Posts by Seeker4

34

Overweight JWs -- on the increase?

by Seeker in

jw
friends

yes, i know, the title is a pun.

it was deliberate.. i can recall in the 1970s seeing very few overweight jws.

in fact, i used to think (in my arrogant jw manner) that this was a sign of how jws were better at self-control than worldly people.

Seeker4

Not sure if we're seeing more overweight JWs than in the general population - but certainly not any less.

Your comments did remind me of a conversation I had with a young brother a few years ago. We were at a Circuit Assembly, and it was in the Sunday mid-day break. I was on my way out of the Org., and the young brother was struggling. We were talking about the program, and he said that he just found himself getting angrier and angrier as the program went on. He described all the brothers who were speakers as overweight, middleaged men who could barely button their suitjackets spouting platitudes and threats - and that he simply couldn't relate to them at all. I had to admit to him that I was struggling with the same feelings. There was not an original thought flowing down off that platform for talk after talk.

The program was like watching all the bad, bald, fat speakers at a convention of lousy salesmen.

S4

12

To SCREAM or not to SCREAM???

by cyrano in

jw
friends

jw women have a greater need than jw men to stay ever vigilant and attentive of the watchtower's back and forth rules and regulations which they have the nerve to teach is "new light" from god.

if a jw woman is raped, she may actually face disfellowshipping from the body of elders who will interrogate her soon after the crime has occurred and will listen with the utmost attention to every little detail.

depending on the "new light" from the governing body, if she doesn't scream during a rape, she will be charged by the elders as an adulteress ... someone who may have actually 'enjoyed' the violent act because of her silence.

Seeker4

Lisa,

You actually walked out on that comment? Good for you!! I remember elders gleefully refering to this judge's statement - as though it verified the WTS's mindless view of dress and grooming. Can you imagine trying to defend yourself in court: "Judge, this guy was so damn ugly, I just couldn't control myself from going up and beating the living piss out of him." Same kind of reasoning. I hope the judge was disbarred as well. Sexist, ignorant bastard.
S4

63

A New Breed Of JW Emerging?

by Englishman in

jw
friends

is there a new breed of jw emerging, i wonder?.

i know that there are lots of real brainwashed dubs around who see demons behind every car boot sale item and who scuttle off to the elders with every bit of tittle-tattle imaginable, but, i think that there is a new type of dub who quietly does just as he / she pleases.. this is what i think: many of the long-serving jw's who have seen the 1975 failure and the 1914 generation change are now approaching old age with something of a jaundiced eye, and are choosing to do their own thing in their remaining years.

in conversations i am picking up it seems that the elders are being regarded somewhat derisively by many jw's.

Seeker4

Englishman,

Good post. I started a similar one a year or so ago on the old H2O. I've seen so many of the same things that you've mentioned, though I must admit that Mulan's comment and others about bros and sisters having affairs or unmarried sex on a regular basis without telling the elders and while still doing all the "right" things in the congregation was a bit shocking to me. At least when I had my first sexual fling on my way out I had the decency to just simply stop any activity beyond occasionally attending a meeting. I sure wasn't about to make comments at that point!!

I'm seeing more and more JWs simply doing what they will and keeping quiet about it. My wife's congregation (where I had served as an elder for 15 years) recently gave a talk about dress and grooming - which made her mad and she said she was going to totally ignore it. The Witness women in my family are all quite attractive, and don't mind dressing to show that off.

I have seen some of the more mindless Witnesses who have left finding themselves all shook up by the WTC disaster and talking about coming back to meetings, but I think that its sort of part of the overall knee-jerk reactions we're seeing everywhere from people who don't think these things through very clearly. A lot of people who leave the org haven't really replaced it with any kind of viable philosophy about life, and nasty events like Sept. 11 scare the hell out of them.

I've seen Witnesses more willing to do the b'day thing, much more lenient about getting together with worldly people, even on holidays, and not afraid to speak out against local elders or the WTS in general. I always find it interesting to get together with in-laws, some of whom are old-time elders. I'm quite apostate according to the JW definition, and out of respect for the family I don't say a lot about what I think. But I do listen, and I find it funny how critical they often are of things they hear and see among the friends or from the Org itself. It's no longer the feeling that "If Mother says jump, we ask how high."

My mother has always associated with my disfellowshipped sister, as have I. It's common around here, actually, among some. They just don't publicize it much. I think there are still some hardliners, but they are looking more and more like brainless wonders to many of the friends.

And Sirona, tipsy and in a backless dress. My kind of woman!!
S4

15

Its the Whole Premise that Gets Me

by pettygrudger in

jw
friends

#1 - original sin: supposedly all this stuff is going on because adam/eve "ate the fruit" (type of fruit still under question).

because of this, god let billions & billions of people, "his children", suffer imperfection, pestilence, plague, wars,death, etc.

