...and then around the birthday they'll give a gift and say, "Oh, it's not for your birthday."
What crap!
It’s Stupid That JWs Wont Recognize Birthdays Yet If A Baby Is Born They Will Give Gifts!
by minimus 19 Replies latest jw friends
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zeb
The baby showers are permitted only because the gb haven't got round to ban them.
Ban wedding anniversaries ?and hear the outrage from the sisters!
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dozy
Quite a few JWs over the years admitted that they didn't really agree with the "No birthdays" policy and I know several who ( quietly ) had a meal and gave presents etc. The doctrine always seemed to me really feeble and biblically on really lame grounds. Especially when anniversaries and baby showers were such big things in the Org , I couldn't really see the distinction. Quite often people would have a meal on an anniversary of a death to remember a relative who had died and it always seemed perverse that they weren't allowed to celebrate someone living.
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truth_b_known
So the absence of proof is proof? I am confused. If God disapproved of birthday celebrations I would think he would have just put it out there rather than call for a process of jumping to conclusions.
You will get disfellowshipped for smoking. There is no prohibition against smoking. Yet, JWs will use a vague scripture to jump to the conclusion. All the while they do not realize the can of worms they have opened. So, you get disfellowshipped for smoking or using tobacco products because it's harmful to your health, but it's ok to eat garbage food and be medically obese.
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Finkelstein
Good point Minimus but your equating rational thinking to religious theology and the two are incompatible.
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minimus
Excellent comments—-all!
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EverApostate
All CULTS have Bizarre beliefs and Practices. "No Birthday" is one among those many beliefs for the JW cult.
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pleaseresearch
I love some of these comments, especially calling it the anniversary of your birth. Reading biblical commentaries regarding the scripture in Job 1:4 it's pretty clear that Job is in fact referring to birthdays, I mean anniversaries :)
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minimus
Semantics is a wonderful thing!
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jwundubbed
An argument could also be made that baby showers are a way for the community to congratulate a couple for fulfilling God's purpose. Growing up JW as a female I know that there was a lot of pressure to 'marry and have kids' but even women who had kids out of wedlock, or were single parents, or who had kids with a non-JW father still all had baby showers, though the stuff they got wasn't as nice or to the same quantity.
People who get baptized get presents too. Any time people did something that was conforming to the 'JW' way, they got presents. Heck, if you go out in service regularly you get to go out to lunch with other witnesses.