Marrying my wife is one of the happiest days of my life

even if it happened in a kingdom hall ;). One of the next happiest days is the day she walked out, of the kingdom hall that is!

Well recently my wife has decided that the JW's are not directly speaking for God. Although she is not disfellowshipped she would no longer be consider a JW and is in the monumental process of figuring things out. It took about 8 years. One of the things I truly regret is that I was so passive and didn't speak out more so that this day could have come sooner. There is of course a road ahead for her in finding peace and happiness while creating her world view point.

So my old blog tag line has been updated.

What's the big deal if the bible has even a tiny little error?

So a long time ago when I was trying to figure out if I could trust the bible as the inerrant word of God, I had to decided if errors would be a problem. If I recall this was the tip of the iceberg for me. You see JW's often use the article "a" as reason that Jesus is "a god" instead of Jesus "is god". See John 1:1 in their bible. While there are a lot more and bigger problems in the bible than missing articles(or call it a translation error), the tiniest article illustrates what a huge difference in  religions doctrine it can make.

After doing more research and seeing many many other errors you might just then decided to admit the bible is errant and now never ever really be certain that your doctrines are correct or that you could know things absolutely. You could then continue to bend over backwards making excuses and logical loop holes and try convince yourself it's still inspired somehow.... eventually you'll get to the point where you can just admit it's absurd.

If the smallest things can make a huge difference it's surprising that god couldn't at the very least do the proofread. Typically I wouldn't care but in this case people should even give a fuck about an oxford comma. Ambiguity is not a good thing when something is supposedly coming down as the word of god.

Interviews with some ex JW's

JW's should be doing background checks but they don't

People dealing with children should be given a background check.

You would think this would be a no-brainer, but the JW organization chooses not to do so.

While not a magical or holy spirit bullet to prevent all wrongs it would help keep members safer.

If JW's are forced to do background checks then they would be liable if the person had a record and they did not take measures to protect their members. If enacted I wonder how many elders and ministerial servants will have to step down to keep them out of positions of trust and authority.

Another step of civilization pushing JW's in a safer direction.
http://www.vice.com/read/an-11-year-old-is-suing-000919-v20n4

http://www.topix.com/forum/religion/jehovahs-witness/TO7LR4JJR96PIHVVU

Jingle Jingle.. Have some Nog

Musical interlude . please be in your seats within the next 15 minutes

The slow sanitizing of extremist thought and actions

My guess is that as the JW religion ages some of it's extreme practices will slowly be sanitized.

They already can accept most parts of blood, give it another 50 years and I would guess that blood becomes more symbolic and the value of life is placed higher than the symbolism of life,  Or some better medical alternative comes along,(ie synthetic blood with nano bots)

Shunning/Disfellowshipping

Watchtower‘s July 2009 “Awake!” magazine, p. 29, No one should be forced to worship in a way that he finds unacceptable or be made to choose between his beliefs and his family.
While they don't practice what they preach here , one can hope that eventually it may come to be.

The two witness policy, now(?) the directions are to tell the person they can/(should?) report to the local authorities, or at least I thought I heard this a few years back although I am not sure if they do this in all regions/areas.

A major influence of these  must have been law suits that pressure the organization to make adjustments to protect its flock. Hooray for civilization.