under_believer

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Posts by under_believer

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  43

  "Apostates end up bitter and angry"

  by XBEHERE in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i actually attended the bookstudy on friday, don't ask me why.

  anyway the revelation book is being considered and we're at the paragraph where the congregation in ephesus is comended for "not bearing bad men.." apostates.. .

  the comments from the ones attending were so baised and ignorant.

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  under_believer

  I hate to say it but that statement is patently true for me. Most Witnesses would consider me an apostate. And I am bitter and angry, specifically because of the fact that I'm not a Witness anymore. I miss blissful ignorance and the happiness of my JW-indoctrinated teenage years especially. But, a little voice inside my head said, "Don't look back. You can never look back."
  
  On the other hand, my dread (a paradox: dread coexisting with bliss) at the prospect of surviving the slaughter of almost 6 billion people is gone. And you can't deny that there are very, very few happy Jehovah's Witnesses. In my family's current congregation there are maybe two, in the whole congregation.
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  27

  The CRITIC and the Phony Artist: A Lesson for us all?

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  from the washington post (02/22):.

  too perfect harmony.

  how technology fostered, and detected, a pianist's alleged plagiarism.

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  under_believer

  A bit of history, here--I was raised a Witness. The average Witnesses' idea of culture is a Kingdom Song played by Sister Marge on the out-of-tune piano in the local Grange, or maybe Sister Freida's terrible poetry about the New Order. For this reason, and because my parents didn't give a fig for art or culture of any kind, I didn't become culturally aware until my mid-20's, after I was married to my wife. Most of my cultural knowledge has been subsequently self-taught.
  
  However, I've always had a critical bent. I was heavily involved in Drama in high school, and I learned the difference between good acting and bad, between a good play and a bad, between good directing and bad. I could spot bad writing, bad staging, and bad cinematography. For this reason my Witness friends referred to me as "The Critic." We'd come out of some horrible trash like that King Arther movie, First Knight, from 1995, and they'd all be gushing about it--wasn't it WONDERFUL? And they'd ask me what I thought. And I'd tell them that it was a ridiculous divergence from the original story, that Richard Gere couldn't act his way out of a brown paper bag, and that it wasted Sean Connery's not inconsiderable skills. Also the directing was rubbish. And real movies aren't written by three people. There'd be a silence, and my opinion would be written off as the ramblings of a boy who always hated all movies. (Not true, though.)
  
  Here is where the meat of my story comes in. My wife, if this is even possible, had less cultural exposure even than I did. Shallow rom-coms were pretty much the pinnacle of Western culture in her book. And after we were married, and without any kind of conscious thought or intent, I began to undermine her ideas. I'd make a comment here (Sandra Bullock stinks because...), or an observation there (why does Hugh Grant always play the same character?) And after awhile she had picked up on my sensibilities, which, by the way, were not subjective. I can always give a rational, objective reason for why I hold an opinion about a given movie or play or television show. And now she does too--and SHE HATES IT.
  
  She hates it. She misses her ignorance. She misses the simplicity of going and seeing a chick flick and liking it. She misses the days when there was good entertainment to be found everywhere, in bounty. Now, she might enjoy 1/10th of what she sees on TV and 1/5th of the movies we see. And her mind is always analyzing the content that it's being given--she notices things like writing, and pacing, and the emotions the score is deliberately trying to evoke. And our kids are already doing the same thing--"this commercial is so stupid" or "look how dumb Dora is". And she bemoans the fact that they're never going to have that innocence, the innocence I stripped from her. They will never even experience that wide-eyed credulity that she misses so much.
  
  So I guess it cuts both ways. Some people are happier with Friends and a Big Mac and Britney Spears and Titanic and "a good house red" and Hershey's Special Dark and Budweiser and Chevrolet and Old Navy and John Grisham and Cheddar cheese. And you take those things away, the enjoyment of those things, and they will resent you until the day they die.
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  35

  Why do the local congregations always pay for the D.O. and C.O. visits?

  by RULES & REGULATIONS in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  every time a circuit and district overseer visited our congregation,the elders always wanted a show of hands from the congregation to see if we would pay for their car expenses and travel.sometimes the congregation would pay for airline tickets.it was always approved.. do you know if the idea came from the local congregations to pay?

  did the wts send out letters to each congregation to see if they would pay?

  we know that the wts always get what they want.. it's amazing how we paid $250-$400 for each overseer visit and the wts paid nothing..

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  under_believer

  I don't think it's outrageous or a big deal to finance the CO visit.
  
  I mean the guy doesn't have a job for which he gets money. He spends all his time visiting congregations, and that mofo works HARD for the money he gets, too--and I would argue that his wife has it harder than he does. And he's not like... profiting or anything. He will retire with the clothes on his back and the lint in his pocket, no social security in many cases, no retirement fund, because the branch has no use for him anymore. And you're gonna begrudge the guy 100 or 150 bucks a week? 7200 dollars a year? Could you live on 7200 a year, even assuming someone had you over for dinner every night? That wouldn't cover half my mortgage.
  
  I've known many asshole circuit overseers--the majority, in fact--and a couple of really good ones who I would count as dear friends to this day. Even with the assholes, though I don't think you can really accuse them or even the Society of robbing the congregation in this matter. That role is not something to envy.
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  8

  Why Your Life Sucks, Sometimes (Awake April 2007)

  by metatron in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  in regard to the "world is worse and worse" mindset, i recently considered the distress of some of my aging relatives.

  there are two facts.

  that quietly influence our opinions:.