& let his "true followers" throughout bible history be persecuted because of this "original sin".

Seeker4

If you carefully read that account in Genesis, you will discover a very startling thing: Satan told the truth, and God lied.

God said they would die on the day the ate. Satan said they wouldn't die, but that they would become like God. (Gen. 2:17; 3:4-5) They ate and what happened? They didn't die that day (I know, I know - the WTS and it's explanation of "day" here!!!). But what's even more interesting is God's statement in Gen. 3:22: "Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad." Exactly what Satan had told Eve would happen, and Jehovah is verifying it!!

Ah, the problems that arise when we try to understand myths as real events. Give it a rest. The myth makes incredibly good sense - much more so than the WTS's trying to make this into an actual event.

S4

64

A few things I don't understand about the bible

by Leander in

jw
friends

there have always been things about the bible that never really made much sense to me.

not to say that i disagree with whats in the bible but i have wondered about the fairness of certain things.. 1. for example i've always even as a child thought that it was odd that so many people would die during armageddon.

now as an adult and i understand people better than i did years ago i really do feel puzzled about the fact that according to the scriptures the majority of mankind will perish.

Seeker4

Leander,

I'm afraid your examples of Bible "prophecies" that have or are coming true just doesn't cut it. Do you know how often the WTS itself has changed its explanation of these same prophecies? There are people in EVERY generation that see themselves as THE ONE that Bible prophecies point to.

To give you an idea of how absurd the "explanations" of these prophecies get, just take a look at how the WTS explained the prophecy of Rev. chapter 13. In 1917 they were teaching that the "woman" there was the true church of God, sort of buried inside the Roman Church at the time. They were also teaching that Michael was the Pope and his angels were the Bishops, and the Kingdom was the Roman Catholic Church (see Vol 7 of the Studies in the Scriptures, pgs 183-192). That changed a bit over the next few decades, eh????

And the WTS explanations of the King of the North and the King of the South have got to among the most pathetic going. Don't you realize that if you believe the WTS's explanation of this that the King of the North simply disappeared about a decade ago?? If you're basing your faith in the Bible on what you just said, you really need to take a much closer look at things.

I was a Witness for 35 years, served as an elder for a long time. Once I started really looking into the WTS and the Bible, I simply had to abandon any faith in either one. The Bible is a great book in certain ways - but it simply falls apart if you view it as inspired and unerring. Take a few days and read a simple discussion of it like the recently released "Don't Know Much About the Bible." Nice clear discussion of these "prophecies" you mention.

One of the things that also helped me to clearly see what the Bible meant in some verses that we say are talking about our time was when I compared the famous "last days...critical times" prophecy of 2 Tim 3 with Romans 1:28-32. In Romans the writer uses exactly the same words to describe what was happening then, in the 1st Century. And read verses 8-9 in Timothy. You quickly come to see that they weren't writing about some time 2000 years down the road, they were writing about what was happening right then and there. If you start reading the Bible from that perspective, that they were totally fixed on the fact that all of this stuff about the Kingdom, Christ's return, etc.
was going to happen then, the Greek scriptures make much more sense.

And of course, it didn't happen then, hasn't happened yet, and if you don't get the picture after 2000 years, I'll put it simply for you. It's never going to happen.

Sorry - you're idea that prophecy proves the Bible just doesn't hold up to any kind of a careful examination.

S4

2

Hotmail and WTS sites down??

by Seeker4 in

jw
friends

just wondering if it is only me, or is anyone else finding it impossible to get into their hotmail inbox, etc?

also, tried to go to the official wts site, but couldn't connect.

anyone else having these problems?

Seeker4

Just wondering if it is only me, or is anyone else finding it impossible to get into their Hotmail inbox, etc? Also, tried to go to the official WTS site, but couldn't connect.

Anyone else having these problems? Thanks.

S4

66

What I heard the JW's say in light of this tragedy

by Bridgette in

jw
friends

okay, i know (or want to believe) that not all jehovah's witnesses are this calloused.

at least i hope not.

there are some good, caring people, but here are some stark contrasts i've observed today that remind me of how glad i am that i'm not part of such an overall unloving group of people.

Seeker4

I believe that many JWs will react in the mindless way that has been mentioned here - but many will not. The main response I heard from the Witnesses I talked with yesterday was the usual stupidity about how this could lead to the Great Trib. or how it could fulfill Bible prophecy. At the same time there were expressions of genuine concern for ALL the people affected by this.

And before you lambast all JWs for the same mindset, when I got home last night, my wife - an active JW - had a candle burning in our bedroom window in honor of the victims and their families. She also just called me from her job, and said would I consider using our vacation, which begins in two weeks, to volunteer to help in the city. I was already thinking about that.
S4

17

Does Science Prove The Existence of God?

by AngelofMuZiC in

jw
friends

first, i would like to say...... hooray for me>>>>this is my 100th post.

should i get a cake?

