I posted a thread earlier this week about a conversation I had with my JW ex-wife. The next day I sent her this e-mail. I tried to be nice in it, but I also wanted to get across that the superior attitude she showed about a lot of things (JWs and JW morality is better than anyone else's sort of thing) wasn't entirely justified. She hasn't replied, which doesn't surprise me. I'm sure she's upset that I sent it, but she was the one telling me that there was nothing preventing her from doing all the research she wanted.
Below is the text of the e-mail - sorry for the length:
I hope you weren't too disturbed by our conversation last night. BUT, that freewheeling give and take type of discussion is just what you can't do if you're a Witness, and what I've come to love after leaving. It takes real courage on your part to discuss your beliefs like that, but it's a very freeing thing.
One should never be afraid of ideas. Without fear, good ideas will thrive and bad ideas will die. Fear of thinking, discussing, questioning is the worst kind of slavery, and leads to slavery of all sorts.
Tons of people who leave the Witnesses are hungry for that sort of thing - to be able to freely discuss their ideas in the rough and tumble of public discourse without fear that it will get them in trouble. Put your ideas out there, and defend them. If there is no way to support them, that become obvious pretty quickly - and you can adjust your thinking accordingly.
That can't happen if you're a JW. You can't change the things for which there is no proof, or for which there is abundant evidence to the contrary, because the whole thing collapses then.
An example:
The Society knows that there is no evidence for their date of 607 for the fall of Jerusalem, in fact ALL the evidence, and there is considerable, proves another date all together. But the WTS can't change their date because that's the only way they can come up with 1914. Most Witnesses have no idea that Russell originally came up with the 1914 date using pyramidology, which the WTS now considers spiritism!
Many, many a brother has gone to the Society with the evidence against 607, and all were rejected and most are out now. So the WTS is in the position of using a date for which there is no support in order to come up with a date that was originally arrived at through pyramidology! How ironic. Do a google search of "Pastor Russell's grave" if you don't believe me. He was buried under a huge pyramid - and it's all covered with Masonic symbols! Pyramidology was a part of Witness belief well into the Rutherford era.
Another example. I have a friend who wrote the WTS several very respectful letters over a period of years with all the scientific evidence proving there could not have been a worldwide flood 4000 years ago. The evidence comes from several branches of science and is irrefutable. The Society defended its view by quoting from a "science" text that, when the brother looked into it, was a book written in the 1700s! They really had no response to this brother's questions and he ended up posting all his letters and the WTS's responses on a website.
Those are the sort of things I was talking about last night. The Society can't change a lot of things that it can no longer support. If you change the 607 date, you lose 1914, If you lose that, you lose 1918, which is the date the Society claims Jehovah picked them as his spokesman on Earth, which is where they get all of their authority from.
Also if the Flood didn't happen then Jesus was obviously wrong in referring to it, which can't be if he was a perfect person. Or if people existed prior to God creating Adam 6,033 years ago, then the whole Genesis account is just a myth, and if it is then there is no need for a new Adam in Jesus if there was never an old Adam living as a perfect man in Eden. And of course, there is tons of evidence all over the globe of people being around tens of thousands of years before Adam was supposedly created. You can prove it dozens of different ways.
That is the "house of cards" I was referring to. Disprove one part of WTS theology, and boom, the whole structure collapses. The WTS has locked itself into an indefensible, literalist position. Anyone who takes the time to actually research this stuff (one hour or three!!) and you don't turn into a pumpkin, you just get a realistic understanding of what the WTS really is, AND what it's not.
This is what you'll find. Jehovah's Witnesses are just another religion, (claiming like all the rest do that it alone has the truth) connected with a huge publishing corporation, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Incorporated, and directed by what used to be the corporation's board of directors, now known as the Governing Body. The GB has appointed itself as God's spokesman on earth - and the claim itself is used as the evidence that it happened. It's a circular reasoning: "We're God's spokesman, and how do we know that? Because we say so, and we're God's spokesman."
