Ann O'Maly

September 6th, 2017: A just released research survey shows once again that Jehovah's Witnesses are among the least educated people in the United States: 
AmericaÂ’s Changing Religious Identity
It is also interesting to note how JWs rank in the categories of: Income, Insurance Coverage and Homeownership. They are among the lowest in every one of these categories.
45% of JWs report household earnings of less than $30,000 per year Fewer than half of Jehovah’s Witnesses (48%) are homeowners Only 31% report having health insurance through their employer  

I'm very sorry you are going through this, @ImStrugglingBad, but please be assured you are not alone. I'm also very sorry about the close friends you've lost. But I'm glad you have had some understanding and support from the congregation - not everyone gets that.
It's worrying that the stress and depression has reached levels so that you want to self-harm. Please, please contact a suicide prevention helpline if you are getting these urges.
https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/help-yourself/lgbtq/
http://oneloveallequal.org/2016/08/24/self-harm-hotlines/
As I said, you are not alone. You might like to read stories of those who have been struggling as you have.
http://www.jwhc.info/a-personal-story.php -This site has a private forum where you may find support from fellow gay JWs. I don't know the quality or vibe of the forum,  so you'll have to figure out for yourself whether it's a healthy and comfortable place to be.
There's also this person's experience you might like to read: http://jwfacts.com/watchtower/blog/gay-jw-hardship.php
You are valuable, wanted, and loved. There will be a way through this. Please hang in there. (((Internet hugs)))

I'm very sorry you are going through this, @ImStrugglingBad, but please be assured you are not alone. I'm also very sorry about the close friends you've lost. But I'm glad you have had some understanding and support from the congregation - not everyone gets that.
It's worrying that the stress and depression has reached levels so that you want to self-harm. Please, please contact a suicide prevention helpline if you are getting these urges.
https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/help-yourself/lgbtq/
http://oneloveallequal.org/2016/08/24/self-harm-hotlines/
As I said, you are not alone. You might like to read stories of those who have been struggling as you have.
http://www.jwhc.info/a-personal-story.php -This site has a private forum where you may find support from fellow gay JWs. I don't know the quality or vibe of the forum,  so you'll have to figure out for yourself whether it's a healthy and comfortable place to be.
There's also this person's experience you might like to read: http://jwfacts.com/watchtower/blog/gay-jw-hardship.php
You are valuable, wanted, and loved. There will be a way through this. Please hang in there. (((Internet hugs)))

This is totally not something I would do. But I'm doing it because I need help. I need to live. I don't know if I can anymore.
That having been said, I'm completely terrified of who I am and why I am the way I am. I'm afraid of the fears and doubts I have in my mind. I try my best not to be angry at myself or Jehovah. I have a family that loves me, a congregation that's patient with me. I know that, from a logical point of view, they wouldn't care if I told them the truth about me. I haven't acted on my desires about anything (besides pornography, i'll get to that later. it's not serious) But I'm afraid everything will change. I love my family, I can't lose them. But I still feel completely alone. Every time somebody says something about gay people, my heart hurts. I always try to explain to friends and family that "gay people don't necessarily choose why they feel that way." I tell them "if you were gay and the only experience you had with Christianity  was the hateful, bigoted garbage you see in Christendom, what would your perspective be?"  I appreciate the fact the brothers have released watchtower articles about brothers and sisters who've struggled and successfully overcome these issues. 
Last year, I recently relapsed with my pornography addiction. Of course, I admitted it. It wasn't even something I needed to be reproved for or anything. I told them the truth. It was hard, but they comforted me. Since that period last year, I've become so incredibly discouraged that I can hardly make it to the meetings. Door to door has become non-existent, and I get my field service time in through return visits and studies. My Dad is the Coordinator, and he's been absolutely great to me. That having been said, I feel like I've been drawing further and further away from the congregation and Jehovah. I pray to him several times a day, deeply. But it just gets harder and harder. I found myself looking at (very minor) forms of sexualized images again. It's an addiction I use to cope, but I hate it. I'm afraid and alone and every single part of me is fighting this. I'm exhausted. I'm burnt out. I'm discouraged. I'm depressed.
Part of me just wants a relationship. I just want intimacy. It doesn't need to be sexual even. I had a friend I could talk to about anything. He killed himself 2 years ago just before being DF'd for drug abuse. That really messed with my head. I went through a period where I was cutting myself every night. I drank just before I got drunk almost every night. I was so alone. 
One of my best friends left the organization and it killed me. He told me I was part of the reason for it, because I was critical of his actions. Apparently I didn't love him enough. I was crushed.
These events have made me questions whether it's worth it, whether this is the truth at all. I know it is, but I find myself drifting further and further away. Even though I pray and try so hard, it just gets more difficult. Please, please help me
I suppose my question, then, is if anyone else has gone through this, and what they feel?

