Great thread, Darcy and welcome!
A few thoughts on ‘laughing’ x 3:
Luna:
Plus, nothing else that the WTS has ever promised or prophecied has ever come true, so it seems pretty silly to believe that they got this living-forever-if-you-are-a-good-little-dub-all-your-miserable-life thing right either.
Yup – can anyone name one single thing the WTS has ever gotten right in terms of prophecy?
Darcy:
Maybe I like the Witnesses cause I'm laid back.
This is particularly revealing and interesting. JW’s are the least laid-back people on the planet – they have to watch their backs constantly because they’ve been taught that their standing before God is totally conditional upon their compliance with the dictates of the WTS – hours in FS, how they dress, who they associate with, what they do for a living, whether they get an education, their medical treatment, what they read, what they do for a living, how they spend their leisure time and even what music they listen to! And they know that if they deviate from what is acceptable, their brothers and sisters will be only too happy to rat them out.
Ahhhh……but you are laid back! This indicates to me that you don’t take the tenets of this sect very seriously; for you it’s just an exploration or diversion like agnosticism, wiccan, apathy, French, the Pentatuch, etc. (which, BTW, exploring is a good thing to do when you’re young).
But consider this:
Fleshy:
I just get a little skeptical when I feel someone is being flippant about the sincerity of people who have lost so much to this destructive org.
Darcy, you must appreciate that most witnesses take the demands of the WTS very seriously – to the point that it has many, many times cost lives – medically, through suicide, insanity, neglect of health, etc. And it has created emotional pain beyond belief for families torn apart by shunning practices.
And finally,
The big question is
, if this is the truth, then why all the deception?
Deception includes changing or deleting their history. As established so well, why would God’s mouthpiece need to do that?
I’ve often thought that the “truth” is totally contingent on the blind faith acceptance of the WTS as God’s visible organization on earth. Take that outrageous premise out of the equation and the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses collapse like a wet cardboard suitcase.
