i know that some people on the board have experience of being mormons, so i would be interested in your feedback.
at church this afternoon it was an uncanny experience.
in the past i've read a lot about mormons, so i thought i was prepared in general for what it would be like.
I forgot to mention another thing they do is they use early modern English, or mainly just thee and thou instead of you. They do this in all aspects of the service: prayers, hymns, and even during sermons.
I wonder what they do in other languages to make it sound distinctive or if it's just a feature of Mormonism in English speaking areas.
Many aspects of the service remind you of 19th century America: the look of the church, the language, the hymns, the dress, the traditional roles for women,
sometimes it's hard to know if our own experience of jws was typical and what features were peculiar to our own area or the individual jws we knew personally.
i was wondering if others experienced this among jws:.
a few times on the ministry, when we were working wealthy areas with large houses, some brothers and sisters would make the comment that they look forward to taking ownership of one of these big houses after armageddon, when the worldly people have vacated them.
I don't know. If you've got one religion that says do the best you can and make the best of your life, and the other that actively discourages you. I'd say that's a non-trivial difference!
i think people need religion because of fear.
fear of death and what will happen at death if they have been good or bad.
people say it gives them hope but is this not born too out of fear of not seeing dead loved ones again, or having a better life in the afterlife?
I have been reading Rodney Stark's new book Triumph of Faith, where he makes his argument afresh that religion is alive and well. In fact he says it's doing better than ever, and we are in the middle of a revival of faith.
Above is a particular quote he likes to use when refuting secularisation, or generally the idea that, as humankind progresses toward greater enlightenment and rationality, it is becoming steadily less religious. He claims that even people who don't go to church still believe in the spiritual. He uses the example of Iceland. On the one hand secularists can point to it as a very secular country, that's stopped going to church, stopped believing traditional Christian teaching, and has a relatively high number of atheists. On the other hand close to half the population of Iceland believe that trolls live in the land. So much so that when they plan a new building they first seek confirmation that they are not building on top of a troll settlement, which would bring terrible luck. Icelanders may have given up on the Christian God but the G K Chesterton rule seems to apply. How does that fit in with the idea that we are progressing toward secularity?
sometimes it's hard to know if our own experience of jws was typical and what features were peculiar to our own area or the individual jws we knew personally.
i was wondering if others experienced this among jws:.
a few times on the ministry, when we were working wealthy areas with large houses, some brothers and sisters would make the comment that they look forward to taking ownership of one of these big houses after armageddon, when the worldly people have vacated them.
I think this is a key difference between JWs and Mormons.
If a Mormon sees a big house he'd like to live in he might think: I wonder what I can study and what job I can do to be able to afford that.
A JW might think: if don't study beyond school and give up on a career, maybe I'll please Jehovah enough that he'll let me have that house one day.
That sounds really crass. Is that putting it too strong?
I'm glad we've finally got around to discussing this topic. It's a subject we have really neglected on this forum.
I'd also ask:
Does the idea that there is one "correct" way of looking at situations or aspects of the world deserve respect?
i think people need religion because of fear.
fear of death and what will happen at death if they have been good or bad.
people say it gives them hope but is this not born too out of fear of not seeing dead loved ones again, or having a better life in the afterlife?
Believe it or not some scholars argue religion is more popular than ever.
https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Faith-World-More-Religious/dp/1610171381/
sometimes it's hard to know if our own experience of jws was typical and what features were peculiar to our own area or the individual jws we knew personally.
i was wondering if others experienced this among jws:.
a few times on the ministry, when we were working wealthy areas with large houses, some brothers and sisters would make the comment that they look forward to taking ownership of one of these big houses after armageddon, when the worldly people have vacated them.
I find it interesting that the common JW rebuttal of this idea is technical and textual rather than ethical. Instead of simply saying: "cut that out, it's a crass, selfish and pathetic attitude to have to fellow human beings", they come up with: "the prophet Ezekiel (or some such) says Jehovah will divide the land according to the spiritus tribes, so we can't really know which heathen's house and land we will be allocated once they are all slaughtered".
sometimes it's hard to know if our own experience of jws was typical and what features were peculiar to our own area or the individual jws we knew personally.
i was wondering if others experienced this among jws:.
a few times on the ministry, when we were working wealthy areas with large houses, some brothers and sisters would make the comment that they look forward to taking ownership of one of these big houses after armageddon, when the worldly people have vacated them.
Yes notsurewheretogo I remember someone making exactly that response.
sometimes it's hard to know if our own experience of jws was typical and what features were peculiar to our own area or the individual jws we knew personally.
i was wondering if others experienced this among jws:.
a few times on the ministry, when we were working wealthy areas with large houses, some brothers and sisters would make the comment that they look forward to taking ownership of one of these big houses after armageddon, when the worldly people have vacated them.
Well I am sure it's not a false memory on my part or something I picked up on the forum only. The reason being I can remember a particular house in the west end one brother laid claim to and am reminded each time I pass it.
sometimes it's hard to know if our own experience of jws was typical and what features were peculiar to our own area or the individual jws we knew personally.
i was wondering if others experienced this among jws:.
a few times on the ministry, when we were working wealthy areas with large houses, some brothers and sisters would make the comment that they look forward to taking ownership of one of these big houses after armageddon, when the worldly people have vacated them.
