Why can't many just let go?
It is easy grasshopper! Many, like my wife, grew up in the organization and had their views and personality shaped by it. Others, like myself, spent many years trying to live up to the dictates of a harsh, Pharisaical organization which demands total sublimation of one's own personality and desires to the coporate mentality. Can one ever truly get completely past that? That question is especially relavent in view of the fact that everyone comes into contact with formers friends and relative who are only too happy to make it clear that they now consider them the enemy.
Within minutes of meeting to a former JW last night, he hit on what had been both our problems within the organization. we were both nonconformists! We refused to prostrate ourselves and lick the boots of every elder who felt he had the right to demand it. So for the better part of thirty years for both of us, the system tried to slap us down and make us tow the line, even though we never did anything for which we could be Df'd.
My wife had been raised in the organization in an Elder's family. She was used the priviledges which came from being at the top of the heap before the institution of the BOE arraingement. All that came to an end when she married and her husband moved her 500 miles away to a little rural congregation were she was a nobody. For me, the troubles began almost from day one after I was baptised. Once I accepted the authority of scripture, I never accepted the "authority" of snyone to demand of me things which the scripture did not in my view give them the authority to do. I always demanded scriptures when an elder came a-calling about how I looked, what job I held, or anything else "the Faithful and Discrete Slave says so" was never sufficient authority to me without scritpural support. We all know how well that goes over as an attitude among Jehovah's Witness!
After all the years ao abuse it is hard to let go. One is scarred for life by such treatment as my wife and I recieved. For those who didn't do so badly, the betrayal which caused them to question the organization and leave it (whether it was suddenly finding themselves on the wrong side in some incident, or having an epiphany concerning some hypocritical teaching or action of the WTBTS) is so profound that it is hard to leave behind for a long time. Remember, the demands intellectually, socially, and emotionally which the organization puts on its members is so all consuming and powerful that it is hard to just walk away and get on with life.
Some do in an eqaully obsessive way and have absolutely nothing to do, trying to forget that the WTBTS was ever a part of their lives. Those poor souls are folks we'll never hear from unless they suddenly realise that they need healing. A fortunate few can walk away. We may or may not hear from them. the rest realise that they need to heal. They also realise that they can't do it on their own. And many of them will find their way here like the rest of us. We'll rant an rave and do whatever to heal, but at least here we can help each other.
Forscher
