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Why can't Jehovah's Witnesses celebrate their birthdays?

Reviewed, corrected and commented by Margit Ricarda Rolf

There are some strange prohibitions imposed on Jehovah's Witnesses that astonish other people (the Witnesses like to call these other people world people) because they cannot explain why such a rule should be established, let alone observed, in the first, second, and third attempts. Even the often lengthy justifications in the Watchtower scriptures give the lasting impression that they are drawn to the hair and do not really explain the establishment of such strange laws in a plausible way. In their chains of argumentation, such words as "definitely", "is quite certain", "is to be assumed", "should we close" are also piled up.

In plain language means: A "good witness also acts on it", because if not, there are endless discussions with an elder who gives biblical advice!

All these terms indicate a blind flight through the Word of God, but the Jehovah's Witnesses believe it all anyway.

In the everyday life of Jehovah's Witnesses, the explanation for such a ban sounds much simpler. When it comes to birthday bans, it is usually argued that people should not be given honour. Only God is entitled to this. That is why Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate a birthday.

But the real reason for such prohibitions are the Jehovah's Witnesses' fidelity tests against their slaves, which are built into the Watchtower system. The Watchtower believer is subject to a constant and precisely balanced mental stress and the peaks of this stress are these abstruse prohibitions. Thus Jehovah's Witness is permanently forced to prove his Watchtower loyalty, which is blind obedience to the Governing Body, and to arrange his life so that he does not deviate too far from the directives of the supreme slave. Jehovah's Witness is subject to permanent control by "well-meaning brothers. They control and denounce each other.

Jehovah's Witness, who is forced to participate in life like any other human being, has to repeatedly decide whether he still belongs to the Watchtower Society because of this arbitrary legal situation and whether he has to offend other people or not. Even the smallest fluctuations in his behavior ...

Example: Eating a candy in the first year of school when a classmate has a birthday and the 6-year-old child does not dare to publicly prove his loyalty to Jehovah!

... lead to severe sanctions, from which he must suffer greatly. He is subjected to mental agony by being excluded from the community ...

That only happens to "unrepentant sinners". The others, especially children and adolescents, are put right by "biblical advice" – "in the spirit of love" – if necessary "with the rod of discipline" because that is love(!).

... and then he's only allowed to sit on the back of the bench.

Applies only to deprivation of community. Otherwise, "local needs" will be publicised, what disgraceful deed young people or single mothers, etc. have committed. In the case of the two or three persons to whom the respective facts apply, everyone knows who is meant anyway. The rest is done by the rumour mill.

Such a faulty witness is called a renegade ...

That's wrong! Be careful. – A renegade is not an unrepentant sinner, but someone like me who has consciously left Jehovah's Witnesses and publicly exposes them. Whoever "only" leaves the Witnesses or is disfellowshipped because of a sin is not considered a renegade. He can repent and return at any time – but the renegade one by no means!

... and embarrassed in front of all witnesses by publicly announcing the offence for which he was disfellowshipped.

That's wrong too. It is only announced – with a sentence that someone was excluded – not why! No Jehovah's Witness may ask. Women, too, must not harass their husbands because all of the Legal Committee's proceedings are top secret, allegedly to protect the sinner's privacy and, of course, not to disturb the assembly.

The shame added to him in this way is so bad that some have already committed suicide because of it.

This applies above all to young people who take this to heart, especially those who have no social contacts with the outside world and are natives.

None of the other witnesses may talk to him, eat or do anything else together.

This even applies to young people who still live at home. They have to leave the room before meals because they are not allowed to be present during prayer.

Through the public humiliation of an excluded person, all Jehovah's Witnesses experience this process again and again. Also as "unaffected" they experience the embarrassment, the humiliation and the mental agony. It feels as if the punishment would be carried out on yourself, but no one is allowed to show compassion or ask a question as to whether this procedure is really necessary. Everyone must bow to the decision of the elders and must expect the same procedure at the slightest sympathy.

In the Lauenburg assembly, an 80-year-old brother was disfellowshipped because he had not hidden gifts on the occasion of his birthday from secular children on the occasion of the visit of the district supervisor. Thereupon three families (his children) left the assembly and only one daughter came with her daughter and later her grandson. The other three wanted nothing more to do with the witnesses after the expulsion of the grandfather. I knew the doors of those families because they lived in my preaching area and I was not allowed to visit them.

