Question for JWs still on the "inside": (page 3)

serendipity

I don't go out in field service. In informal witnessing, I talk about God, Jesus or Biblical topics. I also talk about God, Jesus and the Bible with my daughter daily. None of this causes me any heartburn, because I only speak about topics I believe in or I preface my remarks with "the society/Jehovahs Witnesses teach ...". Any time I report is "real", 1 or 2 hours a month.

FairMind

I like talking to people, so field service is not hard. Also, I'm not pushy and I'm very willing to listen. Like many here I no longer even atempt to start studies as there are some things I would find impossible to teach as Bible truth.

THE SHOOTIST

I am simply amazed at the number of you on the board that still go door to door handing out the the unfaithful and indiscreet slave's BS journals. Why not try this when you go from house to house. Ask the householder if they would please tell you why JWs are so full of crap. Tell them you're doing an honest survey with your neighbors. Ask them about blood-transfusions, the UN, disfellowshipping, your (we're the only ones with the truth and everyone else is going to die) theory, and last but not least, Armageddon is right around the corner and has been for the last 130 years. Turn in the results with your next field-service report. Just a thought, aren't you just the least bit scared that you could hook and kill some mindless fish. According to your religious stats, it still happens from time to time. There are some people out there like J W Scholar and PMJ. They still believe the earth is flat, prime candidates for JWs.

kid-A

Honestly people, really. I mean, keeping up the facade of going to meetings etc, is one thing. However, I know many faders who stopped going out in the field service years ago while still going to the odd meeting. The point is, by going to meetings even if you dont believe the watchtower bullshit is one thing, you are only harming yourself. However, publicly going out and "preaching" what you KNOW is bullshit, is an entirely different matter. In addition, you are annoying people who arent interested in having you banging on their doors at 9:30 am on a saturday morning.

No more excuses. If you dont believe it, stop peddling the magazines and wasting your time and harassing innocent homeowners. Are you really that afraid of the elders?

For gods sake just enjoy the weekends and sleep in. Dont participate in spreading the watchtower virus.

Hellrider

Hm, like the shootist I have to say that I am a bit shocked that there are so many here that still to the door-to-door-thing. And I don`t mean to be judgemental, but have you considered this? Stilla: You say you only “place” magasines...ok, how? Just leave them at the door, when there`s noone home ? I bet you do, you ring that doorbell and when noone opens, you just sigh in relief that you don`t have to go thru the whole introduction and your own little script “have you ever wondered what God has in store for humanity as a whole? Then let me show you this little pamphlet...God has promised us that sometime in the future blah blah blah”, so you can just drop off the mag at the doorstep and walk on (hope you have a sense of humour about this, I don`t mean to be mocking you or anything, we`ve all been there ). But consider this: What if someone picks up that magazine and actually reads it? And lets say this person is searching, naive, in a difficult situation, a desperate state, newly divorced, looking for a meaning in life (this is really a description of my mother when she found “the truth”), and then, the next time some unsuspecting “brother” rings her doorbell, she not only asks him in, she wants to have a Bible study and all, and whooops, 6 months later this person is a baptised published. And then she meets a new man, a faithful and devoted young pioneer/MS, and they have children who have their entire childhoods ruined by this idiotic religion (along with the womans children from her first marriage, and of course, the father of these children has to go thru hell to even just see his kids, and when he occasionally gets to see them, she has filled them with some paranoid crap about him being one of “Satans world” and that he is going to be destroyed in Armageddon, etc...you know how fanatic those that “find the truth” in adult age can be). See where I`m going? The point is: Every little (although innocent-looking enough) WT and Awake are really small drops of venom. Or small drops of ...viruses. And they have the potential to “open up the door” for even more venom, more viruses (in fact, the Awakes are a bit like HIV, I think). They have, each and every little magazine, the potential to cause tremendous amounts of harm and pain, in that they are able to initiate a chain reaction of events. So can I make a suggestion? The mags are allready paid for, and they`re free at the doors, right? So why “place them” at all? Make sure you go out alone. Drop the mags in the nearest dumpster, then go to a cafè and enjoy yourself with a good book, a sandwich and some cocoa. If you, occasionally have to go out with a very “faithful brother”, perhaps you should make not of the houses where they actually accept the magazines, and then go back to do some anti-witnessing later on? The point is (and as much as I hate to be “giving a speech” or raising a finger of morality or whatever, I have to say this): Every little “placed mag” is something that can have consequenses, and the consequenses lay on the shoulders of the person who placed them. Sorry if this adds to the burdens you are allready carrying, by being trapped in “the truth”.

