I don't even know what the bloody event is called anymore. I think it's still a District Convention until it goes to two days, isn't it? My convention program leaflet just says "Convention of Jehovah's Witnesses", seemingly intentionally avoiding the change in wording. Perhaps the brother designing the leaflet was also confused and didn't want to admit it.
Anyway. Just a few random thoughts on what I saw and heard. I have a feeling a lot of this was already covered when the DC season first started, but I haven't been around much, so I don't know. Well, here's a table of contents. Warning, hyperbole ahead.
--Contents--
1. The drama this year was "Achan Inappropriately Tells Joshua About A Really Nice Shirt for Five Minutes".
2. Loesch is a human soporific.
3. Saturday was SAD, and I don't mean it was a Special Assembly Day.
4. "We will now tie into the International Convention. Please wait quietly for ten hours while we do this."
5. In Which the Earthly Hope is Accidentally Demolished by Reading the Bible Accurately.
6. Society: "Do you have your brain engaged? Please use the nearest available exit. Thank you."
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1. The Drama
A. No more live dramas. I have to say, this is an improvement. The stage drama acting was always cheesy ("Can you tell that I'm the one talkinglip-syncing because I'm waving my hands about wildly?!") and the set changes were distracting ever since they stopped dimming the lights between acts.
B. Unfortunately if you don't have a good seat to see one of the video screens then the drama is much harder to see than when it took place on the stage.
C. The part of the recorded drama where Achan confesses stealing the shirt and other valuables was quite memorable. I'm not sure if the comedy was intentional. In order to justify his theft, Achan begins describing the shirt to Joshua in extremely unwarranted detail ("And it's all one piece, see? It's got all these colors, and sequins, it's really pretty!") while Joshua makes increasingly frowny faces at him. It's awkwardly hilarious.
I kind of wish that at the end of the spiel, Joshua said, "You know, that shirt does sound pretty sweet!" But no, he had Achan "taken away", because he did sin against Jehovah and all. For some reason they skipped the part where Achan was also stoned to death and his whole family was immolated (Joshua 7:25). I wish they kept it in, having Joshua say at the end, "For stealing this shirt and those shekels, we're going to kill your family now." It would have made it a lot harder to see Joshua as a well-meaning old man and made him look a lot more like a crazy tyrant. That would have been cognitively dissolicious.
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Part II: The Loeschening.
A. Ugh, Loesch overdose. Did we need to hear from just one GB member this much? The guy seems like a kindly uncle, but god he is boring. His sentences just sound like one of those really long German words; he runs everything together and the combination of his mumbling and his accent make it even harder to pay attention.
B. Oh God, the other GB member that they used for another talk was "Rubber Mouth" Lett. Seriously, pretty much any of the other GB members are better speakers than Loesch and Lett. How did this happen. Why.
C. Loesch is not so hot with the interwebs. Clearly he wasn't the one who pushed the whole idea of jw.org, as he can't seem to say the site's URL correctly. One day it was "gw.org" (well, it could have been worse, at least "GW" doesn't stand for "Gone Wild"). The next it was "the jw dot web site"... without the "org".
D. Loesch seems to be the spokesman for the Kingdom Centennial. I believe he was the one who broke the news at last year's AGM that it was coming on 100 years since Christ was enthroned. At the DC he gave a talk where he addressed the subject of what the Kingdom has been doing all this time, since it obviously hasn't given us our panda petting paradise yet. The answer (as far as I could ascertain through the thick fog of his mumbling and my incredible boredom) was that the things the Society has been doing are the things the Kingdom has been doing -- the publishing work, the KHs being built, basically anything that a thousand printing and construction companies worldwide are doing -- these are the signs that Jesus is reigning and blessing his people. Hallelujah.
E. Finally, Loesch also reviewed the history of the Society. I know a lot of you have said that the Society is rebranding and desperately trying to put its past behind it. I only agree with one of those statements. They're obviously trying to freshen up their image, but they're in no way disconnecting from the past. On the contrary, I believe that they were probably advised by their PR guys to push the history of the org. as a positive. In other words, instead of being embarrassed that it's been 100 years since 1914, get ahead of it and embrace it! Some of you have suggested the same thing already, but you may be underestimating just how much the Society has embraced this plan.
