TonusOH

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Posts by TonusOH

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  75

  God won't lift a finger to help you.

  by nicolaou in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sea breeze: @nicolau,i stated my case rather succiently, which you failed to address.

  if you have a better solution to the problem of evil than what jesus offers, then why don't you present that in a new topic?.

  pathetic diversion.

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  TonusOH

  Halcon: Because you expect a different action from the Creator. And you base your expectation on your everyday human to human relationships.

  I base my expectation on his past behavior, as described in the book he inspired men to write.

  I cannot base my expectation on human standards of morality or behavior, because God transcends those. It strikes me as inappropriate to even call him good or bad, moral or immoral, just or unjust. He exists on a completely different moral plane, and those terms do not apply. They are, as you note, human standards.

  Thus, I cannot base my expectations on what is good or moral or fair. Those do not apply to God. I can only base them on what he has done in the past, as that would more accurately reflect his nature. The Biblical god is prone to anger and rash decisions, often carried out in a violent and brutal manner. Even in the NT, where we get a more humane version of God, he speaks of sifting people and making many of them suffer. He speaks of the difficulty of attaining salvation. He may be kinder and gentler, but only during his Earthly sojourn.

  I don't have to read his mind and heart in order to understand what to expect. His actions seem sufficient. And he is, after all, unchanging. To expect him to act against the nature that he has displayed all this time strikes me as futile.
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  75

  Would you be able to survive a three day Assembly?

  by RULES & REGULATIONS in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the last assembly i attended was over 10 years ago.

  the monotone speakers, boring talks, uncomfortable seats, long prayers and nodding off after the lunch break did me in.

  i survived the morning sessions, but the afternoon sessions were brutal.

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  TonusOH

  Beth Sarim, you had it good. For us, it was getting up early so we could get to the KH where the bus was waiting to drive us 1-2 hrs to the convention hall. No restaurant for us! My mom would make an insane amount of food and bring it in these big containers. She liked getting praise for her cooking, so she made enough for a LOT of people to stop by and taste.

  Then, after the final prayer, the long walk to the parking lot to get on the bus (which was hopefully not late) and the 1-2 hour drive back to the KH and then the walk home. It was a long day. And then we would repeat it three more times. What the hell was wrong with us?
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  20

  Did your witness family have a 'Thanksgiving' that wasn't on Thanksgiving?

  by SydBarrett in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  my family had several elders, ministerial servants, auxillary pioneers etc, so it certainly wasn't one of those 'barely in' families.

  but in certain small ways, i think mine were slightly less hard line than some other families i've heard stories about over the years.

  one example was the 'fall dinner'.

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  TonusOH

  These comments are very familiar! We, too, would explain that we did not celebrate Thanksgiving because "we are thankful every day." And my mother would do a full Thanksgiving dinner. I mean everything! Whole turkey that was roasting all day, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce... all of it. She, too, would claim that the foods were all on sale and it made the most sense to buy these items.

  (Now, I'm sure that the turkeys were much cheaper around this time, so her rationale wasn't crazy. But the other trimmings? The mashed potatoes? The cranberry sauce? Maybe the prices were slightly lower to move the extra inventory (though not at first) but I can say for certain that the only time we ate cranberry sauce was at Thanksgiving. It was a very specific purchase.)

  It was only for us (her and her children, and maybe my dad, if he managed to show up). I do wonder if there would have been any issues if the elders had gotten wind of it. My mom has always been a 100% die-hard JW, and I think that she would have been mortified if anyone in the congregation had seen the spread she laid out each year.
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  27

  MANY DIFFICULT YEARS AHEAD : PER CHRISTENSEN

  by raymond frantz in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  https://youtu.be/jsmbtv4nafi?si=ezj0dnudyjls4knc.

  there was a time they preached the great tribulation was a short period of time between the fall of babylon and jesus coming back to save them, now they realize there are difficult years ahead of us, watch this latest morning worship video by per christensen on this subject .

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  TonusOH

  It might be that, for stuff that they consider important enough, they will give the speaker a more detailed outline than usual and ask that he stick to it as close as possible. Or the guy just isn't great at giving public talks, which is strange for a JW, depending on how long they have been in.
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  42

  What would happen to a JW for celebrating Christmas?

  by Vanderhoven7 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  mark jones writes:.

  if they were spied upon and it was reported to the elders they’d be “invited” to a judicial committee whereupon they’d be cross examined in a locked backroom by three men acting as judge and jury to decide if they are guilty.. .

  if the elders decide that they are guilty, they’ll then decide if the person is sorry.

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  TonusOH

  I suppose they could make it a "conscience matter" at first, then look the other way as more and more JWs celebrated. But it's a sticky issue for them, because for so long it was one of the ways they differentiated themselves from "false religion" and "Christendom." If they end up saying it's okay, then decades of denounciation go out the window. Also, one of their rationales was that Xmas has pagan origins, and that's not entirely false.

