u/Fit_Durian3763

I looked around the hall one Thursday evening, one of the days I attended, and I said to myself, if something bad ever happened to me, there’s no way in hell these people would show up for me.

I know this because of the treatment Ive been getting since my meeting attendance and service reduced drastically. To be fair, not everyone treats me like this, but most of them do.

I don’t know if I can call you a good person if you are being mean to someone because you stopped seeing them regularly at the meetings and in service. This is why I struggle to classify Jehovahs witnesses as good people, but that’s a topic for another day.

Please, if you are on the fringes(not attending meetings and service/ no longer belief, or an obvious pimo) take measures to protect yourself, make non jw friends, secure your finances and do everything within your power to make sure that you are solid, because if you are not properly towing the line and something bad happens, there’s a good chance that YOU ARE OWN YOUR OWN!

No matter how convinced you are or how strongly you believe you are right, I think it is a huge mistake to create and enforce rules that can lead to people dying.

That is one reason many countries abolished the death penalty. Some crimes are truly horrific and some people may deserve the maximum punishment, but history has shown that innocent people have also been executed and later proven innocent. The law is not designed to protect murderers; it exists to protect society from irreversible mistakes. That is part of the beauty of human law.

Lady Justice is blind for a reason. Even when the evidence appears overwhelming, the legal system still tries to account for the small possibility of error. That 1% chance matters when a human life is involved.

This is where I struggle with the Jehovah’s Witness blood doctrine. Now, I completely, 100% disagree with the blood doctrine. But, looking at it from the eyes of the GB, there’s still no excuse for this rule. They do not account for what ifs. What if there is even a small possibility that a particular interpretation of scripture is wrong? What if there is a 5% chance that God did not choose us as his “faithful slave”?? what if there’s a 1% chance, that God is not actually demanding that people die instead of accepting a blood transfusion? What if?? What if ???…

That small possibility of being wrong is exactly why many people are uncomfortable with rigid, irreversible rules involving life and death.

Me; I do not know any apostate who claims to be God’s only channel to mankind. But if someone or some group makes that kind of claim, then I think their teachings, character, and actions deserve to be scrutinized at the highest level possible.

Calling out claims of authority is not the same as being judgmental. If someone says “look, I don’t think I am special, I am just a regular Joe doing my best like everyone else”, then you can respect them for who they are and can tolerate whatever mistakes they make.

But if someone is telling you that they alone have a special relationship with God almighty that no one else have, then they shouldn’t be surprised if they are scrutinized and dare I say judged a little bit more than everyone else.

I just saw this on someone’s social media stay

“Each day brings us closer to the end. Do not delay spiritual goals or ministry. The calendar is moving fast…even faster than some people reply to messages!

Hence, treat the ministry seriously. This is not “optional overtime work”– this is emergency rescue work!

The “day and hour” are already set.
Live each day spiritually awake. Jehovah has the schedule…we just do not have access to His calendar!

#JWNuggets #PreachWithZeal #Urgency #JahsDay #UKE
“

When I see something like this, it just ticks me off…
What do they mean by “rescue work”??
These people teach that only they will survive the end of the world.. that is the whole point of their religion. Why they continue to deny it is what I cannot understand…
This is just plain religious propaganda and indoctrination..

The world seems far too functional for me to automatically conclude we’re living in the “last days.” Compared to most of history, humanity now has modern medicine, sanitation, electricity, technology, and far longer life expectancy. In many measurable ways, life has objectively improved.

My heart goes out to people experiencing war and suffering, but every generation has believed its time was uniquely terrible. People living through the Black Death or the Hundred Years’ War could have said the same thing.

To me, Paul’s “last days” comments in Second Epistle to Timothy make more sense in its original context,(a letter from one friend to another) not as a direct prophecy about the 21st century. Likewise, many of Jesus’ warnings may have referred to the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century.

Wars and disasters are subjective signs. Improvements in medicine, science, sanitation, and quality of life are measurable, and by those standards, humanity is doing far better than most of history.

I had this conversation with a JW, but I couldn’t fully express myself because it’s hard to have a healthy debate with JWs without it turning judgmental.

I’m sharing it here to get input from level headed people outside a religious lens.

The moment you hear that “being a good person is not enough”, just know that things are about to get really culty, they usually use the encounter of Jesus and the rich man to stress this point.

According to them, the rich man was a good person but Jesus said that being good wasn’t enough, he had to take extra steps. Well, firstly there was no talk of salvation between Jesus and the rich man in that biblical account, their interaction was soley about the rich man becoming Jesus follower.

Not everybody that lived at that time became Jesus followers, doesn’t mean they didn’t have any hope of salvation. The Bible does not say that the rich man lost his chance of salvation after he refused to give his properties away.

