i've noticed several posts recently claiming that jw friends and family members give out conditional love.
well, i'm not so sure that is entirely accurate, in fact, i would say they tend to be very steadfast in their love.
the issue is this, they have been taught a poor form of love.
This may sound weird at first but even true love causes you to act differently under different conditions, but that doesn't make the love itself conditional.
Another simpler example came to me, you wouldn't normally shove your friend with all your might, but you would if a car was about to hit them. Why? Because it would spare them a worse fate. It's just that in the case of JWs they have been convinced that by taking the actions they do they may spare us a worse fate.
i've noticed several posts recently claiming that jw friends and family members give out conditional love.
well, i'm not so sure that is entirely accurate, in fact, i would say they tend to be very steadfast in their love.
the issue is this, they have been taught a poor form of love.
I don't think I expressed myself as well as I meant to, I wasn't meaning to make an argument of semantics, but rather show the difference in points of view. For example:
Let's a say you have a set of parents that never let their child play outside, now at first glance that might seem cruel. What if a doctor told them that if their child plays outside he will very likely die? Then they have a good reason, or at least they think they do. But what if that doctor turns out to be a quack, and their child will actually be no worse off if he goes outside? Then the parents aren't cruel they just failed to get a second opinion. (Which I would call lazy, but that does not equate to cruel.)
And you also have to keep in mind that this "doctor" is an old friend of the family who has been taking care of their medical needs for decades, meaning that they are going to automatically try to ignore anything negative about him, and may even fear that getting a second opinion would offend him.
From their point of view they are expressing love, but as is often the case they lack the full picture, and if the child did go outside despite their rules, they may even punish him, but that doesn't mean they don't love the child. Just that have been tricked into this situation in which they administer a punishment that doesn't actually help anyone.
i've noticed several posts recently claiming that jw friends and family members give out conditional love.
well, i'm not so sure that is entirely accurate, in fact, i would say they tend to be very steadfast in their love.
the issue is this, they have been taught a poor form of love.
I've noticed several posts recently claiming that JW friends and family members give out conditional love. Well, I'm not so sure that is entirely accurate, in fact, I would say they tend to be very steadfast in their love. The issue is this, they have been taught a poor form of love. They have been taught that by shunning us they are showing us love, as twisted as that may seem. They consider it loving to press everyone into a certain mold that will ensure their survival.
This is all perfectly understandable when you remember that their highest example of love, is the God of the Bible. A God who claims to love mankind but at the same time will quickly deal out punishment for any tiny transgression, and sometimes even going so far as to take it out on people who are completely innocent. (The people of Isreal dying for David's census taking.) Their God doesn't show the sort of love that allows him to accept us for our failures, rather he has to make us all "perfect," or kill us. He offers no middle ground. So is it really any surprise that they try to do the same thing by any means necessary? So no, it's not that their love is conditional, they just don't know how to really love and accept someone, they haven't been taught to.
i had no doubts at all about the 'truth' untill a friend of mine in the cong' began falling away.
in trying to help him i had to ask questions and do research and that of course cracked the doors of my mind open for the first time in over thirty years.. years ago, when jwd allowed members to have signatures, i used the following quote from voltaire as mine.
i still love it.. doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous..
I think the seeds of my doubt were planted not too long after I started college. (no doubt a detail that would be used to further scare current JWs away from pursuing such an education.) I took public speaking in which we had to write two speeches, for my first speech I decided I would write about the persecution faced by Jehovah's Witnesses, however, we were supposed to vary our sources so I tried going outside the WT to find accounts of this persecution. Discovering the fact that JWs didn't have things quite as bad in Nazi Germany as I had been led to believe, and that Rutherford actually wrote letters to Hitler saying that they shared common interests...
Well, those things shook me, so I looked a little further into Rutherford and discovered the more despotic and hypocritical parts of his personality that my WT education had failed to mention. I suppose fear kept me from digging much deeper, for I was treading dangerously close to "apostate" sites and didn't want to be "infected" by their way of thinking. So I quickly finished my speech using the bare minimum of sources and halted any further research, meanwhile, I did my best to rationalize the troubling details I had discovered. Those things laid dormant in my mind for awhile, because not too long after my first semester at college I met a JW girl through Instagram.
