by Terry 16 Replies latest jw friends
"We're not a totalitarian regime;" -Elder
I disagree. The WTS forbids individual thinking, promotes censorship, requires "harmony", disallows criticism and tries to scrutinize and control every aspect of the lives of those who belong to the org.
That sounds very totalitarian to me.
Question: "But how would you know that without internal opportunity for airing disagreement? Wouldn't Elders, such as yourself, step in and isolate any diverse opinion under the auspice of 'protecting the congregation' from heresy, apostasy, or divisions?"
Elder: "I see where you are headed. But--no, it's not like that at all."
Oh, no! It is exactly like that.
When I first started going to a Kingdom Hall it was probably 1959 and the
Jehovah's Witnesses brotherhood of "Friends" back then (under Nathan Homer Knorr) was a different breed of cat than it is today.
We had picnics and parties and (although it was frowned upon) people smoked
and worked for employers connected to the military. You could say and do things
more freely.
There were no Elders.
That very idea of Elders hearkened back to an old-fashioned Adventist sensibility.
No, what we had were an Overseer and assistant and various Servants.
It was a friendly shepherding spirit.
Then, slowly, things got weird and weirder.
It was the Freddy Franz hiccups of senility that did it.
The Babylon the Great has Fallen book and the chart of significant Dates came out and I memorized all those dates. It appeared to be a work of enormous intellect and scholarship - until - years later - I started reading the works of Martin Luther and discovered it had been plagiarized and corkscrewed by Franz.
Jesus didn't have a beard back then. Nope. He was clean shaven.
Those were almost (I said almost) fun times.
Just well-intentioned good old boys with wives under submission lookin' out fer you.
Question: "My way or the highway? So to speak."Elder: "(Laughing) That would be Jehovah's statement; not mine."
___________
No feeling of being a human being under all that camouflage.
JW's are forced to live a double life; one public and one private.
Otherwise they'd go bonkers.
___________
Any jw lurkers? You know this is true.
I can only hope to aspire to speak in this way and should I live longer, that is my goal.
Confession from me: I get nervous speaking to any JW.
I grow self-conscious. It's like standing before a parent who disapproves.
I HATE THAT FEELING.
But I've learned to turn that emotion into another emotion: anger.
"How dare this person make ME feel inferior!"
This, in turn, fuels my manic sense of dialogue like a prosecutor in court compelling evidence used to debunk lies.
It's not a healthy way to go about it.
It's simply the only way I've been able to avoid my first impulse - which is to
AVOID conversations with active Witlessess.
I grow self-conscious. It's like standing before a parent who disapproves.
I'm the opposite when I'm confronted by a JWS I think to myself what stupid ignorant twit they are in membership of a lying corrupt fraud of an organization and I'm supposed to respect them, never have, never will.
The awe of living in a controlled society run by divinely guided overlords gives way to
a self-administered head smack - "What was I thinking?"
Turns out - I wasn't able to think.
JW's are strapped in highchairs like mewling infants with a spoon shoved in and utter pablum to be swallowed.
Our ministry? Emptying our diapers on the front porch of neighbors.
