My Epiphany

by Farkel 40 Replies latest jw friends

  • Farkel
    Farkel

    Well, folks. I just had a minor epiphany. It’s a wonder it never dawned on me before, because it should have been so obvious.

    We can forget about doing any more research or any more exegesis. We can stop quibbling over the self-serving and false translation of the scriptures by the WTS. The fact that dubs believe that God’s name should be put above all others and at all costs, and yet they don’t even pronounce it correctly (and know it) is no longer relevant.

    The fact that they’ve gotten EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEIR PROPHECIES WRONG? Big deal. Doctrinal flip-flops, side-flops, back-flops, up-flops, down-flops and flop-flops? So what? That’s nothing!

    Lying to their membership, the media and the public about a myriad of things, including their history, their organizational and ecclesiastical make-up, and what they really teach? Pooh!

    Tax evasion by claiming to be a charitable organization that provides virtually NO charities, even for their own? Ho, hum.

    Making deals and compromising their publicly-promoted principals with the governments they claim to hate and claim to be run by Satan to protect their own interests? A normal day of business for them. No big deal.

    Uncountable deaths due to their anti-Biblical stand on blood, vaccinations, and organ transplants? Sad, but still not the biggest nail in their coffin.

    Claiming to be Christians, yet out of their dozens and dozens and dozens of books, they’ve written only one, or maybe two of them that are actually all ABOUT Jesus? A minor oversight.

    Setting up a religious caste-system with many classes of followers in direct defiance of the simple model Jesus commanded? Boys-will-be-boys.

    Micro-managing the lives of their members; spying on alleged errant ones, encouraging family members and friends to spy and report alleged wrong-doing among their own? Ruing families for life as a result? Just a blip on the radar screen of Christian apostasy.

    Secret star-chamber hearings in direct defiance of the commands and models clearly show in the Bible? Yaaaaawwwwn.

    Spreading a gospel of hate: hate towards their own members who don’t toe the line, loathing for all who aren’t their own, and ultra-hate for those who have chosen to leave that life of hate? Oh, well. No one’s perfect.

    Requiring salvation to be entirely dependent not upon a simple faith, but upon the works of peddling worthless literature which enriches the coffers of the corporation and brings poverty to many of the membership? A minor oversight on their part.

    Insane cover-ups of child-rape designed to protect the corporation’s reputation and the rapists without any regards for the innocent victims. Oh, well. The Catholic church did the same thing. Nobody’s perfect.

    Forcing millions of persons and entire families into lifetimes of financial hardship because of their insane stand that selling their books is more important than preparing for life by getting a solid education? Ok, so they slipped a little.

    Being directly responsible for untold numbers of their followers never marrying or marrying and never having children and dying childless because of their false teachings that selling books should come first in their lives? Oh, well. Shit happens.

    NO! There is even more indisputable evidence that the Watchtower Religion is not, never was and never could be approved by God, to wit:

    Their “songs of praise” suck worse than any other songs in the entire universe. Even the songs of cats tearing each other’s eyes out while in heat are more melodious (and have better lyrics for that matter) than dub songs.

    Why would Jehovah God, the Sovereign of the Universe, hand-pick as his ONE AND ONLY true and righteous organization, a group that writes the WORST melodies and the WORST lyrics possible: melodies that are designed to either bring on a screaming migraine headache, or if one is lucky, lull one to sink into a deep coma? Well, WOULD He? The Bible speaks of angels singing glory to God in the heavens. Can you imagine millions and millions of angels singing “From House-to-House” in the very presence of God? Picture that! Or, hosts of angels screeching “We’re Jehovah’s Wit-ness-es….We speak out in fear-less-ness…He is the God of true proph-e-ceeeeee! What he foretells, comes-to-be!” Shoot! I’ve heard cereal box jingles which blows that kind of musical crap away!

    Why couldn’t the mighty Jehovah God make certain that at least ONE of his witnesses had some genuine musical talent and a talent for writing majestic and inspiring lyrics? Do you actually think God LIKES to hear that cacophony sung over-and-over-and-over in 82,000 congregations twice-a-week? Even dubs hate the crap. What must Jehovah think about it, then? He invented music!

    On the other hand we have genuinely inspiring and simply beautiful music to the praise of God like Handel’s Messiah, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, and Ave Maria. Those songs will bring tears even to the eyes of the most hard-core atheist. Yet, those songs were produced by Babylon the Grape, a group hated and vilified by Watchtower people.

    Singing praise to God goes back as far as the near-beginning of the Bible. Of course, people sing praise TO God so that God can hear it, right?

    Does anyone think that God likes to hear “From House-to-House,” when even your average tone-deaf person cannot stand to hear it?

    Iehovah’s Witnesses CANNOT be the true religion because their songs and lyrics are not just bad; they are simply horrible. No God could approve a religion who can’t come up with anything better than the finger-nails-on-a-blackboard cacaphony they call “Kingdom Songs.”

    God deserves much better than that. That’s why dubs cannot be God’s one true and special religion. Case closed.

    Farkel

  • slipnslidemaster
    slipnslidemaster

    Truer words were never spoken.

    Slipnslidemaster: I thought you said your dog doesn't bite? That isn't my dog!

  • Englishman
    Englishman

    Farkel,

    I really enjoyed that, I'm just about to print it off.

    I was just wondering if your musical ear thought there could be some similarities between certain kingdom songs and other classics.

    I have in mind "We thank you Jehovah", sounds vaguely as though it is part of Haydn's "Creation": "The heavens are telling".

