It's one thing for a young person like me, with no children or siblings, to be in the position of staking one's life on the no-blood teaching, but I really feel for those of you who had to go through that as parents.
Apognophos
JoinedPosts by Apognophos
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44
Would YOU Have Died For The Witness Religion?
by minimus inwould you have not taken a blood transfusion or a transplant because the gb said it was bad?.
would you have imitated the jws in concentration camps and died for your beliefs?.
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I've been thinking the Bible isn't legitimate--long indoor mat-rant
by sd-7 ini'm not sure where this thought came from (believers will no doubt say 'from satan'), but it has started to coalesce in my brain lately.
i've often referred to the bible and argued from it to debunk jw beliefs, and still tried to consider it as a great piece of literature at the very least.
but as my wife was listening to the meeting on a loud speaker phone at home this weekend, i just had this thought.
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Apognophos
Look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Captain Passive Aggressive! He's come to save the day, while commenting to no one in particular that it's a shame others haven't figured out how to save the day for themselves and it sure would be a problem if one day he couldn't show up and save the day, because what would they do without him.
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It is OFFICIAL they want MORE MONEY : NEW ANNOUNCEMENT!!!
by raymond frantz ini just came back from the meeting .although the local announcements have been abolished recently as an item for the second part , an elder came on the platform to announce that the society needs more money and there is a letter on the noticeboard for all the congragation to read to this effect.
although the announcement was read half heartedly (this elder's daughter is an apostate ,it looks like he knows what's going on) the implictions are dramatic .
the society in brief,requests any brother or sister with funds sitting on personal accounts to loan them to the society ,he didn't go into any specifics but i will take a picture of the letter next time and make it available here .. i'm not amazed that they're asking for money ,i thought it will happen sooner or later .what i'm amazed is that 99% of the congragation are oblivious to the financial crisis that the society finds itself these days and the reasons why .i can see the future now .the watchtower will be the fist part of the babylon the great to go down in a blaze of scandals and financial troubles !.
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Apognophos
@Splash: Ah, my bad, thanks for the correction. I have to say that I find that fast change in accounts report policy very amusing. How many panicked COBE phone calls to Bethel did it take to get that policy amended, I wonder.
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I've been thinking the Bible isn't legitimate--long indoor mat-rant
by sd-7 ini'm not sure where this thought came from (believers will no doubt say 'from satan'), but it has started to coalesce in my brain lately.
i've often referred to the bible and argued from it to debunk jw beliefs, and still tried to consider it as a great piece of literature at the very least.
but as my wife was listening to the meeting on a loud speaker phone at home this weekend, i just had this thought.
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Apognophos
@elderelite: Yes, and after you've awoken, you have to do battle with the robots you've turned against.
@sd-7: I know quite well the fear that leaving behind belief in the Bible will be like the floor dropping out from under you, morals-wise. But then I realized that, since I haven't felt like God ever helped me in the first place to be a good person despite all my praying, then any good things I've done up till now were coming from me. True, perhaps my motivation before was to please (or not to displease) God, and now it's down to what morals I wish to maintain for my own reasons, but any lifestyle I led before, I can still lead on my own now. The Devil is not going to enter me and make me start doing drugs or kicking puppies. I resisted most bad inclinations on my own all along, and the areas where I "fell short" of Watchtower teachings (ahem, porn) no longer need to plague me because I can honestly say that looking at porn never hurt anyone. Heck, now that I'm setting my own standards, I can even choose to be stricter than Witnesses in some way if my conscience compels me -- or at least I can attempt to (just as Witnesses can only attempt to live up to their own standards). Realizing that was liberating for me.
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44
Would YOU Have Died For The Witness Religion?
by minimus inwould you have not taken a blood transfusion or a transplant because the gb said it was bad?.
would you have imitated the jws in concentration camps and died for your beliefs?.
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Apognophos
Yep, I would have. Although I definitely had anxiety about a possible prison camp scenario and wished God would spare me from that situation, I was prepared to be executed by firing squad or what-have-you. If you really believe that you're safe in God's memory, what do you have to lose? As far as blood, I wanted nothing to do with it and was not comfortable accepting fractions when that change was made (I was somewhat scandalized that it was even left up to our consciences!).
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Quick question, did you feel lonely at the meetings even though you were part of the action?
by Theocratic Sedition injust curious, something i've noticed only lately.
i'm in the mix within the congregation, stay late after the meeting is over, converse with quite a few people afterwards, make plans for saturday and sometimes sunday service and yet i feel so awfully alone walking to my car afterwards.
i feel lonely when i'm talking and laughing with people after the meeting.
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Apognophos
I thought "a watcher" was being sarcastic the first time....
Anyway, I would simply suggest that if anyone feels friendless in the congregation, it's because there's little that we are guaranteed to have in common with the assorted ones there. Even the personalities attracted to the organization are not all identical, with motivations ranging from "end-times paranoiac" to "high-horse rider" to "warm and fuzzy hugger" to "(faux) intellectual Bible scholar".