  On the other hand, if you're going to say it's okay to celebrate Jesus's birthday, then birthday celebrations are also okay. Next thing you know, Easter is on the table.

  Honestly... I just don't see it. It would be a clear sign that they are going mainstream, and the whole idea was that mainstream Christianity is a tool of the Devil designed to draw people away from Jehovah. From Rutherford's time, they did not pass up a chance to attack non-JW denominations as false, as offensive to God. That is a whole lot of history to turn their backs on. How many books/magazines would they need to destroy to clean up that mess?
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  75

  Would you be able to survive a three day Assembly?

  by RULES & REGULATIONS in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the last assembly i attended was over 10 years ago.

  the monotone speakers, boring talks, uncomfortable seats, long prayers and nodding off after the lunch break did me in.

  i survived the morning sessions, but the afternoon sessions were brutal.

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  TonusOH

  I went to the international convention in 1979. That was five days. After that, I think it was four-day conventions. I don't even remember if they had gone to three-day conventions when I stopped going. My last convention was probably in the late 90s.

  Today? Today I wouldn't last a minute, much less a day.
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  42

  What would happen to a JW for celebrating Christmas?

  by Vanderhoven7 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  mark jones writes:.

  if they were spied upon and it was reported to the elders they’d be “invited” to a judicial committee whereupon they’d be cross examined in a locked backroom by three men acting as judge and jury to decide if they are guilty.. .

  if the elders decide that they are guilty, they’ll then decide if the person is sorry.

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  TonusOH

  I do recall one year where my mother bought us some toys and games in mid or late December. She was a very frugal person, so the reason was probably that there was a sale on them. As young children, we didn't care, since she rarely bought these items. I can remember that we told each other --in VERY hushed tones-- that it was like we were celebrating Christmas!

  My dad was not a JW (save for a very brief period in the early 80s) and one of his brothers did bring us Christmas presents when we were very young. I think my mother put a stop to that. So we had a bit of an idea of what it was like for children.
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  54

  Covering up bathroom mirrors at the assemblies!!!

  by nojudgement in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this was one of the craziest things i remember about the summer conventions.

  i would go into the sister's bathrooms and the mirrors would all be taped up with brown paper so that we couldn't look at our reflections.

  were were amish or something?

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  TonusOH

  TonyT: Lets see now ...smurfs are bad

  This made me smile. My older sister had a collection of Smurfs figurines, which we played with as if they were toys (they kind of were, made of a tough but slightly flexible plastic). One day my mother got rid of them. She later told some sisters that she had "done some research" and learned that they were "of demonic origin." This was not at all the case. But, the cartoon series did feature magic and JWs get pretty bent out of shape when anyone other than Jehovah uses magic.

  For the record, I don't think my mother did any "research" into the Smurfs. But I bet it sounded good to the other JWs to have someone act as an informed authority and confirm their suspicions that a popular cartoon was demonic. JWs in the 1980s seemed to find a demon behind every corner. Listen to the wrong music? Get demons! Read the wrong books? Get demons! Watch the wrong movies? Get demons! Stories of 'good' JWs who burned 'demonic' books, records, or toys were all the rage for a while.

  The 'Sparlock' video is such a toned-down version of that hysteria that it almost seems quaint, if the underlying idea wasn't so sinister.
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  36

  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

  by jwundubbed in

  1. social
  2. humour

  i found out recently that michelangelo's painting of adam on the sistine chapel depicts him without a belly button.

  i had never noticed this before and it makes sense that neither adam nor eve would have belly buttons, not having been born in the usual way.

  then i realized all the first animals were created rather than born, according to the religious views of the origin of life.

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  TonusOH

  jwundubbed: makes me wonder why no one tries to use that as an argument for why the chicken came first...

  For the creationist, the answer is pretty obvious: God made the first chicken. I guess they could theorize whether God created eggs which hatched into chickens, but that doesn't seem to be what the Genesis account describes.

  For the non-creationist, it's something of a thought experiment or a way to describe situations where the starting point isn't quite clear.
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  75

  God won't lift a finger to help you.

  by nicolaou in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sea breeze: @nicolau,i stated my case rather succiently, which you failed to address.

  if you have a better solution to the problem of evil than what jesus offers, then why don't you present that in a new topic?.

  pathetic diversion.

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  TonusOH

  Halcon: He is clearly intentional in hiding the details of our future from us.

  Halcon: indeed he does expect a lot of us to fail

  These are the actions of someone who should not engender our trust.

  Halcon: But what actually happens does not negate what would be his desire.

  He has the power to achieve what he desires. If he does not achieve something, then he did not desire it. If he is actively working against his own desires, then he is not trustworthy. One has to wonder about the nature of a person who behaves in such a manner. When this person is also the unstoppable force behind the universe and the only person who can determine our eternal future, the notion that he might exist should terrify us.