You may be thinking of a letter, not an article, that I believe was cited in CoC.
Of course, there are plenty of articles counseling against independent thinking, but I suppose that's not what you're after?
it was from the eighties, and basically it said that even questioning the organization in your mind and not telling another soul about it is still apostasy.
i'm working on a blog entry about the new stance on college and elders' kids and i want to cite it.
thanks.
You may be thinking of a letter, not an article, that I believe was cited in CoC.
Of course, there are plenty of articles counseling against independent thinking, but I suppose that's not what you're after?
i used to be the piano player at the kingdom hall (before they made the halls play tapes/cd's).
i had no idea that whenever i played song 72, i was doing a song by queen.
queen's song "lazing on a sunday afternoon" was on their 4th album "night at the opera", the same album that had "bohemian rhapsody".
Queen has no case for copyright infringement. At all. The first line is similar, not the same, and after that it's not even close. Both chords and melody are different.
The Les Baxter one is eerily similar through the entire verse. May be a case there.
most cults don't go out with a whisper when they know their time has come.
jonestown.
branch davidians.
When the WTS was subject to the whims of one man, anything could have happened. From its founding to 1975 it was a dictatorship.
Now, with a group of men in command rather than an individual, it's much less likely that they will go along with too "crazy" a plan. Their prudence can be seen by their ever-increasing use of lawyers. Don't be fooled, the WTS corporation is as "worldly" as they come.
The WTS is not one man any more, it is a collective that looks out for its own survival. It will not implode, but it may bleed members and money and eventually go out of business. If it were more powerful it would gladly be The Party from 1984, but it isn't and never will be.
...is a big blur.
he was obviously drunk for those 30 years.
He was a slow study. Nowadays you're expected to get baptized at 13.
in the very early days of my explaining to certain witnesses my doubts, i kind of ran through all of them.
they probobly merged into one big hodge-podge of apostate doubting nonsense.
- the nephilim penis size, the animals in the ark, the she bears killing the kids, davids baby being killed by god for his adultery, jesus sacrifice not really being a sacrifice, the torture of jw's in the camps, appointment of elders, the changing doctrines.........but more than a few elders/rank & file witnesses told me that i "think about stuff too much".
Usually when someone tells you that you're thinking too much, it's because they're not thinking enough, because they lack the capability and are jealous that you do not.
Think about it... how many dubs take pride in their ignorance?
i have found some numbers like 4,5% educated, in jw there the average was about 39.3
% in australia, in 1995. if i read it rigth :).
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/eb5dbf508e41611fca2570ec00787e70!opendocument.
Several years back when there was an air of "lightening up" on college education, a number of young local brothers took advantage and got degrees, some while serving as MS or elder. Despite the reassurances at last year's DC that most college graduates are unemployed, all these brothers got good jobs. Of course, they eventually resigned their MS and elder positions as well... seems education somehow made them smarter!
Dumbass that I was, I only got my Associate's, and now I'm back in school.
no, this is not a joke.
having actually managed to survive through the entire 3 grueling days of the dc after attending the friday session today (hit sat and sun last weekend) i was initially going to make a criticism of some of the parts & points at the dc.
however, something that i witnessed today changed my mind.
Thanks for sharing that DoomVoyager... now if anyone asks me why I'm not going to the DC I'll say it's because they cause stroke and death.
Really though, I don't blame anyone for checking out in the middle of a convention... and from what I hear there's a six-part symposium this year... get the stretchers and toe tags ready.
he thought long and hard before he said he didn't think so, but he did think they were a high control group.
now those of you who know alan are aware that he knows more about the wt religion than everyone in bethel (including the gb) put together.
that was ten years ago, but look what has happened since.. about 8 years ago alanf was making a business trip to new york city and he asked me if i wanted a copy of the wt cd rom.
Re: OKM availability
OKMs used to come from the book study conductors. When I missed the book study where OKMs were handed out, I just didn't get mine. This happened a lot as I missed a lot of book studies. I was inactive at the time so maybe the conductor figured it was no big deal, or maybe he thought if I wanted it enough I would ask for it specifically later, or maybe the direction was to not volunteer to give out OKMs to people who missed the first handing out.
In any case, not having OKMs led to me attending fewer ministry schools. It was a snowball effect that kept me from doing field circus, from attending meetings, and the halfhearted attempt by elders to "encourage" me pushed me over the edge and made me think, 'try as I might, I just can't see God's spirit here.'
So THANK YOU, lazy elders!
one part of my experience with the jw's was that many of the elders in my congreagtion were die hard into star trek...i figured it was isolated to that one kh, but as i went to different ones, i noticed it was a lot of them.
one elder explained his fandom as: "it makes me think of the new system.
we will travel to other planets when the earth is full, and colonize the galaxy.
A lot of JWs are into Star Trek. I remember when The Next Generation had a big two-part episode in which it was revealed that all the humanoid races of the galaxy were spawned by a single ancient race who put DNA on a bunch of different planets.
I wondered at the time if Star Trek was going to now be considered "bad," since that episode basically gave the finger to Bible-God.
how do you handle them?
i mean, sometimes they write things that are really hurtful!.
do you just ignore them altogether?
Seriously, though, this is just another: you're too insensitive vs. you're too sensitive thread. We could post on here till our fingers bleed and never convince anyone of our view.
What cuts one person to the quik is just a passing comment to someone else. But that does not make the pain any less real. I think we all need to be reminded every now and then that our words have power. Power to uplift and power to destroy. Sometimes our words are misunderstood, and the best thing to do is simply apologize and move on.
So basically, it's just Cartman vs. Dr. Nelson all over again.