Jehovah's Witnesses and Higher Learning

This weeks lego story depicts a typical scene in a Jehovah's witness family when the subject of college comes up. highlighted at the end is the current policy regarding a mans position in the congregation if he allows his child to attend college. he will be removed! he has made poor decisions making him ano longer an exemplary example in the congregation.

  

 

Higher learning, getting a degree, in the 21st century is a normal practice in many countries. For Jehovah's witnesses its rare. while there is no command forbidding someone from attending a university the culture within JW's is such that anyone contemplating such a course will be counseled, looked down upon, viewed as lacking faith. After all if Armageddon is imminent why would you waste 4 or more years in extra education in satan's world this is passing away.

to someone never associated with JW's this thinking no doubt seems crazy, but national statistics in USA   show jehovahs witnesses to be the lowest religious group gaining a post graduate degree at only 3% of JW's with 63% of JW'S gaining high school or lower education! these stats are a reflection of the religious pressure to conform. Guaranteed that 3% were either rebellious ignoring 'divine counsel' or they were educated before becoming a JW. not one of that 3% would have been encouraged to pursue their higher education.

 

unless of course we count JW HQ where the governing body actually encouraged and paid for some of their young men to go through university to gain am law degree to help the religion in legal matters, they claim they no longer do this, you know because its so very damaging spiritually to go to college! but rather they rely on a lot of outside counsel, employing and relying on people who have used the education system of this world.

the official policy is this, educate yourself only as much as is needed to do a menial job that allows you to then spend the rest of your time preaching JW dogma. any who do not follow this are going against the bibles words in Ecclesiastes 12:1 which says  Remember, then, your Grand Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of distress come and the years arrive when you will say: “I have no pleasure in them”;

to go to college, is to forget your creator and to act selfishly, to seek great things for yourself in satan's world. it's using the world to the full. it's slaving for two masters. all those scriptural concepts are pushed on to you to create guilt and pressure to conform to JW policy.

yet what are you doing really? you are continuing what you have been doing since you were 4 or 5, you are in school. you are educating yourself so as to choose employment that you are interested in. Most of the big billionaire entrepreneurs in the world do not have a degree, most of the people who become stars, who make a big name for themselves are not post graduates! most people with degrees are simply working hard in their chosen field being compensated fairly for the work they do.

they are not seeking great things, not trying to be a star but rather, knowing they will need to work for the next 30-40 years they are wisely choosing a profession.

planning for the future is what watchtower seems to be doing, embarking on building projects that have spanned longer than a college degree. did they imagine the time people spent building Warwick was wasted? that they all should have been pioneering, warning people the end was nigh? no of course not they were building and planning for their long term future and the years spent building was only temporary.

how is this not the same as getting a degree? its a relatively short term work that once done, does not need repeating. once you have a degree you are more qualified for a chosen work and your time is now yours to do as you wish. you can get back to preaching if you wish. its a double standard. if the governing body truly believed the end was nigh, they would surely have never begun the projects in new york, the UK, spain, and elswhere.

what it boils down to is this, if you go through a university course, you will be taught how to think, how to research, how to prove something to be factual, to be able to present logical factual arguments. doing this is dangerous for the religion because if you apply this skill set to your faith, the religion is quickly shown to be false! 

for any who believe the description here to be exaggerated  please review a portion of the outline from the 2018 elders school.

Room full of elders dont know JESUS is the answer to a question

I started a new little Dubtown segment called 'watchtower quote of the week', created in my apostate broadcast studio based on the edge of Dubtown.

this first episode just highlighted two little points made by watchtower agents.

on the platform a prominent agent asks a group of senior elders, 'what is the second most used name in the bible. none of them knew the answer and so the speaker had to tell them, to their shame.

the second point was something easily missed. at the start of the monthly broadcast the helper agent reminds us that th governing body has agreed to broadcaast the annual general meeting of   **********
fill in the blanks! what would you say this was the annual meeting of? of Jehovah's witnesses? of the christian congregation of Jehovah's witnesses? of jw.borg? the answer may surprise, but when you consider this originally was a meeting for directors and donators you will understand why its not the annual meeting of jw's

next video project is higher learning! timmy wants to be a spaceman and chad has his heart set on being a lawyer and not a window cleaner.

Jehovah's Witness LEGO - The Bethel Boy - #pillowgate

I had planned for a while to do an episode on someone going to bethel. i had intended making the focus of it being something the congregation pushed or encouraged young men especially to set as a goal. someone who goes to bethel is viewed as the height of spiritual progress, putting jehovah first in your youth.

With the release of leaked videos made for the purpose of training and warning and controlling young people upon entry to bethel, that had to be the focus of this subject.

It was important to include a few other 'truths' in this video. for example in the application form, section 3 asks some amazing questions.

