i read this on another site and thought it was interesting as well as on the nail when it came to how i felt as a kid. see what you think...
Grim Reapers I've been doing some reading at freeminds.org, today, most recently Terry Walstrom's account "My Life in Jehovah's Service."
www.freeminds.org/stories/mylife.htm
This is a powerful and logically compelling account. However, I only got partway through it; I had to stop for a while, and plan to return to it later. I got as far as this:
Quote:At school you are quite apart from normal kids. But, normal is worldly and worldly is "marked for destruction." So, quite literally, everywhere you look you "see dead people.” Or, as John Wayne said in the Alamo, "They may be walking around; but, they're dead as a beaver hat!"
Quote:So, quite literally, everywhere you look you "see dead people.”
Put this way, these words take me back, and I feel, once again, if only for a moment, that sad, sick, alone sort of feeling.
That such should be vaunted a reason for exultation within the JW organization is really quite perverse, or more simply, it shows you just how sick these fuckers are. Hasn't it ever occurred to them, that even if one is assured of one's own salvation...to walk around every day, assured that everyone around you, including loved ones not in the faith, are buzzard fodder for God's great feast at Armageddon...hasn't it occurred to them that such might be an unbearably painful experience for many people?
I can extract a lot of information about the god of the JWs out of that one sentence quoted above. First of all, there is no "Jehovah," of the sort the JWs worship, or if there is, he is shallow and cruel. Think: I am one of his poor, pitiful, flawed creations, but if I was given the choice between killing billions over matters like celebrating birthdays or going to restricted movies, I would not do the killing. I would let them be. In order to do the killing, I would have to be shallow, and petty, and hateful. But, how is it that I, the flawed creation, can have a sense of empathy and compassion that runs deeper than the Creator's?
What parent butchers his own child for being disobedient?
In JW dogma, Jehovah is pissed off because Adam and Eve screwed up and ate a piece of stinking fruit. That's pretty shallow right there, but we'll allow that it was just a sort of arbitrary test God set up for them. Anyway, Adam and Eve followed one possible alternative allowed by free will - they disobeyed him. They didn't even necessarily cease to love him, and they certainly didn't cease to fear him. No matter, God tore up the lease and threw them out, and put one of his winged stooges at the gates of Eden with a flaming sword so they couldn't ever go back. There's Jehovah with his "awful finalities" again. Maybe it comes from being without beginning and without end: a sort of novel fascination with irrevocable endings.
Now, millenia later, it's all coming to a head, according to the JWs. And the truly faithful, the truly indoctrinated, walk around with happy smiles on their faces, even though, everywhere they look, they see dead people. So they go door to door; they try to save a few lost souls. Where they don't find a hearing ear: more dead people.
What does it take to hold up under this, day after day, year after year? Is it purely a matter of brainwashing? Or does it help to be shallow, to be self-centered, to be stupid? Doesn't the process of going to door-to-door, being fundamentally a weeding process, make a JW party to divine genocide, since what they are doing is not really trying to save souls so much as they are trying to separate "sheep" from "goats?" When they leave the door and walk away after disturbing someone's breakfast and being told to fuck off, aren't they actually sending a report to Jehovah: kill these folks, o' Lord. They're goats.
In this sense, Jehovah's Witnesses are Grim Reapers, or at the very least, agents of the Grim Reaper. Like Silver Surfer, the Herald of Galactus, destroyer of worlds, in the comic book universe of the Fantastic Four.* They are mostly about eternal death, not eternal life.
Best,
Dean
dubs are grim reapers
by andy2tanx 8 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
andy2tanx
-
Hellrider
"And that I still struggle with amorphous feelings such as this, in adult life - feelings divorced from religiosity, but still lingering, spectre-like in the back of my consciousness? "
I think I know exactly how you feel. It`s a bold statement, but I recognised most of what you wrote. I can actually remember occasions in the classroom at school, looking around me, thinking that they were soon all going to die in a blazing inferno. It made me feel sick, and I was of course not sure I was going to survive either, I wasn`t always a good boy. In my adult life, I`m struggling with constant depression and anxiety. I`ve been on anti-depressives since I was diagnosed at 23, 7 years ago. Looking back, I think I`ve had this depression since around the age of 16-17. Coincidentally, and also ironically, that`s around the age I really rebelled against my mother and left the JWs once and for all. Ever since then (and maybe also earlier) there is a constant feeling of pessimism in me, a downward spiral, I`ve never expected to live very long (or happily), and I still don`t. The trouble is, you can never be sure as to HOW much this illness was caused by the upbringing as a JW, and how much has been caused by other things. But the fact that I still have these nightmares of Armageddon, vivid dreams of catastrophy, flaming inferno, objects falling from the sky, floods washing over mountains, would really indicate that much of it,probably most of it, is due to that upbringing in the JWs. I hate them with all my guts.
