Posts by neverendingjourney

22

How the new US gay marriage ruling could cause trouble for the WTS

by sir82 in

jw
friends

here are a couple of ways that come to mind:.

-- suppose a married gay couple, or even one of the partners, starts studying the bible with jws and decides he wants to baptized?

would the jws require him to get a divorce?

neverendingjourney

Of course no JW elder would agree to perform the ceremony, nor would they allow the Kingdom Hall to be used for the ceremony. Isn't that discrimination? What would the legal consequences be if the JWs refused to sanction the union?

That's basically the slippery-slope argument evangelicals of all stripes have been making in response to the ruling.

In short, the law does not currently require that churches marry gay people no more than it requires that a Catholic Church marry a pair of Muslims.

But what about that bakery that was forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding? If you can force a bakery to bake a cake can't you extend that logic to churches and force pastors to marry gays? Can the government revoke a church's tax-exemption in order to force them to marry gays?

Well, in a word, "no." At least not yet.

Seems to me that the underlying paranoia is less about this particular court ruling than it is about secularization trends. It's not difficult to imagine a world where society would no more tolerate a church refusing to marry gays than it would it refusing to marry black people. We don't live in that world and it's possible we never will. Evangelicals do not have full confidence that they'll be able to stem the tide of public opinion, though.

9

30 most edited regular Wikipedia pages

by biometrics in

jehovah's witnesses topic made it to the list:.

http://i.imgur.com/7m2xgzz.png.

neverendingjourney

Surprised Scientology isn't on the list

If I remember correctly, Wikipedia banned a bunch of users who were constantly making edits to the Scientology page, accounts that were in some way linked to their headquarters.

9

Anonymous email arrived in my inbox! Advice needed please...

by Anon_SA1 in

jw
friends

hey guys!

i am not a jw, never been one, but linked to a born in jw via family.

last week i received an email from an anonymous person.

neverendingjourney

When I was a child, my Catholic aunt made me sit down and read some anti-JW pamphlet published by her church. It contained all sorts of "lies" such as how the Witnesses had actually predicted the end of the world in 1914, 1925 and some "nonsense" about 1975. I immediately dismissed it and went back to living my normal life. It wasn't until I was in my mid 20s that I began doing independent research and realized what I had read was actually correct.

I know it's not of tremendous use to you, but take that story for what it's worth. The indoctrination we're subjected to is very strong. In my case it took many years of suppressing doubts and some very specific circumstances to get me to entertain the idea that my beliefs were wrong.

Combating Cult Mind Control has the best suggestions I've ever read regarding how to attempt to get a JW family member to reason. There's probably no advice we can give you that isn't already in the book. I wish you luck.

35

THIS IS WHAT WITNESSING HAS BEEN REDUCED TO IN 2015

by steve2 in

threads on the newer jw face of public "witnessing" have shared in common the astonishment that jws safely park themselves behind their literature trolleys and exercise incredibly little contact with passersby.

whether the poster is talking about europe or the united states or australia, descriptions here are the same.. literature stands are protective sheilds behind which jws huddle, talking to each other, sipping on their espressos, whilst the disinterested world passes by.

neither the jws nor the passersby catch each others eyes.

neverendingjourney

I don't see what the problem is. Isn't this the same method Noah used to convince people the flood was coming? After all, he spent decades at it and made a grand total of zero converts.

8

Sometimes the most obvious connections are the most difficult to make

by neverendingjourney in

i had a sudden realization the other day, one that took me many years to make but that should have been fairly obvious in hindsight.

let me explain.. my parents are immigrants.

they moved to the u.s. when i was a toddler.

neverendingjourney

So true. From among the batch of kids my mom first met in the kingdom hall, three have done prison time and at least one of them is a registered sex offender.

20

Pioneer Service School Adjustment for 2014

by bnybyt in

the pioneer service school will now be only one week, monday thru saturday.. it will consist of 40 hours of instruction and illustrations/presentations.. the reasong given is that this will make it more accessible to the pioneers for due to work schedules and for congregations having to sponsor and support the school.. it will make it easier on everyone and those who haven't attended in the last five years may be able to attend this school with the new curriculum.. .

what do you feel would be included in the new curriculum.

probably more worship of the governing body and they don't need two whole weeks to get this across.. .

neverendingjourney

The school was one of the highlights of my young life at the time. It was a big deal for me.

