Or "How to Hypno-Meditate on the 'Truth about the Naked Lady and Talking Snake' While Ignoring the Teacher's Lecture on Evolutionary Biology"
She's going to have to take her hand off of Satan's textbook if she hopes to cover both ears and say, "I'm not listening...."
PS anyone catch the subliminal message of the entire class shunning the teacher, with their chairs turned away, their backs turned to him? NICE touch, Art Department..... :)
i live in a majority-minority neighborhood, so i get the double witness whammy of my street being worked by both spanish- and english-speaking congregations.
jws come to my door about four times a year, but i stopped answering years ago.
what's interesting is that about two years ago, they stopped knocking on my door or ringing the doorbell.
He was also a flight attendant where I worked.
(Heavy dose of dramatic foreshadowing)
No response needed, but let me guess: Southwest Airlines? They have a well-earned reputation for gay male flight attendents. :)
...take a look at this from page 29 of the latest october 2012 awake!.
the gloves are now well-and-truly off.
referring to facebook as a "social networking website" clearly isn't working.. the society now feels compelled to start being more specific about which websites it doesn't want you to visit!.
Well, at least FB doesn't arbitrarily decide that I've broken some petty rule of theirs, so bar me from the site if I'm not repentent enough (in their eyes) for my violation. Further, they don't expect that the automatic "defriending" actually apply to my real-life friendships with "FB" friends, barring them from communicating with me.
witnesses got me out of bed this morning.
i was too sleepy to say anything and the guy was very nice and friendly, so i just took the magazines and smiled.. a couple of absolutely awesome graphics from the awake:.
thanks to the writing department for brightening my afternoon.
Good job! You just added 2 more to that publishers literature placement count. :)
Love the scale: the brother might blow a gasket pre-maturely if they actually ever made it to 3rd base. ;)
so, i'm new here and i've decided to finally tell my mom the truth about jws.. and sorry for the long post.
i'm at my wits end.. here's some background:.
i grew p in a congregation in california, i'm not a born in, though i was raised in it from 5 - about 20. arond 20 i pretty mch faded out, bt the emotional ups and downs were jst all too much.
i want to come back becase i love you all, bt can you help me to understand these qestions? i need help understanding before i can dedicate my life again avenue might work. i'm being naive, but it just might in certain circumstances.
I don't know if I'd be able to use my own belief system as "bait", when I KNOW I'd NEVER go back; you'd be lying to her by suggesting that is even a possibility.... That merely reinforces her own faith.
if i'm honest i have a fair bit of denial going on. i've stopped going to meetings for a long time, but i never called it a cult until a couple years ago. in fact, i'd have said that the jehovah's witnesses were weird, that they were wrong, but not really any different than other christians and that's not true.
the jehovah's witnesses are a cult. my mom is in a cult. i was raised in a cult.
From a logical standpoint, you need to realize that saying "JWs are a cult" IS a conclusion, one that takes months, if not years, of evidence to build to support the claim (and the evidence IS out there).
I am always tempted to repeat MY truth (my conclusion), and expect others to accept it on MY word, but think about it: what good would THAT do? JWs have accepted conclusions without supportive evidence for YEARS, and I'd prefer they learn to be skeptical THINKERS, and not simply accept MY or anyone else's conclusion, EVEN IF IT IS CORRECT. That blind acceptance is exactly how they ended up in a cult.
This is an occasion where less really is more. Telling her everything will accomplish nothing.
I think that's a doubtful assertion, where "one size doesn't fit all".
My brother was a Bethelite, pioneer, etc and when he "awoke" he was the kind where an appeal to logic and facts worked on him; he saw the errors with the Bible, and lost ALL Xian religion in one fell swoop.
Others (such as Ray Franz) lost their flavor of religion, but didn't become atheists (like me). Problem is, these types may then go to another flavor of the same lie, and spend many years denying facts (out of frying pan into fire). It's a bit like pulling a band-aid: do you prefer a less-intense drawn-out experience, or a sharper, but quicker process?
My bottom line is I cannot worry about whatever results from people learning the real TRUTH: I didn't tell them the LIE in the first place, and my job is not to shelter others from themselves or become the relected target of their hatred, but to provide the knowledge needed for them to be able to make an informed decision.
I know, I'm a bit of a maverick, placing truth above all else... Not unusual for ex-JWs to be like that, since we've spent years telling others we HAVE truths (and the irony is, sometimes there are no "one size fits all" truths).
PS here's the difficult thing for YOU to comtemplate: you need to tease out WHY you feel the need to act. Don't say it here (it's none of OUR business), but ask yourself what drives you to want to do this. Is it your own ego speaking, or to prove to her that you are right, or to make her share in your pain? REM wrote a song about "Losing My Religion", and while it's ultimately a worthy goal (IMO), it's also a painful process to go thru.
so, i'm new here and i've decided to finally tell my mom the truth about jws.. and sorry for the long post.
i'm at my wits end.. here's some background:.
i grew p in a congregation in california, i'm not a born in, though i was raised in it from 5 - about 20. arond 20 i pretty mch faded out, bt the emotional ups and downs were jst all too much.
the jehovah's witness answer for satan is that he was perfect but chose to go his own route. it was not jehovah's fault. on a personal level, i would arge that we are born with an innate sense of right and wrong. sorta. i mean at the very least we know it's a dick move to kill another human right? that's not just a perception/label thing. i too never really understood the existence of evil. god is spposed to be the great engineer. no great engineer builds faulty eqiupment. if god is perfect, how can he have come up with sch a complete cluster fuck of a planet? actually that's kinda funny. if you think about it, he REALLY screwed the pooch on this one. and really early into it too. i mean, if 1000 years is but a day to jehovah, then his human creation lasted all of what? seconds?minutes? hours? that's inexcusable and god needs to be fired. if the shoddy design of the firestone tires/ford combination and the relatively few deaths that resulted from that got people fired and lawsuits filed...then shouldn't we get to fire god for literally killing something like 95% of all human population up to this point?
