Ask Cedars #1

[Applause] hello viewers and welcome to the first episode of ask Cedar's the show where I answer your questions this is actually something I've been meaning to do for a while now and I finally been able to get round to doing so without further ado let's get stuck into these questions there are 20 in total and four of them are from the same person so let's start with evylyn de la Umbra and I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly evylyn evylyn asks do you think the Jehovah's Witnesses will exist in a hundred years time if you do do you think they will be bigger and stronger than today or much diminished in size and influence it's a great question I can't imagine there being Jehovah's Witnesses in 100 years time because religions have a habit of sticking around once you have an idea if there are enough people who are enthusiastic about this idea the idea can get passed on for multiple generations and I think we've already reached the point where the idea of the Jehovah's Witness religion is going to be around for a considerable time to come potentially at least 100 years or more so yes the only question for me is whether the religion will prosper and thrive or whether it will stagnate and Windell I think it's more likely to to stagnate given what we're already seeing with the numbers kind of flatlining sort of globally I mean if you if you're in Jehovah Witness and you're proud of the fact that the growth percentage is around one or two percent but is nothing to be proud of that just basically means that you're pumping out Jehovah's Witness kids at this efficient rate to keep the religion alive so now I don't see a bright future now the next question is do you think they will ever move away from their main doctrine of Armageddon and mass genocide of non Jehovah's Witnesses and I don't think that they will unless it becomes a major problem when it comes to recruiting new members I think that at the moment it is very much part of their theology but they've managed to suppress it so well or conceal it so well or dress it up so well but no one really thinks about it even if you're a Jehovah's Witness you don't really think that much about the fact that your belief your faith entails the annihilation of everyone who doesn't happen to agree with your religious views you just don't think of it that way so I can't see them changing that anytime soon evil and also asks do you think that the governing body members genuinely and sincerely believe everything that they teach I think that it's a bit more nuanced than that I think that the human mind can be a very complicated thing and I think this it's possible to both sincerely and genuinely believe something and to simultaneously be aware of overwhelming evidence that it's not true so for example if you're a governing body member you're going to know more than most people about the the scale of the cover-up of child abuse and the the human cost in terms of people dying from blood transfusions disfellowshipping figures you're going to have that kind of information I'm yet I believe that they're they're deluded enough thanks to their own kind of personal experiences and the fact that they've been given this massive privilege I think they're deluded enough to believe that they are genuinely representatives of God and that God will fix any problems in due time do you have any practical tips for those who wish to remain anonymous on the internet so they don't end up being shunned by family members evylyn that's an excellent question I actually devote a chapter to this question in my new book how to escape from Jehovah's Witnesses which I've just finished writing and we're already far along with the publication process and yes there are some basics that you can do to to keep yourself off the radar obviously obviously you need to such a pursued in him that pseudonym can be used for Facebook for Twitter for reddit but you also need to make sure that your email isn't popping up with notifications so in other words if your family members can see your email or maybe you're living in the same house and you're using a shared computer there are lots of problems that can come up if you're not sufficiently careful about guarding your privacy a lot of it's basically common sense but I will be dealing with that in the book I hope that sort of answers your question we'll move on to mark runs fold who asks what would be a good starting place to work from in helping someone leave both in approach and contradictory beliefs related what watched her articles publications or scriptures would help in starting the conversation and I think I think the whole for me that the whole question is focuses on the word approach what approach do you have with someone who is a Jehovah's Witness because you can't just assume that if you're speaking to eat your home as witness that they are at a stage where they're ready to start questioning their beliefs you basically need to with your approach you need to assume that they're not ready you need to assume that they perhaps have one or two lingering doubts but basic basically they're sold on the idea of the governing body being the faithful slave of Jehovah's Witnesses being got one and only true religion and I think your approach needs to be to plant seeds so just to come just to Express Jehovah's Witness teachings in a way that they're probably not familiar with so rather than focus on any particular watchtower article or publication or scripture I think I just want to help the witness understand where I'm coming from and how my minds working and how their beliefs sound to me so I I want to ask questions like what will happen to me if I'm a good person and I live my life in a moral way I'm trying to people I don't do any harm to anyone what will happen to me if despite all that I just don't want to be a