i know this might sound silly but field service did provide a strange type of good feelings after i was done.
i called this the "halo-effect" because i felt so "righteous, obedient and good" for taking the weirdos or "the friends" in my station wagon.
vans and station wagon owners in the congregations often get used hard, pile up seven whacks and your off!
"Look in the trunk of the average JW's car and its got piles of months old mags that they are afraid to throw out. At least thats how it was when I was still going in service."
Ha! You should see my basement! I've still got boxes and boxes of stupid old magazines & literature, yellowing and dusting! But naturally I thought I was the "only one" with these secret piles of guilt!
i know this might sound silly but field service did provide a strange type of good feelings after i was done.
i called this the "halo-effect" because i felt so "righteous, obedient and good" for taking the weirdos or "the friends" in my station wagon.
vans and station wagon owners in the congregations often get used hard, pile up seven whacks and your off!
At first, I really thought I was doing "the Lord's work!" Used to exclaim to everybody at the hall how wonderful it was, that it was "just like being a disciple!"
I really thought and believed that Jesus' disciples actually did this kind of door-to-door thing. *ugh*
But after things went on, and you're knocking on empty house after empty house (and walking past people on the street!! What's up with that?? I could never understand how so many JWs could do that... I was one of those super-zealous, annoying JWs who wanted to talk to everybody and who leapt out of the car to talk to somebody if they were walking on the sidewalk toward us.
I was in field service for a WHOLE YEAR before I saw anybody place a magazine with a householder. So all those assemblies and conventions (or should I say sales meetings!) that interviewed people who placed dozens of magazines and literature always mystified me.
I used to wonder at the lack of urgentness and spirituality of my brothers and sisters in field service.... it seems like so much time was WASTED! Why the long coffee breaks? (I brought my snack and drink along with me!) Why walk so slowly to the doors?? Why drive round and round in circles when we should be OUT THERE witnessing to people who could DIE at any moment!! Armageddon was coming!! Their blood would be on our hands!!
All the preparation, all the paraphernalia, all the changing literature, all the tracts/brochures/booklets/magazines.... you'd just get one presentation worked out and accustomed to it and it would change all over again. This was frustrating. Placing different books all the time was frustrating. Trying to keep track of service time... and YES, of course I was one of those honest-earnest people who reported their EXACT time, beginning with the first knock on the door. (When I first started, I wouldn't even count this time UNTIL someone actually answered the door!) It took a lot of work for me to count even the minimum of hours.
So it wears you down. And at the meetings, you're told to do more! More!! What's wrong with YOU?? MORE!!!! MORE, MORE, MORE!!!!
Field Service became drugery... I began to dread it. Even packing a service bag was tiresome. The field service groups were horrid. And I'd get terribly car-sick at times. Oh, gawd, it could be quite awful. Come home and feel like you've wasted a whole morning.
I am SO GLAD all that is O-VER!!
that interpretation had caused a problem that the governing body was never able to satisfactorily explain.
they needed to be able to show that there has always been a functioning faithful and discreet slave in one form or another ever since.
but they were never able to provide any evidence for the existence of an ongoing 1900 year-old slave prior to the appearance of the watchtower society.
Excellent points in this thread, love it. Yet the reaction of most JWs is that this new understanding of the FDS/GB makes perfect sense!!
*marking*
Thank you!
:)
the other day i found a red plastic bag hanging on the knob of our exterior door.
it contained a calendar with beautiful landscape scenes and scriptures for every month of the year.
i'm not a bible believer, but i hung up the calendar because of the pretty pictures.
The WTS does put out calendars, but they are small, ugly useless things with photos of the organization's sales force out and about distributing the rags and lit.
I have never liked them.
more haphazard thougths on the recently concluded elder school..... a big chunk of time was spent on a video which traced a judicial case, all the way from the confession to the elders through the decision to disfellowship the guy.. here is a very brief synopsis of the video:.
tearful late-teen or early-20's publisher confesses to 2 elders that he committed fornication with a "worldly girl" who is now preganant and wants to marry him.
the elders give him some "homework" to do prior to his judcial committee - read psalm 51 and an old wt article.
The unloving, uncompassionate, horrid way I and my family were treated once upon a time at my JC helped remove the blinders from my eyes.
The elders have become Pharisees, they go way beyond what is written, they encourage people to shun someone when that person needs help the most. They kick you when you're down. They don't even consider the ramifications to others involved (as in this example with the pregnant girl and unborn child). AWFUL! Terrible! Despicable!!
I agree this video s/b put out there for public consumption. Why do they hide these things when truth and love "casts fear aside"...? They (The GB and others in control) must know their actions are smutty and reprehensible!!
there has been some interest recently about the moyle case, and how it may have set a precident in what became the society's disfellowshipping policy.
in july 1939, the chief legal counsel of the watchtower bible & tract society, olin r. moyle, resigned from his position in a protest over conditions at bethel and rutherford's mistreatment of workers.
he did not want to continue living under those conditions and he felt he could effect positive change for his brothers by taking such a stand.
Leolaia: Thank you for the work you've put into this. This has been a great summation of the shabby way Moyle was treated by the egotistic, bullying and narcassistic Rutherford.
Is there more to this account, or have you concluded your summary and research into this? Would love to hear more!
i considered myself immune to ex jw stuff.
no amount of old watchtowers or anything would change me.
it was seeing treatment of others by elders and the bible itself, which woke me.
It was a cumulative process, things just kept adding up, but I suppressed or submerged my "disloyal" thoughts for a long time.
The elders overstepping their authority. The generation thing. The blood fractions-thing. All the pressure to place literature, felt more and more like a sales organization <--- (never actually noticed this until our family joined a multi-level marketing company and went to some of their meetings! Wow! The similarities!!)
But what really made me see that the GB didn't really know what they were doing or have a clue was the publication, MY BOOK OF BIBLE STORIES. I was going to give this book to my little grandchildren when I suddenly saw it through their little eyes. What a horror-show!!! Don't know why I didn't see that when my own children were little. :(
After that, I ordered CoC and the whole thing toppled and crumbled and fell apart with a huge crash.
(wt 1957 june 15 p. 370) .
watchtower 1957 june 15 p.370 "it is vital that werespond to the directions of the "slave" as we would to the voice of god.
" (wt 1964 june 15 p. 365) .
Wow. Awesome research here. Saving/bookmarking. Thank you.
at the 128th annual meeting of the watch tower bible and tract society of pennsylvania, on october 6 th 2012 .
during this meeting “food at the proper time” was given and the most important, was given during a symposium of six talks by members of the governing body—brothers jackson, lösch, pierce, herd, lett, and splane— which analyzed and discussed the meaning of jesus’ words recorded at.
" (matthew 24: 45, 46) it must be conceded, then, that at the end ot the world, at the "time of the end", during the presence of the lord, during the harvest, he would have in the earth a servant who would be faithful and wise.
