Posts by TonusOH

watchtower bible and tract society of new york, inc. dear brothers:.. we received your letter of december 17 in which you inquire about handling a situation involving a brother who has been guilty of serious violation of the law in the past.. you explained that you received information indicating that this brother ?committed several murders and crimes before his baptism.

you ask if law obligates some action on our part.

TonusOH

Anyone else hearing the same thing?

Yes. I am also hearing this:

WT: You say you killed several people in cold blood? Well, that's between you and god.

WT: You say you slept with your boyfriend? We'll need a full accounting of the entire experience, with no details spared. Someone hand me a notepad and a moist towel, please.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

TonusOH

And by "come off social media" he meant that he would continue to feverishly seek out and respond to every mention of him on the internet. Suddenly, his inability to differentiate between words like "regular" and "persistent" becomes clear.

17

How Murderers In the Congregation are handled

by blondie in

jw
friends

i don't have the link but i am trying to post this, this is from a previous post on jwn.

watchtower bible and tract society of new york, inc. dear brothers:.. we received your letter of december 17 in which you inquire about handling a situation involving a brother who has been guilty of serious violation of the law in the past.. you explained that you received information indicating that this brother ?committed several murders and crimes before his baptism.

you ask if law obligates some action on our part.

TonusOH

What he does about paying his debt to Society is largely up to him and his conscience. Since he is apparently a fugitive from the law, he obviously would not qualify for any extra privileges of service in the congregation.

That's pretty insane. I get the part about confidentiality, but they should have pointed out that it is more of a technicality than anything else. They have taught that Jehovah wanted "mercy, not sacrifices" and that Jesus gave examples of times when people violated divine law and God allowed it, because sometimes there was a greater good to be served and following the law mindlessly was not what God intended.

Yet, here they are, saying that a fugitive multiple-murderer's own judgment should be relied upon to settle the matter, and until then make sure he doesn't handle a microphone or lead a prayer. That would be bad!

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

TonusOH

I'm guessing that the lawyer gave him advice on how to proceed, and may well have advised against it. But if Evans is aware of what he is doing and insists on proceeding, the lawyer can take the case if he doesn't feel that it's unethical to do so (ie, he has explained everything and the client wants to take action anyway). If the worst that is likely to happen is that he'll lose the case and have spent some money on lawyers for no gain, that probably happens all the time and wouldn't be a big deal.

As for the potential fallout from such an action, that seems as if it would be Evans's fault, not the lawyer's. His insistence on making everything public, combined with his inability to control himself, is creating a mess that is entirely of his own making.

22

1914- responsible for the biggest decrease in JW's?

by joey jojo in

theres a couple of threads re: 1914 on the board right now and it got me thinking.. the jw doctrine of the 1914 generation is a key doctrine , yet it is probably the number one reason most have left over the decades.. 1975- within one generation.. 1995 - new understanding of the word generation.. 2010- overlapping generation first mentioned- some anointed survive armageddon.. 2015- infamous overlapping generations chart featuring david splane.. its obvious the org is changing the goalposts and constantly trying to squeeze as much time as they can before they have to abandon this altogether.

or will they come up with something new?.

does anyone else think this ever changing doctrine is responsible for the biggest loss of members?.

TonusOH

I don't have a clue about the actual numbers, but I do think it was a mistake to return to the "generation" teaching after they effectively let it go in 1995. It was a way of admitting that the teaching was wrong, and they could still cling to 1914 as the year Christ quietly returned and began the last days. It would hurt them in terms of recruiting if they could not create the old sense of urgency, but the "generation" teaching was dead at that point.

Going back and redefining it was a way to imply that there is a deadline that can be counted, in the hopes of creating that old sense of urgency. But it's a complicated and messy concept, and you can no longer just say "the generation that saw these things is getting older" because (A)you already abandoned that idea and (B)everyone knows you can just extend it again. So you cannot create the urgency this way, but you also set off a lot of people's BS meters. There is only so much most people can take before the doubts become a real problem.

8

Do JWs trust and rely on bad reviews? Why should they? How could it be coherent?

by psyco in

jws are taught that all bad reviews about them made by exjws are false and sick, so they must not read or listen to them.. so, when jws decide on joining, applying, or buying whatever product, service or organization: are they reading and listening only to good reviews about people still satisfied with that product, service, or organization because they consider false and sick all bad reviews made by people who abandoned that?

do they trust and rely on all bad reviews reported in documentaries, on internet, on tv, on magazines etc.

about people who left scientology, who left that house, who left that job position, who left that hotel, who left that restaurant, who left that medical treatment etc.?

TonusOH

How can a newspaper be good enough to cite in a Watchtower publication, but the same newspaper be condemned as declared forbidden reading?

I think it depends on how your worldview is shaped. If the idea is that the whole world is effectively against you (because it is under the control of God's main enemy), then you can claim that any good news has to be legitimate, since Satan is loathe to allow anything positive to be said. Conversely, bad/negative news or information cannot be true, since Satan would want to put the JWs in the worst possible light, and doesn't hesitate to lie.

If you point out the absurdity of this concept, you are likely to be bombarded with a flood of "what about this" objections and cherry-picked examples that only prove the point to someone who is already inclined to believe it. If your worldview is that Satan controls the world and the media, and is determined to bring the WTS down, you are willing to accept some very thin premises in order to maintain that point of view. Confirmation bias is a very powerful thing.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

TonusOH

If he had a good business sense, he would price that second book very cheap and promote it constantly, then use that book to promote the larger and more costly (and unintentionally funny) book.

Of course, if he had good business sense, he wouldn't have done any of the dozen things he's done over the past few months. So close, and yet so far.