no stones please! (page 5)

bebu

almosthome,

First, WELCOME to the board! I like dialogues, not stone-throwing. So here are my comments and questions.

I wonder how you will view the folks sitting in the back once you are reinstated. Will you still shun them? Jesus touched and healed lepers, spoke with prostitutes, and ate with sinners. None of them had to sit for months away from others. The prodigal son's father did not shun him until he was sure of his repentence... I'm sorry, but enforced shunning is abhorrent to me, and it is certainly not of the grace of Christ.

Next, if 607 BC is off... then how can the WTS ever justify their demands to be followed? Have you ever truly followed up on the logic on this? If the foundation is proved utterly false, then how is the conclusion supposed to stand? Such is building on sand, not solid rock.

By the way, if the doctrine of hell is the only doctrine that keeps you in the JWs... there are other denominations that teach this besides the WTS. Unitarians do. Bible Students do. Seventh Day Adventists do (I think). And even in more mainstream denominations, you'll find people with personal opinions like this as well. You don't need to stay in a cult to satisfy your need to be with like-minded people.

(And the WTS IS a cult. I wish, for your sake, I could say it isn't. A cult doesn't even have to be religious, just psychologically controlling. And the WTS controls by allowing no dissent, no questions (once you are a member!), hiding information from followers, psychological pressure to think that leaving is death itself, isolation from associating with others, absolute prohibition from contact with former members (often called apostates), filling up one's time with their activities, and associating the group/leader with some ultimate power or truth.)

Lastly, because the litmus test is whether you are personally committed to following God, or following someone/some group that takes God's authority upon itself, I wonder if you have ever read this court transcript, wherein Franz and Covington admit that the JW is REQUIRED to obey the WTS EVEN IF THEY ARE FALSE PROPHETS. Please tell me... are these guys really telling you to follow God? For you know well that the Bible says clearly, repeatedly, in both OT and NT, that ONE IS NEVER TO FOLLOW A FALSE PROPHET. This is a bigger watershed than the doctrine of hell, my dear!

http://watchtower.observer.org/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040312/DOCTRINE/10527012

Read it carefully!

bebu

JV

Wow, Whiskeyjack, what can i say? comparing the JW's to the Nazi's hmmmm........ let's see, one group systematically killed millions of people during WW2, the other.... oh yeah i don't think you can really top that on the evil index.... For all the faults of the WTBS to compare them to the Nazi's is retarded. Next time lets use a little common sense.

EvilForce

JV I agree the Nazi comment was over the top. The Nazi's simply killed many Witnesses. The WTBS has slowly dismantled their members bit by bit. Causing emotional and mental damage. They have sapped their soul. Killed their desire to go on. Blinded them to Jesus command to love one another. They have stolen their lives. Witnesses giving up any current life for the b.s. promise of a grander life somewhere beyond. All based on lies. So I agree with you JV.....the WTBS is worse! Thanks for clarifying this for us JV :)

SixofNine

The loss of your stones is the least of your worries, almosthome. It is tissue far north of your stones gone missing that you should be worried about!

JV

Wow EvilForce, you've got to be kidding me..... what can I say, i'm speechless, I really hope your being sarcastic, but if your aren't I feel for ya bud, I really do.

greendawn

I also agree that the WTS is very criminal even if at a different level, they don't harm the body but they do have this strange power to seriously harm people emotionaly which can causes anguish for years.

EvilForce

JV...yes I was being sarcastic...but only to a point. At what point does an organization get branded evil? One unnecessary death? 5? 50? 1,000? 5,000? 50,000? At what point does the mental tortue differ? At what point of robbing people of Jesus command of love does it become manipulative and cruel? Is a person who kills 5 people worse than one who kills 10? They are both bloodguilty in my opinion!

avishai

The nazi thing was obviously an analogy, duh, to individuals, not wts org. to nazi org.. Plus, the wts claims to be "just impefect men", but likely kills more folks than jonestown with it's blood policy, and the second someone has a problem where they might need blood, well, there's the elders at the hospital , "just imperfect men", but they're there to make sure that you won't take any, even though the policy has changed constantly in the last twenty yrs.

They kill, lot's. Little kids, too.

Confession

Odrade,

I'm sure you must not mean it like that. Surely those who have children who were molested by an elder, then treated cruelly, or simply not believed, while watching the elder continue serving are not "blowing it out of proportion."

Please forgive me. I certainly didn't have such a thing in mind. I'd been reading so many threads of late that discussed how JWs are, for example, 'so without any decency or love' after having related a story about what one sister said, etc. Anyone in the situation you describe, of course, has every right to mistrust individuals or an organization that tolerates something like that.

This is a strawman argument. It asks suggests to us that there is logic in the decision to dismiss the wrongdoing of one group because there are many other organizations perpetrating the same type of abuse.

If I'd suggested such a dismissal it definitely would be a "straw man," but I never meant to do that. I intended to demonstrate that the organization of JWs is not the only group that has done damage to its adherents, and that individuals will use examples of what SOME of the people did to justify their wholesale denunciation of ALL the people. There are threads here in which many contributers have suggested that all elders are idiots--or that they never met an elder who wasn't a jerk. I don't think any honest person can believe that's true.

The "terrible things" mentioned may have sounded like I was discussing pedophilia, but I wasn't. While most of the bad things perpetrated by individuals within the organization don't make them peculiar from other religions, their policies about keeping things quiet regarding pedophilia does mark them as particularly reprehensible. In fact I thought about going into that later in the post, but decided it was long enough as it was. Again my apologies for any who thought I was "soft-pedaling" their anger over such a thing. I agree with you that it would be unfair. Would you agree that many in this forum make generalizations about JWs that are also unfair?

Glofishy

I'm not gonna throw stones at ya, but there is something that I would like to suggest you consider. (And it's very Oprahish)

You have an established history of winding up in abusive relationships. It sounds like things are going great with your new hubby, which I am very happy for you for. But, from the tone of your post, it sounds like you're going back, subjecting yourself to shunning and humiliation just in order to rejoin this group that shunned you in the first place, even when you sincerely were repentful. It kinda sounds to me that now that you're in a great marriage, you're trying to seek a different abusive relationship...that is with your religion. I understand not everyone has had bad experiences and there are many happy JW's, but I got the impression that your history with this organization hasn't been the best.

I may be way off base, but it was just something I thought of as I was reading your story. I do wish you well. If you do go back, just make sure that no one tries to interfere with your marriage, on any level. If you want to do the field service deal, don't do it so much that it's at the expense of quality family time with your hubby and kids and grandkid. Your first order of "ministry" should be geared toward your own household, not spending hours knocking on stranger's doors.

no stones please!

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