That in a nutshell is what a few hours of research will reveal. You will also discover that the WTS has the absolute worst record among religions for it's prophecies – not ONE of the things the Society originally claimed would happen in 1875, 1914, 1915, 1918, 1925, 1950, 1975, 1995 or by the end of the 20th Century, has happened. That takes some careful research to discover because the Society tends to rewrite it's history from time to time, changing things around and leaving things out. I'll bet not one in a thousand Witnesses knows what the WTS actually said was going to happen in 1914. It wasn't the return of Christ – they said then that that had happened in the 1780s! In fact, if you taught now 90% of what the WTS was teaching in 1918 when they were supposedly picked by God to be his chosen group, you'd be disfellowshipped for apostasy! By the way, this system was supposed to have ended in 1914.
But wait, you might think,"The Witnesses are the only group preaching God's kingdom door to door. Doesn't that prove we're the only true religion?"
Not really. Lots of groups go door to door. In reality, in this day and age, door to door preaching is mostly a huge waste of time, because most people aren't at home. It uses up massive amounts of gas basically knocking on empty houses. You and I know that from our years of Pioneering! One television evangelist probably contacts more people in one broadcast than a congregation of Witnesses does in a year! The Pentecostalists started about the same time that the JWs did in the 1800s. Today the Witnesses have 6 million members, the Pentecostals claim 500 million members!
I also know for a fact that the GB did an in-depth study of the concept of door-to-door preaching in the Bible that showed that all the house-to-house references in the Bible do not refer to the preaching work, but to other activities. A majority on the GB voted to do nothing with that info as it would be too disturbing to the friends. That's how the GB make decisions - based on a 3/4 majority vote. The h-to-h work is not a Biblically backed indication of a true religion.
If you want to remain a member, that's fine, just do it with your eyes open. The Witnesses provide a great social community in some ways, as long as you don't rock the boat. Just be realistic about it - they are nothing special, and science and the free access to massive amounts of information and education will eventually doom literalist religions like this over the next few centuries.
That's a good reason to be careful about feeling superior to non-Witnesses and judging people for not living according to Witness standards. Anyone with even a basic understanding of modern science sees the Witnesses as a scientifically ignorant group of people who base their lives on an ancient mythology that they take as literal fact. It's no surprise that the PEW Survey I mentioned last night found that the religious group in the US with the lowest level of education among its members were the Witnesses.
High on the list of things that people who leave the Witnesses found disturbing was the arrogance among the Witnesses, this feeling that they are right and everyone else is wrong. People refer to it as the "window washer with no college education making fun of the scientist with a lifetime of research" mentality that they find hard to swallow.
How long can a religion keep a sense of urgency in its members that the "end is right around the corner, " or that we're living in the last minutes of the last days, when they've been saying that for going on to a century and a half now? They were saying we're in the last minutes of the last days when I was a kid in the 1960s! You were saying something similar last night. People grow tired of that when nothing really ever happens.
It's part of the reason they're cutting down meeting times. People need a break. Shorten the Public Talk, lump the Book Study in with Thursday night and shorten all those meetings. If things were really urgent, you'd think they'd be doing the opposite, "drawing together all the more so as the end draws near." But the friends are tired and I think the sense of urgency was lost a long time ago after 1975 came and went with nothing happening.
When the "80 years from 1914" slipped through without a whimper in 1994, and the WTS changed that whole generation teaching in 1995 to an open-ended time frame, and then changed their statement that the preaching work would be completed in the 20th Century, it became impossible to maintain that urgency.
Remain a Witness for your friends and social network and activities, but just be very careful making important decisions based on what the WTS tells you. The blood policy is a mess and hardly understood by anyone in the JW rank and file. It has changed dozens of times over the years, and there are very few that have kept up with or that understand the changes. How can anyone make a life and death decision based on that - especially for a kid? And now this attack on higher education. I feel very sorry for Witness young people today, having to deal with that.
