...between a group of people who wear sandwich board signs, hold up signs, hand out handbills or put up billboards with the messages of:
"Religion is a snare and a racket"; " Millions now living will never die"; "Live forever in paradise"
and people who hold up signs, hand out handbills or put up billboards that say:
"Jehovah's Witnesses break up familes"; Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult"; Jehovah's Witnesses kill babies"
This isn't in defense of JWs as a cult or religion or whatever. The JW religion, as organized by the Watchtower Society is a cult. Their basis of belief is based on erroneous teachings and doctrines. No argument there.
The facts behind the signs of the anti-JW protestors are actually more factual than the JW signs ever were. Families are broken up; they are a cult and their blood doctrine results in the death of babies, children and adults. No argument with the factual information.
It's the process with which these protestors go about trying to share their message that confuses me.
Let's face it... the WT version of signs, billboards and door-to-door preaching doesn't work. Never has. For all the millions and millions and millions of hours over a hundred years of these types of campaigns they only have about 7 million members. That's a poor return on time and labor. We've discussed it before about the waste of time and energy it is.
So how is it that a group of anti-JWs think that the same exact presentations is going to work for them?
In addition to the futility of this campaign is the preception of people, the masses of non-JWs, that actually do see you. Just as the average, normal thinking person dismissed/dismisses JWs as fringe religious nuts, then the average, normal thinking person is going to dismiss these kinds of protests as ridiculous, and the protestors as fringe lunatics out of touch with reality. And in a way, they are. JWs are a speck in the world. They are inconsequential. They aren't anything except to those who are affected by them. So when the rest of the 'world' sees a couple of people, or even a few, holding up signs on the side of a road, in the snow and cold, they don't see the message on the sign. They don't take note of the too long to write down website. They think, "What a bunch of nuts. Why don't they get a life?"
Good question. Why not get a life? Sure...most of us on this board have been affected by this religion and it's fucked up rules and doctrines. But if you're so consumed with hatred for them that you'll spend excessive amounts of time and energy to try to expose any and all things about this religion, you're coming a little unhinged. It's one thing to come on a message board and share your experiences or associate with others who understand the pressures of having been a JW. You might even get to help a newly freed JW. It's quite another to go to the lengths of staging protests, conducting so-called conference calls, etc. Even though you're not turning in time to the WTS for preaching for them, you're expending as much, if not more, time and energy because of them...which means they still have too much hold on you. There comes a time to let it go. Live life as a person free of the WT's influence, don't live a life of hate or protest... because they still control you as long as give in to that.
