Posts by Phizzy

14

Sister In "Pants" Carrying the Microphone--Brother in "Jeans" out in Service!

by Atlantis in

jw
friends

click the image to enlarge.. sister carrying microphone at kingdom hall in pants!.

https://postimg.cc/jdjysmgt.

brother in blue jeans out in service.. https://postimg.cc/z36bj89h .

Phizzy

About 18/9 years ago, fresh out of J.W. org, I attended a lovely old church, just once to see what it was like, I guess built early 1800's, a vibrant Preacher, but I was dressed as I would have been for a J,W meeting, shirt, tie, trousers, jacket etc, polished shoes.

All the Congregation were in smart casual, the teen kids in their version, and the teens all sat together, even the preacher was smart casual, open neck shirt etc.

I felt distinctly over dressed. The atmos. was great, really fun and friendly, the Band that played Christian Rock was really good too.

The Church served an area that was only a small fraction of the vast Territory "served" by our K.H, so lots of alternative places for people to worship nearby. That Sunday morning our K.H would have been half empty, this Church was FULL !

J.W org needs to modernise big time, and attract people, or die from lack of funds. I hope the latter happens. And may Churches like the one I attended, prosper, and continue to provide what people want. People don't want an Authoritarian group to tell them how to dress, and to bore them to death.

19

Lifetime Regret for Not Expressing my Love to a Non-JW

by a-JW-girl in

i want to impart some advice from my life experience that i hope will help others in a similar situation and prevent them from making the same mistakes i did, ruining my life.

to begin with, i’m a 52-year-old single woman, i’ve been a devout jw since i was a little girl.

i had an abusive dad who left my mom, my two sisters and me when we were fairly young.

Phizzy

I have known a good number of successful relationships that have come after one, the other,or both ended a previous one, so to imply that it cannot work does not always apply, yes, you may feel that 100% trust is not possible, but thta may be a small price to pay fpor mutual happiness.

There never is a black and white to these situations, or an adage that always works, without exception.

12

Ecclesiastes 12:12,13

by Lost in the fog in

whenever you think of your time in the organisation you'll remember all of the books.

every year at a convention, new books brought out.

shelves at home groaning under the weight of multicoloured covered wts books!

Phizzy

I just thought back to the new books coming out thing, and then the subsequent studying of them, and realised that when new books were supplied, I always hoped they would be better than the last lot, that they would illuminate things for me.

Ever since I was very very young , I was hungry for knowledge, still am, but sadly, those new Books did nothing greater than the old ones, and I came to realise they were re-hashing the same stuff, like a not very imaginative cook, who presents "meat and to veg" at every meal, just slightly tinkered with.

Their Spiritual Food was always the same grey slop, and not nutritional either.

19

Lifetime Regret for Not Expressing my Love to a Non-JW

by a-JW-girl in

i want to impart some advice from my life experience that i hope will help others in a similar situation and prevent them from making the same mistakes i did, ruining my life.

to begin with, i’m a 52-year-old single woman, i’ve been a devout jw since i was a little girl.

i had an abusive dad who left my mom, my two sisters and me when we were fairly young.

Phizzy

I am very moved by your story, and your plight. Some of the comments you have received on here are very black and white, but where the heart is concerned, when we fall in love, the normal things that affect our judgement and actions don't always work.

Simon wisely said that we cannot know how our fantasy would have worked out, whether we would have been happy, and whether the other person would.

What has happened in your case is that love grew in the way that it does in a lasting relationship, starting from the dodgy base of attraction, then infatuation, and the accompanying fantasy, or two. Then becoming something bigger, something that will always be there, in your heart.

We cannot turn the clock back, and it is especially important that we make the right decision for our future, and for others involved.

I firmly believe your Therapist is right, the religion is holding you back from solving your emotional problems, but, to give it up, and the emotional support,the social interactions etc, that we call friendships, that are there in the religion, will be extremely difficult, and possibly damaging to yourself, as you could end up even more lonely than at present.

Sometimes it is better to live with the regret that we didn't do something, and then, once done, we would have discovered what really might have been, good or bad, but we might have chased the dream, and ended up really hurt and disappointed. There are so many "what ifs" in life, we have to live with them, why not this one as well ?

The guy in question maybe loves his wife, and you, but is a believer in loyalty, to keeping the vows he made, if his circumstances have not changed, I doubt you could change those admirable qualities of his.

Whatever you decide, I wish you well, and may you be at peace with yourself.

3

A state in india has a law against religious conversion

by cognitivedizzy in

jw
friends

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/anti-conversion-bill-passed-in-karnataka-assembly-amid-opposition-protest-3348450.

Phizzy

"Noting that in recent times religious conversions have become widespread, he said there have been mass conversions with allurements and through force, disturbing peace and leading to mistrust among people following different religions.

