So why do I feel like a hypocrite??

by Super_Becka 14 Replies latest social relationships

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  Enigma One

  I guess I don't see how you are judging him as such. You are determining if you are a match. If you can live with him and have children with him....yes I know, not today...but someday.

  Why is his stubborness any different from any other trait that might turn you off. We "judge" people everyday based on looks, smile, intelligence, etc. There are some things in life that just ARE NOT meant to be. You might have the right man at the wrong time. Or you could just have the wrong man. Doesn't matter. The end result is the same.

  Think of it this way. Right now, could be the best the relationship gets. You seem to think that it will get better. And while it may...it might also get worse. As it is....this could be the best it gets. Is that enough? You mistakenly think that if you make some movement on your own beliefs on Xmas and such he will make some movement as well. This is complete folly. He won't budge if he's a good JW. Won't happen. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Let me say this one last time....are you listening? HE'S IN A HIGH CONTROL CULT! Get it? If he is a good JW, YOU WILL NEVER COME FIRST. You will ALWAYS come AFTER the religion.

  So if you want to live your life where you are not as important as his religion....knock yourself out. If you want more than that. YOU WILL NOT find it with this man.
• 

  sass_my_frass

  You make a good point about prejudice, and remember that most opinions you're getting here are based upon our own prejudices; we are all rather prejudiced against all JW's because for the most part they have hurt us very deeply. That's why there is this huge community of us needing each other's support.

  I want to comment on some things:

  I just wish that he'd be willing to at least consider that other people believe different things and that they have different rituals and celebrations that coincide with their belief systems.

  If he is not showing some sign of this, it will never, ever happen. You need to understand this; the automatic reaction he gets to christmas is one of many things that will always be in the back of his head.

  He realizes that I don't believe what he does, but he refuses to talk about it, he refuses to acknowledge that I think that my celebrations are right and he doesn't want to have anything to do with them at all. He tells me that he loves me and that he loves everything about me, but he just completely blocks out this huge part of my life - I celebrate anything and everything, but he ignores that fact. I, on the other hand, am curious to know more about what he believes, even if I don't ever want to be a member of his Society, and if he did have something to celebrate, I'd be more than willing to participate in his celebrations, even if it was just to satisfy my own curiosity and make him happy. He tells me that he wants me to be happy, but he refuses to have anything to do with my special occasions, even if he is an inactive JW. He's free to believe whatever he wants to, but I think that in a relationship, there has to be compromise, and he refuses to even talk about compromising, much less actually doing something about it, and it's because of his beliefs.

  This sucks, and you need to tell him. He won't know what to do about it though, because it's all he knows.

  And so I can't help but think that I'm judging him based on the beliefs that he's been taught, because that's where his behaviour comes from. I'm sure that if he wasn't a JW, he wouldn't be nearly as intolerant about these things as he is.

  So what? He is a JW, isn't he? You know that the second you indicate that he'd be a better person if he wasn't a JW, he will close his mind towards any opinion you have towards them, the organisation, the practices. You will be a threat to his spirituality, and if he's already weak, he's going to know that any little threat will compound into threatening his family and his very way of life.

  He's patient about so many things - like dealing with a long-distance relationship with a younger girl, listening to me rant when I'm having a bad day or just talk endlessly about anything and everything, and even trying to teach me how to drive a car with a manual transmission

  That's how it's supposed to work, you see. You're supposed to be a little nice to your best girl. If you took the blinkers off you'd meet a lot of men willing to do this for you, who also accept you exactly as you are, and who will make you happy.

  - but he's so impatient and intolerant about my celebrations. I just don't get it. And I can't even tell him how much it hurts me that he thinks like this because he won't let me talk about anything related to my holidays.

  That's the problem - he is in a cult, and he can't think for himself.

  I feel so horrible about feeling this way towards him, judging him because of this, but I can't help it. My celebrations are a huge part of my life and it hurts me that he refuses to have anything to do with them, right down to even talking about them and sharing my happiness about them even though he doesn't practice them, and I find myself blaming it on his faith. So now, I feel like I'm discriminating against his faith for teaching him to be like this, and I even find myself resenting the WTS for making my sweet guy behave like this. I can't help but feel like a horrible person for thinking this way, but I do anyway. The teachings of the WTS have made him like this and it's breaking my heart.

  And he will always be that way, as long as he is a witness. We can't make it any clearer for you.
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  Ingenuous

  I try to live my life by the Golden Rule - do onto others as you would like them to do onto you - I hate doing things to other people that I wouldn't want them to do to me, and I know that I'd be devastated if someone I loved deeply cut off contact with me because of my faith, so why should I do it to my boyfriend, especially when I love him so much??

  {{{{{Super Becka}}}}}

  This is so hard. I can hear your heartbreak.
  
  You say, "I try to live my life by the Golden Rule." Jesus said this in Matthew 7:12. Please humor me by getting your Bible and reading it. When you're done, turn over to Matthew 23 and read the entire chapter.

  Think about what you've just read. Was Jesus being a hypocrite? Clearly, Jesus didn't mean 'Never do to someone something you wouldn't want done to you.' I doubt Jesus would ever want to be called a viper, offspring of serpents, a blind guide, a hypocrite or be told that he had been rejected by God - especially in public. The thing is - Jesus would never have done anything to warrant such treatment. The scribes and pharisees had. Not only were they in need of a dressing-down, they were hurting others then and there and were endangering their future prospects. Interestingly, Jesus said the Pharisees were endangering the lives of others, not through beating them or physically hurting them, but by sharing their “beliefs” with them (‘making proselytes’, vs. 15).

