Posts by SixofNine

185

Long Intro From A Long Timer

by hillary_step in

jw
friends

i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.

i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.

i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.

SixofNine

Hillary, I don't know if you are a good guy, or a bad guy. I'd suspect mostly good, with a heavy leaning towards being a spiritual "leader". Which is bad.

I do know that you speak with an authority that you do not have. For instance:

Spirituality is an individually gained state of heart that develops from a friendship with God and Christ.

Really? I mean, it sounds good to me, at least on one level, but did God tell you that? If so, where and when? Do you only mean God of the Bible? What about the billions of people who have no knowledge of the Bible, Jehovah, or Jesus? Are they circumstancially totally unable to be spiritual? Or do they only get a "shadow" of the real spirituallity? (can they have full lives that way?) What about all the people who do know much about the Bible, and have decided that it isn't inspired of God, yet they still believe in a Creator?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Posting to this board does not make one spiritual or liberated.

I have to disagree on the liberated part. At least comparatively, yes anyone posting here has been "liberated" from where we used to be. Keep talking friend, you may find that your own liberation, your "hillary step" may be a bit further off than you thought.

Anger is not spirituality, frustration will not bring the ‘peace of Christ’. Only understanding and forgiveness will.

Again, it sounds pretty nice, like the collective babbling brooks of a thousand liberal christian ministers, or Unitarian ministers, but what is your authority? "Anger is not spirituality", but can spirituality include some some anger? Is righteous indignation ok? Jahs anger blazed a few time didn't it?

"only understanding and forgiveness will bring the peace of Christ"? hmmm, again, sounds great, and I have come to believe it for the most part. But really, that didn't come from the bible now did it?

Funny though, here I am, not even sure I believe a man named Jesus walked this earth, or if he did was he anything like the picture painted in the bible, and yet, I really feel like I have that "peace of Christ" as much as anyone.

My bigger point? Just that the Society preached at all of us, taking an authority it did not have, for as long as we were associated. The society mostly refered to the Bible as it's authority, but really, it never told us why the Bible should be believed as an inspired book.

So if people like you and L.W. come along and basically do the same thing, even if you have a bit more magnanamous viewpoint than the Society does, don't be surprised if we get a bit irritated, frustrated, angry. Preachers and spiritual leaders are a dime a dozen. Even nice calm opiated ones.

We would like a side of logic with all that pretty emotion.

185

Long Intro From A Long Timer

by hillary_step in

jw
friends

i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.

i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.

i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.

SixofNine

Some of you seem to have set yourselves up as some sort of online Theo Jaracz. You use the very same tactics as the Organisation that you claim to have seen through and abhor. Instantaneous judgments, guilt by association, straining at words, missing the spirit and principle of the messages, collective bullying, selective quotations, a total intolerance of viewpoints that confound your own and above all an astonishing and arrogant confidence in your own point of view. All in all many of you seem to have become the kind of people the WTS made you. So much for your 'freedom'.

unfortunately, I'm afraid that rings a bit truer than most of us here will like to admit. Still, I hope you have seen another view of things.

That last line though, "so much for your 'freedom'", I really think you ought to rethink that. This freedom, is wonderful. And if we on occasion abuse it, some one else has the freedom to let us know in no uncertain terms. If we abuse it, it is our own name that gets sullied, not Jehovah's, and certainly not the "congregation".

Yep, this freedom is pretty special, and something no JW has. For me, it makes life so much richer, fuller...just all around better. It's the freedom to be completely honest.

No more, 'stopping your mouth before you say something, just because what you were going to say is not inline with present truth'. No more, 'stopping your mind before you think something, because that thought is going to wreck the foundations of what you've been told (and bought into) is the supreme truth, the foundation of your very life'.

So much for our freedom, indeed.

13

"A Helping Hand"

by DevilsAdvocate_DA in

jw
friends

"a helping hand".

a young girl, dressed in her kingdom halls' best was running.

as fast as she could to the kingdom hall down the street.. as she ran, she prayed, "jehvoah , please don't let me be.

SixofNine

Oh my.

Devils advocate re: your words to Seven; this has to be the mother of all the misunderstandings I have seen on this board. It's rich with irony.

185

Long Intro From A Long Timer

by hillary_step in

jw
friends

i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.

i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.

i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.

SixofNine

Hillary, :)

Where do we go from here?

Anywhere but back ;) Maybe to an "ex" convention. That seems to be getting pretty popular around here.

I hope you don't take too much more time, now that your wife is out. Just because it hasn't destroyed you, does not mean that it isn't destroying others.

This world can be a better place, as one superstition after another has the legs knocked out from under it.

185

Long Intro From A Long Timer

by hillary_step in

jw
friends

i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.

i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.

i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.

SixofNine

Sure thing, it can't get any simpler than this.

