Birthdays..... Now A Conscience Matter (page 6)

cab1000

Just wondering, jwsons, what connection is there with ALDI and the WTS?

Thank you Blues for the scan of the article. Maybe I am still brainwashed, but I see this as a two part answer to a two part question. I really dont see any permission for the average JW to celebrate birthdays. The question asked if it ok to allow your conceince to decide if one can celebrate holidays/birthdays, since it was ok to do so with the candy stuffed animal. The answer was clear. Birthdays are still wrong. but on small, insognificant things, then you can decide on your own. Thats how I see it.

M.J.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Worldwide Church of God prohibited holidays and birthdays, that is while their "inspired" leader and "prophet", Herbert W. Armstrong was still running things. Does anyone know their purported reasoning for the ban on birthdays? I wonder if they borrowed their reasoning from the WTS, since it would take quite a leap to come up with that one purely and independently from scripture. Or perhaps Herbert Armstrong had a little spirit direction himself...

got my forty homey?

Believe it or not I had my first birthday party when I was 32. My wife did a big shink dink with plenty of beer, liqour, food, guests, she even let her friends sit on my lap!

It was great!

jaredg

funny the wt only brings out bad birthday's from the bible. why not print about the birth of christ and john the baptist. did not the angels rejoice in heaven over these birthday's and even many came to worship the birthday of jesus. job's children had birthday parties, moses talked about his 120 th birthday. these are just off the top of my head. i'm sure if i looked there are other birthday celebrations in the bible. is not the birth of child a gift from god? i'm sure some of the bible scholars here can post many fine godly verses about birthdays. john

anybody know where these examples are found in the Bible?

Sweetp0985

My simple take on the matter is like this. I'm gonna have to illustrate this too. How often in everyday life does things happen normally and nobody says anything about it, but as soon as something happens outside of the norm its all over the news. Same thing could have happened in bible times. They may have had many numerous birthday parties back then, but if nothing happened at it why write it in the bible. But lo and behold at this particular one(prisoner) and that particular one (John the Baptizer) got their head chopped off, of course this is something worth writing down or "making the news". Just like I know there were thousands of weddings held in the bible times, but at this particular one Jesus turned water into wine, so someone said hey let's write this down so we won't forget this.

God is a God of love. Every precious gift and perfect present comes from God. A child is a precious, perfect gift from God. Why wouldn't he want you to celebrate that childs birth? JW's used to celebrate Xmas, b-days, etc. anyway, I guess it wasn't pagan back then and it suddenly became pagan later on. Oh my bad, the light got brighter. But if they are so-called inspired or directed by God, why did he let them celebrate it back then.

itsallgoodnow

My take on this is they just want to restrict association with outsiders any way they can. This is a good way to keep JWs at odds with their family and worldy friends, which I figure is probably the motivating force behind most, if not all, of their strange rules.

No holidays & birthdays = tension with family & friends & neighbors

No college = no opportunities to be distracted with partying and new friends

No happy hour = that one's obvious, what's wrong with having a drink????

No smoking = no opportunities to strike up conversations with strange men/women

And the list goes on, I'm sure.

Birthdays..... Now A Conscience Matter