I thought about this illustration, do we know if the steward had complete control over his masters debts, if so, he had the right to do what he did. it wasn't stealing, what was owed was more than the master had laid out in the 1st place...any thoughts?

Maybe he had overcharged them in the first place.

Definitely not  a Watchtower image. Evangelical or SDA.
       

What is happening to my eyes?

What is happening to my eyes?

What is happening to my eyes?

You missed a golden opportunity to lob a comeback insult at my expense, there, @James Thomas Rook Jr. 

RATS!
and I already had my missiles targeted!

Publicly revealing members' IP locations is uncool - even if the members are being a pain in the rump. Tsk, tsk.

Speechless......SMH.....
Throws his papers up in the air......
I need a drink.

Uh Oh! Does that mean it will be weeks before we hear from you again?

OK. This line of discussion has been left unfinished ...
... so it's probably time to wrap it up.
@Arauna had expressed her belief that the date 539 BCE for the fall of Babylon was "truly verified." However, she indicated mistrust of Babylonian sources because "their dates are all over the place - not reliable," the reigns are "impossible to correlate," and that the "Persian and Greek sources gets (sic) us to the truth." She cited the battle of Opis as an example of how the date 539 BCE is verified, apparently unaware that the battle was primarily recorded in a Babylonian source. So I was curious to know if she knew how the relative chronologies of the ancient near eastern world were fixed to BCE dating.
The only answer she could provide were reiterations of what scholarship had already concluded (that Babylon fell in 539 BCE), that Cyrus reigned 9 years and she cited the Olympiad counting system used in some Greek sources. But how do we nail down this data onto a BCE calendar time-line? I asked.
Maybe Arauna doesn't know, or doesn't care, or knows and won't say. So this is the point I've been leading to:
We nail down 'floating chronologies' like Babylonian kings' regnal years and Olympiads to the BCE/CE calendar by means of numerous dated Babylonian astronomical observations. The sky is the 'universal clock' I was hinting at. Babylonians were excellent sky-watchers and wanted to understand the motions of celestial objects, so they observed and measured distances and times, and they recorded what they saw. It was vital that they noted down the date for the observations otherwise their records would be useless for researching and calculating periodicities and so on. The year date would be their king's regnal year. Therefore, these dated astronomical tablets are snapshots of time, with celestial configurations often unique to that time period. So, when we combine the data from known kings regnal years with dated astronomical records from the same era, we can derive the BCE years the kings reigned.
This is the method by which it was deduced that 539 BCE was Nabonidus' 17th year, when the battle of Opis happened, and when Babylon fell to the Persians.
The same method and same Babylonian astronomical sources yield,
605 BCE as Nebuchadnezzar II's accession 597 BCE as the siege of Jerusalem and Jehoiachin's surrender and exile 587 BCE as Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year and Jerusalem's destruction We cannot accept 539 BCE as being verified for certain events, while rejecting the dates for other events that have been verified by using the exact same methods and sources that were used to confirm 539 BCE. This would be an intellectually dishonest approach. Counter to what Arauna stated about the unreliability of Babylonian sources to get at the truth about dating Babylon's fall to 539 BCE, we cannot get to the truth about 539 BCE (or the year of Jerusalem's destruction) without Babylonian sources.
 
