I got an invitation to the Memorial today. Two male JWs (one older one and a young one) came to my door and opened with a question about "did I know who the world’s greatest man was?" as one handed me the printed invitation sheet. However, during this visit they did something seemingly very unusual (from what I’ve read in JWD).
I couldn’t come up with a good, pertinent name so I told him "Charleton Heston the actor." That should have been their clue that I was gonna be an annoyance for them. The old guy seemed amused.
All the while I conducted myself in a joking manner like they were being facetious with me. They were pleasant and the kid was mostly silent until he’d add something to counter something I said.
I told them that I was pretty much an atheist and found fault with ALL organized religions. I was an equal-opportunity religion-hater. I also asked why they spent so much time in the Old Testament.
So they then went to the New Testament and read a passage with the name jehovah in it. I told them about the name not being in the original manuscripts which got the kid’s attention.
In a rather condescending tone, he told me he could prove it had been removed. I replied "No you can’t. I have it from your own publications (I couldn’t remember all the specifics ‘cause they haven’t been around in a while and I was a little rusty...) that Fred Franz added it to the NWT."
He told me it wasn’t JW literature but probably apostate literature. I told him it wasn’t and I could give the exact magazine issue so he could go look it up himself. He didn’t seem enthused.
They tried some F&DS stories, some Adam & Eve stories, some Noah stories, some Job stories and on and on. I told them the bible was a good story book to fascinate and control primitive peoples thousands of years ago but held no real interest to a modern person. (This agitated the kid...)
I said I found the excessive violence unnecessary and despicable. Jehovah was a bad guy for things like killing 42 children for taunting a bald man and stuff like killing 70,000 for something as simple as a census.
We went back and forth joking and me even making the old guy laugh a bit (the kid just looked annoyed) with all my irreverent comments. I admitted to having done a LOT of reading about JW. I said I might have even spent more time reading and studying than the young boy years ago because of an involvement I had had with a woman who had joined.
I asked about the predicted "End" in 1975. The older guy said he was a JW then and remembered. I asked him if that wasn’t a false prophecy.
He side-stepped it with the "they just suggested some things might happen" line and I didn’t feel like getting too involved so let it go. The kid kept trying to convince me that anybody (your everyday apostate) could print something and put the WTS name on it. Neither the old guy nor I gave him any attention for this statement.
We went round and round about A&E and the snake. I said the J-man lied ‘cause he told them "they would surely die on that day" if they ate the fruit. The kid tried "a day is like a 1000 years to jehovah" so they DID die "on that day" because they only lived 900 or so more years.
I said that first, living 900 years was a crock. I said it spooked the primitives who also believed the earth was flat and the sun revolved around it. He actually started on 1914 and said they could prove it from the bible!
I said that all such "invisible" stuff was just craziness, that no one could prove anything involving invisibility. I also told him that using a list of their own publications (again) and some simple arithmetic (AlleyMom’s now-legendary post) that I could actually disprove 607. All without resorting to invisibility!
That’s when the unusual event happened. (Yes, I’m finally getting to it!) The old guy admitted that you had to be a JW to make it past the Big ‘A’. He tried but didn’t really do a lot to obscure the matter and finally gave me a simple yes or no. I told him I appreciated his honesty and that he was the first who called on me to say that.
Junior tried some comments about it couldn’t be JWs and were probably apostates. I tried to describe the folks who had been here previously because they were from the same congregation! The previous folks had even left the Creation book with me.
Old dude tried for a RV but I told him he would be wasting his time and that I would just probably make him mad. He said he didn’t get mad. (He doesn’t know what a hard-headed a-hole I am!)
They left in a reasonably good mood. I doubt I made much impact but I did manage to amuse myself with some mental gymnastics for 20 minutes or so. They were persistent.
I hope the old guy doesn’t get in any trouble for saying what he did. I think he seemed amused, too. All-in-all it was an interesting morning.