Those magazines should be used for what they were always meant for: wrapping up fish (only works with smaller fish, such as trout, they`re to small for, oh, say a big old cod), defrosting shrimps (frosen shrimps defrosts three times as fast when laid on a paper of the same kind as WTs, Awakes and newspapers), and for lighting up in the owen with. There might also be some other practical uses for them that I don`t know of, but they should certainly not be read by anyone.

Ingenuous

I had a problem with this the last few years I was still "in." I still believed the Org taught The Truth, but was mightily ashamed of the behavior and lack of refinement (i.e, just plain laziness of thought) found at my Hall. Not to mention that many brothers were so ill-prepared when they gave talks that they didn't infrequently say things that were totally off and just plain wrong - not just by Society standards, but by anyone's standards. I didn't want to find someone in the field who was so interested that I'd have to start bringing them to my Hall. I talked it over with my elder Dad and, while he agreed, we concluded that there was no where else for people to go and that Jehovah would straighten it out in time - with a little help from me pulling my study aside after every meeting and straightening out anything that got screwed-up on the platform.

Insane! I was absolutely insane!

Calliope

i think i can safely say some of us find it very difficult to fade 100% from this secret society, and so the masquerade is to show up at some meetings here and there and participate (loosely defined) in the "service".

i've been trying to figure out this week if i'm gonna actually write "0 hours" for the first time ever, on the report, or if i won't put one in at all. then expect the service overseer to call me and ask my time... i'm trying to figure out if i'm even going to go to the next meeting. should i study the wtower? should i comment at the meeting and keep up the pretense?

i still feel some kind of guilt (don't ask me to explain, i don't quite understand it myself). sometimes, i just want to throw in the towel, pretend i never started reading CoC or any other aposta-literature and become a pioneer like nothing ever happened.

arghhhh...

of the "i'm popping valium" class.

The Leological One

I do alot of laudromats, and finally out of the 10 hours I write, only 1 1/2 are real

Heh~! The laundromats at apartments I've lived in sometimes had like 10-15 dub books left on the table(s) inside. Now I'm thinking there's a great chance someone wrote that off as a couple or so hours of field service.

jah1914

This statement only applies to only to those who want to be or consider themselves Christians.

I must have grown up in a timewarp or something. There is no conflict or bad feelings that anybody should have about talking about God. Leading people to Jesus is a Christian responsibility. Period....you should be free to use whatever tool that you personally decide will help you to do that.If that is a Watchtower and Awake fine. Sometimes I use other non-JW religious literature at the door. For a time I was placing the 'MESSAGE' paraphrase with people. I know this sounds crazy, but I have never encountered any problems with any in the hall and I'm still an active witness and was an elder up to a year ago.(At least no one has said anything to my face.). For me it seems that when I just speak the truth from my heart and don't try to anticipate what the other JWs might say, it just works out for me.

Personally I use the bible mainly and speak the truth. When I go out in service, if some asks if the witnesses are the true relgion. I tell them the truth, no, but there probably are some true christian in the organization. If they ask about pedophiles(and some have). I tell them the truth(that is possible that all those things are going on). I tell them that 1914 seems wrong to me as well as 144,000(with people around), but that doctrine is not the important thing.

-------I digress
The bottom-line is that if we believe in God and the bible, than we know that God is going to deal with us individually and so that is all I try to get them to focus on. Their relationship with God. Does anything else really even matter? Don't get me wrong, all the things I read on the various boards are certainly interesting and eye-opening and most of it is probably true. But in the final anaylis I'm left with what does any of those doctrines have to do with my relationship with Jesus.
------end of digression

Jesus never really talked alot about doctrine, just relationships(with God and with man). So that's what I focus on, not trying to indoctrinate people.

When I study with people I don't try to convince to do anything other than be a disciple of Jesus. Believe it or not it seems to work and I have suffered nothing at the hands of JW elders or anything else.

Muffinman

I've managed not to go out in service for a while, but I'm sure I'd feel bad about it.

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