A religion with nothing to Celebrate

eyeslice

How sad that the Witnesses have nothing to celebrate. The more I think about it since I stopped going to the meetings, the more I feel that spirituality and religion are about opportunities to give thanks and to celebrate life with family and friends.

Christenings or name giving ceremonies celebrate the gift of a new life to a family. Thanksgiving and harvest festivals celebrate the gift of food and provisions for another year. I want to celebrate my dad's 80th birthday in a few years time; not because as the Society would say it glorifies an individual, but to celebrate his life and what he has done and what he means to our family. I would like to re-affairm my marriage vows on important anniversaries every few decades.

Sadly, the only religious celebration of the Witnesses - the memorial - is a somber affair. The hopeful message of 'Christ has risen' is never heralded but rather all we got was the doom and gloom of what awaits those who do not submit to Jehovah's (aka the Society's) will.

Eyeslice

Golf

When you know what it takes to control people, you stick with it. Socialism, communism and democracy all one and the same with just a different dressing, one more palatable than the other.

ozziepost

Golf,

I don't understand that. Surely by the same line of reasoning, everything is included. Kinda nihilistic??

Ozzie

kwintestal

It really lacks culture doesn't it. These holidays aren't just excuses to get together, endulge in gluttony, and consume massive quantities of alcohol. They are important parts of our social structure. History and even the bible makes sure when they tell the account of a civilization, they tell about the parties. Mind you, 1000 years from now, will the WTS be in the history books?

Kwin

ozziepost

G'day Eyeslice,

You make some good points and i especially took note of this:

the only religious celebration of the Witnesses - the memorial - is a somber affair. The hopeful message of 'Christ has risen' is never heralded but rather all we got was the doom and gloom of what awaits those who do not submit to Jehovah's (aka the Society's) will.

Mrs Ozzie and I have often spoken of this for our experience in recent years has revealed to us the gulf between the so-called "Truth" and the others. Paradoxically the Witnesses can only experience a depressing message whilst at the same time claiming that they have found "true christian freedom".

You are right to highlight the absence of celebration in a dub life. Even wedding anniversaries are supposed to be a private affair and all other celebration are forbidden. No wonder a dub has such a jaundiced view of life.

Compare this with the joy and exulting that many enjoy in their religious experience. I suppose one could say the dubs have nothing to celebrate because there is nothing to celebrate for them - if you see what i mean!

Cheers, Ozzie

garybuss

Good post. As a child of Witness parents, I lacked rites of passage. There were really no milestones to acknowledge the levels on the way to adulthood in the Witness culture. My theory is that is one reason why so many Witness youths act out by smoking and other drug use. Witness youth are really no different than other youths, except they are better at hiding what they do from years of practice to survive.

By the removal of all things a child looks forward to like birthdays and Christmas, and forcing the children to act as miniature adults in a secular multi marketing business, they lack structure and realistic role models . . . heroes. The role models they do have are all acting and the children try to mimic a facade. It's a set up.

A society is measured by how it benefits it's people. If the Witness movement was a government with their own country, they would be viewed by the rational world as one of the worst on the planet. They are identified by mental illnesses, broken families, a depressed economy, submission to a dictatorship called a theocracy, they have irrational, delusional goals, and wealthy leaders living in opulent communes.

An environment that confines space, controls associations, limits information, and where all activities focus on achieving the goals of the leaders to the detriment of the people is not a society, it's a prison. And people plot ways to break out of prisons.

`

Scully

I was just thinking about this the other day actually.

It made me very sad, as I pondered my life as a JW, that there weren't any milestones like special birthdays (the ones that end in "0" or a Sweet 16 or the one where I became "legal" to have a glass of wine in a restaurant)... no baby showers to welcome my daughters... no "baby's first Christmas" ornaments... no photos of first birthdays... no Easter egg hunts. My kids see those kinds of pictures in their friends' photo albums and the wonder why they don't have any like those in our photo albums.

All those pre-JW photos that my parents took were destroyed... but I remember having Christmas and Easter and birthdays between the ages of 3 and 7. The JW part of my childhood is a blur - the only things that stand out are horribly negative events, technically referred to as Persecution For Righteousness' Sake?. Things like being threatened with a gun at my first door in service. Things like being hauled to my feet by the hair on the back of my neck at a school assembly during the National Anthem. Things like having an egg smashed in my hair because I didn't celebrate Hallowe'en.

Why on earth would any parent want their child to have memories like those?

Love, Scully

Will Power

Gary: good point about the prison - and too bad Lifers are afraid to leave - like the Shawshank movie

It is sad that they see nothing to celebrate without attaching some taboo to it.

We all know that this mental attitutde is started asap with the little "ones". This keeps family ties to a minimum and dependency on the WT to the max. How will they know how to react to any situation without the direction of the society? gag.

You certainly wouldn't want a troof christian to see how happy family get-togethers are in the false christian's homes. That might get people thinking - Hey I want some fun family love in my life.

Re: Celebrating the death of Christ with a ritual and ignoring the resurrection is pretty anti-christ to me.

And they have the nerve to to say "if He was killed with a gun would you wear that around your neck?" Next time I hear that I might say "and the death is more important than the life?" He was still alive when he said Do this in memory of me. ie my life, the bread of life blah blah.

sorry, its sunday HA

blondie

Re: Celebrating the death of Christ with a ritual and ignoring the resurrection is pretty anti-christ to me.

That is something I wondered for years, why is the resurrection left out. If Jesus had not been resurrected to go to heaven to give God the value of his sacrifice, the anointed would have nothing to inherit and not to celebrate these last 2000 years.

I always wondered too why people were being invited to event and then told all they could do is watch others eat and drink, to be reminded that they were second-class.

Blondie (celebrating her 2nd Xmas and first tree)

iiz2cool

When you think about it, it's a sad existance they have. They work, eat, shit, and die just like any other animal. The only difference is that they do it all for a corporation, because it is supposed to be the focal point in their lives. No wonder they have nothing to celebrate.

If I placed? a lot of magazines I used to celebrate by going to a chinese buffet.

Sad.

Walter

A religion with nothing to Celebrate

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