hi Vitameatavegamin, ( I could use some of that right now.
I agree that organized religion is bad, not good. Organized religion is more like dictated faith. And when that is the case, members aren't allowed to feel or have faith. And in return, they don't know what faith even is. That is how I felt as a JW anyway. I did not know what faith was. I only knew what obeying the top organizers was.
And I think with JWs, if they spent more time concentrating on how to be a good Christian and not spending so much time on how many meetings attended, hours of field service put in, whether or not you should have a vasectomy, etc., maybe people in the JWs would not be so prone to all this judging and deciding who is and who is'nt.
I agree. But I also know that the truth is that the "meetings attended, hours of field service put in, whether or not you should have a vasectomy, etc." is exactly what the society has taught it's members to measure each others level of spirituality by. Those who don't make the time in service or to meetings are judged as "spiritaully weak". Those who make good service hours and attend all meetings are considered "spiritually strong". We also have the ratings of "mature Christian" and "imature Christian". Then there are the "marked" ones. The list of ratings go on and on.
That's organized religion for ya!
Interestingly, this is the definition of Jehovah's Witness, from the Merriam -Webster Dictionary:
Jehovah's Witness (noun)
First appeared 1932
: a member of a group that witness by distributing literature and by personal evangelism to beliefs in the theocratic rule of God, the sinfulness of organized religions and governments, and an imminent millennium.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
peace,
somebody