In this way, every Jehovah's Witness is left to his own devices. It is clear from the outset that he has no one to help him if he is not ironhard loyal to the slave. (The slave is the Governing Body of the Jehovah's Witnesses.) This terrible loneliness of the Jehovah's Witness forces him to accept the laws of the slave always without grumbling and without question. Otherwise he would lose the rest of his friends.

Those who ask uncomfortable questions, as I have always done, are not granted privileges, such as the auxiliary intelligence service, because they are not mentally "mature" or have an "isebelian spirit".

Now when the witness comes to the point of having to refuse the invitation to his birthday to good acquaintances, because his religious head of the church demands this of him, then of course the urgent question arises again to him as to the meaning behind it. But he must immediately repress this question and fight down with the blanket "determined"-"-"is-acceptable"-"should-we-close"-arguments, because otherwise the Jehovah's Witness would lose his "livelihood". This compulsory exercise of brain shutdown occurs whenever one of the slave's abstruse commandments is pending and interferes with the Witness's life.

Worse! If you exercise your (natural) right to freedom of expression, you get a visit from the Service Committee. These were regularly Juergen Br. and Wolfgang Ba. (name abbreviated [RH]). If they ran out of arguments, I was pointed to the following: 1. a sister is not entitled to teach the assembly; 2. if the faithful and understanding slave has not published something in the Watchtower, then he has reasons for it (for example 3. the light becomes brighter and the most important thing is the unity of the assembly, I should not hurry ahead of the slave, but should show consideration for those brothers who are not blessed with my understanding; 4. I should take an example from Moses: He constantly showed consideration for the herd of small cattle. (And so they got me! I kept the insights of my personal Bible study to myself from then on!)

With these completely absurd laws, the Watchtower Society achieves that Jehovah's Witness immediately and long term ...

  • his brain is switched off when insane teachings interfere with his life
  • brings blind obedience back to boiling point
  • the mental cornea hardens even more
  • hardening himself for witnessing a renegade expulsion
  • willingness to betray wavering fellow believers increased

No, that never came into question for me, although Juergen Br. would have liked that. He even asked our 8-year-old daughter why she didn't want to go into the service with him anymore.

  • refreshes the good standing before Jehovah as a substitute for the gospel

... and so on and so forth. РThe psychological distress is not so much perceived as a burden in stiff adherence to the Watchtower regulations as in questioning these laws or in a personal decision following one's own conscience. That is why there is hardly anyone among Jehovah's Witnesses who can deal freely with these things. They are always strongly reduced to short explanations, to clich̩s. Therefore, no one knows the real reasons why Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed to celebrate a birthday. They can hardly explain it themselves and also do not recognize their mental coercion as the real reason why they have to act like this and have to repress reality again and again in their lives.

Conspiracy

The real reason Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate a birthday is conspiracy. Without knowing it, the Jehovah's Witnesses, by following these arbitrary guidelines, operate a mechanism that welds them together into a great machine and gives them a home they can no longer do without because they have no other friends. This conspiracy can be described as follows:

Just as the bald head has become the symbol of the primitive Nazi who is ready to use violence, the observance of the exaggerated laws of the Watchtower Society has become the symbol of the witness community. As two little girls swear never to pull up their right stockings as a sign of their friendship, so the good standing before Jehovah is a sign of the Witness's belonging to the only surviving human class. The witness himself experiences himself as good and obedient. However, he does not realize that he has been caught up in a treacherous conspiracy trick of the Watchtower Society.

The mental oppression system of the Watchtower Society is elaborated so meticulously and impertinently ...

I recommend reading the Gebt-Acht book.

... and equipped with such malice that the witness has to break off the contact to the "world people" again and again. This is the inner core of the worldwide brotherhood of Jehovah's Witnesses with their freemasonic peculiarities. The center of Watchtower power is not God, but a highly sophisticated, cleverly devised system of human oppression, for which the name Jehovah stands.

The discussion of the topic can be found under: www.zeugenjehovas-ausstieg.de

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