Posts by Jofi

15

2019 Annual Meeting: more F.O.G.

by neat blue dog in

after the new construction project is announced, anthony morris the turd gives a talk where he arrogantly tells the audience to 'get over it' and get to work.

he says relaxing is fine and 'im not trying to put a guilt trip on you' but you all need to get busy.

no graciousness at all for the endless volunteer labor they demand for whatever new projects they dream up.

Jofi_Wofo

I'm watching Morris' talk.

Maybe I shouldn't, but I feel bad for him. Drunk? Sick? Succumbing to the frailty of old age?

I tend to find him entertaining to watch. His timing is usually better and his tone more forceful. He seems completely listless and completely lost.

EDIT: Check out the 11:25 mark how much his hand shakes when he picks up the piece of paper.

EDIT: Wow, here's a doozy. At the 12:14 mark - "Jehovah's spirit was on him- not inspired!" WTF is the difference? From the Insight book, the definition of Inspiration, "The quality or state of being moved by or produced under the direction of a spirit from a superhuman source."

72

Not invited to congregation “get togethers”. They finally said it

by solomon in

jw
friends

we don’t get many invitations to congregational social gatherings.

we don’t attend midweek meetings and miss about 1/3 of sunday meetings.

we go in service at least once a month.

Jofi_Wofo

I'm invited this Sunday to casual games, followed by a superbowl party. I'm genuinely looking forward to it. I do like my congregation, full well knowing I'm only a few months away from being categorically shunned. It's a strange spot to be in.

I'm realizing more and more how much I tend to view other JW's as interchangeable. Could it be that everyone has "the new personality" and that swapping one NPC for another makes no difference to the overall plot? One of the reasons why I've held on so long is because I thought I could never replace the community. However, after having moved away from my hometown last year, I find I don't really miss any of my old friends. Sure, I'd love to see them if they happened to show up, but these new friends have found ways to fill in the slots left by my old ones.

I can count on one hand the number of JWs that I will be saddened to never see again, people whom I really don't think anyone can replace. I wonder how many of my soon to be ex-friends feel the same about me.

72

Not invited to congregation “get togethers”. They finally said it

by solomon in

jw
friends

we don’t get many invitations to congregational social gatherings.

we don’t attend midweek meetings and miss about 1/3 of sunday meetings.

we go in service at least once a month.

Jofi_Wofo

I went to a large gathering yesterday. It was good fun and good exercise. Around my parts, there is NOTHING else to do other than lock myself inside and read some books. As an introvert, that's more or less the only thing I really want out of life, but it can get real tedious if I have no means to switch it up once in a while.

One of the elders holds the gathering same time, same place every weekend. In a very hushed and serious tone, he told my wife and I that only certain people are allowed to come, and he trusts that we know whom, so we can invite whomever we want, so long as they fit the bill. Basically, no non-progressive studies, no inactive, no reproved, no faders, no non-JW relatives, and no-whoevers that don't belong.

It's rather weird being on this side of things for the moment. You can see how counterproductive it really is. Instead of weeding out the spiritually weak, it serves to keep the doubters and disbelievers right in the thick of things, hiding in plain site, since exiting comes at such a high cost.

14

Ever notice no pictures of any JW get togeathers?

by JimmyYoung in

i remember when i was a kid in the early 70s that we always had a baseball game or picnic where they would get together and bring a dish to pass.

every summer there was one or more.

we had canoe picnic parties and camp fires ect.

Jofi_Wofo

My congregation still has regular gatherings and dinners. Often times, I'm invited somewhere multiple times per week. This is in an area where there is no movie theater, bowling or even a park to visit. We just make our own fun, and I have to say, it's what has been keeping me sane while I'm stuck in my current situation. My old congregation (moved last year) was similar. This is the biggest thing I'll miss when I leave. It really felt like we were all in this together, even when I knew it was all wrong.

It would seem that many JWs are cautious about what social pics they post online due to not knowing how many people at the gatherings would be ok with it and due to extreme paranoia that someone, somewhere, is going to misunderstand something about the picture and get them in trouble.

There is a pretty stark distinction I've noticed between two different kinds of JW social media users. The first is the kind that you can follow for years and never know that they were a JW, because they do everything possible to hide it. The second is the kind you can follow for years and never know that they were anything but a JW, because they do everything possible to advertise it.

25

Ask yourself why you don't DESERVE "kindness" (A look a the Watchtower's struggle against "Grace."

by Terry in

graceyou won’t find any in the new world translation!no no no.you only find “undeserved kindness.”(ask yourself why you don't deserve kindness.

?isn’t kindness basic decency?

?if you are one of jehovah’s witnesses you have a reason.jehovah’s witnesses are never on firm standing with their god.

Jofi_Wofo

Interesting and insightful post. Thank you.

Re: celeb JWs, good luck finding two witnesses confirming any bad behavior by them. To be fair, they get away with a lot just by not being around other JWs very often and by not being in one place long enough to settle into a congregation that would hold them accountable.

38

Flood over everest

by road to nowhere in

meeting part comment on how the flood covered everest.

that is even more ignorant than mountains being pushed up and eroding in a few thousand years.

and it wasnt cold either.. i should have commented on the bristlecone in the awake that survived the flood.

Jofi_Wofo

Well, since we're piling on.

Paleontologists have discovered thousands of human dna samples from remains of varying levels of preservation that are dated 5000 or more years old. They have confirmed what fossils had already evidenced quite a long time ago- that human beings have remained almost entirely unchanged since WELL before the creationist (including WT, who misdefines creationism to disinclude themselves) chronology for when the flood supposedly occured. Ergo, absolutely no genetic explanation for why human lifespans before and just after the supposed flood were so much longer than contemporary humans. No record of humans becoming less and less resemblant of their perfect origins as the centuries roll on. While we're at it- not even a single fossil of a human being anywhere in the world that would be large enough to be considered a Nephilim.

