Dear Brother,Thanks for the note. I'm glad to hear all is well with your family. Everything is fine here. The kids are good and they're enjoying school more than ever.
I hope I'm not being rude, but, I don't appreciate your guilt trip tactics in trying to get me to return to meetings. I am an adult and I have researched and studied on this subject diligently. I came to a decision to leave the religion due to my conscience no longer allowing me to live a lie. While you may not agree with my decision, I would expect my own brother to at least accept my decision as final and not use pressure, guilt or fear to try to coerce me to change my mind.
If you want in-depth reasons for why I made my decision, I will gladly share them with you, but not at the expense of having you heap undue criticism on me just because you don't agree with me.
You're last statement was especially hurtful and mean. Even if you do believe that I am making a bad decision and choosing a bad path, your bringing up our deceased parents was a low blow, meant to hurt. I can't believe someone who claims to be christiain would stoop to such a tactic.
I hope you find happiness in whatever path you decide to take and I would hope that you would wish the same for me. Apparently though, you seem to harbor some resentment or anger against me for something that you have no control over. Maybe you should check your reasons for why you are so against me right now.
I hope we can have our families get together and still have fun, like we used to. I don't see a reason why we can't, unless, you of course, continue to allow a difference of opinion cause you to shun your own family.
yours truly,
Wow, undercover covered it real well I thought.
Just recently when accousted by a JW woman in a parking lot asking me about going to the meetings again, she said to me "Whatever it is (that stopped me from going to the meetings) Can't you just let it go and come back?" then she rambled on about how loving Jah is because he gives us the choice of whether we want to serve him or not. So was she saying? that I knew Jehovah but had chosen not to serve him? Balony. I stopped being a JW because I had experiences things within the WT Org. that had changed my mind and I had stopped believing in the WT.
I then told her that my experiences had been different than hers and have caused me to believe differently.
Geevee, I am sure that your experiences with the JW Org is what drove you away also. But, JWs are programmed to believe that the reason you left is because you have turned your back on God and have gone off to pursue your own selfish course in life or have been lead away by Satin or whatever.
The point I would like to make to a JW is that I cannot deny the things I have seen and observed and my own experieces with the WT. I cannot be in denial. What right do they have to tell anyone that their thoughts and experiences are superior to anyone elses and they and only they are approved by God?
I am sorry to say your brother sounds deeply entrenched as a JW. I have a sis that way too. We no longer speak (her choice). she said it is too hard for her to know what to say to me anymore as the JW thing is the most important thing in her life. She has now sacrificed 3 of her children for her beliefs (they are out of the Org now and has no communication with them either).
What kind of religion (or God) tears families apart? And, how selfish is the person who abandons their own children and families in order for themselves to be saved?
I think about my years as a JW. How hard it was on my non-believing husband always having his wife rushing out to meetings throwing a quick dinner on the table, sacrificing our weekends together to go to meetings and out in service --financial sacrifice too (the donations I gave to the WT). Of course his wife (me) wouldn't attend any family holiday functions with him...How selfish of me to put my interests and life always ahead of his and other members of my family and my daughter too--what she had to go through growing up as a JW--all the sacrifices she was forced to make--it was selfish of me. I didn't know it at the time. I thought this was righteousness on my part, but loking back now I think I was just filling some sick need somewhere and it was selfish. It took a while (some 20 years) and eventually I started to wake up and see it for what it really was. I now find it is best for me to avoid JWs as much as possible, as it is too disturbing to communicate with them and a waste of time and energy too. My family is whole now and life is 100% better than it was for us when I was under WT influence.
the best to you,
cybs