i have not been in a position to watch all of the interviews, so i'm sure that i missed a few things.
here is my question.
were either elders or ministerial servants accused of sexually abusing children, or were the accused just lowly r&f publishers or bible studies?
Londo,
Which of the bazillion PDFs were those numbers in? I'd like to print it off to show my wife. We just started discussing this some last night. She seemed to think that it was mostly the rank and file, but I didn't have any evidence to back up my thoughts, so I just said I'm sure there were appointed brothers too, but didn't really know. The circuit overseer being on the list is crazy too.
does anyone else relate to this as much as i do?
the fears, heartache, everything she went through to finally come out... just so courageous!!
!
i am now a jedi, so trust me on this.. .
why dis-associate, you are just playing by the wts rules?
how can you dis-associate anyway, you never thought you were baptised as a watchtower society member, you thought your dedication was to god, so why formally disassociate from something you did not formally join?
This would be interesting to try. I've long thought my baptism wasn't valid because I was kind of pushed into it. My COBE (then Presiding Overseer) asked me at 15, "Son, why haven't you got baptized?" My response: "I don't know." "We have an assembly coming up. If you want to start the questions, we can get you baptized then." "Okay..." And that was that.
I lied when they questioned me on if I had dedicated myself in prayer to Jehovah. I didn't quite understand it at the time. Why should I have to tell him? He can see me, right? He should know my heart and if I'm dedicating my life. Anyways, after I lied, I did a brief perfunctory prayer to right my lie. Other questions I answered plain wrong because I didn't know the answer and wasn't thinking with a "spiritual" mindset.
I often think that if that conversation never happened, I wouldn't have been baptized until much later, if ever. Because once I got baptized, they made me feel useful with lots of chores and responsibilities. I got the big head, enjoyed serving, and kept reaching out for more and more.
Once that dried up and I realized that they were only so good to me because of what I was willing to do for them, I started seeing things with a different perspective. Regardless, I now wish I never got baptized.
heard a lot buzz for our upcoming convention.
those that already been were saying how great it was and all the videos that were presented.. well, thus far not impressed!
in fact many times pure insanity!
London: The best convention ever!
I have to second that for a great number of reasons.
1) All the videos kept it from being too drab and dry. (Translation: I had something else to laugh at.)
2) I missed half of the assembly, mostly at my wife's suggestion.
3) They released their first full length Lifetime original movie.
4) I saw a grown man cry on stage. (Seriously, during the last part Sunday where they have the video visualizing how everyone gets their own perfect beach island in the sun, the speaker said he always gets choked up when he sees it and started crying. It took him a minute to get his composure. This was more sad than anything. )
It was a little disappointing witnessing the death of the live-action drama, though.
from commentary press: "in honor of raymond & cynthia franz, the present copyright owner of crisis of conscious and in search of christian freedom is committed to further distribution of these publications.
more details will be forthcoming.".
http://www.commentarypress.com/.
my husband, as far as i know, has never seen any of the gb.
with all the videos on at the convention showing the gb speaking, is there anything that would make him think wth!.
he thinks the gb are special, appointed by jehovah, that god speaks to them and imparts special knowledge.
i saw an instagram post showing a short clip of a talk being given in one of our southern states.
the talk clip showed speaker making the statement, "jehovah doesn't want anyone to know satans real name, jehovah hates satan so much, he doesn't even want his name mentioned" .
i posted in comments: matt 5:44-48 with the full scripture rendered from niv.
sometimes i get a strong curiosity to start dabbling into other religions, other faiths, you know?
really different ones such as islam, judaism, hinduism, etc.. has anyone here looked into something else?
has your spirituality been satisfied by any other than christianity?.
I think looking at other religions is great. But you have to be careful. Look at the arguments of those that are both for and against the religions. Look at the propaganda. And then look at the expose' on the propaganda. Find people who love the religion, and then find those who are objective in their opposition to the religion. Going through this process, I found that all religion is a snare & a racket. For me it turned from a search for faith and God, into an educational exercise and helped solidify my views as an agnostic.
For me, I found that all the research and critical thinking that I learned while investigating my views as a JW was just as helpful in investigating and exposing the hypocrisy and false teachings of other religions. But I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent learning about other religions and thought processes. After a while, you realize that there's not much difference between Jews, Islamics, Christians, etc. Most of them believe much of the same, just in different flavors, forms, and shapes. It's all the same crock of lies.
i'm having problems identifying a small cyst that i get every once in a great blue moon.
i like to call it a lollipop cyst because it looks like a really small lollipop.
so, it's basically a small cyst at the tip of a really small shaft (not my penis).
i'm having problems identifying a small cyst that i get every once in a great blue moon.
i like to call it a lollipop cyst because it looks like a really small lollipop.
so, it's basically a small cyst at the tip of a really small shaft (not my penis).