  The Golden Rule does not require that we silently accept intolerance or disrespect in the name of being “nice.” Would Jesus really have wanted us to tolerate what was wrong in the name of doing good to others?
  
  The thing is, you are already being hurt. Your feelings are real. You are being affected by his beliefs just by knowing what they are, in addition to his actions.

  Do you judge others? How about if I phrase it like this: How would you feel about someone who believes it’s OK to beat women – even if he’s never laid a finger on one? How about someone who thinks it’d be fun to seduce and rape a minor – even if he/she hasn’t done anything other than imagine it? Would you decide you wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time with either of these people? Would you avoid being around them with a close friend’s children? If either of these people got involved with someone close to you, would you warn your friend? Then you have just judged these people based solely on their beliefs – and good for you!
  
  All responsible, mature adults judge others. Judging others in a responsible manner usually has more to do with our actions – how we will respond to people, what things we do or won’t do with or around them – then it has to do with the other person. Responsible judging is done to keep oneself physically, emotionally, and mentally safe. None of those areas are usually affected if someone has blue hair or 18 holes in their ear, is black or white, likes pickled pigs feet or watches Blue Collar TV. But beliefs are our world – not just how we define our world, but they are our world. Beliefs determine what we see, how we understand others, and how we interact with the environment and those in it. Beliefs create the mental “planets” we all live on – those worldviews that tell us what is true, what is false, what is real, what the rules are and who we are in the world. And when those beliefs don't respect or allow room for others to be different in ways that aren't harmful, there's a need to determine what we'll do about it.
  Jehovah’s Witnesses believe anyone who doesn’t believe as they do and won’t convert should and will be killed. In the past, they have subtly expressed regret that they can’t execute those who used to be Witnesses and then changed their minds. They believe their Governing Body and anything published under that Body’s auspices should be obeyed at the cost of their families, health, and lives, if necessary. These beliefs are dangerous. Even if they haven’t been acted on, they are the root of current thinking and future actions on the part of those that hold them.
  
  It hurts so much now, I know. Just know that, no matter how much you hurt now, you can't even begin to imagine the pain that will come in the future if this goes downhill. And, this being a "dating" relationship, this is likely the best he will ever treat you and your feelings as long as you're together.

  And remember - it is completely acceptable and quite mature to say, "Look - you're free to believe what you want and that's all fine and good. But I can't live with those beliefs and be happy, so I won't."

  I hope you find peace and happiness with whatever decision you make.
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  Super_Becka

  Hmm, a thought on prejudice and discrimination:

  " This is the essence of discrimination: formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics."

  That's from "Philadelphia", the 1993 movie with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington (great movie, by the way, it's about discrimination and AIDS). I know that the general consensus here is that I'm supposed to look at this situation that I'm in and decide whether or not I'm compatible with my boyfriend, not whether or not his belief system is "good enough" for me, but this quote sums up what I'm feeling right now. I feel like I'm judging him on his association with the WTS, tenuous though it might be, and not his personal merits.

  As a person, WTS notwithstanding, my boyfriend is exactly what I'm looking for in a man, he treats me like a queen, he tells me how he feels about me every single day, he's caring and honest and patient and funny and sweet and sensitive and every other great quality that I want in a man. He is, dare I say it, "practically perfect in every way", and I love him very much.

  It's not his personal merits that I'm judging him on, it's his association with the WTS and the beliefs and behaviours that the Society has ingrained in him all of his life that I'm judging him on, and that makes me feel very guilty. I know what I'm probably going to end up doing, but I cringe when I think about how I'm going to do it. What do I say?? "Sorry, I can't be with you because I don't like the belief system that you stubbornly cling to"??

  That's why I feel like a hypocrite - my boyfriend's beliefs tell him that other faiths aren't good enough and that only JWs are "God's people", but I'm looking at him and thinking something along the lines of, "Wow, what a whack-job, he's not good enough for me", just because of his beliefs and the behaviours that they entail.

  But of course, I can't jump to any final decisions just yet - I know nothing good will come out of it and it'll just delay the inevitable, but my boyfriend has agreed to talk about our differences and try to compromise, and I can't break it off until I give him the chance to talk to me about it. It's just trying to see his side objective and without the bias that I've developed against the WTS in my research that's going to be the hard part.

  It's just good to be able to come here and get some other opinions on my situation and feelings, it's a big help. Thanks everyone!! Keep it coming!!

  -Becka :)
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  AlmostAtheist

  Becka, this is an extreme example, but what if a person were a member of the KKK? Or was in training to be an Islamic Jihadist? Wouldn't their membership in such a group give you pause?

  It's a little different when a person has chosen an ideology, than when a person is born a certain color or has a certain sexual preference.

  If you're white and you marry a black man, all you need to deal with is difficulties from prejudiced people. But if you marry a KKK member, you've got to deal with the fact that you're married to a person that -- for no logical reason -- has a hatred for people with a different skin color than him. A JW is like that, since they rabidly hold to their Bible interpretation as THE "truth", despite having no substantial proof. Since it impinges on so much of their life -- their whole life, really -- it will in turn impinge on yours. (Like a KKK member, they will be very selective in the people they make friends with. Forget having the neighbors over for cards and pizza.)

  Maybe it's all worth it anyway. But I wouldn't want you to characterize your concerns as simple prejudice.

  Dave