by JH 17 Replies latest jw friends
I had no family in the JW's, so no one forced me into it.
I had a worldly friend, whom I didn't know had a JW background, became a JW and gave me a bible study. I was 27 at the time. If it wasn't for him being a friend, I would have never joined this religion.
He was friendly and knowledgeable, so I accepted his bible study. Then at age 28, I got baptized.
I truly believed in everything they taught. The way he put it, the end was so close.....
I would like to hear the responses to that question myself. I was born into it.
Like JH I wasn't born in the "truth" but what I realised later was that my unconscious motive to join the JWs was in order to find a spiritually minded brotherhood. They appeared at first to be that way but later it became obvious that they weren't so I quitted.
My husband was raised a JW. He was inactive when we met but still "believed". I could see that it was something important to him. After we were married we both studied and were baptized. We studied our way into, through and out of the religion. Unlike many here, we didn't have a bad time amongst the JWs. We left for doctrinal reasons.
Cellist
My bio: "I lived with my dad and JW stepmom and became interested in her study, so began having my own. This was at my most vulnerable and gullible point in life. I went from being worldly and celebrating everything, to living the jw lifestyle. Meeting attendance was never up to par in their spiritual gradebook, so that gave me more time to study before taking the plunge. As baptism goal got closer, I began thinking again and researching on my own instead of being spoon-fed everything. What I realized was false and had no standing was: 1914 could not be proven and they made it up, the entire blood doctrine is wrong and is not more important than saving a life, having children is not a bad thing, their 5 meeting a week rule holds no ground, etc. I could go on and on because there isn't much if at all about them that is right. Eventually I cut off religion and my JW friends cut me off. I now have my brain back and no longer live life as a cult slave." My most vulneralbe and gullible point in life (so far) were the months after my daughter was born. She was very sick and spent the first month of her life in the NICU. The birth was traumatic and she almost died. I was told I came close as well, though I don't recall much of anything but my daughter. I had no friends or family who were jw's, only church going christians. I've also always doubted there was a god in the first place, but still kept trying to want to believe in a higher being. Thus, I spent the entire time growing up and attending Catholic, Baptist, Episcopal, and a few other born again evangelical churches. At the time the jw's came around, everything they'd said to me about other religions made sense. So, I began to believe they had the troof. There it was, they suckered me in at a time when I was "meek" and "willing to listen to the word of jehovah". They had answers for why my daughter and I had been so sick, what would've happened to her if she did die after all, and also, the rewards I had to look forward to for the simple fact I was studying with them! Let me say this: I absolutely love the fact that I live life now and am a good person simply because it is the way to live. This is why I HATE for them to talk to anyone when they've lost a loved one to death. This is encouraged and it makes me furious!!! A person ought to be allowed to grieve during and after the death/near-death, traumatic process!!
I was 20 years old, my husband was 24 when we got baptized into the JW's. We had started studying in 1971 and were told the end would come in 1975 and that was certain. We were a newly married couple who were on the verge of divorce because we were poorly matched. We started to study with JW's to save our marriage, because they assured us that by living by Bible we would be happier than we have ever been in our lives. We put our bad marriage aside and conformed to the JW way and actually started over and we did become happy for about 6 years. We wanted to move across country and pioneer, we were burning with what we believed was the true way. We were gullible and did no research into the organization at all, but threw ourselves into it because it made sense to our biblically ignorant minds. We were needy, we wanted fixing, we wanted someone to tell us how to fix our lives and Jehovah's Witnesses assured us they had the answer. To us they surely did. My family and my husband family offered little resistence. My family was not religious at all, my father was an basically atheist. Neither of they had much use for religion. My husbands family were weak Catholic's
Only my sister condemned the witnesses, but she did it in a way that it was not helpful. She did no research either and was thus of no assistence in helping us to reason. So we learned the JW way and moved to the state where my husband's family lived and set about to convert his whole family. I had converted my nephew (my sister's son) and he remains one today. I also converted my husband's youngest sister at 13 and she joined and became a rabid witness who continues in it today. My husband and his siblings were raised in an alcoholic family and were prime targets for our preaching.