They ask about the music and movies you have watched and any pornography viewed. but then they ask if you have had a homosexual relationship, if yes EXPLAIN. then you are asked if you have been envolved in child sex abuse. and notice here they dont ask, 'if yes EXPLAIN' no! they ask 'IF SO, WHEN?' so being an abuser is not as important as when you last did it? surely it should say, if yes, top filling this application in!

Question 4 seems just ridiculous in the light of the questions that preceed it. hat is your hours for the last 6 months??? really? he ticked yes for child abuse.. but he had done 100 hours a month for the last 6 months. so he can join us in bethel?

What i find equally disturbing is the fact that people with a disability need not apply.

I understand that there will be hard work and many hours required of an individual, but someone could for example be in a wheelchair yet able to do a full days work. discriminating against people who are not in good physical health is just aweful and is yet another reminder that bethel is stuck in the land that time forgot. its like living in the 1950s


The LEGO episode only included a few short minutes of the induction video and frankly i mocked the whole thing by swapping phrases around to make it sound like they were promoting masturbation, flirting and sexual immorality.

It was simply not within me to take anything about this story serious! HQ and other bethels around the world have a long history of inviting young man to all live together while in the bloom of youth, many of them struggling with their sexuality. and while they may have surpressed their gay nature in their home congregation, once they find themselves surrounded by a number of other young men in a similar situation it can become increasingly difficult to not express their true self.

Much of the video for the men focused on homosexual encounters, which suggests it is something that happens in the heart of the spiritual paradise where all these exemplary young men are supposed to be keeping jw.borgs high moral standards.

Of course the insight book [a bible word dictionary] describes bethel this way:

To address a point made to me regarding the use of camp voices, a known and often over used stereotype of gay men. I don't by into the current politically correct world in which we live. everyone feels offense and what people say about a given group. Its true, stereotypes can be offensive to some, and yes im sure gay men are offended by the use of a camp voice to portray someone who is gay, but with my medium of choice [lego] i have only my voice as a means of conveying character and so any and all stereotypes will continue to be my go to.

Just like giving an old guy a 'whistley' voice is judged as necessary to indicate old age, a camp voice is needed to convey gayness. im sure many old men dont whistle when they talk just as im sure many gay men are not camp, but i have to create different characters with differing accents and styles, and since its only my voice being used, i must use some extremes to create differences.

This brings up another complaint. that my accents are too 'THICK' making it too difficult for some to listen and comprehend what is being said. if English is not your mother tongue i can only apologise for making things difficult for you. if english is your first language and you are struggling, i cant help you. Great Britain is a small island full of various accents, but they all speak English!! im not reading the news, im creating characters with one mans voice! if i simply used my narration voice everyone would sound the same, hence accents of various thicknesses. usually its people struggling with the scottish accent, maybe i could help those that struggle with English by providing subtitles.

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This weeks project is to finally get around to creating a channel advert type video. ive not decided whether to use clips from existing episodes or to create something new... i guess we find out next week.

DUBTOWN - the life of a jehovah's witness through the eyes of LEGO PEOPLE

Last summer [2017] I began making LEGO stop motion videos depicting the many aspects of life as a jehovah's witness [JW]. beginning with only a few lego bricks a handful of lego figures and no knowledge of how to go about stop motion i made my first video.

With my mind bursting with ideas and stories I quickly set about making more. A great little play on words came to me, 'BEARD FRACTIONS' and so episode 2 came about. highlighting the ridiculous JW law that beards are banned. no respectable man in good standing in the congregation wears a beard... well, not a full beard! moustaches on the other hand, which is essentially a beard fraction is permitted with no resulting punishments by the wolves [elders].

unsaid though is the idea that blood fractions are also ridiculous! they are produced from stored donated blood but somehow are ok yet larger blood fractions like plasma is banned!

Episode 3 focusses in on the wolves role a little more. and their job as judges, jury and executioner in the congregation. they hold your spiritual life in their hands and can execute you even on circumstantial evidence.

with limited amounts of lego and therefore set building óptions and stories being limited i was able to produce a video every week. i was able to sustain this more or less right up until the new year [2018]

looking back over my videos is painful as i observe the poor sets, the poor camera work and overall cringe worthy production. but thats just my critical eye. others seem to enjoy them and it was cheap therapy for me to help me process the pain of waking up and greiving over my religion.

With the new year i bought a new camera.  a shiny canon with a nice lens. between that and an ever growing collection of lego, i wish to make videos of a hiogher standard this year. finishing a story on a set day is no longer the goal, but rather, a higher standard of movie making. hopefully videos this year will prove to be more refined and slightly more professional lol. we shall see.

i began with a big story,  the BLOOD ISSUE! or as i called the two part episode, DOES IT BLOODY MATTER. i took the time to learn properly the masking required to make lego fly, my first results i was pleased with.

Next up is a story resulting from the release of secret bethel training videos dealing with masturbation flirting and poreia. that video is in production now and hopefully released by the weekend...