When I was a child, my mom only called me by my first name. Unless I was in trouble, then I heard my middle name come screaming across the back yard and I knew I was not in her good graces. It did not matter what that name was, or how it was spelt, it had meaning to me when I heard it and that was all that mattered.
So much of the English language is like that, where certain words can have different thoughts attached depending on how you say them. Most of which are based on the idea of getting a certain response from their listener. Think about your time in the religion, do certain words still hold meanings beyond what a outsider would hear? Do you think there is a reason for it?
I have always felt since my exit from the religion, that everything inside the faith was about control. So when I examine the individual parts of that life. I can not overlook their use of certain key words as a means of controlling us. The biggest example is the word "truth" or as it was more often said "the truth." This was a powerful thought, as the word "truth" is thrown around constantly in normal life, but every time you heard it, what happened? You thought about the fact that you were in God's religion, and that you were in the one true religion that existed in this time. Thus, you were being controlled to hear a common thought outside of the hall and with a little preprogramming it meant something that sent your mind into the organizations teachings.
Then their were words like, "association", "encouragement", "service", "study", and many more that were automatically rooted into your mind to have a meaning that went along with something the Watchtower taught or you heard from fellow Witnesses. I can not count how many times I heard people say, "It is like we speak our own language in the Jehovah's Witnesses" and they were right! The thing is, what was that language about?
Well in ancient times, language caused wars. It caused them because people of two different regions would come together and they could not communicate. Thus, when someone left their tribe they always had to stay within a certain region to be safe. If you went to Germany and only spoke French, you were evil and thus you were killed and burned. So the French stayed with the French, the German with the German and the English with the English. They accepted what the land brought for control, as they could not leave to another land to make a better life without risk of death. So is this the same in the religion?
Well go back to what I was saying, "words do not have letters, they have meaning" and the language of the Witnesses was not the same of other churches and even the common people. Thus, you were constantly going through your mind taking words you knew, and putting them into a frame that worked outside the Kingdom Hall. Yet that translation, did something. It reminded you, it reminded you about Watchtowers, Kingdom Halls and what else "the control they had over you." .
Yes they did control you on more levels then you ever imagined. Now you are free though, and you can find the proper definition of these words and how they can benefit you. Because after all, "isn't the study of the real truth far more encouraging then the associations you had in your former service to the Watchtower?"
I think so, and I enjoy writing the correct dictionary in my head each day. How far are you, hope you got past the "A's" and know the real meaning of Apostate now.
My thought
Dragon
Edited by - kenpodragon on 24 September 2002 20:14:31