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  under_believer

  What I love about 1914 is the misapprehension that most Witnesses have, that the WHOLE WORLD knows about 1914 and how it was the start of everything bad. They think it's common knowledge and universally recognized by Witnesses as well as non-Witnesses. Why do they think that? Because the Society has told them that.
  
  Just last week at the Watchtower study an elder raised his hand and said "there is very little or no argument at all that all these things are so much worse after 1914. Everyone knows it. What not everyone knows is why 1914 was so important."
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  26

  Another One Bites the Dust

  by XJW4EVR in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  http://kcbs.com/pages/270226.php?contenttype=4&contentid=352202.

  church leader sentenced for molestation.

  san jose, calif. (kcbs) -- a man from san jose has been sentenced to twelve years behind bars for repeatedly molesting the daughter of a fellow church member.

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  under_believer

  Curse you for getting that song stuck in my head.
  
  And... poor girl. I hope her parents take steps early on to get her into therapy so she doesn't suffer a life of misery. Of course, they're WITNESSES, so mental health professionals are the devil, right? I guess more progressive Witnesses are starting to drop that attitude, maybe she'll get lucky.
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  103

  Favourite quotes from films.....

  by fifi40 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i love this quote and often find myself using it on the kids and my dog.

  it is from cats and dogs and james earl jones doing the voice over.

  "not for you young puppy, for you the war is over".

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  under_believer

  "My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement."
  

  Patricia, Joe Versus The Volcano

  Col. Jessep: You want answers?
  Kaffee: I think I'm entitled.
  Col. Jessep: You want answers?
  Kaffee: I want the truth.
  Col. Jessep: You can't handle the truth.

  A Few Good Men

  Westley: Hear this now: I will always come for you.
  Buttercup: But how can you be sure?
  Westley: This is true love - you think this happens every day?

  The Princess Bride
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  24

  If tomorrow never comes, any regrets??

  by avidbiblereader in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if tomorrow never comes, do you have any unsettled regrets, anything you wish you would have done, any places to see or things to do, anybody you wanted to say something to and didn't?.

  .

  abr.

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  under_believer

  Glad you are all so at peace.
  
  I would have a thousand regrets, and each one cuts me like a knife.
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  25

  What is the purpse of the Jehovahs witnesses

  by theyoungone in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i have been on this site for a while looking around at all your comments and most of you have pretty good arguments and i am not trying to argue for either side i am just wondering and maybe this has already been discussed but what is the purpose of the jehovah's witnesses most of you believe that the jw organization is a cult and that they are controlling the minds of their people, but why are they trying to control the minds of the people?

  is it to get their money?

  is their reports of the jws having like billions of dollars stashed away?

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  under_believer

  Coupla comments:
  
  * IMHO, Seeker4's answer is the right one. This religion started out with the best of intentions, and has devolved, as ALL organizations do, into a state of self-preservation at any cost.
  
  * AuldSoul wrote: "When Kingdom Hall properties are sold, the money from the sale belongs to the WTS and the congregation must buy new property." Brandon, I made that very comment a while back and Jim Whitney insisted that this is not true--that the congregations use the proceeds from the sale to buy new property. I have been unable to verify this one way or the other, but I thought I'd share that with you.
  
  * Money is very important to the Society, but only as a means to self-preservation. So you can always tell the reason behind any change or move the Society makes by following the money, but I don't think the organization is about getting rich for riches' sake.
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  95

  First & Last, One-time post

  by journey-on in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have been lurking for quite some time now on jwd.

  my story is pretty much just like everyone else's, "only the names have been changed".

  in reading your posts, i have both laughed and cried till tears ran down my cheeks.

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  under_believer

  I agree with your opinion on disfellowshipping.
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  1

  Swivelling The Service Reports: The Decline of JWism In The West

  by under_believer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  so there is this new web service called swivel.

  it is at http://www.swivel.com.

  what it does is you take data and upload it onto there, and you can generate charts and graphs and so on.

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  under_believer

  So there is this new web service called Swivel. It is at http://www.swivel.com. What it does is you take data and upload it onto there, and you can generate charts and graphs and so on. It's pretty keen (though it's a technology preview or "beta", and therefore it has some bugs).
  
  Anyways I got all the field service reports from 1997-2005 and put them up there. I couldn't get 1998 off of the Internet Archive, so it's missing, and 2006 isn't out yet. Another caveat: I left out the "other lands" line because it changes every year, and is also statistically insignificant. Anyways these data reveal some interesting trends. The full raw dataset is at http://swivel.com/data_sets/show/1003719. If you click into the main report, be prepared to see a lot of raw data. It is not for the faint of heart, or the faint of statistics, or the faint of online tech demos.
  
  However I can link you to a few interesting representational graphs that illustrate what has been happening to JWism in the Western World since 1997. One of the best metrics I can find for this is comparing hours of preaching work with numbers of baptisms. In almost all cases, the baptism figures are way off, especially considering the number of hours preached.
  
  Here are the graphs for:
  Brazil
  Britain
  Finland
  France
  Germany
  Greenland
  Mexico
  Japan
  U.S. of America
  As you can see, Brazil is one of the places in the world where JWism is absolutely exploding! But look everywhere else (even Mexico.) The hours are either falling, flat, or rising with the population increase. The baptisms are way, way down all over the globe. The Society can't possibly be happy with those numbers if they, as Raymond Franz reports, really follow those numbers with all the gusto and interest of sales reports in a regular organization. Which, I guess, is exactly what they are.
  
  EDIT: I take it back. Brazil is declining too. I guess things really are looking bad, aren't they?