 

Sometimes we mistakenly think a source is incorrect due to our own preconceived ideas or lack of knowledge. Sometimes quoting sources we believe are incorrect is necessary for critical analysis, discussion, or to acknowledge an alternate POV exists.
Again, the methods and primary sources from which we deduce 539 BCE as being the correct year for Babylon's fall, are the same methods and primary sources from which we deduce 587 BCE as being the correct year for Jerusalem's destruction. I understand your caution and I get that it feels 'wrong' to you. Once you become more familiar with the lines of biblical, chronological and archaeological evidence, you should see how all those lines converge into one inescapable conclusion.
This is why I tried to get you to follow a linear track of reasoning instead.
I wish you had. It would have been interesting to explore.
Well, I can see that the reasoning and information I presented have gone whoosh over your head and you're restating what prompted my questions about whether you really understood how BCE dates are arrived at for Babylonian regnal years and events. Never mind. Maybe one day it'll click. Thank you for responding anyway.
Edit to add: If "there are no dates given so that one can properly synchronize to BCE dates," on what basis do you trust 539 BCE, since it is a date that derives from the Babylonian Nabonidus Chronicle and other Babylonian sources?

Thanks for making it so clear. I love it when someone can say in just a couple paragraphs what it takes me 15 pages to say.

OK. This line of discussion has been left unfinished ...
... so it's probably time to wrap it up.
@Arauna had expressed her belief that the date 539 BCE for the fall of Babylon was "truly verified." However, she indicated mistrust of Babylonian sources because "their dates are all over the place - not reliable," the reigns are "impossible to correlate," and that the "Persian and Greek sources gets (sic) us to the truth." She cited the battle of Opis as an example of how the date 539 BCE is verified, apparently unaware that the battle was primarily recorded in a Babylonian source. So I was curious to know if she knew how the relative chronologies of the ancient near eastern world were fixed to BCE dating.
The only answer she could provide were reiterations of what scholarship had already concluded (that Babylon fell in 539 BCE), that Cyrus reigned 9 years and she cited the Olympiad counting system used in some Greek sources. But how do we nail down this data onto a BCE calendar time-line? I asked.
Maybe Arauna doesn't know, or doesn't care, or knows and won't say. So this is the point I've been leading to:
We nail down 'floating chronologies' like Babylonian kings' regnal years and Olympiads to the BCE/CE calendar by means of numerous dated Babylonian astronomical observations. The sky is the 'universal clock' I was hinting at. Babylonians were excellent sky-watchers and wanted to understand the motions of celestial objects, so they observed and measured distances and times, and they recorded what they saw. It was vital that they noted down the date for the observations otherwise their records would be useless for researching and calculating periodicities and so on. The year date would be their king's regnal year. Therefore, these dated astronomical tablets are snapshots of time, with celestial configurations often unique to that time period. So, when we combine the data from known kings regnal years with dated astronomical records from the same era, we can derive the BCE years the kings reigned.
This is the method by which it was deduced that 539 BCE was Nabonidus' 17th year, when the battle of Opis happened, and when Babylon fell to the Persians.
The same method and same Babylonian astronomical sources yield,
605 BCE as Nebuchadnezzar II's accession 597 BCE as the siege of Jerusalem and Jehoiachin's surrender and exile 587 BCE as Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year and Jerusalem's destruction We cannot accept 539 BCE as being verified for certain events, while rejecting the dates for other events that have been verified by using the exact same methods and sources that were used to confirm 539 BCE. This would be an intellectually dishonest approach. Counter to what Arauna stated about the unreliability of Babylonian sources to get at the truth about dating Babylon's fall to 539 BCE, we cannot get to the truth about 539 BCE (or the year of Jerusalem's destruction) without Babylonian sources.
 