Take everything with a grain of salt and don't be afraid to question anything - just do it quietly to stay out of trouble! Demonizing the Internet, claiming that all information critical of the Witnesses is lies inspired by Satan, discouraging ANY research outside of what the WTS provides, consolidating the meetings, starting to publish a "private" edition of the Watchtower for Witnesses only, once again strongly discouraging higher education - all of this smacks of a desperate attempt at "information control," a not unusual process for a high control group like the Witnesses.
Just be aware of what it is. You say you're free to research anything you want, but you are also well aware that doing so will get you in trouble with the elders if they happen to find out. If you discover something that disturbs you or that factually contradicts what the WTS says, and you publicly comment on that, you can be disfellowshipped. Fear is a strong motivating force, and it's keeping a lot of Witnesses very quiet about things that don't make sense to them.
Wow, that's a bunch of stuff!! But I strongly believe that one should never be afraid of information and facts. Anything or anyone that makes you afraid of learning about something, reading something or researching something should set off a huge alarm in your head. The only reason to try to limit someone's access to information is a fear of what they'll find out.
I'm glad you're not afraid.
S4
E-mail to JW Ex-Wife: What You Can Learn Researching the WTS in 3 Hours!
by Seeker4 86 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Seeker4
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Liberty
Wow Seeker4,
Great list of easy to see problems that the Watch Tower can't truthfully address or excuse away.
What a load when a JW claims they are free to research anything they want. This is true only if they don't get caught and keep their findings quietly to themselves.
I really liked the factual tone. Good job. Let us hope your ex will see the light and free herself from this nonsense with your helpful information.
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reniaa
hi seeker, I like your post a lot of which I agree with,
I'm a person that can see the mistakes the watchtower does and it saddens me yet I am still drawn back in because of the beliefs, (aside from the date thing which i think they have just made a hogwash of) the hardest thing for a religion to do is get rid of the dead wrongful part of their teachings they have accumulated over time, you can see that with trinity with other christianity groups and 607/1914 with witnesses, I've been thinking all night how Jw's could drop the date issue and blood, soften the shunning and allow higher education without losing a lot of members. Religions need to change and grow and it's time JW's had a makeover, they did it in the past they just got to learn how to do it now.
They still got jehovah going for them and thats more than the others.
The only thing I disagree with on your post is the education thing because despite witnesses not doing higher education, I think as an organisation you are taught to a higher level skills reading writing etc and this shows, they may get stuck in deadend low paid jobs but i bet the average witness IQ is quite high,
I myself have only had basic education but found that reading skills i learned in the JWs made me a different person than I would have been. I actually think Jw's teach you to be analytical thinkers but this is a shot in the foot because then you can analyse them and so see were they are wrong, thats why i say they are better having a makeover and getting rid of the deadwood teachings.
I wouldn't discourage college education because I think there is arguebly a bible principle for allowing it which is jehovah allowing jesus to reach 30 before he came into his inheritance thus he had a full life and job training :)
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easyreader1970
they may get stuck in deadend low paid jobs but i bet the average witness IQ is quite high
If you have a high IQ and are perpetually stuck in a dead end, low paying job, what good is the IQ?
I think that discouraging its members, its young people, from seeking a higher education is the worst crime that the organization has committed. Even worse than the blood job they are doing on people. The blood doctrine affects relatively few people. Telling people that nothing good can come from higher education is damning to just about everyone who believes it. Worse yet, they will actually show pictures of people in their literature happily doing things like mopping floors and such.
How many people do you know who can support a family doing Broom Duty?
Oh wait. Jehovah provides the "necessities of life". That means you should be able to afford 10 year old blue jeans from the Goodwill, ramen noodles for dinner, and a 1973 Datsun. Anything more than that is pursuit of riches.
