I love the surreal artwork JW hand out in their fliers and books, it is like some crazy combo of drug addled and something like you’d see in North Korea propaganda.
This kinda stuff:
I totally agree with you that some of the stuff they put out seems like North Korea propaganda or something.
If you enjoy snarking on their artwork, you might also enjoy snarking on the new “JW Broadcasting” programs they have started putting out there. I like how a lot of the speakers on those shows speak in such a slow and deliberate way, as if talking down to a very young child.
The Jan 2015 episode features some of their crazy beliefs against education. I like the part at about 9 minutes, 30 seconds where Tight Pants Tony* warns about the danger of going to a good university for education ("I have long said: “The better the university, the greater the danger”). He then mentions going to visit a JW mother’s college age son who had attended a “prestigious” Rhode Island school: “After visiting him, I had to inform her that her son believed in evolution. She refused to believe it until he told her himself. HOW SAD.”
This guy is one of their top leaders, by the way. They really think that Tight Pants Tony is one of the handful of chosen ones that Jehovah picked to lead his organization on earth.
*I call the guy Tight Pants Tony because of this incident: Jehovah's Witness Leader Lets Loose on Tight Attire From 'Homosexual Designers'
I find it sad too. I have a couple of relatives in the organization (which is the reason why I started to investigate the religion) and it is such a waste of human potential.
I know that these relatives are not stupid people, but the organization has forced them into such simple-minded, shallow beliefs. It has crushed their intellectual curiosity about the world.
It’s sad to me that one of my young female relatives actually thinks evolution isn’t real, there isn’t any point in aspiring to a good career because Jehovah will destroy the world soon anyway, that women are not as smart as men, and women should be “submissive” to their “headship” (husband). Not to mention all the birthday/holiday celebrations that they can’t be part of. It’s sad that their lives are so limited by something that, if you’re not under the organization’s influence, you can see is so clearly ridiculous.
This explains a lot about one of my daughter’s HS boyfriends. He was in his senior year, a few months away from graduating, and his grandparent were encouraging him to drop out of school and apply for a job at the post office. I thought they were out of their tiny little minds, but they were JW, and this link kinda explains their thought process.
Incidentally, the boy did graduate from HS at least. But this thread also explains some of the other weirdness after he and my daughter broke up.
lavenderviolet was right, I was referring to the End Times. This was my first real introduction to religion barring some vague notions that there was a God and supporting characters (Jesus, Mary, Devil). I was eight, and a visiting great-uncle took the time to explain what would happen at the end of the world.
Fortunately, either he wasn’t clear or I didn’t get that he was trying to tell me what would happen to me, and the story was so ridiculous (“God is going to tie the devil to Jupiter for a thousand years”—to the planet? With rope? What?) that there was no danger I’d believe.
They tried to get me to witness, but I told them I didn’t see anything.
Hm, this sounds familiar…
And then it turns out, she was right all along…
I had a similar reaction: “Oh, that explains so much!” when I learned more about the religion and thought of quirky things I had noticed in the family members who are involved. A lot of times they are not as vocal about it as other strains of fundamentalists are, but when you dig deeper it is just as bad if not worse as some of the most extreme fundamentalists.
What kind of other weirdnesses did you see? Honestly, I think your daughter dodged a bullet by not marrying that guy, if he believed in the organization at all himself. The way JWs view women is extremely backwards and at times dangerous (for example, they do not feel that domestic violence is a valid reason to get a divorce, which is why I am worried about my young JW relative who is rushing into a quickie marriage with another JW that she doesn’t really know very well).
I don’t know that he was deeply into it himself - there were lots of issues in his family - mother died, step-mother didn’t much like him, various other dramas. But when he and my kid broke up, he married someone within the year, then ended up divorcing her almost immediately. I can’t blame all of his problems on JW, but the influences are pretty clear now.
The above can, I suppose, be referenced scripturally: Isaiah 11:6, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” Isaiah 65:25, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.”
As you say, though, “one of the ‘hooks’ they use” – JWs and their methods put me in mind of unscrupulous salesmen who will use whatever bullshit comes to their hand, to draw people in. I have the impression that the orthodox Christian line on stuff like this, is that it’s “figures of speech”: orthodox Christianity’s “take” seems in the main to be, from what I see, that God is interested basically in human beings – if animals are around at all in the New Jerusalem, they’ll be domestic ones – the world’s wealth of wildlife is for the chop eternally, come the end of the present Earth. (It’s hard to help strongly feeling that whatever one enjoys and relishes about this world and this life, Christianity will decree that it’s bad and due for abolition, and will tell one to renounce it.)
[I’ve screwed up the quote tree – Senegoid and I were floating the notion that eternal annihilation / no afterlife, is not a particularly terrifying prospect.]
While allowing that true believers will genuinely believe what they do – however “off” it may seem to those who don’t share the belief – in my perception: if the JWs are desperate to recruit people, then “unless you join us, there will come your way a few years of very horrible stuff in which you’ll die, quite likely horribly; and then be snuffed out and feel and know nothing, ever again” – is a pretty feeble and lame-ass threat, compared to what orthodox Christianity, and Islam, can and do bring to bear: “unless you join us, after your death or the end of the world, whichever comes first, you’ll be sent to undergo hideous suffering for all eternity”. If the JWs want to scare people into signing up, the ammunition which they choose to have available for them to do so, is – relatively – somewhat weak.
Just a note of correction: they’re not, really. They’re delighted when someone joins, but most of the effort spend recruiting is more about (1) selling the printed material (they may be giving it away to you for free, but they are paying for it), and (2) reinforcing their existing group identity.