 

OK. This line of discussion has been left unfinished ...
... so it's probably time to wrap it up.
@Arauna had expressed her belief that the date 539 BCE for the fall of Babylon was "truly verified." However, she indicated mistrust of Babylonian sources because "their dates are all over the place - not reliable," the reigns are "impossible to correlate," and that the "Persian and Greek sources gets (sic) us to the truth." She cited the battle of Opis as an example of how the date 539 BCE is verified, apparently unaware that the battle was primarily recorded in a Babylonian source. So I was curious to know if she knew how the relative chronologies of the ancient near eastern world were fixed to BCE dating.
The only answer she could provide were reiterations of what scholarship had already concluded (that Babylon fell in 539 BCE), that Cyrus reigned 9 years and she cited the Olympiad counting system used in some Greek sources. But how do we nail down this data onto a BCE calendar time-line? I asked.
Maybe Arauna doesn't know, or doesn't care, or knows and won't say. So this is the point I've been leading to:
We nail down 'floating chronologies' like Babylonian kings' regnal years and Olympiads to the BCE/CE calendar by means of numerous dated Babylonian astronomical observations. The sky is the 'universal clock' I was hinting at. Babylonians were excellent sky-watchers and wanted to understand the motions of celestial objects, so they observed and measured distances and times, and they recorded what they saw. It was vital that they noted down the date for the observations otherwise their records would be useless for researching and calculating periodicities and so on. The year date would be their king's regnal year. Therefore, these dated astronomical tablets are snapshots of time, with celestial configurations often unique to that time period. So, when we combine the data from known kings regnal years with dated astronomical records from the same era, we can derive the BCE years the kings reigned.
This is the method by which it was deduced that 539 BCE was Nabonidus' 17th year, when the battle of Opis happened, and when Babylon fell to the Persians.
The same method and same Babylonian astronomical sources yield,
605 BCE as Nebuchadnezzar II's accession 597 BCE as the siege of Jerusalem and Jehoiachin's surrender and exile 587 BCE as Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year and Jerusalem's destruction We cannot accept 539 BCE as being verified for certain events, while rejecting the dates for other events that have been verified by using the exact same methods and sources that were used to confirm 539 BCE. This would be an intellectually dishonest approach. Counter to what Arauna stated about the unreliability of Babylonian sources to get at the truth about dating Babylon's fall to 539 BCE, we cannot get to the truth about 539 BCE (or the year of Jerusalem's destruction) without Babylonian sources.
 
 

You should still be able to find at least one quotation that indicates this. You shouldn't say "done already" if it wasn't done. And as I explained above, I do already know that it isn't true. Russell did not predict any kind of war resembling WWI in 1914. This must be one of the reasons that Russell (after 1914 came and went) began using the year 1915 as the date for the end of the Gentile Times.
That doesn't say a lot for whether there were any anointed in 1914 who were truly able to discern the sign in 1914, does it? Yet, that's how we define the beginning of the "two-group generation." In fact, the Watch Tower continued saying that Jesus' Parousia had begun in 1874 all the way up until the formal change in 1943/4, nearly 100 years after Barbour first started promoting 1874 as the date for Jesus' Parousia. It might even be why it wasn't until the 1920's that the Watch Tower ran the story of Russell announcing the End of the Gentile Times in early October 1914 (Can't give the exact day when that announcement happened, because it's also changed 3 different times.)
As I said, I don't receive "special interpretation." I was referring to the way YOU defended a "special interpretation" by claiming that it was OK to use the least likely definitions of someone's words. The analogy I used was probably confusing. Sorry.
By the way, these topics that reverted back to 1914-related subjects will probably go back to their respective topics where they started from.