What Comf is saying is....

quote:
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COMF - serial-killer! Well if he keeps a tidy garden and pays his taxes, that's some good isnt it.
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I didn't say serial killer. I said serial rape-murder. Note: "murder" - not "murderer."

quote:
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Every man or women is capable of anything and we all have good and evil carefully balanced within us, even you Comf, is the point that I was trying to make and by which I stand.
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No, that was not your initial statement. I did not speak of a person. I spoke of an activity. You did mention people, true, but only after your statements which prompted my post. Let's look again. You said:

quote:
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I appreciate that it may puzzle most of you as to how I have been able to be part of and indeed support an arrangement for so long when I have been well aware of its theological and social flaws... Needless to say, I have found in life that nothing is completely good nor completely bad.
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Note that you specifically address your support of "an arrangement." It is while speaking of this "arrangement" that you make your claim about good and bad, using the term "nothing" rather than "nobody." So you are speaking at this point about the religion's effects; its activity and the result of that activity. Yes, you do attempt to segue by mental sleight-of-hand from one subject to another by immediately bringing up people:

quote:
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Some of the most wonderful good hearted people I have met have been JW’s and some of the most spiteful and deceitful that I have rubbed shoulders with have also graced this strange collective edifice. Is this experience any different from any other organization, religion, business, political party, neighborhood, indeed individual? I suspect not.
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But it is not the people you are discussing in your initial statement about the "arrangement," and people's benign "arrangements" have no connection with their harmful "arrangements." To adapt your own analogy, a tidy garden does not "carefully balance" serial rape-murder. I like gardens and encourage their cultivation, but am unwilling to allow that every gardener be a serial rape-murderer to balance out his gardening.

COMF

It is rare to find anyone using the written word as clearly and concisely as Comf. Just read and understand, it really can't be any simpler unless you have a serious reading comprehension problem. You don't write as if you are stupid, I have trouble believing that you read as a stupid person. No offense meant here, but there is no particular reason to be patient with you if your motives are not good. If you refuse to understand the simple words of Comf, I believe your motives are not good.

13

"A Helping Hand"

by DevilsAdvocate_DA in

jw
friends

"a helping hand".

a young girl, dressed in her kingdom halls' best was running.

as fast as she could to the kingdom hall down the street.. as she ran, she prayed, "jehvoah , please don't let me be.

SixofNine

Re: ubdjudge. I have to think she/he is kidding

185

Long Intro From A Long Timer

by hillary_step in

jw
friends

i am a new to posting on this board though i have been actively reading your posts the past while and i thank some of you for the interesting viewpoints that you have verbalized and that i have enjoyed thinking on.

i am still an active jw, in fact an elder of 20 years standing hence my need to limit information about my personal circumstances.

i have served in a number of countries in europe as a pioneer and elder over the past three decades.

SixofNine

I am not sure that I fully understand what you are trying to say but I will give them some space and thought.

Please do Hillary, because he was VERY clear. If you can't come to an understanding of what Comf is saying, it is because you don't want to.

21

All us on the board need to pitch in to help JanH

by jelly in

jw
friends

janh,.

i have noticed several times when you refer to americans you use the phrase 'merkins'.

now as far as slurs go that one is pretty lame, really i have lived here all my life (32 years) and i have never heard any american talk like that.

SixofNine

Yah, Jan, are you a girly man? {said in my best hans n' franz voice}

I suggest a moniker which I could proudly wear: APD for, American pig dog. I already have the name trademarked for business use however; ie. American Pig Dog Graphics.

GPB for Great Pimp of Babylon might work too. My Iranian friends like to just call us "filthy" Americans. That works pretty good.

I like "Yanks" far better than "Jerks".

29

A Message of Hope

by 7robert7 in

jw
friends

it's been a long time since i've visited this site.

the last time that i was here i was not allowed to participate in this forums discussions for as it was explained to me, "you dont share in our beliefs, therefore your comments, ideas, and expressions would cause conflict, and disunity among those of us who do share in the truth.

" the day i recieved the denial, i broke down in tears and prayed that jesus christ would bring down the walls of hatred and mistrust among those here and that he would allow me the blessed opportunity to some day share the joy that i have found in him.

SixofNine

I think what larc is trying to say, and your words make clear, is that you are a damn liar.

20

what brought you out?

by uncle_onion in

jw
friends

i was intersted in what brought "you" out.. with me it was the 607 bce thing.

i always followed the org and would have died for it but when i saw the fallacy of the 607 date that blew it for me.

i am now on a quest to try and find something to feel comfortable with.

SixofNine

Ubdjudge,

Oh Baby! lol

If you want to stop having sex with women now, you can. 'Cause after reading that, I'm in love. I'll marry you. And if you don't, well, hell, I might just be willing to marry you anyway.

Thanks for the laughs.

Why do I fear that you're a guy?