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easyreader1970
they may get stuck in deadend low paid jobs but i bet the average witness IQ is quite high
If you have a high IQ and are perpetually stuck in a dead end, low paying job, what good is the IQ?
I think that discouraging its members, its young people, from seeking a higher education is the worst crime that the organization has committed. Even worse than the blood job they are doing on people. The blood doctrine affects relatively few people. Telling people that nothing good can come from higher education is damning to just about everyone who believes it. Worse yet, they will actually show pictures of people in their literature happily doing things like mopping floors and such.
How many people do you know who can support a family doing Broom Duty?
Oh wait. Jehovah provides the "necessities of life". That means you should be able to afford 10 year old blue jeans from the Goodwill, ramen noodles for dinner, and a 1973 Datsun. Anything more than that is pursuit of riches.
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Sorry for the double-post. I hit Submit too excitedly.
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coolhandluke
Nice! I might steal this one day for my mom.
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reniaa
I agree with you easyreader and they should allow higher education, they are held back by a few core aging teachings that need to be pruned and that is one of them, but it may take some younger men coming through to the GB to achieve it. I think it is a necessity to the organisations growth.
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flipper
SEEKER 4- Great e-mail to your ex-wife ! I truly hope she does do research on the things you stated and opens her mind up to the facts you present to her . Good job !
RENIAA- In your comment about Jehovah's Witnesses where you said, " They still got Jehovah going for them, and that's more than the others. " I respectfully disagree. Can you explain to me how Jehovah or God would approve an organization that has covered over child abuse and allowed innocent children to continue to be abused ? And keeping pedophiles in congregations , being allowed to make new starts in other congregations- with no checkpoints ? How much better are the Jehovah's Witnesses than the Catholics- whom they condemn, by the way, by not reporting child abusers to the police - just to save face of a hypocritical organization to the public's eye?
And your comment that , " I actually think JW's teach you to be analytical thinkers "? Please, come on. How are Jehovah's Witnesses able to be analytical thinkers- when the only material they are allowed to analyze is their own prejudiced materials in the societies publications ? They are forbidden as of last September to do any outside research to help them analyze anything ! Let alone whether their beliefs are correct or not ! I truly feel you perhaps need to open your mind up a little more to all the information available describing in detail what really is going on in the Jehovah's Witnesses organization. Perhaps it will enlighten your analytical thinking a bit -
reniaa
I respect your opinion but one thing i would say to support my education statement is look at the ex-elders, ex-Ms and just ex Jw's on here, they all come across as intelligent inc yourself, Even if you can only read Jw books rightly or wrongly the way you are made to study and analyse them constantly will impact on your mind,
lol I can see a "Yeah in a bad way" coming from that but just step back and think of how all the constant studying does make you able to read and write more lucidly think more deeper on subjects etc. thats my personal experience possibly more noticeable for me because i was brought up on a council estate/ghetto and found my speech from reading and the way i looked at things also kept me apart from my peers in many ways after I left Jws
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Awakened at Gilead
it may take some younger men coming through to the GB to achieve it.
Nice to see you're still here Reniaa and you haven't gone back to the darkside yet...lol
But think about what you said... it'll come true since now anyone can be anointed... even a 15yr old newly baptized kid can be anointed.... so they'll have plenty of anointeds to pick from to rejuvenate the GB and renovate their teachings.. they just have to pick the right people for the GB and they can do what they want. Here in America much of what is legal depends on what the supreme court's composition is. Once one dies, the liberal/conservative balance can be swayed. The same thing happens with the GB... that's not wrong in itself, but it shows that Jehovah's spirit is not running things if Jehovah needs someone to die to place a new member on the Board of Directors of the JWs to get his "will" done.
S4, sorry to change the subject, but I couldn't help but respond to reniaa...
I liked your email, you brought up great points...It's true, in an hour or 2 if you do the resaerch you can destroy your whole JW faith!