    Then there's "Keep your eyes on the prize", sounds very similar to "Some day my prince will come" from Snow White.

    The only other one that I query is "How pleasant to see brothers who dwell in unity", which to my uneducated ear sounds like Loony Toones at half speed.

    Nice post by the way, most enjoyable.

    Englishman.

    ..... fanaticism masquerading beneath a cloak of reasoned logic.

  • Farkel
    Farkel

    : I was just wondering if your musical ear thought there could be some similarities between certain kingdom songs and other classics

    As a matter of fact, yes. In the old green songbook Songs to Jehovah's Praise, for example, song #87 is called Extending Mercy to Others. This song takes the exact motif from Beethoven's glorious Apassionata Sonata in F minor. It is the most beautiful song in the book, but then again, that's because it was not written by a dub, but by a real musician.

    When that icky pink songbook ("Singing and Accompanying Yourselves With Music in Your Hearts." Geeeesh! Even the titles of their songbooks suck!) replaced the green book, the society state that certain songs were removed because they were not written by dubs, but by "worldly" people. The rest is history. All songs since then have been shit.

    Farkel

  • Mommie Dark
    Mommie Dark

    Eman! LMAO here!

    ...Looney Tunes at half speed...a definition of certain clueless cultists in field service?

  • AlanF
    AlanF

    Great thoughts, Farkelmeister!

    Many of the old songs in the green 1950 songbook and in the older ones were pretty good. Of course, they were borrowed from Christendom, so they weren't actually nearly as good in Jehovah's eyes as the newer theocratic songs.

    In 1966 the Society came out with the infamous pink songbook. It contained the worst songs imaginable, produced under the direction of Karl Klein. Klein's musical ability seems to have paralleled his writing ability, he having produced that wonder on "tacking" in 1981.

    Remember how they added insult to injury when they came out with the records? For unknown reasons they decided that there would be a sort of "interlude" after the first stanza was sung, where the first few bars of the first stanza would be repeated after the first stanza and people were apparently supposed to just stand quietly and let the extra bars fade away, and then the second stanza started up. It took darned near ten years for the JW community to get the hang of this bit of lunacy. Oddly enough, the Society never issued instructions on how to sing according to the records, so whenever they were used, people would start singing the second stanza while the music in the first repeated, then after a couple of bars people would realize that they were singing to the wrong music and start to shut up. It was pretty funny, really. I can hardly think of a better practical joke to play on a community of millions of people.

    Apparently by the early 1980s Klein had lost influence, and they dumped the worst of the pink songbook's junk and came out with the present version. They also jettisoned that nutty interlude business.

    With respect to the Society's understanding of science, I can think of no better description than the one made by Alan Rogerson in his book on JWs, [i]Millions Now Living Will Never Die:

    A long acquaintance with the literature of the Witnesses leads one to the conclusion that they live in the intellectual "twilight zone." That is, most of their members, even their leaders, are not well educated and not very intelligent. Whenever their literature strays onto the fields of philosophy, academic theology, science or any severe mental discipline their ideas at best mirror popular misconceptions, at worst they are completely nonsensical.

    Substitute "music" for "science" and you've got a good description of the Society's handling of music.

    The sad thing is that most JWs know in their gut how bad the Society's music is. The typical congregation sings so quietly that you can barely hear the average JW's voice. Many times I've heard an elder or a CO "encourage" the congregation to sing loud, but that usually dies out after a few weeks.

    I think that this shows a basic flaw in the JW religion -- it has no soul. And people whose souls are suppressed will not hesitate to lie, distort or misrepresent whatever they need to in order to get to their goal -- in this case, earning 'salvation'.

    AlanF

  • TR
    TR

    I love it Farkel! Going to save your post for future reference. It nicely sums up all the reasons to NOT get involved with the WTS.

    As a dub, I was always embarrassed to sing these songs. I would always think to myself, "what if some worldly person heard these songs?" I turned beat red just thinking about it. Such Korny Krap designed strictly to promote WTS doctrine.

    TR

    "Kults Suk"

  • betweenworlds
    betweenworlds

    Amen brother Farkel!! That is indeed the number one reason I have seen small children cover their ears in horror as the congregation attempted to hit the high notes of some of those songs. That kind of abuse CANNOT be tolerated any longer. Very painful.

    BW

  • safe4kids
    safe4kids

    Fark,

    Great post! LMAO....it brought to mind something...I was married to a nondub for over 13 years and he would occasionally attend meetings and assemblies with me....his main complaint was how bad the music and the singing were!! He would start into a fit of the giggles halfway through the music and embarrass the hell out of me!!! Oh, how I would glare at him...the poor man, now I realize that for him, it was self-defense!

    Dana (of the "Kingdom Songs killed my marriage" class )

  • joelbear
    joelbear

    eng,

    I have caught the looney tunes sound myself. I love the song, some day my prince will come. Its a regular in my shower repertoire along with Doh Re Me.

    I also sing on roller coasters. My 3 favorite songs for coasters are Delta Dawn, Home on the Range and Help!.

    I liked the march sounding songs the best. Firm and determined in this time of the end, prepared are god's servants the good news to defend. We must have the faith. To whom do we belong. But they did all basically sound the same.

    Mitch and I have this musical game we play where we try to get everyday sayings to fit into the melodies of songs we've heard. A couple of kingdom songs are among those that come up. His favorite is the one that goes, Kiss the son, lest god be angry (of course he probably subliminally likes this one for other reasons). I'll often hear him saying, Mow the grass, lest god be angry, or others.

    farkellike hugs

    Joel

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