(hehe i know i'm corny) i plan to keep on posting, cuz i love mostly everyone here, and i have fun.. here's the real question....does science and all of these evolution theories actually prove the existence of a designer...god?

Seeker4

AnglofMzc;

Good question, and Calculating God is a good book. But I think from what I've studied for the last few years as I've left the Witnesses that I have to agree with JanH and FunkyD. And I think you've seen how your reasoning is really similar to the way the Witnesses always reasoned about God - everything in the natural world is so marvelous and complicated, so there must be a designer. It is an aspect of the type of reasoning that confuses the difference between an artifact (like a stone arrowhead) and a natural process (like photosynthesis). While the artifact definitely points to an intelligent designer, the natural process doesn't necessarily do that at all.

And I agree that what is being confused is cause and effect. We are the way we are, and the natural world is wonderfully suited to life on this planet, BECAUSE of the conditions on this planet, not vice versa. But there are still tons of things that don't work so well in the natural cycles, and those have been commented on in various posts here in the past.

I find myself feeling that where I would really like to believe that there is a god with a plan overseeing all of this universe, I now see that god is our own invention, humankind's creation to explain all the things that our emerging minds have found perplexing and frightening over the past few hundred thousand years, and then used by society as it organized itself on a larger and larger scale in order to keep people in line and society from dropping into chaos. Religion, when you look back, has simply been another tool to keep people under control.

There have always been some who have tried to move beyond the veil of superstition that is essentially what religion has been for thousands of years. There are many now - but I'm not sure if it's more than in the past. I know a number of well educated people who are substituting astrology or pagan religions for the more normal mainstream ones. I'm not talking about people who see drumming or ritual as important ways of expressing ourselves and connecting with the world in which we live - but about people who ACTUALLY BELIEVE that drumming will alter human consciousness and bring about a peaceful world, or that a festival ritual celebrating light in mid-December will REALLY be the reason the days start getting longer.

So, superstition and ignorance still seem to dominate in most cultures even today. Part of this is that I think we really do need a connection to our natural environment, a sense of our place in this world, a feeling of true spirituality - and that is where ritual and myth can be of huge help. Our problems lie when we start believing the myth as actual fact. It's what caused me to leave the Witnesses - being forced to believe things that obviously were not so.

The answer? Perhaps it lies in embracing ritual and myth for what they truely are - balms for the soul and spirit, a way to connect with our environment and one another, and not for what they are not - controllers of the physical universe - at the same time that we embrace what science can teach us. Once you take gods and demons out of the picture, it is just amazing how wonderous this universe we find ourselves in really is. This doesn't lessen the mystery and wonder, it multiplies it dramatically. There is a strong argument made by writer Paul Shepard that we are missing something we need as humans, because for the past ten thousand years we've moved away from the world we had evolved in over the previous million years. Reconnecting with the natural environment may be one of the most important parts of our evolution in the coming millenia.

And while some may say that cities and such are just as much a part of evolution as a forest, I think that is again a confusion of artifact (the city) with natural processes and systems - the forest and river and desert.

Just a few thoughts, if that was what you were looking for with this thread.
S4

13

Has Anyone Tried Yoga?

by Eyebrow in

jw
friends

i have been considering learning yoga for a few years now, but i am not sure how to go about it.

i don't really have the money for a class right now, and most of the books i have found are either extremely expensive or not really for beginners.

can anyone make any suggestions?

Seeker4

Mulan had apost about this a week or so ago. I would suggest picking up a copy of Yoga Journal mag, and using one of the videos from that. You might want to take a few classes. I do yoga with classes 2x per week. It's $5 to drop in on a class, and the personal instruction is really important.

By the way, yoga, for me personally, has been fantastic. One of the building blocks of my new life. You might want to check out the earlier post on this.
S4

8

How can you go back?

by notperfectyet in

jw
friends

i talked to my parents tonight.

the first time in a year and a half.

i will save you all the boring details of my life, being raised in the truth by an elder dad, pioneer mom, yada, yada.. tonight they were very loving and kind.

Seeker4

NPY,

I understand your wonder at how anyone, especially after being out of the Witnesses for 30 years, could ever go back. But it happens, and here's my take on why.

People leave the JWs for a number of reasons. They may be discouraged, they may learn that some of the teachings are false, they may want to do other things, or they may be stumbled. Some of these never come back, some do, some move into another fundamentalist religion, with a message they like better.

Then there are those that leave because they have moved onto a whole new level of consciousness and spirituality. They have moved up the hierarchy of human consciousness far beyond the basic level of the JWs. You will never see any in this group in some other fundamentalist religion, nor will any of these ever return to the JWs. They have grown beyond that point in human development, and could no more return to the Witnesses or something similar than a 20 year old could become ten again.

S4