my sister...... is a psycho!!!!.
she's "in feild service" sending out letters to people that didn't answer at the door.
(which is already a little too much) she dressed up in her meeting cloths, head to foot, in order to be presentable while she is writing those letters.
I recall a few years back when letter writing was suggested that the instructions were to dress up as if you were going door to door. Maybe she is just following "suggestions"
I was going to say - yeah, she IS just 'following orders'. They ARE supposed to dress up when doing phone or mail witnessing.
Sticks and Stones Mr. French Fry Man...........
Hoo-boy. He doesn't even know what your avatar IS, does he?! *cough*shel-tered*cough*
i've faded, but i still would like to have faith in a creator/god.
but i am really not sure if my belief in god is the result of being brought up a jw and being stuck with a particular world-view.
the best thing i can do is challenge myself by reading some material that explains proof of the evolution, but i have not seen anything that does this yet, i've only seen explanations of the theory, not the proof.
The FALSE information is present!!!
first it makes no sense to me that something can ever arise from nothing...so I assume and believe in some original something...
Google. Look up 'Hawking Radiation'.
That is all.
in the aug. 1 wt, in a secondary article on numbers, the following paragraph appears:.
"what were "the signs" around which the three-tribe divisions were to encamp in the wilderness?.
the bible does not give a description of what these signs were.
Your comparison of a flag to the Virgin Mary it's not a good one. Please allow me to explain:there are a number of different types of flags. Some people have a flag of their favorite sports team. Ships have identifying flags. Some people even put up flags to celebrate the different seasons of the year. And, of course, there the national flags. From those, only the national flags are the ones that people salute.
I never saw a person saluting, say, his sports team flag.
Were those flags put up by the tribes in Israel national flags? I doubt it. Were those flags idolized? I doubt it. They could have erected flags for idenification purposes, for example.
Idolizing, by saluting, a national flag is what the WT opposes.
No offense, but have you really forgotten all they taught you already?
Sports team 'flags' were DEFINATELY verbotten. Hell, you couldn't even have PICTURES of sports stars, remember?
In Watchtower-land, walls should be bare, painted, or wallpapered. ANYTHING put up on a wall showed undo devotion do it. You don't remember all the talks on not putting up posters of singers? Sports stars? Not displaying won trophies (not that a TRUE Christian would engage in competition at ALL, anyway)? Not having ANY kind of flag - sports, national, etc?
Has nothing to do with identifiable 'worship'. HAVING IT was 'worship' enough for them.
i was always a shy kid that desperately wanted to make my parents proud.
at about this same time i started to hang out with some guys that my dad didn?t particularly approve of.
i wonder how my life would have turned out had i stopped at any point between ages 14 and 19 and asked myself who exactly i was doing all this for.
I think the biggest step in healing you've already started on - finding new friends.
While my wife and I left together, for slightly different reasons, she is about the only close friend I have right now. I never did have many in the JW religion, either (not REAL friends, obviously), but I considered my literal brother and a couple 'brothers' from the hall as close friends - they shared similar interests, etc. It's fairly hard when you are of the nerdy-persuasion. I mean, I learned quickly (in high school) how to dress and act to be 'cool', what sports to follow, etc - but it all bored me. I was really interested in PCs, pen-and-paper wargaming, science and learning, etc - all things fairly rare to find in ANY group of people, so the fact that a half dozen JWs shared interests with me while so few in the world did kept me 'in' for much longer than I would have otherwise been (nevermind the obvious hypocrisy of JWs interested in wargames).
I did not 'play their game' and send them a DA letter or let them DF me....so I am, technically, still a 'JW in good standing' although I'm really, REALLY inactive . But, still, you start missing meetings (and aren't a Bethelite - heh) and they distance themselves from you. That's, perhaps, why I've stayed active in the 'trying to convince them they are wrong stage'....they still HAVE MY FRIENDS!! And I haven't found any new ones near as close as those I've lost.
I've done the same arguing you have - I think we all have - trying to convince them they are wrong on points. I mean, some things are SO obvious it hurts. The 607 thing, for example. Where do they get that year from? Can they find ANY source? NOTHING says Jerusalem fell in 607 but them, 586/587 is the accepted date, etc. - they just dismiss the whole thing and don't even bother looking "That's just apostate nonsense, why would I need to look that up? The org would never lie!" etc.
It makes you into a boiling sea of emotions. You want to scream and try to reason with them, you want to smack your head in the wall, you wonder if there really IS a deity or someone you could petition to remove the blinders from their eyes, you want to cry for seeing what a cult has done to a thinking human being....literally, a sea of emotions, and all of them negative. It feels very different from arguing with someone in field service (back when I did that) - even as a JW who really, really believed what I was teaching - I could still at least understand the householder's objections, and try to reason with them. It rarely felt as frustrating. It never felt like it does now - that they DO understand what I am saying, but are deliberately choosing to ignore it despite it's truth.
i'm conrad, a long-time-ghoster first-time-poster.
i'm a sociology major trying to get my bachelor's degree and for my "sociology of religion" class i've been studying the jehovah's witnesses for quite some time.
i've also been checking out this board to get some insights into the lives of former jw's.
