Conscience individual and collective

[JW Insider]

18 hours ago, xero said:

I think Mr F is doing commercials for IKEA.

Scandinavian countries have IKEAs, too?

[JW Insider]

On 4/24/2021 at 4:51 PM, Anna said:

In my self righteous judgemental previous self I was shocked and almost stumbled.

In the 1970's it was common for Bethelites to order Bible commentaries like Matthew Henry's and Barnes' Notes on the NT and various Bible translations. Later, they also allowed orders for Jay Green's Hebrew Interlinear and William Whiston's Josephus. Bethelites paid for them, but the price was fairly low because all requests were ordered through a one of Dean Songer's assistants.

Then there was a meeting in 1979, and all such books became impossible to order, and anyone who already had them in their rooms (except for Bible translations) would be looked at suspiciously. In 1980, housekeepers would report to their overseers if these types of books were found, and many Bethelites who owned them would be questioned by an interrogation committee. Within a matter of months, they moved the entire Bethel Library out of reach of all Bethelites by moving the entire Writing Department --along with the library-- out of 124 CH and onto a locked floor down at 25 CH.

Also, even before it moved, no Bethel tours allowed visitors to see the Bethel Library beyond a quick peek from the doorway to the "facing" shelves which were almost all WT material along with a couple sets of encyclopedias and dictionaries. All commentaries and books from other religions were were kept in the rows of shelves behind the first "facing" shelves, and could not be seen. Even the tours at Patterson in the 2000's only allowed a doorway glimpse of a small corner of the Library from the main hallway, about 40 feet from the nearest book.

I remember once when Brother Klein railed against commentaries one morning at breakfast. And he was one of the GB members in the Writing Department. At another meeting he said that using them was "sucking at the teat of Christendom." Now, of course, there is a much more reasonable approach, and I think that most of the brothers are at least partially aware that this is where most of the information in the Insight book comes from. They might be less aware that this is also where we get many of the spiritual gems and treasures in the meeting workbooks, and of course the footnotes in the Study Bible, all those interesting comments about Hebrew and Greek words, etc.

[xero]

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

In the 1970's it was common for Bethelites to order Bible commentaries like Matthew Henry's and Barnes' Notes on the NT and various Bible translations. Later, they also allowed orders for Jay Green's Hebrew Interlinear and William Whiston's Josephus. Bethelites paid for them, but the price was fairly low because all requests were ordered through a one of Dean Songer's assistants.

Then there was a meeting in 1979, and all such books became impossible to order, and anyone who already had them in their rooms would be looked at suspiciously. In 1980, housekeepers would report to their overseers if these types of books were found, and many Bethelites who owned them would be questioned by an interrogation committee. Within a couple more years, they moved the entire Bethel Library out of reach of all Bethelites by moving the entire Writing Department --along with the library-- out of 124 CH and onto a locked floor down at 25 CH.

Also, even before it moved, no Bethel tours would allow visitors to see the Bethel Library beyond a quick peek from the doorway to the "facing" shelves which were almost all WT material along with a couple sets of encyclopedias and dictionaries. All commentaries and books from other religions were were kept in the rows of shelves behind the first "facing" shelves, and could not be seen. Even the tours at Patterson in the 2000's only allowed a doorway glimpse of a small corner of the Library from the main hallway, about 40 feet from the nearest book.

I remember once when Brother Klein railed against commentaries one morning at breakfast. And he was one of the GB members in the Writing Department. At another meeting he said that using them was "sucking at the teat of Christendom." Now, of course, there is a much more reasonable approach, and I think that most of the brothers are at least partially aware that this is where most of the information in the Insight book comes from. They might be less aware that this is also where we get many of the spiritual gems and treasures in the meeting workbooks, and of course the footnotes in the Study Bible, all those interesting comments about Hebrew and Greek words, etc.

It doesn't surprise me. I've been for years meditating on the kinds of personalities necessary to generate a new religious group vs those required to grow the religious group vs those who wish to maintain the status quo.

I realize that I don't have the kind of personality which would gather a group for any purpose. I've always had the attitude of "Go about your affairs. Pursue your interests. The ones whom you run into along the way who are motivated will join in the manner of their choosing." - Clearly we wouldn't have the Bible or any religious organizations if everyone were like me.

I used to irritate this one sister who was a control freak about everything. Our circuit overseer's wife (Bro Rainer) was talking with my wife and she (Bro Rainer's wife) mentioned this diet "blood type diet" by Dr. D'Adamo. Anyway we both sortof got into it for a while and of course since we're all about knowing about blood I did a bunch of research and found while researching that the Japanese and Korean cultures are really big on blood types and personalities associated with them. (In Korea they made a movie entitled "My Boyfriend is type B") and so a bunch of people began to get into it. She, of course because the word "blood" was in the name of the diet was highly suspicious of the whole thing even after she realized it wasn't about eating blood pudding or blood sausages.