Don’t get me wrong—in my experience, they do believe, and the desire to convert is, I think, much more genuine than cynical. It’s just that their mission focus is on the conversion process, not the results, and it’s important to their identity that they are a special group who are rejected by the worldly masses.
Edit: my objection to their methods is mostly about the way in which they make it very, very difficult for people to leave. It’s abusive, full stop. Also the way they treat people who have left. I find they way they target people coming in unscrupulous, but not terribly different from the other unscrupulous sales techniques which abound in our society, and at least they are genuinely welcoming and interested in the new people. I don’t think that’s faked.
Just like Ambassador Londo Mollari ?
I love their fabulously elaborate illustrations that they have in all their literature, as I mentioned in the other thread in IMHO re: Their book on Revelation.
They do regularly depict the post-Armageddon paradise-on-earth as a place where people, lions, sheep, macaws, and various other wildlife all sit down on lush green meadows near a lake and picnic together, amidst food (all vegetarian, fruits, vegetables, breads, etc.) aplenty. This is a very recurring theme. Quite attractive, actually. Where do I sign up?
ETA: The pics linked by running coach, above, show this.
ETA: Upon skimming the rest of this thread, I see others here are also heaping praises on their artwork. It’s really marvelous!
According to my neighbor, the end times are coming this year.
So he will give me all his stuff right?
I don’t know if it is just chance but I have worked with JW’s in a number of jobs over the years and have found them to be genuinely good people and very reliable workers. My current office-mate and mentee is one as is one of the older coworkers that I travel with. I have heard people make fun of them my whole life for being involved in a ‘cult’ but they are remarkably normal in day to day interactions except for the no holiday thing. They party, drink, watch sports and never try to witness to non-JW coworkers or at least they never have to me. I have read the Watchtower out of curiosity and it is definitely odd but not really any more odd than any other religion.
I am not sure why they got such a bad reputation except for the knocking on doors thing (which they scaled down quite a bit for private residences the last I heard). If you want a dependable worker, they will show up on time and do what they are asked to without complaint unlike many others. My coworker doesn’t have a college degree but he is working on a number of IT certificates and progressing quite well and his JW wife has a bachelors degree and a good job.
I believe that people that make fun of JW’s the most probably don’t know many of them personally so they make an easy target for criticisms that aren’t always accurate or justified. I would choose to know or work with them any day over many evangelicals and fundamentalists that I have known.
I have problems with their refusal of basic life-saving treatments such as blood transfusions and willingness to let children die. I have problems with the way they shun family members who do not adhere in lockstep to all the beliefs, making people choose between making their own life and staying touch with family. It’s heartless.
Shagnasty, I wouldn’t disagree with most of what you say, but please be aware that you’re not seeing all sides of the story. It’s like an abusive relationship: most of the horrors are not visible to outsiders. Anyway, most of them have nothing to do with their religious beliefs, but with the way their organization is controlled and managed. I guarantee these nice people and good workers have either experienced psychological abuse as a part of their religion, especially if they grew up in it, or would experience it if they ever tried to leave.
Edit: I have first-hand experience with family members who died in agony because they refused medical treatment; good for them for standing up for their beliefs, I guess, but what a waste. I also have firsthand experience with family members who are being shunned. It’s heartbreaking. I’m being shunned, as well, but I’m not sure if it’s because I’m gay or what; it hurts, but because it’s not immediate family it hurts less for me than for those whose parents / siblings / children shun them.
I am very sympathetic to the damage that this organization has caused to your family. A big part of why I think the JWs are very toxic is because they try to interfere with the normal love between family members. I feel terrible for anyone gay who is born to JW parents. It is not natural for a mother to disown her own son over anything short of being a serial killer/rapist/etc., in my opinion.
I have JWs in my own family (though most of the family is non-JW, which has limited the harm so far). As Shagnasty said, they are good people. I care about them - and that’s why it bothers me a lot that they are being harmed by this organization that is trying to control their thoughts and behavior.
I honestly feel that most of the JW followers are being victimized by the leaders. The leaders KNOW what they are doing. I don’t think most of the followers really understand what is going on.
It really is shocking that even though the JWs make their followers go to multiple meetings a week and make their followers do so much door to door preaching, most of the followers really DON’T know much about the organization’s history and doctrine changes.
My experience has been that if I ask a JW follower a few questions from http://www.jwfacts.com that they usually will end the conversation very quickly because they really don’t have answers to my questions. In some cases they don’t even know enough about JW beliefs to understand why things like the fact that the JW organization lies about the date of the fall of Jerusalem matter. I think it is absolutely horrible that so many people are being hurt by beliefs that collapse so easily under a little bit of scrutiny.
The JWs in my family joined before the internet. I really feel that if the JWs in my family could have looked at JWFacts before they became deeply invested in the organization, they would have never joined. I don’t think most JWs really know what they are getting into when they join. Like Shagnasty, they think “These are very nice people. I want to hang out with them”. They don’t know they are joining an organization with a long history of concealing childhood sex abuse, for example.
This is what turns it from “legitimate religion” to “bizarre cult” for me. My mom’s cousin became a JW more than 20 years ago, and he, his wife, and children have shunned the rest of his family ever since. When his dad died a few years ago he didn’t even come to the funeral.
Any belief that encourages the shunning of family members is a cult worthy of derision and mockery. Add the refusal of modern medical treatments and some of their other nonsense and it just seals the deal.
If you know that’s them knocking at your door, the best thing to do is quickly strip off your clothes and answer the door naked. They don’t seem to inclined to “witness” you for some reason. 