As someone whose interests are not mainstream myself, I have known only a few brothers who shared one interest or two with me. But I wouldn't expect much different results with a random assortment of non-Witnesses. Then again, some of the things we like in the entertainment world are borderline or "un-Christian", so doesn't that also limit the subjects we can discuss with them?
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It is OFFICIAL they want MORE MONEY : NEW ANNOUNCEMENT!!!
by raymond frantz ini just came back from the meeting .although the local announcements have been abolished recently as an item for the second part , an elder came on the platform to announce that the society needs more money and there is a letter on the noticeboard for all the congragation to read to this effect.
although the announcement was read half heartedly (this elder's daughter is an apostate ,it looks like he knows what's going on) the implictions are dramatic .
the society in brief,requests any brother or sister with funds sitting on personal accounts to loan them to the society ,he didn't go into any specifics but i will take a picture of the letter next time and make it available here .. i'm not amazed that they're asking for money ,i thought it will happen sooner or later .what i'm amazed is that 99% of the congragation are oblivious to the financial crisis that the society finds itself these days and the reasons why .i can see the future now .the watchtower will be the fist part of the babylon the great to go down in a blaze of scandals and financial troubles !.
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Apognophos
Although I'm dubious about the OP's claim (I was at the meeting last night and actually paid attention to the announcements for once, so unless the letter hasn't made its way to the platform yet...), I did note in a post last night that they read the accounts report. Can I ask, is that something that others are still hearing from the platform? Because as noted in the letter (quoted in the thread that blondie's post above links to), that was one of the items that the Society said "do not need to be read".
I secretly suspected at the time that the elder body was most likely to "rebel" against that particular announcement being removed as soon as money got short, thus my ears perked up last night when the brother with the first part announced numbers that made it clear that we had a shortfall last month. The whole idea of removing the full announcements from the TMS was asinine, but especially the part where the Society expects the friends to read the bulletin board (HA! HAHAHAHA!) to find out how we did financially last month.
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It's all about me.
by smmcroberts inbut it's mercifully brief.. actually, "teeny" sent me.
but i eagerly began posting here without first re-introducing myself.
i realize that could be considered slightly rude.
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Apognophos
I meant to post here when I joined the forum because I had just finished the book and I really enjoyed it. It does a great job of taking one through the reasoning that a person has when they join the organization, and how they can get disillusioned by hypocrisy or by deeper study of the Bible and the history of the Witnesses. You covered the major teachings and counter-arguments to them very thoroughly. It made the point well that how a person chooses to interpret the Bible is a matter of the perspective they choose, or want, to take. I see "FIT" being really good for anyone who is a questioning believer or who has never been a Witness and wants to know what it's all about (although non-Witnesses could probably use a little more elaboration on the front end of the story about certain terms and how things like field service work, I think they will get the point).
I appreciate that you strike a balanced stance, pointing out that some Witnesses are sincere and that there are nice things about the religion (although the bad things, such as the no-blood teaching, make it a net negative, I think we can agree). Otherwise, if it's so bad, why do so many people find the ideas intriguing enough to get baptized? The fact is, some people love the teaching about a paradise earth, and some love the fellowship they find in the local congregation because they haven't yet seen that in other churches they've been to. I was especially impressed with the realistic characterizations; perhaps based on people you knew, but I'm sure also due to your talent for storytelling. Thanks for writing it, I hope it finds a large audience!
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What happened in the Christian Congregation immediately following the destruction of Jerusalem?
by itsibitsybrainbutbigenoughtosmellarat inwhat exactly happened in the christian congregation immediately following the destruction of jerusalem?
what were the central issues being dealt with at the time?
was there a crises akin to what happened to jws when they weren't all raptured in 1914?.
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Apognophos
Yes, moggy lover's comment was very educational to me.
@mP: Far be it from me to sound like I'm defending slavery, but wasn't Paul telling the slave to return to a master who was now a Christian? Philemon and Onesimus were supposed to be spiritual brothers at this point. We also don't know if Onesimus ran away because he was being mistreated in the first place. To be more philosophical about things, one could argue that a well-treated slave is little worse off than an overworked, underappreciated employee at a modern large corporation (a "wage slave") or, heck, a Bethelite. The reason why slavery is bad is the power it gives someone to be unkind to someone else with no recourse (edit: and also that slavery carries down to the children of the slave). But Onesimus would have had recourse because he was presumably now in the same congregation as Philemon.
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How did you fare in High School as a JW?
by PaintedToeNail infor me it was rather painful.
it was like pressing your nose against the candy store window, knowing that you can look, but you cannot partake.
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Apognophos
That's a good point, Balaamsass. I know that being limited in associating with "worldly" kids harmed my social development, which was already naturally stunted due to my personality. To this day I have no ability to communicate with the opposite sex. And most of my fellow kids in the congregation were jerks who I had no interest in hanging out with.