Media wouldn't cover it. Woman gets raped to death on a bus -- that's a protest story. Your family wont' talk to you because they disagree with your religious choices -- who gives a shit? It's a big deal to us, but on the global scale of fucked-upness, it's pretty much a nothing sandwich.
Posts by Sulla
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14Would a downtown NY public protest against shunning help or harm the Watchtower Corp?
by tootired2care inso i was having an interesting thought the other night -- albeit probably not original, but interesting.
what would be accomplished if thousands of us banded together and held a huge protest of the issue of shunning family right behind the governing body's headquarters (25 columbia heights) in brooklyn bridge park?
the shunning of non-believing family is a strong issue that i'm sure everyone of us could get behind 100%.
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17
How Much Did You Actually Study the Bible as a JW?
by Ding inthe wts says that people should read the bible daily, but did you really do that as a jw?.
or were you kept so busy reading wt literature, attending meetings, and going door to door, that you basically had little time for the bible itself?.
also, doesn't the wts teach that no one can understand the bible without "the slave" to teach its true meaning?.
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Sulla
Not at all. Just a repetitive review of the few dozen proof texts in the JW oeuvre. Along with the sophisticated Greek grammar and classical logic, of course. Did you know that the Greek definite article, ho, is missing from the second instance of theos in John 1!? Therefore, Constantine borrowed the idea from the pagans to hold his empire together!
My experience was JWs generally don't have any idea about scripture. And why would they?
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73
How many decades/centuries before 1914 becomes irrelevant?
by jwfacts inhow long do you think the watchtower can speak about 1914 and have followers think it relevant?
i think for people born in the 1900's, it feels like an acceptable year.
but what about those born since 2000, will 1914 seem like a year of relevance?
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Sulla
Don't you think, Phizzy, that the crucial difference between 1874 (and all the reest) and 1914 is that 1914 delivers the idea of an established church to the JWs? I mean, prior to this idea of an established church, the JWs / Bible Students were a fairly loose association. Russell had famously talked about the idea that, as important as he was, he was still presenting hypotheses and ideas. People would be more-or-less free to disagree with these in favor of some other hypotheses.
Which is to say, JW-ism was a sort of an Arian Evangelical church, with association being something like the current Evangelical churches, yeah? With 1914/1918 and all that, we have the claim of direct selection of this particular church as the only path of survival through the End. That's a different critter.
The most sophisticated JWs I have ever spoken with are committed to the idea that the thing they believe in is that church, and they can explain 1914 all day long -- hell, a great many of them have 1914 built into their e-mail addresses, the address of homes they buy, and whatnot.
For this type of JW, doctrinal changes are not a problem. This is not because they don't know better, it's because they know exactly what they are about. They are about 1914.
I could be wrong, but I don't think 1914 ever goes the way of 1874 or all the rest. It's crucial
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73
How many decades/centuries before 1914 becomes irrelevant?
by jwfacts inhow long do you think the watchtower can speak about 1914 and have followers think it relevant?
i think for people born in the 1900's, it feels like an acceptable year.
but what about those born since 2000, will 1914 seem like a year of relevance?
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Sulla
Never. 1914 is the only JW dogma; it can never be changed because it explains the validity of the entire church structure. Blood and disfellowshipping may pass away, but 1914 always gets doubled-down.
The GB may have their problems. But they do -- it seems to me -- genuinely believe what they teach. You simply need to understand what they teach as core doctrine, which is simply that they are the group that Jesus selected to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church in 1919 (or 1918, I can never get that straight). It can't change because without it, they can't justify their existence; say what you like, they have to justify their status.
The single unalterable JW belief is that their inherent superiority led to Jesus selecting them above every other religion. They don't believe any of their other teachings -- at least not in the sense that they wold hold them if they didn't want to. So, they can change the meaning of a word -- generation -- they can change blood if they wanted, anything, really. But the claim that they cracked the secret code and that something really important happened in 1914 can't change.
It is the founding event of the JW self-conception. It is their Resurrection.
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65
I need prayers about Engine Out Service on my Ferrari.
by james_woods inshould i do it this year - which would be the minimum five year interval, or wait until the maximum ten year interval?.
divine guidance is needed..
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Sulla
I shall remember you in my daily prayers.
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277
How Modern Christianity has failed Christians
by Christ Alone ini've recently been thinking about our culture and how christianity in our western culture has failed to keep up with advancements in science.
) churches have let reason sink into the intellectual closet of fundamentalism.
"feel good" churches seem to be the norm today.
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Sulla
Pagels made me Catholic. Quite unintended, I'm sure.
CA, you are speaking of the Evangelical movement. Who was it who said that the tragedy on the Evangelical mind is that there isn't one? It would serve the Evangelical community very well to engender a passing familiarity with at least the Fathers, who engaged a culture very like our own.
That said, your point is well-taken. I think an emphasis less on apologetics than on the basics of the faith: what is it that we think happened to that Jesus fellow, anyhow? And how is it supposed to fix anything at all? The problem is that this is not the sort of thing that is effectively taught at teen worship sessions, which tend to desire to be relevant -- the way, say, mathematics isn't.
And that requires lots of instruction. Theology is hard, the way math is hard. You need decades of instruction to become useful in the practice of either. Catholics accomplish this through schools up through college. Evangelicals tend to like to attempt to control the public schools, imagining themselves to operate (in some areas) within an environment that can stand Christianity. American Catholics have always been in a culture hostile to them; Evangelicals think they still own the culture.
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13
17 foot python crashes Florida picnic!
by moshe inthese snakes are becoming a real nuisance in south florida- next month florida is having a python hunting contest with cash prizes.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6bw__uvrm0e#!.
<>.
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Sulla
Fuckin' pythons. They ruin everything. Worse than chimps.
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46
Why are the world's anointed not called to Brooklyn to be Governing Body?
by free2beme inwhen i was in the witnesses, and near the end of my time in.
there was the whole new understanding, of putting non-anointed people in positions in the organization that were normally something an anointed person would be in.
i remember them mentioning that the amount of anointed was dwindling and there needed to be people in these positions of responsibility, to make sure the work continues.. after this was highlighted and all good witnesses swallowed this thinking hook line and sinker.
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Sulla
Sorry, Mr. E, for the delay:
Damn! That's funny.
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174
Good Reasons To Hate Every Weak And Ex-Jehovah Witness.
by AuntConnie in1. my husband's time is finite, it's wasted on spouses arguing over money, sex or family mattters with stupid home visits.. .
i hate people's constant open hand for money, it's the weak individuals asking others to pull their weight.
my family worked extra hours instead of begging the strong members for district assembly money, cat food for seven cats or tiny little rag-a-muffins weiner dogs.. .
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Sulla
This was just the most awesome rant ev-ah!
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124
2012 Memorial Partakers--12,604!
by Atlantis in.
2012 memorial partakers total 12,604.....atlantis
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Sulla
I think Quendi has this spot-on. Huge problem: everybody thinks they're annointed now, that's supposed to make them important; what do we do? Simple, make it so they're not important any longer. Step 1: only the GB are FDS. Step 2: annointed isn't a literal number, so feel the spirit all you want!
It is a genuine puzzle, to me anyhow, why the number of partakers has been increasing so dramatically. I mean, it's been going on for a long time, in real terms, since the number never went down below 8,000 or so when it clearly should have. But to see the number actually increase like this.. weird.