It's not just that they want us to think it's a good thing that Christ has been enthroned for so long; they want us to revel in the illustrious spiritual heritage of the org. over that time period! Thus, in his review, to show how far the Society has come, he covered the typical light-becoming-brighter talking points, like the eventual ban on smoking. He even mentioned the false expectation of 1925! I did a double-take when he brought that up. See part 6 for my thoughts on this.
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3. Jehovah Wants Your Soul.
The Saturday session was the most depressing thing I've ever witnessed at a JW event since learning TTATT. Lots of experiences from people of all ages who have sacrificed years of their life that they'll never get back. Homes sold, etc. One sister gave the experience of her valiant battle not to talk to her DFed sister. For a while, this JW sister was weak spiritually and was spending time with her fleshly sister and her sister's newborn baby (tsk tsk). Finally she got herself back on track, attending meetings, and was strong enough to tell her sister that Jehovah has to come first and they can't talk anymore. This was no doubt an educational story for any interested ones in attendance.
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4. The International Convention tie-in was 20% black screen.
At first, I thought that they were having trouble getting the feed from the IC. "Wow," I thought, "This must be really complicated." Then I realized that if the brothers in charge of the video are anything like the brothers that run the average KH's sound department, they probably forgot to turn something on. Finally I figured out what was really going on.
The IC was running parallel to our program, apparently live. Thus, in order to make sure that our program didn't go overtime and end up cutting off the beginning one of the many tie-in talks, the DC was apparently "underbooked"; they finished their parts earlier than what was printed on the program to make sure that they were ready to tune in when the IC got to the designated time for the tie-in part to begin.
So, for instance, if the tie-in talk starts at 3:00pm, our previous part ended at 2:50 just to be safe. We then sat for 10 minutes looking at a black video screen while the brothers waited for the IC to start the 3:00 talk. While every minute of this felt like an hour of purgatory, I suppose if you had a seatmate you wanted to chat with, or were looking for a good bathroom break opportunity, this was not so bad.
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5. It's three, three, three heavens in one.
Okay, so there was an adjustment in the understanding of the "paradise" of Paul's "third heaven" (2 Cor. 12); they are now saying that this is a threefold paradise: the spiritual paradise, the earthly paradise, and the heavenly paradise. Oookay. What astounded me was not that they arbitrarily decided that this paradise is three things in one, but that they made reference to the fact that Revelation 2 talks about a paradise in heaven. The purpose of bringing out this scripture was simply to show that there is a paradise in heaven. Now, read on its own, a JW might think this scripture was referring to the JW's patented Earthly Paradise™, but we have to keep in mind that the teaching is that the NT is basically talking only to anointed ones, and the full verse (2:7) says:
Let the one who has an ear hear what the spirit says to the congregations. To him that conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
So since this is referring to "conquering", and it's written to the congregations of the first century, JW doctrine says that it's referring to the heavenly hope. What's so funny is that I imagine this is how most Christians interpret this scripture, and it begs the question of when the earthly hope is actually referred to, anywhere in the NT. If it's later in Revelation, then how can we draw a line that says, "This paradisaic language is referring to heaven, but this other language is talking about earth"?
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6. Brains Not Wanted.
When it comes to the kinds of admissions like "We thought Christ was going to take action in 1925", and the nonsensical doctrinal statements like in part 5 above, I almost feel like the Society is trying to say, "Pssst, hey, you. Yeah, you. Are you a thinking Witness? Then you really should just move on. Seriously, how many hints do we have to give you that we're BSing these people? Nobody else can hear this, by the way. You have to have your brain engaged to hear this, it's like a dog whistle for the brain. Anyway, we're trying to tell you, this isn't a place for thinkers, so you should probably just get on with your life. Leave these gullible ones to their fate."
At least, that's what I think I was hearing. Maybe it was just the rumblings of the air conditioning in the coliseum during my state of half-sleep after lunch. What do you guys think?