The TENSION of unbearable BELIEF

Terry

I have a personal theory about Russell, Rutherford and Franz.

It extends to End Times religious people in general.

That is, highly intelligent...End Times believers...

There is a tension to believing something that never seems to overlap with reality.

Your intelligence keeps flashing "Something's wrong".

But, your deeply held convictions (Faith) tells you to Shut the F**k up!

The tension comes and goes...

So, you live your live with a "gnawing" away at your brain. ( Psychologists called it the cognitive dissonance.)

How to deal with it? Read on...

Sooner or later, the tension must be relieved or you become either a religious fanatic (pushing away from any "balanced" views) or a rebellious complainer or, most often, a sneak with a double life who embraces your duplicity CONSCIOUSLY.

Which is to say: Something REAL must happen or you'll go crazy!

FOR SOME PEOPLE....like Fred Franz and others, the tension becomes so great they TRY TO MAKE IT HAPPEN themselves!

They create an ACTUAL CRISIS in which the scenario-in-their-own-head must be forced to play out in the REAL WORLD!

In effect, they leverage God into acting! When God acts they suppose the WHOLE WORLD will see they have been RIGHT all along!

That is the tension of being a believer of craziness! You get tired of the world scoffing and ridiculing and marginalizing your grand absolute truth.

You want them to stand in awe that YOU ARE RIGHT! Rub their noses in it!

So, like Russell and Rutherford before him, Freddy Franz concocted a "trap" for Jehovah forcing him to act on behalf of his TRUE RELIGION.

To the rescue, as it were. Franz would make Jehovah rescue his reputation as scholar supreme. He laid it all out "how fitting" it would be for Jehovah to act! Build it and He will come!

Remember Charles Manson?

Manson believed there would be a RACE WAR between whites and black and that, once begun, Manson himself would be LEADER. He was training his followers out in the desert to follow orders. In his "mind" he was a sort of bush league Messiah. The only problem is that the race war never seemed to happen. So, what did Manson do to make his "vision" come true?

He sent his follower out to MAKE IT HAPPEN by perpetrating grisly murders and making it look like black radicals had done the deed.

He was FORCING his theory into reality!

Please forgive the rather ghoulish comparison. But, I feel the psychology is the same!

Franz created a DATE certain where Jehovah would have to make it happen or expose his True chosen religion to disaster. Jehovah's arm was being twisted. And, to bring it off, Franz used all of his considerable imagination and reputation to BUILD THE ARGUMENT behind Chronology and the worldwide effort to make 1975 THE TARGET YEAR.

Every True Believer eventually tries to make fantasy and reality collide one way or the other, imho. We create our own crisis. It causes and end point to our suffering.

Amazingly, every other JW on the planet was so fantasy-whipped and passive we just sat there waiting on the bus that never came.

Business as usual.

tornapart

Terry, you are a real 'out of the box thinker'! I like your style! :)

That's some thought provoking points there. I reckon there might very well be something in that. I can understand how the R&F have been deluded but often wondered how the leaders can be, if they are not then it is outright want of power and control. The fact that they are creating their own fantasy and trying to turn it into a reality makes a lot of sense. They think that if they get everyone to believe it strongly enough it might actually come true....

Terry

I can understand how the R&F have been deluded but often wondered how the leaders can be, if they are not then it is outright want of power and control. The fact that they are creating their own fantasy and trying to turn it into a reality makes a lot of sense.

It is something about the language itself in Fred Franz's writings that seemed to be baiting Jehovah to notice how "reasonable" it would be to

act. Almost a pleading in it. Franz and the Watchtower thought process is preoccupied with TIME. Why? Because each Watchtower leader is psychologically dependant on it that THEIR OWN LIFE NOT END in doubt.

Think how awful...how agonizing the moment of death....not really knowing if you face a real Heaven...a real Hell....or an eternity of total nothingness!

The only way to avoid that is to be alive when your rescue comes!

That is....IF YOU CAN MAKE it come!

End Times religious believers are perhaps the most desperate of all when you get right down to it. The ticking clock is their executioner....or...deliverer.

thetrueone

Good thoughts there Terry

Since the topic of 1914 has recently popped up again, I wonder if the WTS. and a majority of long time JWS

are going to sweat under their collars a bit once 2014 arrives and the proceeding years to follow.

Your right though there's always a assertive amount of varied anxiety within JWS based upon no less the WTS. own doctrinal teachings.

In some ways I feel sorry for them, for all those years of work, devoted dedication and stifling oppression, the end result will be a empty

basket of nothing, unless you consider a bookshelf full of useless redundant literature something.

Terry

Jehovah's Witnesses can pretty much be summed up as a religion this way:

The sneeze that does not happen.

notjustyet

Terry,.

I CANNOT imagine how you can compare Manson with the leaders of the WTBTS!! I mean Manson was bad, but come on!!

Terry

I think it is not too great a stretch in human suffering and even death to make such a connection with a LEADER who compels by persuasion.

I leave the question open to the Forum here. What do you folks think?

How much responsibility for deaths by blood transfusion policy, Malawi "party card" policy, Neutrality policies can we lay at the doorstep of

the Watchtower leaders?

How many child-molesters have been tenderly treated allowing even more ruin to occur?

How many young spirit-minded people have postponed or denied themselves a living, education, plans for retirement because of GB policy?

I think a substantial case can be made.

What do you say?

Quentin

Please forgive the rather ghoulish comparison. But, I feel the psychology is the same!......(Terry)

The wtbts has done more damage to individuals, family's, than Manson ever thought of, due to their shunning, blood, neutrality doctrines. The comparison is citing the physiology of how a leader or leaders attempt to cause self full fling prophesies. If WE do this, then surly this will happen.

fresh prince of ohio

Great thoughts, and I think the Charles Manson comparison is legit enough.

I guess the difference would be that, Manson's methods of overwhelming and taking hold of a person's entire psychic existence were deeply personal (and with the women, sexual), and therefore a small following was the best he could ever hope for. Those infamous crazy-piercing brown/black eyes and all. FF's charisma came not from having a piercing, I-OWN-you stare nor an ability to gain complete psychological control of a small group of people, but rather a unique and bizarre set of circumstances that combined to put an intelligent and studious yet extremely kooky man from Kentucky at the head of an international, boisterous, and apocalyptic religious sect whose very existence RELIED upon an always immenent doomsday in the minds of the flock, and Fred's hypnotic (to the impressionable) writing style was just the trick.

Two men with different styles and different circumstances, but with the same bent towards believing themselves to be at the very heart of a grand cosmic drama that was being played out. You can throw Hitler and David Koresh and countless other into that category.

N.drew

You are right. It is obvious that the org twists the Bible and every circumstance that they can to fit their model. But their model is everyone else will die. So that makes them worse than Manson. And they do all in the name of the Holy God. I don't think anyone else has done that, have they?

The TENSION of unbearable BELIEF

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