Jehovah's Witness I think that kind of question can really help to get cogs turning and help them to just kind of take a step back and see things from a different perspective it won't make a radical kind of instantaneous impression on and they won't kind of say oh well what am I doing here why am i stood next to this literature can't I'm going to quit being a witness there is no magic bullet I'm afraid but if at the very least you can just give them something to think about when they when they later go home and they kind of mull over the events of the day I think that would be a helpful approach to take April Forbes asks what is the best approach for waking up a partner now this is similar to the previous question but obviously we're now dealing with someone who's in the same household and is in fact you know your partner your spouse that's a whole other issue and I think I again I talked about this in my new book how to escape from Jehovah's Witnesses because I talked about the impact of leaving in various scenarios including when you're married and I talked a little bit about my experience with Deanna basically the approach I took with her was to take a softly-softly approach where rather than bombarding her with information and all-union you know how can we possibly have been so stupid and Jehovah's Witnesses are they're so nervous and I just basically let her come to me and that this is what I try to stress is that when you're in a relationship when you're married to someone they are going to come to you at some point because first of all hopefully they love you if you're married and second of all they are not going to want to see you destroyed Armageddon so at some point they are going to instigate conversations with you and when that happens you need to be ready and you need to be ready to present the arguments against the Jehovah's Witness religion in a calm rational logical respectful kind way and that can be challenging but in my experience is the best way to do it don't bombard them with him with information let them come to you it's a little bit different when you've discovered something that's genuinely rattled you so for example when I was waking up and I was learning about the child abuse scandal or I was learning about the UN NGO scandal or Mexico Malawi or whatever I obviously couldn't help saying Deana you're never gonna believe this and excitedly conveying about discovery to her but I think that's a bit different than pushing it in her face that's me genuinely being alarmed and shocked by something on wanting to share it with her Rob than trying to manipulate her basically your husband or wife needs to both feel in control and be in control because nobody ever leaves a cult because someone else is making them do it they need to feel as though they are in control of the process just as you if you're watching this and you have woken up from the Jehovah's Witness religion you will have felt in control when you were doing that so I think it's important to give them that control as much as possible amelia asks what books would you recommend for people new to atheism that's a good question I have done a book recommendations video I guess the ones that rattle off the top of the head are a letter to a Christian nation by Sam Harris that's kind of a a nice introductory book because it's very short and it's targeted towards Christians rather than just people of any religion so from the Jehovah's Witness perspective and from the perspective of someone who is rather wary of reading this big big thick book about atheism this is quite palatable from that perspective because again it's very short and it's very quick and easy to read as far as my favorite atheism books are concerned that would have to be and of faith by sam harris or the end of faith God is not great by Christopher Hitchens he was kind of my hero and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins although I'm not I don't consider The God Delusion to be the definitive book on atheism I just think is helpful to hear the perspective of a scientific mind such as that of Richard Dawkins so those are my recommendations toy elk in the mating season asks how old are you I'm 38 that was an easy one to answer AG Kent asks what is the basis for scriptural divorce so scriptural divorce is basically the witness lingo for is this divorce allowable according to our rules so for example you could get divorced by for any number of reasons and get a legal divorce according to the state but that doesn't necessarily mean you have a scriptural divorce Brian Jehovah's Witness standards so you could in theory get a divorce and get your papers through and everything but according to the Jehovah's Witness religion you're not free to remarry because you don't have a scriptural divorce and to have a scriptural divorce what you need basically is for either party to have committed adultery there needs to be adultery for that to be a divorce there's no other allowing to give an even in the case of one spouse being abused in in some way there's no other allowance given for marriages to be terminated and I think that that's one of the most sickening aspects of Jehovah's Witness teachings because it puts abused women in this situation where even though they are being violated they have to basically remain tethered to this person for life because the best they can hope for is a separation which means that they're not allowed to marry anyone else so I hope that explains what a scriptural divorces Martin how asks can you make a short video on remoulding I guess you mean remodeling your apartment I love looking at your old videos and seeing what it looked like it could be this old house with Lloyd Martin well yes if you've watched some of my very earliest videos which I now cringe when I watch because I feel as though I've in yoli you inevitably