The Bill does not take away anyone's religious freedom and that anyone can practice the religion of his or her choice, but not under pressure and allurements, Mr Jnanendra said."

78

Do you believe in ghosts?

by Country Girl in

jw
friends

i am posting this because i know there are many people that have had experiences that cannot be explained by natural means.

i am a ghost hunter, as a hobby.

my hobby is to disprove ghosts.

Phizzy

Although I do not believe in ghosts, being an Atheist who leads an evidence based life, I actually believe in very little.

What I do feel is the correct approach to metaphysical things (are they things ?), is to go along with Shakespeare where he has Hamlet say : "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Not that I think Ghosts etc will be proven to exist, but I think a greater understanding of the human mind will explain even further the mechanisms that prompt a lot that cannot be fully explained at present.

61

Why are so many Jehovah’s Witnesses Angry and Rude?

by Vanderhoven7 in

why do you think many jws are hostile and rude?

or is that just my imagination?.

mark jones writes: the vast majority of jehovah’s witnesses are nice people.

Phizzy

" If you mean on line, then they are very defensive and if they think you are one of “those apostates” they won’t think you deserve politeness. "

Yes ! I have crossed swords with a few on line. What also annoys me, and it is a subtle form of rudeness, is they condescendingly talk down to you, when trying to explain or justify J.W beliefs, little do they know that most of us know more than them about those beliefs !

As someone else pointed out, they soon descend in to an Ad Hominem attack, then Report you, and Block you. The other despicable move is to accuse us of lying, but never say what untruth we have told !

Rudeness and ignorance abound in the J.W org, even the D to D is rude really, calling on someone uninvited to sell your brand of nonsense is not Polite !

37

Avoiding Temptation As a Young Elder

by TMS in

it was the summer of '72.

i was 24 but had been the presiding overseer or congregation servant of a small congregation in the county seat of an arkansas county for about 3 years.. my regular pioneer wife of nearly four years was big and pregnant, with our attempts at birth control unsuccessful.. one of my wife's several bible studies was with a young woman named brenda whom my wife had encountered in door to door work.. brenda had two young children she could barely handle and was married to a very countryfied arkie named henry who worked as a chicken catcher, one of the most difficult jobs at the local chicken plant.. brenda eventually revealed that she'd been raised as a jw, but was never baptized, having left home to marry henry at age 14. she spoke of her family in texas, mentioning her mother and two older sisters, all jws she said.. one morning, just before the meeting for field service, we noticed a small car in kingdom hall parking lot.

my wife and i were parked to one side of the hall in our aluminum nashua house trailer.. two young women got out of the car and soon joined us for the meeting for service, identifying themselves as brenda's sisters from texas.. the two girls, ages 17 and 20, were distractingly beautiful, with the eldest decked out like a magnificent southern belle including hat and heels, her high-end clothing accentuating her very obvious curves.. with no one else showing up for field service, it ended up just the four of us in the car group with the two texas girls in the back seat.. starting our time at a not-at-home, the 20 year old asked if she could accompany me to "hear my presentation.

Phizzy

I don't know if it is an age thing that kicks in men who are over 70, but I have been musing on a good number of instances when I was offered sex with attractive young JW women, I refused in every instance, because similar to the O.P I was married to a loyal woman , and I believed in loyalty to her in return.

It was hard sometimes, in both meanings of the word !

The bullet I really missed was the girl who looking back wanted not just sex, but to wreck my marriage and have me as her husband, she had obviously calculated the Divorces (she was married too) and the possible DFing as being worth it, but she was a Witch, and may have worked out how to do it and come up smelling vaguely of roses. Because not much later she did that, got "scripturally" divorced some how, and then married a guy, a much younger JW, who had been single until then.

11

Romans 10:9, 13 Identifying Jesus as Jehovah?

by Daniel Michaels in

the use of the divine name in the nwtcgs

romans 10:9, 13

identifying jesus as jehovah

Phizzy

Really, if you understand the origin of the god Yahweh, all this discussion is pointless, or worse in fact, rather silly.

9

No part of the world

by Lost in the fog in

the wt calls itself christian while at the same time insisting that its witnesses don't mix with other christian groups but remain separate.. to be no part of the world.. i was mulling this over recently in my personal bible reading.

in the first century that demarcation would have made sense because apart from your fellow worshippers the rest of mankind were going to be jewish, roman, polytheistic, pagan, or (i guess much like today) didn't really care.. christians had no worries about meeting up with other people who believed in jesus the same as they did even if there were minor differences depending on who had first taught the gospel message to them.

but nowadays there's not just one christian group against the world, there's lots of "christians" out there.

Phizzy

" 38 “Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

39 “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 40 for whoever is not against us is for us."