Edinburgh Residents targeted with handwritten letters from child members of Jehovah's Witnesses brand the move 'sick

[xero]

1 minute ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Does the first one have a name?

I'm always suspicious when people avoid using "Jehovah". The argument about not knowing the exact pronunciation would then apply to Jehoshaphat, Jehoram or pretty much any name in the Hebrew scriptures, but for some reason the punctiliousness is applied only to "Jehovah".

[TrueTomHarley]

2 hours ago, xero said:

I'm always suspicious when people avoid using "Jehovah". The argument about not knowing the exact pronunciation would then apply to Jehoshaphat, Jehoram or pretty much any name in the Hebrew scriptures, but for some reason the punctiliousness is applied only to "Jehovah".

Yes. Of course. He will be merging “Almighty God” with Jesus Chrst presently, if he hasn’t already, and it may not be long after that he sends “Almighty God” to the ash heap entirely to worship Jesus.

There is a scholar somewhere—I wish I could put my finger on it—who says that the very reason LORD began to be preferred over the name was that it facilitates a merging of the two.

Call us old-fashioned, Xero, but we belong to the club that thinks if you put your name 7000 times in your book, it means you want it there, and may not be too thrilled with those who obscure it or even take it out.

By forsaking the Name, is he not distancing himself already from that One, even as he presents himself as holiness on steroids? Is he going down the path of what he does to you, calling you ex-elder, or what CC does to JWI, calling him ex-bethelite? It is an unmistakable sign of dislike and desired distance, and that is why they do it. In discarding the name for the title, is not 4jah all but calling God “ex-confidant?” If he drops the “4Jah” for “4God” we will know for sure.

As to CC, as you know, I go back and forth with him. At the moment, (and I really hope I do not drag him in here with rebukes to all) I am inclined to think he probably is a JW, but exceedingly unbalanced, hung up on one point to the near-exclusion of others. Is there precedent? I wonder. When Phineas pierced the two love-birds through their you-know-whats, and then led the charge to slay a ton of others, did someone at some point have to lay a hand on him and say, “Not them, Phineas! They’re okay. Granted, they are a little squirrelly, but we can put up with them. They have some good in them.” We may just have to put up with him, as we acknowledge that here and there he comes up with powerful points, and he certainly tolerates no rivalry before Jehovah. Who knows what inner turmoil people have gone through? Unless I cannot resist, I not going to squabble with him, even if he takes shots at me.

I dreamt up a fictional character and sometimes when a humanist ex-JW acts up I assign his words to Vic Vomodog, a former compatriot for whom against all reason and counsel, I still retain a soft spot, however so faint. Long ago, we used to pull shoulder to shoulder in the work. But Vic is unrelentingly atheist. He will not do for ex-JWs who still retain a recognition of God. How to solve that problem?

Meet Bob Sowmire, who will serve as the anti-type of 4jah. For some reason Vic and Bob are close—you would think they wouldn’t be able to stand each other, for they have nothing in common and have gone in mutually antagonistic ways. But like 4Jah chumming with Alan, with Srecko, with O’Malighan, with Matthew 4-5784, (you may not have had the honor with the latter two) people who in all other respects he would not be able to tolerate, but the mutual distaste of Jehovah’s people and now his Name unites them, so Vic Vomodog and Bob Sowmire are thick as thieves. 

[TrueTomHarley]

9 hours ago, xero said:

The crusty old atheist reminds me of a long-standing call I had w/a chip engineer at intel.

And your experience reminds me of a man I placed magazines with a few times. Finally he said he didn’t want them anymore. His wife was allergic to newsprint, and in any event, they were moving soon.

”Oh, come on!” I thought, but didn’t say it. “What a stupid excuse! If you don’t like them, just say so.”

I few years later I met them at a District convention, both baptized. The organization had upgraded to a higher quality paper.

[TrueTomHarley]

6 hours ago, 4Jah2me said:

What should we say, or not say about this Tom ?   JTR, a JW and online Child pornography. 

While he was here, he sided with you almost always.

[Anna]

6 hours ago, xero said:

I'm always suspicious when people avoid using "Jehovah".

Me too! And I've noticed that the majority of those who leave, stop using it. To me that says a lot.

[xero]

You know Tom, I'm sure you've known a lot of brothers & sisters who had issues. I remember one family who were quite musical, the boys did well in school and the congregation, but the mother apparently was passing on adult-onset schizophrenia and I remember when it happened to one of the young brothers. He'd worry about whether Jehovah wanted him to wash with hot water and then cold water or the other way around. We'd go over the scripture that it wasn't what went into you that made you unclean but what came out of you. Then he'd calm down. I'd work w/him in service during the week. He was real sweet and sincere (Rob). Fortunately his younger brother Em. was spared the bulk of the hallucinations, though he'd tell me he couldn't look at certain paintings because things would start to move around in them. The father kept the family together while he was alive. I remember sitting in the living room when the oldest brother (St) started to get a schizoid episode and F. just decked him. I was surprised to say the least, but having just finished an empanada made out of pumpkin road-kill (I asked where they got the pumpkin and F said they found it on the side of the road) I just took it in stride. F was a simple guy, but he loved Jehovah and did the best he could w/his family. The sad part was when he died of a heart attack, the family had issues (St was incapable, Em. took care of his mom, but Rob was a diff story). I'd moved away and I googled the members of the family and found that Rob was committed after he apparently bashed his roommate in the back of his head after his roommate said something derogatory about his mother.

Another young sister used to call me up at work (another case of schizophrenia) and told me she felt she was seeing important things and wanted to share them w/the cong. I told her I couldn't speak or deny whatever it was she was experiencing, but suggested that if she was somewhere and she wondered whether she was the only one who was hearing or seeing certain things, that she should look around to see if anyone else looked like they were seeing or hearing these things and if it was just her then she should probably not share.

