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.