What has changed since I left/got kicked out in '92?

by outbutnotdown 13 Replies latest jw friends

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  outbutnotdown

  Hi all,

  I have long ago come to the conclusion that the JW religion is a negative influence on society for many reasons. Their "love" is so conditional that it doesn't count as love..... their prophecies are contradicted by many different, more accurate dates from which their chronolgy is based (587 B.C.E rather than 607 B.C.E., for example).... and I could go on, but most here have developped an understanding of why the Witnesses DO NOT have "the truth", so enough said about why we are where we are.

  But what has changed in the last 12 years, since I left? I felt that the about-face on the 1995 generation change of thought brought a lot of people out, and thankfully so. But I have been reading other topics about how they seem to not really care about the "new book" part anymore and that how the Governing Body seems to have changed, as far as their power goes. This passiveness could be good in a sense, but it could also be bad. It would likely soften the Witnesses, as a group, as far as how EXTREME they are allowed to appear to be to the general public, but it would tend to not shake peoples' comfort zone enough to allow them to question their faith as a whole.

  I have my entire immediate family still trapped in that religion and I have been waiting patiently for their innate human tendency to see through BULLSH*T to come through, but I now wonder if they will find comfort in the fact that they are becoming better adjusted instead.

  What does anybody else think? Don't worry, I am comfortable enough with where I am in life to stay on the outside but I still have a desire to be reunited with my family as well......... and I was hoping that their rigidity/close-mindedness would force some of my family out.

  Brad
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  Happy Guy :)

  You ever hear that expression "Curiosity killed the want-to-know-more-about-the-JWs cat"....okay well I took some liberties there.

  Seriously, the consensus seems to still be that they are a cult but you can ask the others. DaCheech is still on the inside and is a MS. He could probably be a good source of info. Good luck with your family.
• 

  Beans

  Welcome eh!

  check this out

  http://Quotes.Watchtower.ca

  Beans

  Canadian District Overbeer
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  Quotes

  What's changed since 1992?
  
  Well, pleats are out.
  
  Retro is in.
  
  Non-fat ice cream is now pretty good.
  
  Oh, and the orgies. Lots has changed at the orgies. But you probably arlready know about that! ;)
  
  ~Quotes, of the "changed my pants" class
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  garybuss

  Nothing has changed. We still don't believe in hell. We still don't believe in immortality of the soul, we still don't believe in the trinity.
  
  There have been some "slight" adjustments in the way communication is handled and the way "truth" is supplied. The governing body has disassociated itself from the Watch Tower Publishing Corporation as well as from Jehovah's Witnesses. The Watch Tower Publishing Corporation has disassociated itself from Jehovah's Witnesses. The governing body, the Watch Tower Publishing Corporation, and Jehovah's Witnesses, all disassociated themselves from the United Nations.
  
  Don Adams is now Watch Tower INC president and communicates with god with his shoe phone. Max Larson is Watch Tower New York president and he is not allowed to use the shoe phone but one tabloid reported that he was seen eating soup from his shoe last year on Halloween. Bill Van De Wall is president of Jehovah's Witnesses but since he doesn't have a shoe phone or any printing presses he is not known by very many individual Witnesses.
  
  We still have five meetings a week and sister Stout still had body odor and takes up two chairs at the service meeting.
  
  Jehovah's Witnesses never make changes. True, Jehovah's people have, at times, had to make "adjustments" and "revisions" to their publications but never have they said they were inspired.
  
  The generation issue was never meant to be a teaching. It was always an understanding, and understandings are always subject to "revisions", so really, nothing has changed.
  
  
  
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  onacruse

  What's changed is that the WTS is facing the inevitable social evolution of any and every eschatological religion: secularize, or die.

  Why reduce the regular pioneer hours from a hard 100/month to 70? Why provide for the 15-minute rule? Why make announcements at assemblies for the brothers and sisters to hang around and visit (instead of hitting the doors as the final "Amen" is said)? Why are teenagers not jumping on the bandwagon to temporary pioneer every summer, but instead, jumping at the chance, at the age of majority, to leave the org cold?

  The gb is facing forces beyond its control: grass-roots forces that it will have to, and already has, responded, albeit unwillingly.

  Perhaps the most impactive thing that could happen is for TedJ to die (of course, I mean, a natural death); the liberal element of the gb is waiting--but even then, the type B's usually lag behind the type A's.
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  confusedjw

  Well the generation that was supposed to see the end (1914 + 80 = 1995) didn't.
  
  The associated with the UN by become an NGO in 1991 and left in 2001 after being found out.
  
  About 600,000 have left due to realizing they were in a cult.
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  jgnat

  I don't know what it was like before, but oldtimers say the study materials are recycled and dumbed-down. It is all so mind-numbingly boring. That is what I notice, but I don't know if that is new. Yet the congregation is scared in to staying, or face Death. Fear works for a while, but it eats at the gut.

  Let's see; jello for brains, and swiss cheese for guts. Your family is in, but probably miserable.
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  onacruse

  jgnat:

  I don't know what it was like before, but oldtimers say the study materials are recycled and dumbed-down.

  Ha! That reminds me of what the congregation servant told me back in the late 60s: "The Society repeats the same stuff every 10 years." And review of every book and Watchtower since the beginning bears this out, especially insofar as the book of Genesis. Added to that, the 'typical-antitypical' and 'class' interpretations of all of the OT books has gone on for decades, including the latest "Isaiah" book...literally to the point of ad nauseum.

  Yet the congregation is scared in to staying, or face Death. Fear works for a while, but it eats at the gut.

  An interesting observation! Now, there are at least two dimensions to that "fear":

  1) The fear of eternal death: A fear that we should have if we truly believe that our subsequent existence is based on compliance with the dictates of some Prime Cause, and that conformance to those is an absolute demand (as the WTS would have it);

  2) The fear of social alienation: imo, and in my experience, by far the most important factor. "God" can be put on the back burner, so to say, but it's our family, our friends, our ingrained anti-social (read "don't hang with 'worldly' people) mentality that is the truest psychological poison of all.
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  hillbilly

  Gary--

  Outstanding post ...you'll always be my horse even if you never run another race.

  Hill