develop in your style in front of the camera the more videos you make so when I watched my earliest videos which were filmed in the apartment when it was still basically bricks and mortar I find them difficult to watch I'm not gonna take them down or anything but Martin would like to see the transition and I have actually considered doing a video where I do like a tour of the apartment and show people around and show people what it used to look like there is actually a picture of what it used to look like in my book interestingly enough but I just decided and I actually went went as far as to start filming that video once but I think the Anna and I just decided that we needed to kind of draw a line when it comes to privacy so my activism work is already kind of sharing so much of my life with thousands of people it would be nice to have boundaries where well this is what you guys get to see and this is what only we get to see so I think that's a healthy thing and as a result of uh I'm afraid I won't be doing an a tour of the apartment but that's not to say that you can't still see the apartment because I try as much as possible if I when I when I get to film in the living area because that's difficult nowadays with Jessica when I get to film in the living area I try as much as possible to do different angles so that you guys get like a slightly interesting view but yeah I just think it's important to to have some things that can be just for me and Deanna so I'm sure you understand that free activist asks can I ask your view on the idea that some JW's in certain cultures apparently don't shun their relatives as their culture is more fun we orientated and the idea of shunning doesn't fit in have you heard of this and how does a JW psychologically deal with going against the organization I guess those are two different questions it's going to be very difficult psychologically in terms of cognitive dissonance to do something that you know is wrong because regardless of what country you're in the rules on shunning are very very clear and every country gets the same material in their conventions and obviously we had it as recently as 2016 we have the convention video showing very clearly that a mother and father shouldn't even pick up the phone when a disfellowshipped daughter is ringing so the the rules are very clear so it must cause issues psychologically to knowingly go against those rules especially when you know that the penalty for failing to me with God's approval is annihilation at Armageddon I guess I can imagine there being different cultures and more laid-back attitude towards shunning but just to give you some idea I happen to live in a country where family is everything I mean here in Croatia the family unit is very very strong and it's just assumed that if you're related to someone you're going to be close to them to the point where people are close to even kind of uncles and cousins there's this very tight-knit community mentality when it comes to the family but even here and Jehovah's Witnesses shun or are urged to shun disfellowshipped or disassociated family members so I guess I would I guess it's always possible for there to be exceptions to the rule but I can only imagine it it causing considerable internal conflict when you are knowing League against what the faithful slave has told you with the risk of being destroyed Armageddon so Sarah Harris asks why is the watchtower more concerned with anti LGBTQ propaganda than addressing the child abuse on domestic violence that exists in their organization Sarah that's an excellent question you would have to ask them I can only join you in being absolutely gobsmacked that there can be this continued crusade against gay people against lesbians against the LGBTQ community when they have such pressing issues to deal with where children are at risk I mean that doesn't mean that it's right to go up to go after LGBTQ people but it's even more reprehensible when they have more pressing issues such as children being exposed to the worst of humanity and having their abuse covered up so I share your disgust that that can be the case Frances Bean Cobain asks squalor are long in two parts do you think the governing body subconsciously feels the need to protect God from himself example the teaching that God can see all the future but chooses not to only selectively the shielding God from criticism perhaps a form of cognitive dissonance when it comes to what the Bible actually says about God versus the nice little box that Watchtower would like to put God into in order to have a more appealing version of him Francis is a great observation I think it's true that Watchtower does water down certainly the Bible in terms of making some of the more gruesome aspects of of Christian theology more palatable and under and an example that immediately springs to mind is the passage about Jabba's daughter where if you read in the original Bible of you and if you compare different translations it's obvious just obvious the Jeptha kills his daughter as a sacrifice because he's made this file this with this stupid ridiculous vow and he follows through with it and he kills his daughter as a sacrifice but Watchtower retells this story so that Jeptha Jephthah's daughter gets sent off to become a nun essentially she has to serve the tabernacle where she's visited by by the the daughters of Israel which just isn't in the original so I think that's a good example of some of the more gruesome passages in the Bible being watered down and you give the example of God's character being excused for if God is truly omnipotent if he knows everything why would he have done things in the kind of convoluted way that he has done them so that his solution for bringing about a world where there is perfect justice involves their being millennia of human suffering well