We aux pioneered off and on all the 30 years we were in and raised our three sons we had in the 1980's. We never listened to apostates or people who left. The fear that the society put in our minds was very strong and effective.
I left the witnesses and my JW husband and with me my sons left with me. I know it was my need for my life to be directed, that lead me to the JW. My father's atheistic view was too cold, hopeless and empty, and I craved spirituality, I craved to know God. Surely I believed that God cared about us. My own need, the need of my ex-husband lead us to the JW's religion. The battered, the lost, the mentally ill, people with dysfuctional families, the unhappy people are drawn to JW's because it seems like they have answers. Over the years I saw JW's come and go but we were always constant. I think what bothered me was that my life as a kid was very happy carefree, and to hate my world family always felt wrong to me.
That is what took me into the JW's. I know for those raise in it, its bizarre. We are lead by our own desires in life.
Balsam
Why? I hated the world and had no friends. :)
I'd come to know about the truth thru my long distanced relatives. At an early age, 14 or so, I'd met a young lady I came to be romantically attracted to. We dated for about a month. She took me to meet her mother. When her mother inquired as to who I was, she thereafter asked, " Is your father, such and such a ______?" , I said " yes he is, how did you know?
There went down the drain my new girlfriend, as we were half cousins. Her mother, I'd come to find was my father's half sister. Her mother was a devout Jehovah's Witness, and there began my introduction into the truth.
I wrestled with many of the trappings of being a teen, the bloom of youth, peer pressure and the like, so coming up in the truth, without anyone else in my immediate family in it was difficult to stomach. My father used to go to the KH when we were children, but I never knew what a KH was during those days. He used to study with the witnesses when we were younger. I never put the two together until I became a teenager and would see that same little dark blue book with the craxy title. "The Truth That Leads To Eternal Life ".
I guess in an off handed way, out of seeking affection and trying to display loyalty to a father I was never close to, I went seeking out this religion that he was so immersed in at one time in his life. Having peeked in thru the curtain of the witness life, I was thrilled as a young teen who believed he'd found all those who had the answer to all the tough questions about life. Why we were here, what happens to us when we die. What I could look forward to in life. What it was that the future held for me as well all mankind.
It would take me 17 years, a nervous breakdown at 18, a waste of time thinking I was doomed for destruction because I couldn't get it together, walking in the darkness of what I was told the world was, before I would finally get it together long enough to get my life to a point where, maybe, I could even begin to serve Jehovah. The time spent in the world led me to believe that I'd sinned beyond God's ability to save me.
Learned at 14. Floundered outside in the world until 1990 or so. Baptised in 1991. Vanished in 1993.
I was 21, just graduated from university and planning to become a teacher, marry my boyfriend and have kids when the jws knocked. For reasons I can't really fathom now, I agreed to a study and got baptised about 18 months later. It just seemed so attractive, the idea of living in a paradise, so I went for it, simple as that really.
I was about 12. My parents had divorced a few years earlier, and due to the custody fights I had been left for several years in a Catholic board school, which was a painful experience. I was a very sad boy. Religion in the board school was an obligation -- although I refused to be confirmed as I didn't believe it. I remember once in the schoolyard praying to God and saying, "if this (the Catholic way) is what you want I'll do it, but if there is another way I'd like to know."
A few months after that, my father and stepmother (who were going to have my custody eventually) began studying with JWs. This was quite a surprise as my father had never been very religious thus far. First we (the children of both previous marriages) had to follow studies on the Paradise Lost book, which I found just as boring as catechism. I remember my older stepbrother and I made all we could to avoid the studies, and when we had to suffer them made all the possible objections (from the evolutionary standpoint, for instance). Then one day, during vacations, my stepmother asked who would come with her to the KH. I went, out of curiosity. I was struck that this was very different from a church service, and that the public talk was very critical of religion, especially Catholicism. That seemed to be what I was looking for after all. From this day I forgot all my previous objections (only to find them again later!), asked for a JW book (Make Sure of All Things) and read it from cover to cover in a few days. Less than 6 months later I was baptised, together with my father and stepmother. I was 13.