-
MerryMagdalene
"Grim Reapers"----great metaphor.
As a JW child, I had some fairly grim nightmares about Armageddon, in which I would be clinging to my mother's hand as she rushed along a narrow mountain path to Paradise. But God would strike me down anyway for being a wicked child, severing my hand from my arm and I would fall from the path into a chasm.
The only way I could handle the grimness as a teen JW was to try to put my trust in God that he would never destroy someone who wasn't truly deserving, no matter what the "grim reapers" around me said about the "heard-hearted householders" and other worldly people.
But I still had my moments of fear and despair when I would try to bargain with God thru prayer, to intercede on the behalf of someone I loved who, I was receiving receiving constant reinforcement, would soon be destroyed if they (or their parents) didn't become JWs.
~Merry
But it definitely can have a lingering effect on one's psyche, how one view's oneself and relates to others!
-
sweet tee
I wasn't raised a witless but I also hated the thought that the majority of mankind would be destroyed. It wasn't until I watched an interview of a gospel singer that I really questioned the witless' outlook. I thought, if this woman has done all of this for God, why would he turn his back on her 'good works' just because she didn't believe as I did? It takes a lot of tiny cracks to break the dam of indoctrination.
I was of course not sure I was going to survive either,
I felt this way too. What's even worse is not knowing if your CHILDREN are going to perish because YOU don't measure up!
-
heathen
At least they aren't militant and have a convert or die policy as say the catholic church had in the dark ages . I do hate the sell WTBTS publications or be eternally damned mentallity . The bible iself is very clear that jesus can turn anybody away even if they do say to him lord lord . I do agree that spirit and truth are important things but since when did the watchtower have any of it ? They continue to redefine the "truth" to cover their trail of deceit .
-
DannyHaszard
Psychopath Primer new page upgrades at DannyHaszard.com
The Watchtower is run by psychopaths
This is BIG and scary Satan is the original pure psychopath.
Psychopathy is UNTREATABLE according to clinicians,because it is not an illness it is a moral judgment.They have NO conscience they are great to have around in war time as hired killers but raise hell among the civilian population.
My JW Father and my maternal grandmother (not related) would look you in the eye,so that you could see your reflection in their retina when they would bold faced lie about anything.I have been pitted against countless Jehovah's Witnesses who are just like them.
It is UNCANNY!!
-
Crumpet
Hi Dan
You said exactly what I've been saying for a while now but so much better:
: I am one of his poor, pitiful, flawed creations, but if I was given the choice between killing billions over matters like celebrating birthdays or going to restricted movies, I would not do the killing. I would let them be.
IThis thought is my strong hold whenever I find the indoctrination creeping back in. If I am more loving in my sense of right and justice than god then tell me - who is God?
Well said - I hope I get to meet you. Katie speaks very highly of you. Another wonderful person.
-
Hellrider
"IThis thought is my strong hold whenever I find the indoctrination creeping back in. If I am more loving in my sense of right and justice than god then tell me - who is God?"
Exactly! I say that to myself too. You know, even I am not that petty that I require that everybody worships me blindly. I have a kid, so I created him, but I don`t expect him to worship me, do I? Until he is a certain age, I expect him to listen to me, even obey me, but not WORSHIP me! Because I`m not that petty. Pettiness is a really low quality, perhaps the quality I dislike the most. Giving something and then expecting to be adored for it, people like that are ridicolous. If you`re gonna give something, give because it makes you happy, not for getting blind admiration back, at least that? s what I try to live up to. And I can`t be more perfect than God, can I? I believe that if there is a God somewhere, he doesn`t require blind, fanatical worship,not even faith. All he requires, if he exists and is a God of high ethical standars, is that you try to live ethically, not hurting other people. That is the key, and the basic principle. I don`t think God cares if you smoke or drink or is a homosexual or occasionally curse, all he cares about is what you do to other fellow human beings. Period.
-
Honesty
The WatchTower god is an angry demon and his followers are just like him.