Anyway when I mentioned the blood type and personality thing it sortof tickled me that she was so irritated by the whole thing (she said "There are more than four types of people in the world!"), I paused and asked her what blood type she was and she "Replied A" and I said "Ohhhhh! That makes sense now." and she says "What do you mean?" and I say "Well as it turns out, people with blood type A are more likely to get stressed out over perceived ambiguity or perceived disorder because their brains produce more cortisol in response to stress and the way this is manifested when they try to reduce these levels is by trying to control their environment as well as the people around them.....pause...you see"

That annoyed her even more.

I'll bet Klein was blood type A for sure.

[Pudgy]

2 hours ago, JW Insider said:

most of the information in the Insight book comes from. They might be less aware that this is also where we get many of the spiritual gems and treasures in the meeting workbooks, and of course the footnotes in the Study Bible, all those interesting comments about Hebrew and Greek words, etc.

This is known as “jumping the shark“.

[Pudgy]

cEEZAR

Do you not realize that by not making specific objections to JWI's account of life at Bethel, that you have validated it?

ALL of it.

Thanks for the validating!

.... don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Note, Question to the great washed masses: What ASCII code produces this ...  r⃗  ?

 

[xero]

2 hours ago, Pudgy said:

cEEZAR

Do you not realize that by not making specific objections to JWI's account of life at Bethel, that you have validated it?

ALL of it.

Thanks for the validating!

.... don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Note, Question to the great washed masses: What ASCII code produces this ...  r⃗  ?

 

That is ASCII text. Converted to decimal is 114 226 131 151

[Pudgy]

10 hours ago, César Chávez said:

Now, I will tip my waitress!! 

The same way you tip a cow?

(... sneak up on them at night and push them over.)

[xero]

Reading through various histories, what seems to be absent is what was actually done to convince illiterate people that Christianity was true.  Lots of talk about conversions, but really light on the processes involved.

https://www.history.com/news/inside-the-conversion-tactics-of-the-early-christian-church

Found this. Interesting take. Of course Bart is an atheist.

Now in all this it strikes me that perhaps the reason the trinity garbage got promoted was because it was harder to argue w/the hoi polloi about not worshiping multiple deities when Christianity appeared to have two - namely Jehovah and Jesus though Jesus was a lesser deity (elohim) (325 had nothing to do w/the Holy Spirit). Then too, the bad practice of not using God's name Jehovah further confused these issues.

Of course, the Catholic Church also leveraged the gods of river, or corn or whatever by creating patron saints of this, that or the other thing. So then they could continue with the methadone of their polytheism weaning them off the real heroin of polytheism.

On the other hand, the Bible has always admitted that there ARE other gods. So some might say that to admit that there exist other gods is polytheistic, though that's not really the case, as we worship Jehovah (who is elohim, but not in the same sense at all as other elohim) Just that these are either impotent or unreal or shouldn't be obeyed. The word elohim applies to more than Jehovah in the Bible - it includes other beings. So "Elohim" is just a form of nonphysical life.

[Pudgy]

4 hours ago, César Chávez said:

It would be nice, if you people at least tried to educate yourselves!! 

If you are "wisdom personified" I will pass ......

Even dogs, disgusting as we are, know not to be hateful, insulting, vindictive and malicious.

Willy-Nilly, most people LIKE dogs, because we are naturally happy!

Your misery screams out ahead of you like a runaway locomotive approaching a bridge-out.

[Pudgy]

1 hour ago, César Chávez said:

Then you don't understand some breeds of dogs.

That is true .....  but I do recognize hateful, unhappy bitterness and malicious insulting insecurity in humans.

Your misery screams out ahead of you like a runaway locomotive approaching a bridge-out.

[Pudgy]

28 minutes ago, César Chávez said:

One thing he refused to accept, he is exactly like me.

Then both of you have my profound sympathies.

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

UM, haven't missed much have I.  I've not been here for days but having now read it all, well nothing new. 

The one thing I did note is that @xero  is really hung up on people's mental state. @Arauna would call it OCD probably.  Oh yes, and that cesar person seems to think I am @Pudgy, sorry Pudgy. 

I wish you all well. I am too busy selling and then buying vehicles and building sheds. The weather here in England is fabulous so making the most of it. 

@JW Insider seems to make it known how mixed up the GB / leaders of the JW org are concerning the owning or reading of 'other religious literature'.  

Best regards to @Srecko Sostar  and @TrueTomHarley and @Anna 

Take care and be good y'all. I'll try to stay away for another few days.