Yea sorry about the terminology - 'bearing testimony' - witnessing , preaching , cramming you belief down others throat etc... I'll try and avoid it - as regards the prayer bit all members are encouraged to find God themselves through prayer not via the church and when they find Him they have their answer. We tag alot of extra to it like asking God if the LDS faith is 'the one and only' etc.. which I'm sure reminds a lot of you about JW teachings about the primacy of the borg.
Understanding why people leave
by Qcmbr 41 Replies latest jw friends
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GetBusyLiving
Okay, can you clear a few things up for me? I heard you guys have to do like secret handshakes and stuff at certain levels of your organization to be better received in heaven.. true? Also I was told that you all have to wear magical underware or something??
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ballistic
to my shame when I was 18 one of my best friends , someone who I had relied upon for growing up stuff and a really great guy left the church and I cut him off
Thing is, we all cut people off in life, all through our lives in one way or another. But I feel the JWs are unique in that the cutting off is so much part of the cult mindset, good friends can pass on the street after not seeing eachother for years, and they will stop and look at eachother in the eye.... and smile, knowing they "CANNOT" talk to eachother.
And I know there are ex-jw here who will say "sheesh - I talk to witnesses on purpose to embarass them" - but I'm talking about a real friend I would not want to embarass - we stopped in the street and had practically a 5 minute converstaion without opening our mouths, and then passed on.
A strange experience you cannot experience unless you are in that situation.
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Qcmbr
Hiya Zen - your logic is flawless and I have to say right. That's why I always search out everything I can to hit against my faith - ie if its true it should always be true not just from a certain angle on a Sunday morning after three hours of sermons and two dead butt cheeks and so I wouldnt dream of arguing my viewpoint but the old stumbling point I always get to (especially in my wobbling days) was that gosh darn it I really got an answer. I'm a sceptic and its the most illogical thing in the world to me.
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whyamihere
Welcome....Glad to have you here. You are among friends and understanding to all faiths not just our own.
Brooke
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Qcmbr
Wow GetBusyLiving - right for my jugular:) - yea we have handshakes and underwear that represents our covenant. Why? - the best answer I can give is that its all symbolic of stuff in the bible - wearing our religion I guess. I don't wear a cassock (is that how you spell it?) or a dog collar but I do wear things that symbolise my promises to God(a bit like baptism but a whole lot more itchy) I guess the most difficult part about your question is that I promised not to talk about it! There are plenty of sites though on the net that tell all (though a trifle out of context I think:)
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GetBusyLiving
That's all cool.. I am honestly curious because I work with a morman dude and he never really talks about his beliefs all that much. Trust me its doesn't sound that strange.. I used to be a JW. hehe
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zen nudist
I did the prayer to find out if the church is true - got my answer - never really looked back
ALTERNATIVE VIEW ON WHAT HAPPENS WITH YOUR PRAYER--
THEORY-- the subconscious is similar to a computer, it is running its own programs, but is subject to re-programming
if you tell it something without questioning it, it accepts that as a truth.
as I understand it the prayer thing goes something like this-- ask God if such and such is TRUE and then you will know...etc.
break that down into programming--- 1. in order to ask God if X is true, one must ASSUME God exists... so first program installed
God = true [even though, there is NO proof given, we just told our subconscious that God is true, simply by accepting that we can and should pray to God.]
2. in order to ask if X is true, we must not have any valid reason to deny X = true. so because we have not CHALLENGED X=True with anything valid, we are by virtue of asking IS X = true, in effect, telling our subconscious to program X=true.
3. putting it all together, we now ASK our own subconscious which we at the same time programmed, the question, is X = true, and since we also by virtue of asking in this fashion of a God we already assumed exists, our subconscious takes upon itself that role and answers in a way we will accept, yes X= true.
now of course this will NOT work on anything we KNOW, by some experience or other set of beliefs to be false... but there are many religious questions such as God, are you there? do you exist? is this your church? etc, which NO hard answer exists in this shared reality, which allow this sort of self-deceptive, programming and responding by our own subconscious in the role of the God we told it to be.
so this test of religous validity to me is just a very clever con game, perhaps dreamed up by accident or innocence.
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pc
Qcmbr Welcome!
I just finished reading "Under the Banner of Heaven", did you read it and what is your take on the information presented? I found it very similar to the Watchtower brainwashing.