watchtowers answer as you say is - is that God selectively decides to use his foreknowledge so yeah it amounts to making excuses for the creator Robert asks do you sometimes catch yourself subconsciously going back to a JW habits or thoughts I mean when I'm really exhausted I sometimes catch myself starting a prayer and literally a second later I think to myself WCF I haven't believed this BS for a long time Robert I think a lot of people who hear your question will be able to relate to us experience I certainly can it's just I guess when you when you spend years and years and years in an extremely repetitive ritualistic routine where the minute you sit down for a meal for example it's all what we need to say a prayer it's just inevitable that that's going to carry through even years after you've stopped believing so there are times when when Deanna and myself and Jessica will sit down for a meal and there will just be this kind of awkward pause not necessarily from Deanna but Bobby it will feel as though this is the moment when we need to pray key and this is despite the fact I'm now an atheist so yeah it's just inevitable when you're so heavily programmed in in this very ritual based form of worship and form of behavior it's inevitable that you're going to revert to it from time to time Julia hull getting to the near the end now Julia Hall asks is it true as in the 1900s he colored people had to stand at the back of the church I think what Julia is referring to is Charles taze Russell and his segregation of black people and I'm not aware of it being a common practice but there is at least one example of it that I can think of and I write about in my book when in 1914 when they were showing the photo drum of creation there was this huge controversy because at a theater in New York the blacks were segregated and made to sit in up in the gallery I think it was away from the rest of the audience and that caused understandable outrage so right back from the beginning of the organization you have this ugly awkward attitude towards racial equality and that kind of thing obviously you don't have it today but the fact remains that it was very much a part of Watchtower history which is why I devote a number of pages to that aspect of Watchtower history in my book and I also wrote a JW survey article I think it's called something like the history of racism in Watchtower literature or something like that where I go into that in more detail Corina Cunningham asks would you be dis fellowshipped if you left your husband and would you be dispelling ships if you went out got drunk then slept with a stranger so you could get a divorce I don't know whether you'd be disfellowshipped just for literally walking out on your husband without any communication as to what you're doing and if you were to have an adulterous affair a new one I mean and you had a Judicial Committee you didn't show repentance then yes you would be dis Fellowship's I guess that's the best answer I can give you see your question father mania asks now that the yearbook is no longer printed is it possible to still get hold of the membership statistics yes and no father mania we did we actually touched on this in one of our worst her InFocus episodes they promised that the yearbook statistics the annual sorry the the yearly reports would still be available on jw.org just not in the yearbook and I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that that meant that they would literally release all of the figures they had been releasing just not in the yearbook and it turned out that they did in fact use that opportunity to give a slightly less calm pensive version of the figures so if you go on if you google jw.org annual report you're gonna you're gonna come up with a PDF download which shows that gives you a country-by-country breakdown but what that doesn't include is some of the statistics specific to congregations I forget which statistics aren't on there but crucially it doesn't include the average publishers which is the figure that's used to arrive at the growth statistics the growth percentage so rather annoying that they have indeed used this opportunity so just slightly reduce the amount of information that we get about Watchtower figures but yeah that's the answer to your question juicer turbo says what is the most effective thing to say to a Jehovah's Witness when you see them with their brochure stands I've seen them more often likely and want to engage with them in a polite and constructive manner but I'm not sure what to say thanks I guess this on reflection ties in quite closely with the earlier question and that I answered about how to approach a Jehovah's Witness again just try to be kind try to be loving recognize that these are people who are not in full control of their thinking or behavior so if they say something that's offensive or they say something that's ridiculous try not to see it as them saying it try to see it as they're just parroting what Watchtower wants them to say and rather than kind of pursuer a battle with them and try to attain some kind of victory it's better to just take them on a brief journey with you of how your mind works and the the logical issues that you have with the fundamentals of their belief systems so the example I gave earlier was if I'm a good person if I if I'm always nice to people and do whatever I can to help people I just don't want to be a Jehovah's Witness are you really telling me I'm going to die at Armageddon it could be that Jehovah's Witness would answer that falsely because it seems that there are some Jehovah's Witnesses who have their own version of what the beliefs are regarding Armageddon and they say things like how well God will read your hearts and God will know you're a good person so it's up to God but the bottom line is if you read watched whole literature