...that only people from those countries can lead 'his organization'.
A few years ago, one conversation stopper people would often bring up to jws in my country is: 'you guys are an American religion'. The standard answer we were formatted to give to shoot that down was that "God does not favor any nationality over others. However some countries do possess some advantages needed for the advancement of the divine work. The USA present assets such as their freedom of speech, economic and political stability. Those and other reasons explain why our religion is based in the USA even though it's a wordwide brotherhood."
That's such a lie! The religion isn't just based in the US. The vast majority of its leaders (or whatever they call themselves) are Americans, or are at least people from Europe, North America and other western countries.
This is a religion of about 8 million people accross this planet, present in almost all countries and all continents and islands. And God hasn't found anyone else, apart from people from a handful rich western countries to direct 'his organization!'. No one from Vanuatu, Taiwan, Madagascar, Yemen, Mongolia, etc, is worthy of being part of the small group of people who make decisions affecting the lives of ALL the people living in these parts of the planet and many more? Wow
They write to the congregations throughout the world, pretending to follow the model of Paul. Paul did not only write letters to those congregations. He visited the places personnally and spent some time with the people in there; so he knew their realities and gave advice matching their needs, or at least their realities. I guess it would have been a whole lot different if Paul was born in Rome, grew up in Rome, knew personnally only about Roman realities and culture, and had taken a comfortable office in Rome and started spewing things out the way the GB does.
Spewing things about how these christians were to live, work amd worship, solely taking as reference his Roman background, culture and experience.
I live in a country where the mere notion of 'part time job' is non existent. How do you want people to pioneer and go use something that does not exist to take care of themselves?
where I leave, people do their own cleaning, errand running etc. So there's absolutely nothing like petty jobs to do to sustain oneself. You have to get fairly trained, merely so that you can just stand the chance to apply for a steady full time job.
where I live, we have to pay for EVERY SINGLE THING! For your kids' education ( from kindergarten to high school isn't free), you have to pay fees, even in the public schools. If you're sick and dying, there's no effective health care system to help you. You stay in your house and die if your family and friends can't hlep you with money. Pregnant women are turned away from hospitals if they can't pay to deliver their babies! If they came in too late, and the hospital staff helps them deliver, the mother and baby are kept in the hospital, sometimes for years, waiting for relatives/charitable souls to come, pay the childbirth fees and 'free them'.
There is no organized social support system to help out the needy ones. No social accomodations, no food stamps, no refuge for the homeless where they can eat... NOTHING!!! The only option everyone around here has...is to WORK.
Jws here like to recite paragraphs parroting the GB's stand on education and 'materialism'. But deep down, they know that's just theory for us. Our realities are just too different.
Here 3 suggestions to alleviate this problem...in case any of the 'top leaders' is reading:
1. The GB should consider the diversity factor when voting new members in...I'm sure if the whole thing was truly divinely inspired, Jah wouldn't have restricted so much the geographical locations to pick honest hearted folks from.
2. GB members should consider rotating in countries, staying for 3-5 years on a different continent. Unless the antenna receiving the holy spirit can only work in Brooklyn. When living in different countries, they shouldn't live in bethel/ missionary homes, because these do not reflect the reality of the places. They should live life as the local people are living it...everyday.
Then and only then can they say thing which begin to make sense for some of us.
3. In case they refuse to do these things, jws living outside the western world should consider changing religions. Just too bad no one else is promising us the magic paradise.
For the meantime, poor us will strive to continue worshipping God with people whose heads are in the clouds, their bodies in the US, but whose mouths are in every business of ours.
T in a T