Yeah, that's the right idea, and exactly the point of what that product liability video was making: God wants to take credit for creating mankind and the angels, but doesn't want to accept responsibility for the defect! He admits to the defect, but it's always someone elses fault for when even his efforts to fix the defect fail, as well. Remember God did a double-flip-flop (expressed regretting making man, then regretting wiping out man): that's not behavior consistent with omniscience, and is a sign of a continuity error of human minds, not divine inspiration.
(continuty error is when the character breaks form, acting inconsistent to known traits. It's like if Superman decided to have custom Kryptonite underwear made, claiming it provided "better support". Anyone who knows the story would howl at the writer, pointing out the error in the story-line. Same thing here: the writers of the bible broke continuity).
BTW, another lie often repeated is saying God made mankind with "Free will", i.e. He didn't create mindless robots who must serve him or else. That's a fave JWism, but it's complete nonsense. That 2nd video discusses the Biblical idea of free will, and dismantles the claim.
Understanding that is CRITICAL to why the story is non-sense: you cannot hold a gun to someones head, and say "love me or I'll kill you". That is NOT a free-will scenario, by any stretch of the imagination.
You mentioned being born with an intrinsic sense of right and wrong: another example of JW brain-washing that still lives in you. That is NOT the thinking from child psychologists (eg Piaget). ALL morality is learned, taught.
i live in a majority-minority neighborhood, so i get the double witness whammy of my street being worked by both spanish- and english-speaking congregations.
jws come to my door about four times a year, but i stopped answering years ago.
what's interesting is that about two years ago, they stopped knocking on my door or ringing the doorbell.
PS Oh, I didn't ask her to show me a subpoena with her name on it (I hadn't thought of it yet).
If someone calls themselves a "witness", I want to see some verification that they are considered by the authorities to be a witness. I think it's reasonable for them to show some legal documentation to prove they've been considered a witness to a crime, hence worthy of being served with a subpoena. Anyone call claim they're a witness to something: their claim doesn't mean it's true.
I'll do it to the next JW I encounter. :)
i live in a majority-minority neighborhood, so i get the double witness whammy of my street being worked by both spanish- and english-speaking congregations.
jws come to my door about four times a year, but i stopped answering years ago.
what's interesting is that about two years ago, they stopped knocking on my door or ringing the doorbell.
If you have a few more experiences, those shakes/nervousness goes away. I've had some stop, but when I was too busy to talk. I was surprised how quickly and easily they left at the slightest hint of a 'conversation stopper.'
Heh, I was approached by a young (early 20's, I'd say) JW Asian female with a somewhat flat personality, while sitting outside a Starbucks (kinda odd: I didn't realize they violated the rule, "don't crap where you eat and drink": even an animal instinctively knows THAT, LOL! Maybe they decided it was efficient to kill two birds with one stone?).
So she comes up, and opened the latest Awake! showing me a page that contained a bunch of people holding signs with bad things printed on them (hunger, crime, pollution, war, etc), and asked me which of these would I like to get rid of?
Of course, I rolled my eyes (I'm not a 5 yr old, and apparently that's the insulting angle of the sales approach they were told to use with this issue). I told her my history, fact I have JW family, and she did ask about what congregation, etc. She asked me why I wasn't a JW.
I started to get into details of the bible's errancy, a few books I had been reading (looking into difference between words ruah and nephesh, as used in the bible vs other beliefs at the time). I offered her a seat, but she indicated that her fellow JWs were waiting and she had to go, LOL! She listened politely, though, as she knew she was outgunned by someone 3x her age, who's actually spent time in college getting an education, etc. She left a copy of WT and Awake on the table, though, so she won in the end by scoring a placement of literature for the bean-counters, LOL
Anyone catch this one?
"Be reasonable with regard to how much education to pursue. As mentioned earlier, education can help prepare your child for responsible adulthood. (Genesis 2:24) But how much schooling does reaching that goal require?
Uh, what does Genesis 2:24 actually say?
New American Standard Bible(©1995)
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
They have COMPLETELY gone off the DEEP END, picking scriptures that absolutely have NOTHING to do with the point they're trying to make! THAT scripture doesn't have ANYTHING remotely to do with "education preparing a child for responsible adulthood".
UNLESS their point is, "Girls, don't dream too high: your role in life is to marry a hubby, and bear his children, not to become a Mrs Smarty Pants. Boys, don't get into a non-construction-trade field (such as IT and such things we don't understand), as you just might be tempted to hack into our computer systems in revenge if we decide to DF you."
Cedars said:
As you can see from the above extract, the article writer immediately picks up on the "eating habits" part of the quote - but completely ignores the equally important role of "physical activity". In fact, for the remainder of the article, only dietary adjustments are mentioned as possible ways of combatting obesity, and NOTHING is mentioned about "physical activity" or exercise.
That's odd: it seemed like they were setting up for the approved form of physical activity and exercise: going door-to-door! :)
I had a young JW relative tell me that he didn't go to the gym because he "didn't like the types of people who go the gym". Wow, stereotype much? Perhaps he meant non-JWs: if so, that makes some sense. :)
