Japanese sister gives up three fingers for truth's sake

[EccentricM]

I don't get why urban myths start in the first place in our congregations, don't people take seriously the sin of making up lies? It's like when some groups of Christendom make up accounts or skew facts to try and convince people of the Bible or faith. Jehovah wants us to bring people in, not by "any means" but by honesty and truth.

Edited August 19, 2020 by EccentricM

[Shawnster]

2 hours ago, EccentricM said:

I don't get why urban myths start in the first place in our congregations, don't people take seriously the sin of making up lies? It's like when some groups of Christendom make up accounts or skew facts to try and convince people of the Bible or faith. Jehovah wants us to bring people in, not by "any means" but by honesty and truth.

It may not be that black and white. Sometimes it might be like the childhood game "telephone" where you whisper something to one person and they pass the message on to the next person. By the time it reaches that last person, the message has mutated and distorted.  It's not intentional, but it happens. 

 

So someone shares an experience or illustration.  Then that gets shared with another person. Then that gets shared again but the person forgot or misunderstood something, perhaps they misheard or misunderstood that it was an illustration and not a true life experience. 

 

Remember, we even printed in our publications the experience /urban legend /myth that Gandhi stated said this :

 

Quote

*** w75 4/15 p. 251 Jesus Christ—A Historical Personage ***
Coming to modern times, Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu ‘father’ of the nation of India, once stated to Lord Irwin, former viceroy of India: “When your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems, not only of our countries but those of the whole world.” Bearing similar testimony to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, the veteran American psychiatrist J. T. Fisher wrote, toward the end of his very successful career, that the Sermon on the Mount far excelled the best that all the world’s philosophers, psychologists and poets had to offer.
https://www.jw.org/finder?wtlocale=E&docid=1975285&srctype=wol&srcid=share&paragraph=19

When we finally decided to fact check this, we could not verify its authenticity so we no longer use it. 

 

But we used to. 

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by Shawnster

[Sequoia]

John 21:18-23

 

When Jesus told Peter what sort of death Peter would die.  Peter wanted to know  how the apostle John would die.  Jesus answered. “If it is my will for him to remain until I come, of what concern is that to you?" 

 

In other words it's not your concern.  Yet, a saying went out among the brothers that Jesus said that John would not die and the account clearly states that isn't what Jesus actually said.  So this human tendency of misquoting or getting a story wrong happened among the early disciples as well with something Jesus said.

Edited September 3, 2020 by JW2017

[Norbro]

On 8/18/2020 at 3:52 PM, jayrtom said:

Well I just remembered to hear this story in this forum and it was 7 years ago, so you see how this goes round and round

 

Worst even if someone as reproachable as a CO tells himself such an incredible story saying he was there! (Unless the brother telling that here on the forum was lying)

 

Just look this nonsense, worth reading for a good laugh  (and then a :facepalm: and then some :tears:

 

Watch out for wolves in smurf's (smurves? 😅) clothing..

[Wren]

I've heard about smurfs walking out of a kingdom hall. (this was doing the rounds years and years ago, smurfs must be particularly evil as they feature in quite a few stories)

The witnessing bag in the river story. (heard this one too)

The dog being wacked with a witnessing bag containing a brick story. (this was told as a true story happening in a nearby cong. but I've heard it related as from another country too)

Demons seen sitting on the cars in the kingdom hall car park. (told to me in a previous cong. 20 or so years back, with great sincerity)

 

 

Some like to tell stories, maybe there is some basis in truth. I know my husband loves embellishing stories. Nothing he relates is as it happened and if he can use a thousand words instead of 100 all the better. When I'm impatient I have to tell him to just get to the point. Other times I'm entertained. But I often ask questions like: did they really say that? Did you really do that? Sometimes I wear earphones 😄

Edited September 12, 2020 by Wren

[EccentricM]

34 minutes ago, Wren said:

I've heard about smurfs walking out of a kingdom hall. (this was doing the rounds years and years ago, smurfs must be particularly evil as they feature in quite a few stories)

That one always makes me laugh. It's too much. For some reason back in the day there was some strange obsession with cartoon smurfs being evil. Before my time, but stories like this really baffle me. In my time in the truth since I was raised in it, I've never come across such... oddity. Sounds like older generations of JWs went through some... interesting "teething issues" is all I can say.

 

Today most people seem more "down to Earth", whereas all these older stories makes me wonder just what was going on with people back then, how did these stories start? Why did these urban myths, or odd beliefs get so out of hand? Who said smurfs were Satanic? And how did that lead to a story like "that" being circulated?

 

Is it possible some militant JW spun that tale because "they personally" did not like the smurfs? So they were like "I know they are demonic! I saw a smurf toy standup and run out the kingdomhall!"

 

And besides, would Jehovah ever allow demonic activity to happen at his place of worship where the faithful are gathered under his spiritual protection? I don't think so.

 

I know certain "beyond the flesh" things do go on, for both good and ill (and I, family and people we know have experienced first hand I will say), but some of these stories are so whack, and revolve around some of the 'weirdest' things.

 

 

Edited September 12, 2020 by EccentricM

[carlos]

10 hours ago, EccentricM said:

Today most people seem more "down to Earth", whereas all these older stories makes me wonder just what was going on with people back then, how did these stories start? Why did these urban myths, or odd beliefs get so out of hand? Who said smurfs were Satanic? And how did that lead to a story like "that" being circulated?

It was just the spirit of the times. Not only Witnesses, people in general were like that. When I was a kid in the 70s, early 80s we were always listening to and spreading all kinds of stories without any evidence. I know many people who still swear if you put a piece of meat in a glass with coke it will be gone in a couple days. But none of them ever made the test to see if it was true (I did, it's not true). That kind of silly stories. Witnesses only did what everybody else did. Today at least people is used to give a source for a claim they make. Fake news are more widespread than ever but at a different level.

 

At the same time, Witnesses tended to be overly strict and quite critical of everything. This is because some decades before the brothers realized that a lot of things people did actually came from Babylonian religion, so we were trying to get rid of all those influences. The brothers did a great job of cleaning, but a consequence was that they became a bit paranoid. And those same brothers were well-respected elders when I was a child. Besides, at the time the Slave didn't insist so much in following principles instead of rules and letting the friends use their own conscience. If an elder said the smurfs (or whatever) was demonic, that was it. The organization didn't have the maturity it has now.

 

And there was yet another factor: There existed a fascination with demons and demon stories. Even our publications often contained stories of demon harassment.

 

With those three factors in the mix, it's no surprise that such stories spread like wildfire among the friends.