I understand a distinction you're providing, unshackled. Shunning by any estimation is dispicable behaviour. It is so transparently a deliberate control mechanism of the Watchtower that one cannot but detest it. I struggle with this myself because it has been only recently that my wife has begun to shun her nephew. I know she dislikes doing it, she knows that I greatly dislike her doing it, but she does it anyway because she is told to. It's not as if anything much has changed. We moved around a lot for 15 years and saw him only once in all that time. He is not a close family member, but still a family member. Despite the periodic blowups over the past 33 years I was settling into a kind of laissez faire attitude. I had no problem with what she believed until it started hurting someone, and it was when my wife refused to be in the same house with our nephew who announced a visit is when I decided to join this board and try to figure out a way to get her out. These people are under the mind control of the Watchtower. Call it or label it any way you want. Once I graduate from the I'm-here-to-learn crowd to the I'm-here-to-help crowd I'm going to want to have the best ability one can to help people leave. First thing one has to learn is you can't snap them out of it with hate.
Sleeping with the enemy
by Nickolas 86 Replies latest jw friends
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AGuest
First thing one has to learn is you can't snap them out of it with hate.
Nor should one want to, dear Nick (again, peace to you!)... because that really is THEIR underlying foundation, yes? Even though most of them can't/don't see that, of course. Some believe in fighting fire with fire, though. Yet, sometimes doing that causes the whole dang thing to burn down. Water, then? Methinks so - better to cool things down... (Smile).
Peace!
A slave of Christ,
SA
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Nickolas
Nor should one want to, dear Nick (again, peace to you!)... because that really is THEIR underlying foundation, yes? Even though most of them can't/don't see that, of course. Some believe in fighting fire with fire, though. Yet, sometimes doing that causes the whole dang thing to burn down. Water, then? Methinks so - better to cool things down... (Smile).
I'm seeing an entirely different side of you, Shelby. Thank you for being so forthwright.
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sabastious
where does one draw the line between an R&F member being just an innocent victim or fully responsible for their choices and actions?
If someone broke into my house in the night I would not hesitate to bash their head in with a baseball bat. I'm not a violent person at all, but I strongly believe that there has to be an extreme reason not to break into someone's house. Sure there are reasons for the person doing it, sometimes desperate reasons. I could sit there, like a duck, and analyze the ethics of the matter or I could just swing in protection of my family. Apprehending these types, locking them up for long enough to develop a good grudge with the system, and then setting them free hasn't historically done the trick. At some point you got to protect yourself or even your society.
High control groups that practice child indoctrination and shunning are detrimental to society and in many circumstances the individual. Where the line is drawn is when the "victims" overstep the boundries that society and civilization has set. Every Witness parent is a potential manslaughterer of children, this is an important point when assigning them worth as a community.
I can't help but think of the experience Ray Franz wrote about in CoC. He wrote about Rutherford calling up ALL the children in the convention auditorium and telling them that the convention they were attending might be there last. It's been decades since he did that. He used wildly irresponsible and blatant fear mongering to extort the minds of developing children with their parents clapping in approval from the crowd.
Theses are the roots of my family and all other JW families. Any one of them could pick up Russell and Rutherford's books on Google Books, but they choose not to. Any one of them could spend a half an hour googling Jehovah's Witnesses and find out the truth. They are terrifed of their past, as well as their present, and they don't want to have to reconcile it's oddities, and beyond, within their minds. So they avoid it all and SHUN anyone who sees it for what it truly is. That's sickening mind control or no mind control.
They nit pick daily about the PEOPLE that they live amongst. Their dress, their grooming, their choice of entertainment, their bioligical and sexual needs; they ridicule all of it while they live in ignorant hypocrisy. They hate the world around them and they define the world as anything nonJW. They are frightened just as a burglar would be in my living room at 3:00 am. He needs the money and Witnesses need hope. Both have their reasons and both could be willing to kill for them. Should we swing? Each household is different.
-Sab
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Nickolas
If someone broke into my house in the night I would not hesitate to bash their head in with a baseball bat. I'm not a violent person at all, but I strongly believe that there has to be an extreme reason not to break into someone's house. Sure there are reasons for the person doing it, sometimes desperate reasons. I could sit there, like a duck, and analyze the ethics of the matter or I could just swing in protection of my family. Apprehending these types, locking them up for long enough to develop a good grudge with the system, and then setting them free hasn't historically done the trick. At some point you got to protect yourself or even your society.
