Conscience individual and collective

[xero]

1 hour ago, Anna said:

You are a little condescending here, but I know what you mean

I've been told that. It's a baked-in personality trait. I have high-low self esteem. My biggest fear is that people will be too stupid to realize how brilliant I am.

This reminds me of an elders meeting where one brother said to me "Other people have ideas too!" and my response was "Well if we could knock it off with the fake humility and speak as men, maybe we could get these meetings done more quickly. Just spit it out already."

Edited to mention

I remember one brother (was it me?) who said in a meeting in response to the phrase "speaking as men" ..."Oh, you mean like now when we're being rude and tactless?"

[xero]

12 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I know where you’re coming from, but I agree with Anna. I think it is not good to describe the brotherhood this way. I think it because the scriptures lay no emphasis at all on this “deficiency,” if it is one. Instead, they goes out of their way to show favor to such ones. They pay no attention to the head. They only pay attention to the heart. 

“Wisdom cries aloud from the street,” the Bible says. “Hogwash,” comes the answer from the learned ones. “It cries aloud from the quadrangles. Only ignoramuses are to be found in the street.”

It is their bad, for it cries aloud from the street. 

I like the counsel to Philippians to keep regarding the other as superior. If it seems to me that I truly am superior towards another with regard to smarts, I look for another way in which he truly is superior to me. I usually don’t have to look too hard.

And you're right in may ways these ARE superior, but then again no one is superior, just different. Satan knows scripture as well no doubt and although I think the IQ of angels is a bit overrated, as I think their abilities to do certain things may be instinctive like our digesting our food or elements of our autonomic nervous systems I'm sure he's not a low IQ moron. Of course none of this was any value to him was it. Power is neutral, but the purpose to which it's employed is key the same as intelligence. Intelligence wrongly used or in the hands of a moral pervert is a dangerous weapon whose use brings nothing good to its holder or to anyone else for that matter.

Opposers strike me as the kinds of people who have imagined their (arguable) superior intelligence makes them right in all things. They mistake the ability to argue a position with being correct.  (1 Cor. 1:19 comes to mind)

[Anna]

31 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

They pay no attention to the head. They only pay attention to the heart (scriptures)

Yes, true indeed. On the other hand one has to use the head to be able to distinguish the truth from non truth. Evangelicals are led by the heart, but they are obviously misguided. 

[xero]

29 minutes ago, Anna said:

Yes, true indeed. On the other hand one has to use the head to be able to distinguish the truth from non truth. Evangelicals are led by the heart, but they are obviously misguided

I liked the fact that there wasn't a lot of emotional incontinence at the meetings of JW's when I first started going.

I always found that emotionalism to be incredibly self-indulgent and narcissistic. Jesus would have said (actually he did) "get a room!" 

⁶  But when you pray, go into your private room and, after shutting your door, pray to your Father who is in secret.+ Then your Father who looks on in secret will repay you - Mt. 6:6

...One brother I know seemed to always have these charismatic types turn on him. His family has a bunch of pentecostals and apparently a group of them (cousins) (hey I don't remember the back story...but somehow they were on the beach in Florida) chased him down in their car on the sand, bumped him w/a car door and tried to pray the demons out of him. (because he was one of JW's).

I studied w/his older brother and it didn't take (never got baptized). I was wondering what happened to him and found his mug shot out there.

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, Anna said:

Yes, true indeed. On the other hand one has to use the head to be able to distinguish the truth from non truth. Evangelicals are led by the heart, but they are obviously misguided. 

Yes and no. Obviously the head is not nothing, but it is the heart that recoils at a trinity making God unknowable and a hellfire doctrine making him cruel, someone you would not want to know.

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

On 4/10/2021 at 12:38 AM, JW Insider said:

What the WTS has currently identified as "not allowed" (whole and larger fractions) are not considered to be a matter of conscience. They are simply not allowed without the potential consequences of disfellowshipping.

And this is why people say, and this proves the point, that congregants ARE controlled / ruled over by the GB / WTS.

On 4/10/2021 at 12:38 AM, JW Insider said:

because there is trust in the WTS decision that you have made a decision that properly falls under the range of decisions that are allowed by your own conscience.