What followed was a largely clandestine, long-distance relationship, which, suffice to say, got messy by the end. I won't go into gory detail but not longer after that relationship ended I was disfellowshipped, done in my own guilty conscience that led me to report myself, though I think part of me just didn't want it to bite me in the butt 5-10 years down the line, better to get out in front of it. I did my best to bear my "discipline" with strength and integrity, but my forced solitude gave me time to think and research... and that eventually led me here.
listening to 2 of my current favorite thinkers debate/discussion.
i've been looking forward to this since i found out about it a month ago.
hope some of you get a chance to listen.
Does anyone else think it strange that JWs never seem to do any public debates for their beliefs? I mean they even recognize that C.T. Russell engaged in such debates on Bible subjects and that those debates helped to publicize the "Truth." So why don't they do any today defending old-earth creationism, or their own interpretation of the Bible?
i am wondering if anyone is aware of a book or series of videos designed to explain evolution to creationists, (specifically the jw strain of creationism if possible) without being patronizing or overly confrontational.
i would like to have something to recommend to people who challenge evolution, but i know that the sources which convinced me would turn most of them off because of the confrontational and at times condescending tone in which it's presented.. some examples of what i'm looking for would be someone who doesn't claim evolution is a fact until after they have presented all of the evidence that makes it a fact and also have addressed as many counter-arguments as possible..
I think I may have found one, I'll let you all know how I like it after I read it, in the meantime if you find any more books or video series please feel free to add them here.
The Scientific Approach to Evolution: What They Didn't Teach You in Biology
i am wondering if anyone is aware of a book or series of videos designed to explain evolution to creationists, (specifically the jw strain of creationism if possible) without being patronizing or overly confrontational.
i would like to have something to recommend to people who challenge evolution, but i know that the sources which convinced me would turn most of them off because of the confrontational and at times condescending tone in which it's presented.. some examples of what i'm looking for would be someone who doesn't claim evolution is a fact until after they have presented all of the evidence that makes it a fact and also have addressed as many counter-arguments as possible..
"The Greatest Show on Earth" by Dawkins is not confrontational. He does more to lay out the basic principles of evolution than attack creationism.
I may read that book to help inform my own stance, but according to the main review on Amazon, it wouldn't be suitable for the purpose I described in the OP.
"He repeatedly compares creationists and Holocaust deniers, which is a
peculiar way of reaching out to the other side. Elsewhere, Dawkins calls
those who don't subscribe to evolution ignorant, fatuously ignorant and
ridiculous."
when i was exiting (clawing my way out) i read a tremendous amount of personal.
accounts on the jw recovery page which sadly closed, .
i would like to offer an opportunity for any who would like, to say a few words on .
i am wondering if anyone is aware of a book or series of videos designed to explain evolution to creationists, (specifically the jw strain of creationism if possible) without being patronizing or overly confrontational.
i would like to have something to recommend to people who challenge evolution, but i know that the sources which convinced me would turn most of them off because of the confrontational and at times condescending tone in which it's presented.. some examples of what i'm looking for would be someone who doesn't claim evolution is a fact until after they have presented all of the evidence that makes it a fact and also have addressed as many counter-arguments as possible..
i am wondering if anyone is aware of a book or series of videos designed to explain evolution to creationists, (specifically the jw strain of creationism if possible) without being patronizing or overly confrontational.
i would like to have something to recommend to people who challenge evolution, but i know that the sources which convinced me would turn most of them off because of the confrontational and at times condescending tone in which it's presented.. some examples of what i'm looking for would be someone who doesn't claim evolution is a fact until after they have presented all of the evidence that makes it a fact and also have addressed as many counter-arguments as possible..
I am wondering if anyone is aware of a book or series of videos designed to explain evolution to creationists, (Specifically the JW strain of creationism if possible) without being patronizing or overly confrontational. I would like to have something to recommend to people who challenge evolution, but I know that the sources which convinced me would turn most of them off because of the confrontational and at times condescending tone in which it's presented.
Some examples of what I'm looking for would be someone who doesn't claim evolution is a fact until after they have presented all of the evidence that makes it a fact and also have addressed as many counter-arguments as possible.