In many, if not most, jurisdictions outside of the USA, this will land you in jail and then you'd have to prove defense of life and limb in court. If the burglar turned out to be a 15 year old kid looking to steal your iPod, it would be best if you have a really good lawyer.
Rutherford calling up ALL the children in the convention auditorium and telling them that the convention they were attending might be there last. It's been decades since he did that. He used wildly irresponsible and blatant fear mongering to extort the minds of developing children with their parents clapping in approval from the crowd.
Rutherford is guilty as charged. Those kids are innocent. Their parents are brainwashed.
They nit pick daily about the PEOPLE that they live amongst. Their dress, their grooming, their choice of entertainment, their bioligical and sexual needs; they ridicule all of it while they live in ignorant hypocrisy. They hate the world around them and they define the world as anything nonJW. They are frightened just as a burglar would be in my living room at 3:00 am. He needs the money and Witnesses need hope. Both have their reasons and both could be willing to kill for them. Should we swing? Each household is different.
You are generalising. I don't experience any of this first hand. Are my JWs different from yours? Or is it that I am just different from you?
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sabastious
You are generalising. I don't experience any of this first hand. Are my JWs different from yours? Or is it that I am just different from you?
The Watchtower does the generalizing and the R&F follow the Watchtower because they have compelling reasons to as you know. Have you ever been to a Circuit Overseer talk at the end of his visit? Or a visiting speaker from Bethel? One of their goals is to stifle any interest in the outside world the members are showing by demonizing them mostly with childish ad hominem. Dress and grooming, entertainment or anything else he has heard is a "problem" will make it on the chopping block for his final discourse.
They are taught to hate.
-Sab
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sabastious
Rutherford is guilty as charged. Those kids are innocent. Their parents are brainwashed.
They were innocent. That's not the case anymore for their now adult decendents (for the ones that stayed).
-Sab
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OUTLAW
You are generalising. I don't experience any of this first hand.
Are my JWs different from yours? Or is it that I am just different from you?....Nickolas
Good afternoon Nickolas!..
No..Sab isnt generalising..
Your not in..So you dont get to see the Whole story..
Its purposely kept from you..
Once you were IN..This would be your life..
They nit pick daily about the PEOPLE that they live amongst. Their dress, their grooming, their choice of
entertainment, their bioligical and sexual needs; they ridicule all of it while they live in ignorant hypocrisy.
They hate the world around them and they define the world as anything nonJW.
Your a Potentual JW...
Most JWs wont do anything to mess that up..
You wont get to see the Real Deal until your IN..
Right now its all Sunshine and Lolipops..
.....................;-)...OUTLAW
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sabastious
Are my JWs different from yours?
I don't have any JW friends anymore they all shun me or close to it. My JW friend experience is geographically limited to the area I grew up in.
JWs can be wonderful people beceause humans can be wonderful people when their needs for security are taken care of. The Watchtower plays on that evolutionary need and provides them with a false sense of security through their formula. That false sense cannot sustain itself on it's own so they have to keep injecting the hope. If I injected the kind of hope sold from the Watchtower to their R&F to Ebenezer Scrooge he'd have delusions of glee. Security is what humans have evolved to crave and that's where all the hoopla comes from. A Witness will take, say, a bad tsunami pretty well because their hope cannot be shattered by such a force. Hope is a great thing and it's what can move mountains, but defense of hope is what can get very ugly.
It's pretty easy for you to keep the Witnesses in Dr Jekyll mode because you are not threatening to them. They call evolutionary science "propaganda." Talk about blissful ignorance. Us on the other hand get to deal with the Mr Hyde mode and it's about as dark as it gets. All Witnesses, even your friends, are candidates for losing hope. Maybe you can provide a back to stab for them when that happens, or maybe your "unbelieving mate" forcefield will continue to shiled you.
-Sab
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Nickolas
Thanks for the clearer distinction, OUTLAW. Since I'll never be IN, I'll never directly experience the ugly downside everyone talks about. I'm ok with that. I sympathise with all you folks who do experience it, though. I wondered in another thread I started how Jehovah's Witnesses for whom the light has come on live with themselves afterward. Bringing all those people into the Watchtower before they exited themselves. Those who do live with themselves have also forgiven themselves. Oddly, some of those who have forgiven themselves withhold love and forgiveness for people who are doing exactly the same things they did, until those people see the light themselves. Those still IN need to think the same way the people who are now OUT do or they are perceived as evil. In another thread I'm following someone is quoting Matthew 7:3. It seems appropriate here, too. Oh, but how the Watchtower fucks people up, even well after they have left it.
Perhaps this subject did belong in the Adult and Heated Debate category, after all.