It's possible, so I'll assume you're right. I'm going to try to get in some late edits that don't cause too much confusion so that I can remove my previous assumption that he purposefully pulled it out of context. In some ways, I felt it was a different kind of insult to him to assume he hadn't really understood what he was doing. Hard to find a middle ground here. 
I think I know what he misunderstood here. I've seen A.S. do the exact same thing with the exact same reaction on a similar expression. In context, of course, he said he would ALWAYS prefer the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses to the Bible even if he knows that specific teachings might be different. Several times I spelled this out and was clear that it was only "specific teachings" that he might know are wrong. But because it was clear from context, I left out the idea about certain "specific teachings" and accidentally wrote "the teachings." He was able to jump on that and decide that I must have meant that ALL the teachings must be different from what the Bible teaches.
Historically, most of us have a bad habit of supporting "proof texts" vs. "context," so I should have seen it coming. I got a little more careful when engaging with A.S. because I'm sure you've seen how 'black and white" thinking with no room for subtlety or "gray areas" often results in this type of misunderstanding. It seems that words get culled and re-culled to find little snippets of "proof texts" for a preconceived notion. I've purchased CD's from bruceq, one of which contained several resources we have quoted from. I realized that this is an even bigger problem than I had ever noticed before, when we look to outside sources for quotes and support. Very often we just take a "proof text" without realizing that the context says almost the opposite. Even G.S., a writer at Bethel, was infamous for this kind of misunderstanding. He would read through newspapers and magazines searching for little phrases he could pull out of context. But as smart as he is, I don't think he always noticed when the context was saying the opposite. That's approximately what happened in both of these recent misunderstandings with bruceq. 

Call me a skeptic, but how can Jehovah God honestly expect JWs to put GB and Moses on the same level?
Moses was a prophet, the GB is not. God spoke to Moses and his face glowed like the sun. God has never spoken to the GB. God used Moses to perform miracles. He parted the Red Sea with God's holy spirit. He healed the sick with the bronze serpent. There was a cloud pillar representing God that followed the Jews in the wilderness. Their souls never wore out. God left no doubt in the mind of the Jews that Moses was divinely appointed and had authority. Dissent was ridiculous. What do we have? The GB has a history of missteps in direction, yet they continue to expect unquestioned loyalty.

How so? It may be an extreme example, but the point remains that these Kings were appointed by God, yet God punished those who followed the King into false worship. So, this idea that we should follow no matter what seems to conflict with the example of ancient Israel. Apparently God does expect us to exercise our own independent conscience at times and not just be unified, unified, unified.
Sorry I am a newbie here.

Hi again. You really didn't address my comments about the Israelite Kings who disobeyed God. Doesn't that indicate that just b/c someone is taking the lead over God's people that does not mean they are doing the correct things? Jehovah God did punish his chosen nation...he didn't spare the followers b/c of the corruption of the leaders. So, why today should we follow without question? Will God care on his judgment day that we just followed along or will he care that we did right according to our own conscience? (And I'm not suggesting the GB is on par with those wicked kings, but I'm just trying to make a point.)
You brought a good point...what Biblical reference point do we use to know how to treat the GB? You suggest Moses is the right comparison, but what about the first century Christian Governing Body as a comparison? Wasn't the apostle Peter (one of the men taking the lead) openly chastised for avoiding the uncircumcised gentiles? Can't imagine any open criticism of the GB today. There's very little info about this first-century group...in fact there's 1 recorded event of the GB intervening on the matter of circumcision.
And let me be clear what I'm not saying. I am not suggesting anyone split off or take on the GB's role. I feel that it's appropriate for a GB to exist in God's organization. But is it appropriate that all JWs be in 100% agreement with the GB's direction under threat of shunning? Is their scriptural basis for that kind of authority on scriptural interpretation? What's most important: unity or personal scriptural truth? If your Bible based conscience does not harmonize with the group does that make you an "apostate"?