Live Like You Were Dying

by Scully 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Scully

  This is a song - a very touching one, I might add - about how a man is diagnosed with a terminal illness and how it changes his life for the better. This is the song that Tim McGraw wrote for his dad, former MLB player Tug McGraw.

  So why am I posting about this song on a discussion board about being Jehovah's Witnesses and leaving Jehovah's Witnesses? And furthermore, what would possess me to post this topic under the heading Beliefs, Doctrines & Practices?

  Well, it's simple really. Don't JWs teach that Millions Now Living Will Never Die? Don't JWs applaud the self-sacrifice of members who set aside their own dreams and goals in the here and now, offering them the empty "promise" that they will have an eternity in Paradise on Earth to pursue those dreams and goals After Armageddon? Is it any wonder, then, that JWs often show the most contemptuous attitudes toward people who choose to follow their dreams instead of peddling the WTS's false prophecies that offers no compensation, no reward, no benefits package, no pension plan? They are living as though they will never die; as though they have all the time in the universe. They can afford to put off today what we have come to prize and value: an education, a vocation, finding a soulmate, raising a family, having real friends. I grew up in a group that at one time really believed we would not go to high school or get married or have children or see those children to go high school or get married or have children of their own. Yet, here we are.... and where the hell is Armageddon?

  I know that I include myself among those here who feel that they were robbed of some of the best years of our lives and golden opportunities by the WTS. We started college later than our peers. Some of us got into marriages with people we shouldn't have because we were led to believe that their being In The Truth™ was enough to make it work and make it last. We thought all we had was just a little while longer and Jehovah would fix it all if it was broken. Some put off surgeries that would have made life more manageable. Others who are no longer living chose to die for lack of blood transfusions (and organ transplants) thinking it was a fast track to Living Forever In Paradise on Earth™. I can't even begin to tell you how angry it makes me that I spent 25 years of my life - a quarter of a century - in a CULT, having my thought processes altered to the point where I couldn't argue my way out of a brown paper bag because I was too busy going round in fatally flawed circles of Watchtower Logic. And now that I'm out, I treasure the life I have - the life I fought to have - the friends I have - even the fact that I have a job that I love and look forward to going in for every shift that I work. I love that I have a mortgage. I love that I have a student loan to pay off. I love that I make car payments every month. I love that I have a pension plan. I love that I have friends who love me for me, and not for the numbers on a Publisher Record Card. To me those are signs of living life, instead of stagnating body, mind and soul in a god-forsaken cult.

  And now that you've read my rant for today, I'm going to share with you the lyrics that inspired it.

  Tim McGraw: Live Like You Were Dying Lyrics
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  MidwichCuckoo

  Well said Scully - my philosophy is ''Live every day as if it's going to be your last, because one day you'll be right''
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  blondie

  Good post, Scully. JWs are not taught to live in the moment but to be always focusing on a nebulous future. Whether a person is going to live forever or one day, this moment is the only one we are alive and present in so live it well. Don't worry about the couldves and the shouldves.

  The past is gone, the future unknown.

  Blondie
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  EvilForce

  Scully AWESOME POST!!! This was one of the main things that got me to leave the borg. I saw all these miserable people uncontented with daily live just EXISTING to get to tomorrow. Not LIVING...simply EXISTING. How bloodguilty is the WTBS? Regardless if you believe in Buddha, Jesus, Veshnu, or whomever, the point of THIS life is to prepare us for the next level. So if we don't "get this phase" of our existence down pat...will we be ready for the next level of existence? It's a shame. It's a sham. The WTBS should be flogged for this cop out.
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  Big Dog

  Carpe Diem!
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  EvilForce

  Also, one of my all time favorite quotes from "Shawshank Redemption" is "Get busy livin, or get busy dying".
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  kls

  Excellent Scully,just great !!
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  talesin

  Yet, here we are.... and where the hell is Armageddon?

  I agree, Smedley!
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  calamityjane

  Thanks Scully, I needed your rant today, that's EXACTLY how I felt when I was in the borg.

  Thank God, we're out of there and living our lives with people that truly love us for who we are and not what we do.

  cj
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  Narkissos

  Great thread.

  I feel our relationship to death and its reflection in religion is somewhat ambiguous.

  On the one hand we all know we will eventually die, generally dread the prospect (especially when we are young) and try to put it off our minds -- at this point the religious denial of death is most appealing.

  On the other hand at least some of us, at certain times, dread life, the responsibility of choosing it, planning for it and coping with it in the long run -- and here the religious call for death or self-sacrifice and committing ourselves into the hand of some transcendental truth is equally appealing, and I think would be so even without any promise of "eternal life".

  Somehow related to the above distinction, I think the general prospect of dying someday is psychologically very different from a practical threat of short-term death. We do behave differently when death is a theoretical (although sure) prospect to "time indefinite" and when we feel its approach.

  The WT doctrine (among many others from the 19th century onward), by reviving the concept of short-time eschatology ("the end is near") which belonged to various segments of early christianity, has rediscovered a very powerful pharmakon -- both poison and remedy. What could have been used wisely (using the appropriate doses to help people get through the fear of death and/or life and outgrowing them) was used in a shamelessly irresponsible way, ruining many lives. However we (at least those of us who were not born into it) accepted the poison, in more or less lethal doses.