She's OK today as she grew out of it.

So you don't ever know what's going on w/people. I know I can't judge.

[TrueTomHarley]

40 minutes ago, xero said:

So you don't ever know what's going on w/people. I know I can't judge.

Well said.

The publications not too long ago made much ado about Solomon’s temple dedication speech:

Individuals of “your people Israel, because they know each one his own plague and his own pain; [would] actually spread out his palms toward this house, then may you yourself hear from the heavens, the place of your dwelling, and you must forgive and give to each one according to all his ways, because you know his heart.” (2 Chronicles 6:29-30)

We will never know it all with any given person. But he does. And he uses the knowledge for good.

I’m sure you have taken notice how frequently the verse of Job’s “wild talk” comes up for play, after decades of never hearing of it at all. “If a brother or sister engages in some “wild talk,” don’t be quick to jump to conclusions. You don’t know what they have gone through.” Counsel along such lines has become frequent. 

Before you came along, @Thinkingtold how David Splane had said something to the effect of, “there are those who engage in wild talk, and we may just have to put up with it, because they have been injured and It’s part of their healing process.” I didn’t hear it myself. Thinking may have inadvertently skewed it. But I regard her as a reliable source, and I suspect she is spot-on. It certainly is in keeping with 2 Chronicles 6:29).

 

 

 

 

[JW Insider]

3 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

But I regard her as a reliable source, and I suspect she is spot-on.

Fair dinkum? Funny how things slip by. I never thought of @Thinking as female.

[JW Insider]

13 hours ago, 4Jah2me said:

I wish I could copy and paste something i have on file. Something that @JW Insider uploaded a long time ago.

I think we all know of a suicide or two among the brothers. But if your anecdotal example is about someone jumping in front of a train, it was a story about someone else I know nothing about. The two I know of related to Bethelites were not train-related. And they were many years apart. Overall, I'd say that Bethel did not have much of a problem at all in this regard. The US Army, on the other hand . . . or even New York University (NYU) has had as many suicides in a year, as Bethel has had in four decades.

[TrueTomHarley]

23 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

The US Army, on the other hand . . . or even New York University (NYU) has had as many suicides in a year, as Bethel has had in four decades.

Of course. You commendably refrain from ad hominem attacks, but I don’t. He is such a do-do. In any group of several million people, you will find many examples of anything. One must run the comparative numbers before reaching any verdict. You don’t reach your verdict first then ask around to assemble buttressing facts.

 

32 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Fair dinkum? Funny how things slip by. I never thought of @Thinking as female.

There is probably something unsavoringly sexist about this remark. Having said that, I thought the same. If sexist, it is not necessarily in an unflattering way, as in supposing women don’t think. With me, and probably with you, it was in a complimentary way, as in men are so likely to bluster on about their overpowering thinking ability, but women, though they will think every bit as much, seldom make such a display about it. 

She has favored me with a direct message or two. She has a background and brings much to the table. She says she personally knows Witness and gives me insight on that one.

 

[JW Insider]

50 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

There is probably something unsavoringly sexist about this remark. Having said that, I thought the same. If sexist, it is not necessarily in an unflattering way, as in supposing women don’t think. With me, and probably with you, it was in a complimentary way, as in men are so likely to bluster on about their overpowering thinking ability, but women, though they will think every bit as much, seldom make such a display about it.

It's good counsel about sexism. And I recall being impressed that she explained that her "Thinking" moniker was not to be taken as a reference to any pride in thinking ability or habits, but merely as a reference to what should be a necessity for all of us. My sexism wasn't in regard to misunderstanding the moniker as any kind of bluster but the fact that I had never noticed any real gender hints after years of participation. I just had a feeling that if she was a sister she would say so on  a forum like this, perhaps even inadvertently. And of course, I don't read everyone's every word, so I figured I might have even missed a gender reveal.

Now that you mention private conversations, of course, I have a different impression. I now have the impression that she intended not to reveal this fact to everyone, and I can figure many reasons a sister (or any female) might not wish to let people know on such a forum as this.

The actual thought of Thinking being female came across to me as a choice recently when she said this:

On 2/27/2021 at 8:37 PM, Thinking said:

But I know first hand of certain issues here in Australia..I watched all of the ARC..talked with victims and elders...know  of certain    cases...intimately ..so can speak from experience...  The way they were handled by elders and the Branch directions of the time..and how victims were handled...and the frustrations of elders and the victims.

First of all, that kind of a statement stands up to self-righteous brothers (even potentially on this forum) in a way that no one would attempt unless they were either a frustrated elder, brutally honest, or a sister who was aware of problems, and brutally honest. Any brother who had knowledge of multiple cases of victims mentioned in the ARC would have been either an elder himself, or a sister who had known or spoken with multiple victims. Sisters are the most common victims and are much more likely to speak voluntarily with other sisters than with brothers. I thought of it as a possibility but somehow still preferred to think "he" was a brutally honest elder, who had perhaps known one of the cases, and had perhaps been driven to a site like this based on the experience.

This reminds me that I meant to ask @Thinking about one of the ARC cases, as I had come to believe that this victim was never telling the truth, or was projecting the abuse claims onto the wrong perpetrator. Something is off about one of the cases that got a lot of attention in the ARC.

 

[TrueTomHarley]

6 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

My sexism wasn't in regard to misunderstanding the moniker as any kind of bluster but the fact that I had never noticed any real gender hints after years of participation.

Did you miss the sewing bee she was carrying on about? (Sorry  )