When you reason with jws they’ll do everything possible to arrive at the conclusion that their religion is the only acceptable religion. But the Bible just doesn’t say anything about any religion being the one and only true religion. The Bible is completely silent on this matter. To get to that conclusion you have to add and take away from the Bible’s original message

So there’s this new extremely pimi jw that just moved into the territory. I noticed that he kept reaching out to me, even though I suspected that he was reaching out because I’m on the fringes but I just decided to give him the benefit of doubt.

Anyway, I started to notice a pattern, the only time he reaches out to me is to sneakily say something along the lines of “let’s work together in service tomorrow, what do you think?”
“We are having a gathering at my place why not come?”

Yhe first time I went to his place I was ambushed by a family watchtower study, in a nutshell he’s only interested in hanging with me to “help me spiritually” not really because he respects/likes me or interested in my as a person. I know this because ive asked him at least three or four times to come out let’s hang out or just relax outside jw settings and talk, but he’d always tip toe around it.

The impression I kept getting was “I don’t really want to associate with you outside spiritual activities because you’re spiritually weak/bad association. I’m only getting close to you so I can help you spiritually.”

I confronted him with this just recently and I told him that i suspect he’s reaching out felt deceptive and somewhat patronizing( I didn’t use those exact words) and that I didn’t think he was reaching out because he respects me as a person, his response was the usual jw lines “we need each other and we need jw plus his organization to survive”He even added at the end of one of his messages that, as for him and his family, they want to “run the race of life” and survive Armageddon.

He also said that we need to keep preaching like Noah if we want to survive which, of course, felt directed at me since I’m hardly ever out in service anymore because I simply don’t believe it the way I used to.

But I just thought to myself, these are not real people, these are jw robots, they cannot help but judge other people, they cannot fathom that someone can be less passionate or not passionate at all about their religion and still be a good person, the only way you can survive Armageddon is to do exactly what they are doing. I almost blew my cover trying to reason with this person (a topic for another day) but these people are robots, you cannot reason with them.

I think one of the major problems with “JW thinking” and the kind of training JWs receive is that it can rob people of the ability to truly put themselves in someone else’s shoes or genuinely entertain opposing ideas and arguments.

For example, I’m not gay, but I can still put myself in the shoes of a gay person and understand where they are coming from. That doesn’t mean I completely understand what it feels like to be gay, but I can still reach a point where I say, “Well, you do you, and I accept you for who you are.”

I lean somewhere between agnosticism and atheism, yet I can still understand where creationists are coming from, I can reach a place in my head where I’d be able to say, “Maybe there’s something out there. None of us can know for sure” matter of fact, we can have a healthy argument where I can agree with some of your points and disagree with others but still keep an open mind

With JWs, there seems to be an inability to step outside their own framework and truly empathize with people who think differently. The organization often discourages critical thinking and independent exploration of ideas. If you don’t see things exactly the way they do, word for word, they tend to believe you either need help, correction, or even shunning.

When you say someone is “spiritually weak”, you are invariably saying that you are “spiritually strong”/“spiritually strongER” or somehow better than them….
It’s a slur as far as I’m concerned…

when someone tells you that they don’t agree with jw theology, your first thought as a passionate jw is that something is wrong with them and they need help. They haven’t told you that they committed any crime, you know in your heart that they are “good people”, but your mind tells you that they are somehow at a disadvantage

your first instinct is to try and “help them” fall back in line, because even though you may not realize it, you subconsciously think that some kind of punishment awaits any who does not fully agree with jw theology..

You see, jw official theology is that only Jehovahs witnesses will “inherit” paradise..(they try to pretend that this is not what they believe but you have to read between the lines in most of their publications and watch their body language to realize this) that is why your first instinct is to try and “help” your loved ones who may no longer belive

In your mind, everybody should agree with jw theology otherwise something is wrong with them (at best) or they deserve some kind of punishment ( at worse). It’s a very narcissistic and toxic worldview in my opinion.

It doesn’t matter how you slice it, jw environment becomes a very toxic and judgmental environment especially when it starts becoming clear to jws around you that you don’t fully by into their theology

I don’t think the witnesses are bad people, i think some if not most of them are good/well intentioned people

I just have my reservations about the leadership and their theology

At best I don’t think it is Gods one/only true organization and people can choose to “subscribe” if it works for them or “unsubscribe” if it doesn’t work for them

At worst, I think it is a very dangerous group that no one should be a part of

I tend to slightly lean towards the latter simply because of their no blood doctrine that they heavily “police” and enforce, their CSA cases and the fact that you cannot simply choose to “unsubscribe” if it no longer works for you without consequences.