Am I remembering things differently? Has the society gotten worse? From some of the posts I've read over the last couple of weeks my jaw has just dropped at the lack of love and the outright cruelty inflicted on those who have left or were DFed. Every time I think something was so immoral and the worst someone else comes along and my jaw is on the floor again.
Hi Lady Lee
I was disfellowshipped thirty-three years ago, and I do not remember anything much besides being terrified of the god and terrified of descriptions of the horrors of the Armaggedon to come, preaching of terror of the god, going door to door to earn the favor of the terrifying god, cruel elders with their spies sniffing about to 'get' something on someone, terror of the god, everyone spying on each other, terror of the god, reporting to the elders, terror of the god, whispering campaigns, terror of the god, judgementalism, terror of the god, and did I mention terror of the god?
When you have a genocidal, maniacal, murdering, mercurial, despot that demands absolute unquestioning obeisance and obedience, what do you expect? We become like that which we give the highest place in our minds and hearts and lives. If one worships the cosmic lunatic Jehovah, one will ape the cosmic lunatic Jehovah. I need point no further than the WTBTS.
Nathaniel J. Merritt Met. D.
http://jcnot4me.com/Items/theology/JEHOVAH_UNMASKED/jehovah_unmasked.htm
Is it me or has the WTS gotten worse?
by Lady Lee 42 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Nate Merit
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Cygnus
stillajw is correct, the organization is no longer run by men who love God and love their neighbor, but is run by men who are becoming worried that God has been relatively silent for some 20 years regarding anything worth making a decent defense of the faith besides a web presence that barely resembles anything other than a slick presentation of their most infantile literature, a God that cares so less to even allowing Brother Franz to wither away and die and then have all his expectations turn to dust, and, men who care more about the bottom line and 'going by the book' rather than the spirit of the law.
the camaraderie, the sense of fun and accomplishment
Gone. Elders not long ago enjoyed this, even meeting socially and diving into deep study of the Bible for those feelings, and you never hear of that occuring any longer. Unless you're new and starved for sociality and structure, JWism has become boring and even a hardship. It's sad. For all its flaws, which have reached to heaven, it still had a brotherhood it could be proud of. Now people either fit the mold, or figure out ways to be a personality and get away with it via politics. The complaints of JWs who've been in it for more than 20 years are becoming more vocal, and less important. Their heritage is become unrecognizable and they're getting tired of the direction of the chariot. But the machine presses on with greater efficiency and enough money, invested wisely, to continue growth.
By 2025 this religion will be completely changed from how it was in 1985, in nearly every respect.
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Nate Merit
The Kingdom Hall I attended (is 'attended' the right term? it's been 33 years) was literally a brick box. No windows, a glass door in the front, and two steel doors in the back. The second floor was used for storage. This was a large building, and could easily have held three to four times as many people than it did when the white people (myself included) met. There were two other congregations that used the hall. The black unit and the hispanic unit. The whites didnt like the blacks and vice versa, and the hispanics didnt like either one. The hispanics called themselves the "spanish speaking congregation" but none of them spoke spanish as their primary language, and their meetings were all in English, as was the literature they distributed.
All three 'units' met at different times in the same building so they didn't have to rub elbows. Welcome to the New World Society of Jehovah's Bigots.
Nate