From that post:
This doesn't mean of course that I will allow posts of an obvious apostate nature or those that are abusive. ...
I hope the board gets busy enough so that I need some help moderating it but again, there is no way for me to confirm anyone's good standing or not unless I know them personally.
*snicker*
*guffah*
-cough-
Ahem, back to your regularly scheduled reading.
i'm conrad, a long-time-ghoster first-time-poster.
i'm a sociology major trying to get my bachelor's degree and for my "sociology of religion" class i've been studying the jehovah's witnesses for quite some time.
i've also been checking out this board to get some insights into the lives of former jw's.
Simon (the webmaster) started it years back.
Reading some of the earlier posts (don't even know if they are available anymore) is....interesting. It started as a Pro-JW site, and most of the original posters were all active JWs in good standing.
It's just one of those things with cults. As you gain more information, you realize you've been deceived, and leave. And, as there are few venues more successful at distributing information free of charge than the internet....
i'm a registered republican but i have to admit that after looking at john kerry's web site, i may have to sway my vote his way.
what caught my eye is kerry's attention toward jobs leaving for overseas countries and how the government can at least stop encouraging (and rewarding)large corporations from doing this.
at bush's site, i don't see anything about this huge problem facing america.
Princess - I have seen that site, and, sadly, agree with the contents.
I don't like Kerry. If I met him in person, and had the opportunity, I don't think we'd be friends. A lot about him disagrees with my beliefs, and he's a politician first and foremost, which NO good will come of.
Still, he's the only person who even MIGHT beat Bush, and since that is the only thing that matters at the moment....
(The site does make an interesting point, though. Our troops are involved in a 'war on terror', right? Well, where ARE most our troops, exactly? Occupying a non-threatening country unprovoked, or hunting down the person - who is still on the loose - directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans on American soil? See, if it were me, in a 'war on terror', I'd direct my army at....oh, I dunno, TERRORISTS or something instead of near defenseless third world countries.)
i'm a registered republican but i have to admit that after looking at john kerry's web site, i may have to sway my vote his way.
what caught my eye is kerry's attention toward jobs leaving for overseas countries and how the government can at least stop encouraging (and rewarding)large corporations from doing this.
at bush's site, i don't see anything about this huge problem facing america.
can you explain to me why kerry voting for the above is somehow more forgivable in your eyes than giving the order? he did everything in his power to make sure we invaded iraq....his power was simply limited to voting yes or no. if he truly believed it was the wrong thing to do, wouldnt he have voted no?
He only voted yes on that because he believed the information he had been lied to about.
Would Kerry, if president, have fabricated evidence to lie to Congress about the thread Iraq poses in order to get them to authorize an invasion? Would he, as president, then proceed to lie to his allies to try to get them on board? Would he lie to the American public about connections between Iraq and Al-Queeda that don't exist, or the presence and readiness of WMDs that don't exist?
No way to know *for sure*. All we can say FOR SURE is that Bush DID do all those things, so I will not vote for him. Maybe Kerry will when he gets in the White House, too, I don't know. If he does, then I won't vote for him again. But, at least by his character, it seems unlikely he would at all.
In any case, it's a moot point. Bush DID do those things, so I will vote for wheover may be able to defeat him.
i'm having a really wierd day today.
for some reason i've been sitting at my computer for about an hour with a strange feeling of needing to get something out of my head and onto the page.
normally i can type it out and feel great relief, but today i can't seem to identify what it is.
/surfaces
I do so enjoy reading these threads each time they come up - in fact, I've started a couple. The influx of new members always keeps the dialog interesting - thanks Sirona for bringing the topic up again!
/submerges back to 'lurk' mode
often peoples thoughts of cornwall in times gone by are of swashbuckling pirates and other such things.
certainly these activities used to go on a great deal even to the point where lights would be hung on lanterns on clifftops during storms to lure ships to their fate on the rocky shoreline below, then to plunder the ship of it's goods, the ships captain obviously believing that the lights signified a safe anchorage.. ---.
they say that everything starts with ideas.. now this is only a semi serious post, but i just thought, i would post it for schenalligans fun to see others responses.. piracy in the modern world is as much a serious threat today as it was in times gone past.
Errrr....shotguns, actually.
National government laws do not apply on 'international waters', so you are free to shoot whoever you want with no repercussions (almost no - obviously, a government's navy might get involved if you hurt or kill citizens they are interested in protecting - likely not pirates, though). Rifles or other guns would be a bad idea, though. No sense penetrating the hull and starting a leak.
If I was a *government* interested in protecting a tanker....well, a submarine nearby is the best way. No escort like an escort the bad guys can't see!
