by Frogleg 20 Replies latest jw experiences
Nice thread.
Yes there's a time to give up and there's another to try again.
Many of them actually.
Life goes on -- within any individual life and from one to another.
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. -- Paul, Romans 14:7.
" Jonas had merely written in very small letters a word that could be made out, but without any certainty as to whether it should be read solitary or solidary. " -- Albert Camus, The Artist at Work.
This is like asking someone who has just successfully escaped from a P.O.W. camp if they have "just given up".......
Given up? Nope. Liberated? Yes.
Given up? Given up? GIVEN UP????
Hell no I haven't given up!
The last couple years of my life have been spent learning, studying and learning and studying some more. I've spent late nights, early morning and most of my lunch hours trying to understand what I'd been taught my entire life and never once questioned.
My life has been full of emotional pain and physical pain for the last several years. I've been afraid of losing my immediate family including my children, my extended family and any friends I've made the many many years I've been in the truth. You know what? I love it! I LOVE IT !!!! Because I feel free.
I'm nearing the end of a multi-year fade and I couldn't feel stronger, smarter and damnit yes, sexier!
I've realized that my freedom is worth losing everything else. I worked extremely hard (and in fact I still am working extremely hard) to exit the truth and keep as much of my life "normal" as possible.
I've been moderately successful so far.
Given up??? No way man. I've had to fight for the right to think, read, do, say, be anything I want (within the law of course).
OK then, I feel better.
I'd say the people dying are the ones whose heart have left but they keep going through the motions for the sake of..... family.... eternity.... appearances.... fear.
Those are the reasons I stay but I'm not dying! I also hang around because it's fun to see my enemies (in the org) eventually fall.
Given up? Never!
My spirit was renewed when I finally broke the mental/spiritual/emotional bondage that the WT had put on me wrongly.
I am renewed. Free. Unfettered to learn, absorb, think, meditate, and enjoy life.
Bonds broken. Not me!
Jeff
On the other hand, i have given up on a lot of things. There are things going on in the world about which i can do little or nothing. I am basically a spectator. My life and my concerns are much simpler, but also much deeper. Bottom line, i decide what i will care about. I haven't given up on my own life. In fact, that is my chief preoccupation.
S
1Timothy 6:12
"Fight the good fight of faith." (notice the fight is for faith....not a religion).
Any old timers remember the day when they called it the faith instead of the truth? I remember people asking..."How long have you been in the faith?..... then eventually it became..."How long have you been in the truth."
I had been raised a JW and after being disfellowshiped I didn't want to fight anymore. I thought it was that I that didn't measure up. I didn't fight the good fight hard enough to belong to a religion called Jehovah's Witnesses. So I put it all aside for over 16 years. I wanted it to go away. I thought I had given up...but really I hadn't. I was good at the talk "that I was done with God"....but not too good at the walk. It was always there......like a faint whisper in the back of my mind...."If I could only love God and if He could only love me."
So... I began a quest to find answers. I hadn't given up after all. I found them in acepting Jesus as the one who saves me and found out that what I was fighting for was a good fight for faith in God..... not a fight to salvage false hopes in an organized religion that was nothing more than a mind controling cult. The organization deceived me....not God. I would not blame Him for being mislead. It was not my fault and not my problem. It was theirs.
Faith in Christ is worth fighting for. I won't let a false religion ruin the grace of God which brings everlasting life for those who love Him.
They have substituted themselves as the Way... the truth and the light... when that title belongs to Jesus. How bold.
Just my thoughts.
gold_morning
Reverend Drummond wrote a sermon, later published in a book called "The Greatest Thing In The World" that breaks down that passage on Love in Corinthians. It's beautiful. It's complexly simple. It's something I think everyone should read, religious, bible believer, athiest, everyone.
Love is. It is greater than the sum of it's parts.
Bren
There is a rigid backbone to the answers here. What is most encouraging is that each answer is unique and solitary. No patent recitation of a magazine paragraph, but a stomping of the foot, a shaking of the fist, a defiance based on the only real faith there is: faith in one's self. I am in awe.
gold_morning, your reply is probably a question mark to those who are younger, but it is beauty to those who know. Please, I really want to know, how did you avoid the bitterness?
I agree with defd, many of us are 'wore out'!! I love this scripture in Corinthians and I firmly believe that 'love conquers all' so live in the hope that one day I will not feel so wore out that I cannot investigate my feelings toward God and his son... at the moment the mere thought of study gives me goose bumps and tremors!!!
