FWIW, IRL moonies have struck me as pod-people, scientologists as manipulative, fundis as inappropriately full of themselves, and some Nation of Islam folks have struck me as alternatively hostile or phony. But I haven’t gotten a bad vibe from JWs, notwithstanding their annoying door-to-door salesmanship.
Plus, I don’t think they should be forced to salute the flag, and I’m glad they got the Supremes to overturn that law many years ago.
I am struggling to respond without rancor.
I agree with CLee: I recognize the superficially super-nice tactics. You may be genuine, but I have seen them in operation (just this week) when I have known them to be false.
As far as disfellowshipping goes, it doesn’t “work” in the sense that it doesn’t bring people back to the fold. It reinforces the identity of those who remain, and serves as a powerful deterrent for those who would think of leaving. Exodus 20:12 is pretty clear about honouring your parents: it doesn’t say “unless they’ve been disfellowshipped.” If you don’t like the Old Testament, Jesus is pretty clear on love.
We’re going through a legal mess right now in my family because of a will, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are now legally obligated to communicate with people who have been disfellowshipped. This is permissable, of course, but the fact is that there’s so much bad blood SINCE the disfellowshipping that it’s made things uglier than ever.
A reasonable religion would allow people to leave without punishment. JWs don’t.
And my great-aunt Edith is one of your 144,000 (still alive in her late 90s). Good luck with her as your king or priest. [I’m not entirely sure if she rules in her own right or at the side of her late husband. Whatever.]
What I don’t get, is if you know you are in the same boat with all these folks, why not jump ship?
Hey, what do you get when you cross a Unitarian Universalist with a Jehovah’s Witness?
Something that knocks on your door for no particular reason!
My main problem with the JWs is that as a Jew, I feel uncomfortable writing or saying their name.
It does tend to call into question the aptness of the label “Witness,” though.
Btw, it saddened me to learn that you were not planning to return to the Pit thread. I spent some time crafting a contribution that (in my opinion) was both respectful and apropos.
I don’t hate them, especially. I tend to be put off by anyone pretentious and lacking self awareness who needs to help me to see The Truth.
how about I don’t proselytize you, and you leave me be?
This. It is pretentious to think that others do not have the truth that you do (especially given the total lack of evidence,) and that they are weak-willed enough that they will change their belief system upon hearing your completely novel and unheard of message from a total stranger.
And how many door to door prosletyzers would change their belief system if counter prosletized? Egotistical.
Mostly I don’t like it when people who believe silly things come to my house and essentially say that I’m ignorant. I’ve put a lot of thought into my beliefs, and when some person who hasn’t comes up and is confrontational about it, that’s a little shitty.
Well, ok. I’ll say, you must be reading something into my posts that I didn’t intend to get across. My last post to **CLee **was fully intended to shoot a bit of vitriol back at someone who I felt was trying a bit too hard to use the broad brush of “evil”. My own comments, attitudes, and mode of communication are not representative of all JW’s.
No, clearly I do not. Something tells me that you, and others, were expecting something very very different when entering this thread. Perhaps that’s my fault.
I simply can’t resist the urge to respond to individuals like CLee, who apparently have a very comprehensive opinion that is not based on the majority of available facts, rather, is based upon their interpretation of the anecdotes of people for whom association with JW’s went very poorly.
Hate is a strong word in context of JW’s. I don’t hate them. I’m mostly as indifferent to them as I am to Mormons or Wickans or Zoroastrans or really anyone who believes anything remotely silly. I did however spend a year working side by side with JW’s in my early 20’s. What I remember most is some nice and polite young guys who took pride in their cars and were friendly towards me and other non-JW’s. I even went out on a few dates with a girl that was a JW but that didn’t go anywhere because she seemed a little too naive and sheltered (and I recall she had chronicly bad breath which was a turn off). But on the whole, I have no negative feelings towards the JW’s that I’ve known and not once did they even attempt to talk to be about their faith or enlighten me with their version of The Truth.
Jump ahead to now, my teenage daughter has a good friend that is a JW. Every so often the two of them will jump in the JW Range Rover to attend a service at the Holy Hall of Coffee (Starbucks) where they discuss The Truth of boys and college and whatever else is important in their lives. My daughter has never said anything about her JW friend’s proclivities of Witnessing. All she knows is that her friend doesn’t go to parties and will from time to time attend weekend conferences at some remote JW hall, etc. As far as I understand, the girl is going to be applying to college.
It all seems harmless enough to me. No better or worse than any other faith based group. I realize that in any such group there are those who over indulge in the cool-aid and cross lines. Those people deserve any rancor they get. But for the most part, meh. I can’t get too worked up about the JW’s. Living where I do, I’m far more likely to be pissed with the rank and file fundamentalist Christians.
So I’m supposed to say, “Yep, I personally did that stuff, and I’m sorry”?
I didn’t cause any of that, any you well know that there’s multiple sides to any story. I’m sure we’d never get to know the true reasons why any of those thigns happened - things which obviously upset Dr. Drake greatly. So I offered my apologies for the way things turned out in his life re: association with Witnesses, and I thanked him for his input - input which is perfectly along the veins of my OP. He explained quite clearly where his negative feelings toward the JW’s came from.
I moved on because in case you hadn’t noticed, this thread was gathering one heck of a head of steam and I didn’t really know what else to say to the guy.
