My lurking is purely amateurish.
tms
hey all,.
just checkin' in.
been here since '01, but don't even have 500 posts.
My lurking is purely amateurish.
tms
(i guess i'm posting the following blog i came across because i spent plenty of time in the past holding contempt for the caricature of a human that was tammy faye baker.
i like being shown another pov.
i also like being surprised by christians... it's such a rare occurance).
Thank you, Six, for posting this.
tms
i wonder if richard the wanderer will ask questions that i haven't asked some day?
just wondering.. these two kill me!
lmao!.
JWD,
Is this the 2007 edition of the almost ancient Amnesian/Amazing debate?
tms
just announced on cnn.
saw her on larry king live last week and she looked awful.
There was something beneath the mascara: a large-hearted, happy, non-judgemental person. She would have been the laughingstock of any Kingdom Hall in the world. But so would many good-hearted people.
tms
are we essentially moral beings, corrupted by society?.
or are we in fact amoral, socialized by cultural pressures and religious beliefs?.
are we essentially moral beings, corrupted by society?.
or are we in fact amoral, socialized by cultural pressures and religious beliefs?.
i have always loved animals and have had pets through out the years, so that got me thinking about my jw childhood, not to many dubs had pets, i remember only a small handful of dubs that had a dog.
i wondered if there is a jw realted reason for this, so far the only thing that i can think of is that a pet "would take up valuable time that could be better spent on field service" .
any one have some information on this?.
i know this is nothing new- the thought of the bible being just a story and a blend of culture and of how people interpreted the world around them and recorded it as such.
it's very athiest..y, even if don't consider myself an athiest.
because culture and class also affects how people look at the bible whether they believe it or not.
The first Bible Students with pocket watches, pillbox hats and Puritanical values created the ambience for Jehovah's Witnesses. Rutherford hardened the focus, bringing a more militant, less genteel blend. Knorr turned the whole thing into a gigantic, well-oiled business. It's an Anglo-Saxon group really that has recruited other ethnicities.
The way different cultures respond to Watchtower guidelines is one hilarious subject. I don't pretend to have enough life experience and travel opportunities to have witnessed various cultures interpetation of serving Jehovah, but I know it varies greatly. Ten years in a black congregation in the U.S. taught me that talks given there were not given anywhere else. I smile now when I pass a Spanish circuit assembly at a community recreation area and see the little girls in dresses and boys in suits and ties riding the bumper cars between sessions. I love it!
tms
i often times wonder what happened to certain bethelites that i ran around with during my 1990s tenure there.
while there are still a few left there, the greater majority of them aren't there for various reasons (marriage, disillusionment, left the borg, etc).
a couple of cats i wonder about - there was one brother who i believe was from kansas, who got his fingers cut off in a printing press.
Horrible Life,
You mentioned Leroy Langan. Not sure if he had a Bethel background. He became a Circuit Overseer in August 1970. I was a young Congregation Servant(Overseer) in his first congregation visit. He was from Tulsa, OK. He married a very attractive sister from Mena, AR. He had some training in geology and had worked for one of the oil companies.
We became semi-friends until one evening he invited my wife and I to his trailer for a turkey dinner. He had bragged about his wife's oyster nut dressing. The dinner pleasantries ended abruptly when Leroy learned we didn't know how to play a certain card game. He became annoyed and opened up a newspaper to partition us from his face. We left quietly not knowing what we had done wrong.
I ran into Leroy years later at an assembly. He was in news service and wanted to stage some phony action shots of the characters in our assembly drama. I let him know that it wasn't a war drama. Lol!
One former Bethelite I am curious about is Roger Ramsey from Arkansas. I think he was on what JT used to call the "fast track". . . .perhaps involved in circuit overseer scheduling. Last I heard he had left the borg and his younger brother Keith was in circuit work.
I'm sure no one remembers my close friends George Pringle and Charles Maxwell. They left Bethel in the 50's. George is in Kent, WA and Charles is in Port Townsend, WA.
tms
i think dr perry cox from scrubs would be a brilliant presiding overseer.. dr. cox is sarcastic, unpleasant and narcissistic.
however, he is a very skilled doctor.
he would not care what the co said, would ignore the watchtower or governing body at will.
Sheriff Taylor played by Andy Griffith would have been a great PO with commonsense replacing strict rule interpretation.
Unfortunately, there are more Barney Fifes among elders than Sheriff Taylors.
tms