This really proves that JWs serve and put their faith in the GB and the W/t / JW org. 

And it's good to see that you recognise  that THREAT of disfellowshipping hanging over the congregation. 

 

 

 

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

On 4/10/2021 at 12:38 AM, JW Insider said:

Yet he was willing to write a letter that publicly declared that it was OK to eat meat sacrificed to an idol. Which is worse, eating in front of one who might be stumbled, or writing a letter that offends 10,000 brothers who might be stumbled at hearing your flippant attitude about meat sacrificed to idols.

Eating the meat would have been a personal choice. But the writing of, what we now call scripture, WAS inspired of God's Holy Spirit. So the writing declaring, that it was OK to eat that meat, was not from Paul, but from Almighty God. 

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

On 4/10/2021 at 4:56 AM, xero said:

Also, it would seem that IQ and conscience are also related. I would imagine that certain nuance in the exercise of one's conscience might get a jaundiced look from low IQ brothers and sisters. Let's face it, some of our most faithful brothers and sisters have IQ's about the level of a hamster.

This just seems to sum up the thinking of Xero.  It links to the ideas from the GB about people being mentally ill too.

I wonder if fishermen in Jerusalem had a fantastically high IQ ?  Maybe a Tax Collector did. A physician yes. 

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

On 4/10/2021 at 12:02 PM, xero said:

Opposers strike me as the kinds of people who have imagined their (arguable) superior intelligence makes them right in all things. They mistake the ability to argue a position with being correct.  (1 Cor. 1:19 comes to mind)

And here we have it !   This is Xero at her best.  All this writing about 'conscience' was nothing but a smoke screen. It was all hiding his hate for his imagined Opposers.  She/he now tries to pretend that imagined Opposers are all of low intelligence. This makes Xero feel superior. Xero seems to have an inferiority complex. 

Just a quote here from Xero

On 4/10/2021 at 12:02 PM, xero said:

Intelligence wrongly used or in the hands of a moral pervert is a dangerous weapon whose use brings nothing good to its holder or to anyone else for that matter.

Yes indeed. Moral pervert  = GB / Watchtower / JW org.  Child Sexual Abuse court cases. GB lawyers. Misused intelligence with no moral standing and no spirituality. 

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

On 4/10/2021 at 12:22 PM, Anna said:

Yes, true indeed. On the other hand one has to use the head to be able to distinguish the truth from non truth. Evangelicals are led by the heart, but they are obviously misguided. 

This one is a laugh..... The GB are obviously led by the Devil, and prove it by telling the Anointed not to gather together and to threaten the True Anointed that they would be ' working against the Holy Spirit' if they did gather together. When Jesus told them they should gather together and to ask for things in His name.   The GB, led by their hearts, are frightened that the True Anointed will prove spiritually strong, so the GB listen to the Devil and do his work. 

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

23 hours ago, xero said:

I always found that emotionalism to be incredibly self-indulgent and narcissistic. Jesus would have said (actually he did) "get a room!" 

⁶  But when you pray, go into your private room and, after shutting your door, pray to your Father who is in secret.+ Then your Father who looks on in secret will repay you - Mt. 6:6

Xero takes scripture totally out of context of course.  Matthew 6 : 5 & 6. 

 5 “Also, when you pray, do not act like the hypocrites, for they like to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the main streets to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. ⁶  But when you pray, go into your private room and, after shutting your door, pray to your Father who is in secret. Then your Father who looks on in secret will repay you.

Jesus was saying do not pray on display to get rewards from men.  Jesus was not saying, do not pray together in unity.  Remember that Jesus said to the anointed, 'when two or more of you are gathered in my name, i am among you'. So Jesus wanted them to gather together to pray.  

Matthew 18 : 20

For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there I am in their midst.”

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

22 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Yes and no. Obviously the head is not nothing, but it is the heart that recoils at a trinity making God unknowable and a hellfire doctrine making him cruel, someone you would not want to know.

And what therefore of a God ( so the GB pretend) that would kill you for not being a baptised JW ?