Do you still *want* to believe?

by daniel-p 56 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Narkissos

  It's quite interesting that many of us "apostates" have come to feel, and accept, the impossibility of decision -- which is also, by a funny play of etymology, the impossibility of heresy.

  When I was an earnest JW teenager, only too conscious of the division of my mind and desires, I made my personal motto of Psalm 86:11: "Unify my heart to fear your name." As a result I spent over a decade trying to escape from my own shadow. Vainly of course. The repressed always comes back. What the blind, or shortsighted, affirmation or negation rules out reinscribes itself with an ironical grin into the novel of our life. Reading back we see it never left us. It was alway there, smiling.

  And what applies to the individual also applies to cultures. Monotheism, in a sense, was a negative theology right from the start: no other god. Sooner or later the anti-idol polemics were sure to strike back at every positive definition of "God," even reduced to the affirmation of being -- I am -- the great idol and the very negation of life to Nietzsche. And the denied plurality quickly found its way right into the divine -- with "angels" and "demons," the trinity or Satan.

  Sure we want to believe and we don't want to believe -- if we have only learnt that we cannot really choose we have, at least, acquired some honesty along the way.
• 

  Jez

  Defd is proof of being able to maintain that they ARE a witness, while not subscribing to 'all' of their teachings, so is he really a Jehovah's Witness? My friend once said, "Yes, when it comes to the important stuff." lol
• 

  forsharry

  "The Truth is rarely pure, and never simple" - Oscar Wilde

  "Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived." - Oscar Wilde

  "Truth is beautiful, without doubt, but so is lies." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

  "The Truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off." - Mal Pancoast

  What I WANT is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how much i WANT something to be...it might not make it so. I WANT my grandparents to have never died...I WANT to have never been hit by a tractor trailer...I WANT to never have heard of the Jehovah's Witnesses, let alone having had to endure growing up in that 'religion.'

  As my mother used to tell me growing up, "Well...how does it feel to want, Hope?"

  voila!

  Forsharry (of the "Want for Nothing" Crowd)
• 

  evita

  For many years after I left the dubs I wished that I believed. It was exhausting being out on my own with no support from family or former friends.
  I lost my relationship with my mom and I missed her very much. Sometimes I was so tired of the effort that I longed for the imagined ease of "believing". Of getting back into the cocoon.
  It would be like sinking into a nice hot bath. Such a relief at first, but then the water gets cold and you can't wait to get out.
  Even today I envy those with any type of faith. And yet I will not deceive myself again.
• 

  John Doe

  I desperately desire to believe in a greater power, just not sure what kind. :-)
• 

  fairchild

  Realizing there was no paradise on the way... sucked.

  Same here.. makes me think of Santa Claus (Well, St. Nicolas for me, I grew up in Europe). There came a time when I realized that he wasn't real, but I desperately still wanted to believe that he was real. Same goes for the earthly paradise.. I know it is not real, but letting go of it did hurt quite a bit.
• 

  vitty

  I went back into the truth when I was 26. Although I had been brought up in the truth till I was 9, I remember in my study feeling really excited about the new system and all the things I was learning. Who wouldnt want to live forever in a paradise with your children safe and your parents there.

  The problem is after the intial 6 months the dream fades and after baptism the nightmare starts.

  You get locked into a trap, one you dont realize your in till you want out.

  I alway felt spirtually starved even though they would say we had the deeper spirtual things that no other religion had.

  I had 20 years of what I now realize as continual, repetative, watered down, inacurate crap. No wonder I sat there bored out of my head and the thought of doing research or study just blew my mind, why would I want to give myself more of the same crap I was getting at the meetings, even though at the time I didnt realize what real reseach and bible study meant.
• 

  vitty

  I went back into the truth when I was 26. Although I had been brought up in the truth till I was 9, I remember in my study feeling really excited about the new system and all the things I was learning. Who wouldnt want to live forever in a paradise with your children safe and your parents there.

  The problem is after the intial 6 months the dream fades and after baptism the nightmare starts.

  You get locked into a trap, one you dont realize your in till you want out.

  I alway felt spirtually starved even though they would say we had the deeper spirtual things that no other religion had.

  I had 20 years of what I now realize as continual, repetative, watered down, inacurate crap. No wonder I sat there bored out of my head and the thought of doing research or study just blew my mind, why would I want to give myself more of the same crap I was getting at the meetings, even though at the time I didnt realize what real reseach and bible study meant.
• 

  rmt1

  Back when I was unaware of how to escape, I had become an escapist Tolkein fan, particularly of the Silmarillion (which many people think is as boring as the Bible but I disagree). I remember sitting in Grantview Assembly Hall and it occured to me: You know, there's absolutely no difference in the constructedness of divinity and theology between Brooklyn and Tolkien. I could just as easily switch all my "beliefs" over to worshipping Illuvatar through Manwe and fearing Morgoth and Utumno. There would be zero blessed F*ing difference. Illuvatar does not require coffee breaks after showing perfect strangers cheap pulp cartoons. He might ask me to go battle some Orcs, and that's not so great, but I'd get the same kind of infantile Lacanian reversion to a prehuman/pre"mother", Eden which is what I have here (in Grantview Assembly Hall...) But, try as I might, I could not make the switch; there was too much knowing of the construction, no matter how much I desperately wanted to believe in a different way of... belief. Selective lobotomy. I think that's where it's at. There does seem to be a growing literature of the inability to remain convinced while within a simulacrum. Started for me with Star Trek Generation Picard in the Chrismas Nexus and SOME HOW still knowing that nothing there in that happy place was real. How sad. Yet, how sad to be so sweetly, sweety, bitterly... sweetly, happy. Matrix was a footnote to that moment. Sort of like 'the method of anti-solipsism.'
• 

  ICBehindtheCurtain

  YES and NO, now that I see all the pain this is causing to my Mom, who is devastated thinking that all her children and grandchildren are going to die in armaggedon, I wish I could just forget all we know now, and go back to believing the lies BUT, then I come back to my senses and see how much I've grown as a person, the joy we all feel knowing that life is so much more than we knew in that WTS box.

  Giving up the WTS earthly paradise idea, was painful, until I learned that we go on after death, and get to see all our loved ones, and heaven is what you believe it to be, for some it is standing before the throne of God, for others it is a beautiful earth like paradise and so on, that brought much joy and comfort back to my life, as far as my Mom goes, she will have to learn to accept me for who I am, we should love our children unconditionally, kids grow up, and they have a mind of their own, but I want to be there for them no matter what beliefs they want to embrace, as long as it doesn't envolve killing people.

  I AM FREE, and I wouldn't trade that for anything!

  by the way SeattleNiceGuy I love what you wrote, had to print it out, thanks.

  IC