What were your reasons for becoming a JW? (page 4)

new boy

The reason is simple

My father had sex with my mother.....................9 months later.........one more Jw!

zensim

This is a beautiful thread - thank you Nark. It feels very healing to talk about it like this.

I was born in, so there is the obvious fact that my whole reality was shaped by the JW 'truth'. I truly believed it to be the truth. Was also very obedient and blindly allowed myself to be spoonfed. However, I also have an idealistic nature and a strong sense of justice - so I found many worthwhile reasons to believe the Witnesses. I think understanding one's inner self and nature would give most people a clue as to why they chose or chose to remain a witness (and then also why they chose to leave, and I wouldn't be surprised if really they weren't the same). For all of us there was some part of the Witness teaching that highly appealed to us and was a payoff, it fed some part of our psyche and emotional make-up.

I got baptised at 18. Partly to please my Father (I always saw Jehovah as just a larger, more perfect version of my Father - hmmm...), partly because I intended to become a Pioneer (I did Auxiliary for six months and then pioneered for almost a year) and partly because I hoped, unsucessfully, that somehow being baptised would miraculously give me a new, insightful, discipline to help me deal with the irresistable sex crazed hormones running through my body!!

Narkissos

Soul(s).

Warm sunset (or sunrise?) breeze caressing the surface of the abyss.

Moving shapes from the groundless deep offering their truth --

which is nothing but their appearance.

"everything exposed by the light becomes visible,
for everything that becomes visible is light"

Thank you, bless you, and bttt

hillary_step

Arthur,

Alcohol: Drinking allowed me to drown out the realizations that I was engaging in intellectual laziness, was in denial, was filled with false pride, and was indulging in wishful thinking. When I quit drinking, and began to think more clearly; the blinders slowly fell off.

I think that this is a very important part of the equation with many JW's. Some of the hardest drinking people I know are Jehovah's Witnesses and as a JW I was no different. Often the non-drinkers are those who cannot afford the cost of the drink but make up for it when invited out to others homes. It is a drug that helped to soften the edges of a dissonant lifestyle and subdue the wild voices that clamored within.

HS

Alpheta

To quote Sarek: "It seemed like a good idea at the time".

Paisley

Euphemism

But to harbor such doubts would be an insult to God, which I was not prepared to commit unless I was already certain of the answer....

Exactly!!

So the only way I could have considered leaving was by already having decided to leave. Catch 22.

Yes! I had the same thoughts. Briefly. Mild panic over that aspect.

LittleToe

I was raised in it and never questioned it, which is surprising to me now as I questioned everything else. I was an insatiable reader, especially of science, but always felt that "mother" knew best.

WT studying was a chore, as I knew it all by about the precocious age of 12, but I knew how to underline stuff really fast so I could get it over and done with and get back to reading a novel, or textbook, or anything...

The usual born-in clone, methinks, complete with Pioneering from school

GetBusyLiving

Born in Insta - JW, just add propaganda.

GBL

Tyrone van leyen

I too was born into this religion. The doctrine didn't really do that much for me,although I did enjoy the gospels. The glue that held the whole thing together for me in my teens was the prophecy of 1914. This made me feel it had to be the truth and gave me conviction. I can understand someone that grows up in it accepting no holidays. When you don't know anything else it doesn't hurt as much. I cannot understand someone who has experienced freedom, willingly accepting that kind of intrusion on their lives. The teen years saw more sanctions than I could bear however, and I finally got canned for immorality. For many years I still hadn't totally resolved that it wasn't the truth. Another problem in leaving was that there was no old pre-self to return to. This lent itself to trying a range of experimentation and bad behaviour. I still wonder who the real me is to this day, but I do know it's not the truth. There is still a great void and many questions only time and knowledge can heal.

Narkissos

Incidentally KAYTEE started a symmetrical and complementary topic: why did you exit? -> http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/127416/1.ashx

On both counts, answers differ widely depending on how far one can focus on the "you" part of the question.

What is at stake is how much we can call our lives ours -- in spite of the WTBTS or any other potentially alienating social structure. Assuming that we(our "true selves," as Tyrone put it) were there all the time, even though we may not have been "all there" -- are we ever?

Yesterday I noted an interesting convergence between Nietzsche and Freud on this topic. Nietzsche's "superhuman" cannot come to be unless hewants every single part of the past to have been, forever (which is the deep meaning of his "Eternal return"). Freud's "I" must come to be wherever "it" has been (wo Es war, soll Ich werden).

"Come out, come out, wherever you are..."

What were your reasons for becoming a JW?

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