and you do research on the issue you do find that it unequivocally says that you're gonna die if you're not a Jehovah's Witness as Wilson as was recently underscored by Toni Morrison his talk in Trinidad where he said that if you fail to sufficiently participate in the preaching work guess what you're gonna die so imma get in because you have blood on your hands which for me just illustrates it perfectly so yes just rather than try to win a battle or be kind of combative or confrontational just try to take them on like a little magical mystery tour around what it feels like to be free and what it feels like to be able to ask questions that they wouldn't ordinarily be free to ask that's my best advice Sophie de ninety asks if you could somehow be capable of having a single governing body member leave the cult or what have you what would that member be and why so I think that's an excellent question not one I have been asked before I don't think I think if I had to pick a governing body member who would wake up from the indoctrination and go on to basically do a Rafe runs where they become of the movements and they lend their voice and their experience of the inner workings to help others awaken it would need to be one of the more credible members I actually think Tony Morris is doing fantastic work for the ex witness movement where he is now and I wouldn't want to interfere with that I'm happy for Tony to carry on saying and doing outrageous things I wouldn't want to recruit someone like Steven let I'm not particularly interested in recruiting someone like Jeffrey Jackson who disgraced himself by lying to the world Commission it would need to be someone more credible and I think I would choose mark Sanderson because although I have my issues with mark Sanderson for example I write in my book about how he's he's been very vocal about child baptism for example he at least strikes me as being the most sensible and presentable uncredible of the governing body members he comes across very well on camera he seems very reasonable when he's talking even when he's talking nonsense so if I had to choose a governing body member to wake up and help represent our movement I guess I choose him which brings me to my final question which is in the form of a voicemail which we will now listen to hello Lloyd I would like to know how can I get your latest book how's this big friend you have it witnesses please let me know I want a copy please I came in thanks so yes the question there was how do I get a copy or your book how to escape from Jehovah's Witnesses thank you for that voicemail the simple answer is that you have to wait I'm afraid unless and the amounts of waiting you do depends on whether you pre-ordered a copy on IndieGoGo so there's about 100 copies that have been pre-ordered on nigo go which I first need to get printed and signed and sent out which I'm going to be doing towards the end of March so towards the end of next month and part of the indiegogo terms was that there's going to be a period after I've mailed the last copy before the book goes upon Amazon so that it genuinely is a pre-order rather than the more than getting their copy at the same time as everyone else gets theirs on Amazon so I need to give a like I think it was like a three week period for those copies to arrive and then the book will go on Amazon but that gives me time to put the finishing touches to the book and make it as good as I can possibly make it I can tell you that it's more or less finished in terms of both the writing and the actual design of the book file there's just a few niggling things that needs to be done I also want to make sure for this book that there will be an audiobook version of it at the same time as it becomes available in hard copy and Kindle with the reluctant apostate it's harder to make an audiobook version because his 800 pages long where and that's and I think as I expressed in a previous video 800 pages works on to something like two hundred thousand words whereas how to escape from Jehovah's Witnesses is around thirty five thousand words so it's much more manageable for me to sit down and narrate thirty five thousand words than two hundred thousand words so I aim to have the book available in hard copy Kindle and audiobook simultaneously and that will hopefully be or it will be I should say at least by April so April will be the release date and you can be sure that there will be a video on this channel giving you an announcement when it's available so those are all the questions that I have for this inaugural episode of ask Cedar's if you'd like me to answer your questions in episode 2 all you need to do is well there's actually three ways of asking your question first of all you can ask it in the comments below so when I'm preparing the next episode I'm going to go through the comments below and select questions to answer that way you can also if you're on Twitter you can tweet me a question and all you need to do is add the hashtag ask Cedar's and that's another way you can submit your questions and the third way which is my personal favorite is voice mail as we've just heard I always like hearing the voices come through if you're in a position to share your voice that is so all you need to do to send a voice mail is go to speak pipe comm /c ders and it should be fairly self-explanatory but basically that's the first episode of ask Cedar's I hope you found it interesting please don't forget to subscribe for more videos and as always thank you for watching [Applause] [Music]

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Views: 13,771

Rating: 4.7964602 out of 5

Keywords: jehovah, jehovah's witnesses, bible, christianity, questions, governing body, watchtower, belief

Id: gMugXNT-LLg

Length: 39min 38sec (2378 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2018