangered plant or something.

Totally agree with you, Billy. But the "generation" changes are getting close to 20 years old now. The magazines are what they have been for quite some time, etc. They haven't seen their numbers reuced at all by all this. The best you can argue is that the rate of increase has fallen (or, adjusting for population growth or whatever, maybe it's gone a little negative).

Actually, the more I think of it, the stronger the org looks. In the face of the internet, profound doctrinal shifts, attempts by very high profile JWs to start splinter groups, and all the rest: no decreases in numbers. I really think talk about "beginning of the end" or "nails in the coffin" and all that are merely wishful thinking. Show me an actual decline, then we can talk.

28

I have other sheep which are not of this fold

by Wayward Son in

john 10:16 - and i have other sheep, which are not of this fold; those also i must bring, and they will listen to my voice, and they will become one flock, one shepherd.. setting: jesus was talking to a blind man he had recently cured and the pharisees were listening in.

it sounds like he had a larger audience that likely included his apostles.so, who is "this fold" he was referring to and who are the "other sheep"?according to wts doctrine, the heavenly calling (covenant) had not been instituted yet.

we don't hear about that until the last supper.

Sulla

Amazing to observe that you can't simply drop scripture on a drunken, lunatic, lawyer and come away with a coherent theology.

40

Random thoughts about the organization. In 20 years.....

by stuckinamovement in

jw
friends

many people will scoff at the thought that the org will collapse.

i agree that it will never collapse but the crumbling has begun.

think about the following.....they have a serious lack of potential future leaders.

Sulla

Sorry, I guess I'm a scoffer. The org has an excellent bench for future leadership, according to what they are looking to accomplish. There are plenty of men who want more responsibility within their congregations, especially when we remember that the congregations are kept very top-heavy by design. Comsolidate a few congregations and see how many excess Elders and MS you have.

The JWs would be more than happy to see the printing business go into even greater decline, since the markups on printing are not particulalry large anyhow. Smaller overhead, fewer workers (who are still costly to house and feed) equals no problem. It would be pretty easy to increase direct contributions from the congregations to the HQ, eliminating the priniting process (almost) entirely. 20 years from now, they will simply be preaching with tablets: you want the mag? no problem, just get an instant download or whatever.

And world conditions are always thought to be getting worse and worse -- everybody thinks the old days were better than now and there is always some crisis to get worked up over. Hell, look around.

Finally, the overlapping generation has bought them another 80 years, at least until they change it to something else. These guys aren't going anywhere, sorry to say.

30

GOD Who or What is it?

by frankiespeakin in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljano8fwopy.

Sulla

Well, now the Flood didn't really happen, right? And who says Armageddon means people die? That's the JWs and other fundamentalist groups, right? So, we want to try to move away from a) a childish understanding of God and b) a childish response to the childish understanding. That's what I'm trying to say.

32

The tower of Babel- full of holes?

by highdose in

i was thinking the other day about the tower of babel ( like you do) somthing that always puzzled me about reading the account in our modern day times is that we have today buildings that would have been vastly taller than the tower of babel.

even if purely because the materials needed to build modern sky scrapers have to be light in order to acheive that height.

accient heavy bricks just wouldn't have done it.. just why was god so threatened by a building???

Sulla

Very interesting. Thanks.

30

GOD Who or What is it?

by frankiespeakin in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljano8fwopy.

Sulla

The ancient Jewish tradition is that God gave his name to us in a very odd sort of non-name: he who is. The development, of course, has been substantial since. But the core idea was actually expressed well by St. Anselm in his famous proof, the general idea that God is being itself.

It isn't easy for JWs and XJWs to grasp this idea, raised as we were on a very simplistic idea of -- to borrow the term -- a sky wizard. But, within the Christian thinking, God isn't a sort of being, really. He isn't the greatest thing among a universe filled with other things. He's that than which nothing greater can be conceived.

To see how far from the Sky Wizard idea that is, you just have to work through the statement. The Sky Wizard and my sofa together must be greater than the Sky Wizard. So, in this understanding, the Sky Wizard isn't God. God is the thing that is not made greater by addition and is, therefore, being itself. Hence the non-name.

It's also probably wrong to ascribe attributes to God, the way we did when we were JWs. We used to say that God has main attributes of love, justice, wisdom, and power. But this is thinking about it wrongly, I'd say. God isn't a thing to which attributes are added. St. John speaks of God as being love, not as an entity that has lots of love or that shows love, but love itself.

That's an enormous distance from caricatures offered by atheists and, to be fair, lots of Christians.

32

The tower of Babel- full of holes?

by highdose in

i was thinking the other day about the tower of babel ( like you do) somthing that always puzzled me about reading the account in our modern day times is that we have today buildings that would have been vastly taller than the tower of babel.

even if purely because the materials needed to build modern sky scrapers have to be light in order to acheive that height.

accient heavy bricks just wouldn't have done it.. just why was god so threatened by a building???

Sulla

Leolaia, I haven't come across the idea that the story was post-exile. Do you have a source?

32

The tower of Babel- full of holes?

by highdose in

i was thinking the other day about the tower of babel ( like you do) somthing that always puzzled me about reading the account in our modern day times is that we have today buildings that would have been vastly taller than the tower of babel.

even if purely because the materials needed to build modern sky scrapers have to be light in order to acheive that height.

accient heavy bricks just wouldn't have done it.. just why was god so threatened by a building???

Sulla

I find it interesting that so many people here seem to think that the story is intended to be literal history. Thus, finding that it cannot be literal, they think it is false. Very odd.

Guys, the story is that the founders of the first city engage in a project that is driven by an excess of pride and that this pride is necessarily opposed to God. God disapproves. The story is true beyond any narrow historical reading. Narrow historical readings of the first chapters of Genesis are our own failing, not that of the authors.