by Steel 30 Replies latest watchtower bible
I am not sure that it's contempt. I think it's an ingrained fear of getting caught up with a worldly associate. What if it's a neighbour who smiles in a friendly way? They may invite you for coffee, that would be baaaaad.
Better to be aloof and try not to encourage them to befriend us.
The result? An insular weird bunch with a kingdom smile but who seem too self righteous to lower themselves to be genuine friends.
Never, and I never saw it either. Only once I heard from a not so exemplarly brother that worldly people were the dead men walking, and it was quite shocking.
They hate "the world" as a whole, not the individuals living in it, and they also look down on witnesses doing something they dissaprove of, like starting a relationship with a worldly person, dressing worldly or displaying any other worldly behaviour.
Not mixing with the world can be missundertstood as contempt but it's not. They truly want to help those people they keep their distance from.
Yes Pete Zahut absolutely so! The JW organisation dehumanises people.
The contempt which the org teaches for non JWs means that you don't have to care for their feelings or well-being -- after all your favourite god is going to kill the lot of them while you cheer him on.
Dehumanizes people...kind of like how the Nazis felt about the Jews...
It does dehumanzie - but only if you let it. There is a threshold - you either cross it or you don't. I didn't. People in my congregation hadn't. Some still haven't but are still in and trying to find their way out (PIMOs). Those coming out are not dehumanized.
Watchtower is two-faced. If people only perceive the kind face, they can't understand why people leave. Once the penny had dropped and they see it is a hypocritical organisation from the very top (ie not just a local matter) then they'd better get out or else end up being as bad as those who are misleading them.
The reference to the world being a "Dead man walking" is actually from the study article in the Watchtower of April 2017 page 9.
*** km 6/84 p. 1 Do You Have Pity for People? ***
Do You Have Pity for People?
1 Of Jesus it was said, ‘He felt pity for the people.’ (Matt. 9:36) Do we feel such tender affection for others? (Matt. 9:36b, Kingdom Interlinear) How strongly are you moved to show it?
2 If your neighbors’ house was on fire and their lives were in danger, how persistent would you be in an effort to reach them? (Matt. 22:39) Would you tap lightly on the front door once or twice and, getting no response, go home? Surely you would exert utmost effort to reach them and save their lives! The lives of people worldwide are now at stake. For this reason Jehovah has provided his message of salvation and commissioned us to carry it to the people whether they hear or whether they refuse.—Ezek. 3:10, 11.
Some of them definitely do. Often it is the most blinkered ones who swallow everything the FDS says and add a bit to it...
I don’t think I ever fell into that trap, even in my brief periods of being on a “spiritual high”. In those times I confess to feeling sorry for some “worldly people “.. I would ask myself “Why can’t they see it”? What I called truth seemed so clear to me.....
To answer your question in the thread header - I did not feel contempt, I felt envious.
If I am totally honest, I always felt a little jealous of the freedom to choose their path that "worldly" people seemed to have. At the same time, I felt I had "the truth" and with that came a feeling of superiority. I guess that looks and acts a lot like contempt doesnt it?
I never felt contempt for non-Witnesses when I was a Witness. Probably because, much to my parents' dismay, I always maintained friendships with non-Witnesses. In fact, throughout the 30 some odd years I was in many of my best friends were non-Witnesses.
I recall clearly being counselled (I think it was a Watchtower study) that we were to refrain from calling non-Witnesses names like "worldly people." The Biblical reference comes from the Pharisees who used the term "am ha·ʼaʹrets" or "people of the land" as a derogatory slur. The Pharisees used this term to refer to those who did not observe Jewish customs. Sound familiar?