Let me state outright that I don’t wish JW’s any harm, I just can’t stand some aspects of their belief system.
My own faith finds proselytizing abhorrent and offensive. We don’t usually use the word “sin” as that is associated with Christian faiths, but it’s not a bad word for how we view it. So when you knock on our door with your “good news” you are committing an act we find disgusting, intrusive, and wrong. Of course I’m not going to be happy with you when you do something I find so offensive. How would you feel if you woke up one morning to see someone squatting on your front porch taking a crap? That’s about how my crowd views proselytizing.
To be fair, ANY church knocking on my door to do this is a target of my ire, as the church down the road discovered when they first moved in and sent their “army” into the neighborhood to round up new [del]victims[/del] members (It’s a classic case of a rich minister driving Cadillacs and his congregation riding beaters held together with spit and duct tape. I have to wonder what the church books look like.) Seriously, you think we DIDN’T notice you building that honking big “temple” a half a block away? We know where you are, and you’ve made it clear what you’re about, now go the **** away and leave us alone.
My second reason for disliking JW’s is the (from my viewpoint) the batshit insane prohibition on certain life-saving medical treatments. While I will acknowledge the right of a mentally competent adult to refuse life-saving treatment I find it horrifying that children are killed every year by this prohibition because their parents refused an action to save their lives. I find it horrifying that JW’s will presume to speak for the unconscious. Look, if you’re a JW and want to adhere to that belief/practice, fine, but do it via a legal document in advance so your death isn’t on the hands of anyone but yourself. I get that you believe this very strongly, but almost no one else does.
So those are my reasons for disliking that particular Christian sect. Outside of that, I don’t really care one way or the other. Since JW’s are compelled to proselytize, though, there will never be anything other than friction between us.
Superficially super-nice tactics…ok so when nobody’s looking, we really punch kittens and bake razor blades into cupcakes?
Or just that once we’ve “got you”, we proceed to treat you very poorly, and abuse you?
I don’t understand the sentiment here. Being genuinely nice, and attempting to make an unpalatable subject come across less so, aren’t somehow mutually exclusive. The witnesses are nice when they come to your door because they’re NICE people. Nobody’s cussing you out after you’ve closed the door.
Yeah but you should hear what happens on the in side of the door. 
I can appreciate that perspective. How do you ever grow your faith? If you believe it to be beneficial, why do you choose to not share it? Are other people not worth the trouble?
It just means “miss the mark” or fall short of a standard. We attach even less of a negative stigma to it than do the Catholics. Catholicism has made “sin” into some sort of bad magical word I think.
We do, it’s called an advance medical directive. We refer to it as a “blood card” - it’s the one that basically says “I will accept XYZ, and not accept ABC”. It’s left up to the conscience of each individual as to which procedures involving how much blood they’ll accept - because Galatians 6:5 says that “Each one will bear his own load”. There’s a crap-ton of misinformation out there about the benefits of blood transfusions versus the benefits of bloodless surgery. Look into it sometime, it really does result in higher quality of care - perhaps strictly out of necessity because the fallback of pumping us full of blood after a vein is nicked during surgery isn’t there.
We do not believe that “every effort” must be made to prolong a human life. In our opinion, our respect for God, and what we believe he’s told us to do/not do, is more important than saving our own lives. When you believe that we’re going to all be resurrected in a paradise on Earth anyway, it’s really not so terrible to give up a few years of life in this particular society (full of strife and anger and badness) in exchange for God saying “Thanks for sticking up for the standards I set, however arbitrary they may have seemed to you”. The case could be made that it’s a similar situation that Adam and Eve faced - “they shouldn’t eat a fruit? What? How needlessly restrictive is that?!! They might starve!”
I have pretty good ears. Sometimes, I do hear. I honestly feel like sometimes I should instead not be bringing bible literature but a layman’s explanation of the supreme court decisions and specific laws that permit exactly what we’re doing, and how those laws made it possible for every manner of door-to-door work to take place. Political proselytizing, girl scout cookie sales, surveys regarding Prop 8, whatever you want to take door to door, the right to do so was firmly set in stone by them crazy Jaydubs.
You intended to make the rest understand something you feel they just didnt get. Your position was righteous and only needed someone to point it out how misguided other thinking is. You didn’t expect that others have thought out and personal reasons for their POV, and might expect some responsibility on your part to expand your thinking.
Plus, your premise was wrong (that here in the US JWs are truly hated). However, since you opened the door, people with strong reasons to dislike members of this group and their practices, people took the opportunity you gave them to explain their opinion.
Just because you’re permitted by law to do something doesn’t mean you should.
And cussing on the other side of the door is also protected speech.
Your other examples are interesting. With the exception of Girl scouts, those other “proselytizers” are hated too. And the Girl Scouts no longer conduct door-to-door sales, IIRC. All the ones I see set up tables on the sidewalk and let customers come to them. As it should be. They seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. Maybe the JW’s could do the same.
I forgot to respond to this point specifically - yes, we do. You can choose to simply leave, and not tell anybody, and become “inactive”. You can choose to disassociate yourself, and if it’s due to you choosing to live a life in opposition to biblical principles, an announcement is made that you are no longer one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s the same as if you were disfellowshipped though. 1 Cor 5:10-12.
And this, also, I can appreciate as a reason for not liking the JW’s as a group. Some people feel that family is above all else. Some people feel that God is above all else.