Then the asshole who took the class picture chose the shot where I was looking away and had my eyes closed. He refused to give me the negatives to any of the other shots because if he did it for me he'd have to do it for everyone else. So I never had the coveted framed class photo hanging from my wall.

That ate away at me for a long time. Such a stupid thing now that I look back at it.

8

Sometimes the most obvious connections are the most difficult to make

by neverendingjourney in

i had a sudden realization the other day, one that took me many years to make but that should have been fairly obvious in hindsight.

let me explain.. my parents are immigrants.

they moved to the u.s. when i was a toddler.

neverendingjourney

We had a Pioneer / Cutco Knife salesperson

I forgot about the knives. My mom also bought a set. But it was cool, though. If you gave them the name, address and phone number of six of your closest friends, they'd throw in a free knife.

When they first arrived, they had 2 kids and no friends of family here.

Neither did mine. What's worse, my mom was scared to death that her kids would grow up to be like the some of the thugs in our neighborhood. Once she saw all the kids running around the kingdom hall in suit/ties and puffy dresses, she knew she'd found the place she wanted to raise her kids in.

8

Sometimes the most obvious connections are the most difficult to make

by neverendingjourney in

i had a sudden realization the other day, one that took me many years to make but that should have been fairly obvious in hindsight.

let me explain.. my parents are immigrants.

they moved to the u.s. when i was a toddler.

neverendingjourney

I had a sudden realization the other day, one that took me many years to make but that should have been fairly obvious in hindsight. Let me explain.

My parents are immigrants. They moved to the U.S. when I was a toddler. They were poorly educated and worked tough jobs for little money. As such, they were an easy target for con-artists of various sorts. They were especially vulnerable to door-to-door, high-pressure salesmen.

When I was a toddler my mother was talked into buying an incredibly overpriced cookware set for something like $1,000 in early 80s money. Not to worry, the cookware would pay for itself with the money we'd save from not eating out anymore!

Not long after that my father agreed to buy an encyclopedia set, but thankfully the salesperson never returned. When i was in middle school my mother bought a vacuum cleaner from a lady, again, for over $1,000. Our house didn't have carpet. I wish I were kidding. The most expensive con they fell for was a central air/heating system that was incredibly expensive and came with a near-usurious interest rate. We couldn't afford any of these things.

There was another common thread with all these scams. Each time the salesperson passed himself off as a deeply pious person in order to lull the ignorant into a false sense of complacency. I think you see where I'm going with this.

As I sat there remembering all these things it dawned of me: Of course my parents were going to fall for the nice JW couple who came selling religion to their door . Why wouldn't they? They never once resisted buying a product being peddled door-to-door regardless of the price or the actual need for such product (or lack thereof). The JW product was simply another con peddled by pious door-to-door salespeople. It was completely in character for my parents to blindly purchase it.

Had the Mormons beaten the JWs to their door, I'd likely be posting this on an ex-LDS forum instead.

21

the age of adam when he died, anyone know?

by brandnew in

jw
friends

and if so, does this mean that adam had already invented a timetable, and calendar?

neverendingjourney

Little known fact: Adam died the same year Santa Claus was born.

36

My Last thoughts in Field Service Before the Elderly Man Shat Himself and Pissed his pants in My New Car!

by PokerPlayerPhil in

debating this was going to be the last day in field service was not hard after dealing with a nasty mess because i was grouped with the misfits of the kingdom hall!

i was reading this website on my phone while something started to stink in my car and one of the weird kids nobody wanted to work with yelled "hey, you leaking all over my seat, he was freaked out too!

" the older, retired elder, his pioneer daughter had forgotten to put his depends on and that became my problem.

neverendingjourney

Man, this just brings back a flood of terrible memories, the damage and abuse to my car, the appointed men avoiding the hard service work, the pointless driving around, but I have to say I never once experienced anything as bad as that.

One of the most common issues was mothers who'd drop their kids off at the kingdom hall for field service as a substitute for day care and would make looking after them the congregation's problem. When I was a 17 year old pioneer I'd often find myself out in service with 3 or 4 children. Can you imagine having a teenager and four elementary school aged kids knock on your door peddling religious literature?

Another issue was people simply not showing up when field service arrangement had already been made. Early morning service was quite popular in my area. We would typically meet at 6:00 a.m. and half the time the people I'd made arrangement with simply wouldn't show up, no last minute cancellation call or anything.