Some here have pondered over how we could actually believe this stuff. I can speak for myself when I say I had some creative, and varyingly plausible explanations for why science didnt confirm any aspect of the flood account.

1) The chronology was wrong. The flood chronology, like much of Biblical chronology, follows a piecing together of the lifespans of patriarchs and kings who were recorded in the Bible's detailed geneologies. However, throughout the Bible, we quite often see the words father and son refer to relatives much more distant in ancestry. I reasoned that many generations could have been skipped at certain points, leaving room for the possibility that the flood happened much farther in the past.

2) The flood was not purported to be a natural event. It's purported to be a miracle. If it really was a miracle, then Jehovah had the limitless ability to make the result exactly how he willed the result , even if that result was nothing like we would expect in absense of divine intervention. To project naturalistic results from a miraculous event begins with a false premise and is therefore a strawman argument.

I'm not saying they're necessarily good rationalizations, but I think that they are better than anything WT ever printed. Which is a pretty sad pattern I've been noticing lately in reexamining why I believed for so long. Little old not-annointed and unassuming me always had better explanations than holy spirit ever gave the GB. Even when mine were wrong, their were always wronger.

16

Just one foot in...

by Jofi_Wofo in

...with one foot out.. *deep breath*.

from day one, i've felt like i was one foot out of this religion, but it took me until over a decade to reach the point where i am ready to move on.

i'm a newly registered user to this site.

Jofi_Wofo

Thank you for your support, everyone.

I'm feeling especially trapped this morning.

My current set of circumstances makes it next to impossible for me to just up and leave the organization cold turkey. I'm currently living in a remote area where the only social connections I have are through the congregation. The non-JWs in the area don't take especially kindly to people, like me, who weren't born and raised here, and there really is nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. My landlord is a JW, and my house is actually on the same property as his.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that my wife and I are moving in a few months. I have to figure out the right way to break the news to her. It WILL crush her. Unlike me, she was raised in the religion and not only is it the only thing she knows, it's the only thing she knows how to know.

When it comes to this morning, however... *sigh* I'm tired, have a slight cold and all I want to do is lay in my recliner, sip some tea and read an interesting book. Instead, I'm going out in service and might even be asked to lead the group.

How does it ever come to this? For a fully grown man who has always been a proponent of rational skepticism and has never liked anyone telling him what to do or what to believe. How did I ever get myself in this mess to begin with? How has it taken me this long to do something about it? How am I about to go out in the ministry right now, knowing that this isn't what I want to do, and that this isn't what I want to teach?

I'm ashamed to do it, but I'm also ashamed to NOT do it and see the whole world cave in around me while I'm stuck in this miserable place with little resources and no recourse.

It sucks.

4

Australian Royal Commission question looking back

by Aussie Oz in

after all the attention the royal commission focused on the wt and the damning report that came out, has anything changed at the congregational level or to wt policy?.

i am getting the sense from what i have found that really it accomplished little more than embarrassing the wt and upsetting the jws for a while.. am i wrong in that thought?.

oz.

Jofi_Wofo

In my part of the US, hardly anyone even knows it happened, and those that do usually haven't seen the actual videos and have only heard stories from the grapevine.

Those stories, of course, were that JWs won the day with the help of holy spirit. Just like every other time. Nothing to see here, folks. Just move along and don't find out for yourself.

How it's even possible to get millions of people to not type 3 words (such as "JW Royal commission" ) into the smartphones they carry 24/7 is downright baffling to me. But it works. Every time.

48

If you speak against the Governing Body you will be punished.

by punkofnice in

this was a comment from the meeting(tm) on sunday.. the person that told me about it, is very confused about the validity of the corporation.

somewhere between a pimo and a pimi-lite.

the thing that angered me was that this person has cancer.

Jofi_Wofo

OMG- I just read some of the other posts that I didn't get to before writing mine. Apparently, I'm faaaar from the only one who's made such observations regarding the result of criticism of God/Jesus/Bible vs criticism of WT/GB.

Also, off topic, I'm writing these posts in secret while sitting 1-foot away from my believing wife. I feel like a little kid sneaking sips of my parents booze right now.

48

If you speak against the Governing Body you will be punished.

by punkofnice in

this was a comment from the meeting(tm) on sunday.. the person that told me about it, is very confused about the validity of the corporation.

somewhere between a pimo and a pimi-lite.

the thing that angered me was that this person has cancer.

Jofi_Wofo

I'm in the middle of carefully planning my exit, and in doing so I realized something rather poignant that hit me deep in the pit of my stomach. If I critique the Bible, I will be considered spiritually sick. If I critique the Watchtower, I will be considered an enemy.

A far cry from the Biblical teaching that faith in Jesus is required to salvation (John 3:16; John 20:31; 1 John 5:13).

On a related note, during this past week's WT study (See paragraph 8- https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/watchtower-study-november-2019/large-shield-of-faith/ ) our conductor went so far as to accuse apostates of splicing together audio recordings to attribute false quotes to the Governing Body.

The message here is clear: do not listen to ANYONE or ANYTHING that presents the Governing Body in a bad light, no matter what. No evidence is to be considered. No arguments to be heard. Believe only what the Governing Body tell you to believe, until they tell you to believe something else.

Jofi_Wofo

Posts by Jofi_Wofo