Who still fears the big 'A'?

by lfcviking 28 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  lfcviking

  I have been left for about 18 months now and am trying to get 'unindoctrinated' or 'unbrainwashed' or whatever is the correct term is. But there still exists in me a considerable fear of 'Armaggeddon'. Whether the JW teaching of 'Armaggeddon' is true or not i am not sure, but such was their very powerful strong mental indoctrination of this event it has left me with what i think will be a permenant fear for the rest of my days. I have wondered does anybody else still believe/fear the event of 'Armaggeddon' even after you have left the Org?

  LFCV
• 

  lonelysheep

  I'm sorry you still hold that fear. It is religion's whipping stick!
  
  Bad things have always happened on this planet...we just hear about them more often.

  Why do you hold this fear, though?
• 

  Fleshybirdfodder

  I had dreams for a long time, but now it just seems like science fiction. I always thought fire and sulpher from heaven would be an extremely impractical way of irradicating 6 billion people. If you are able to create the universe and resurrect the dead, surely you could just give the non-witnesses (and inactive ones, and the ones leading a double life, and the ones who secretly visit this board) a disease that kills them in their sleep. I guess the fire and sulphur and birds eating fleshy parts are all for effect.

  FBF
• 

  MeneMene

  I think your fear is perfectly normal. 18 months is not very long.
  
  I did have specific horrors as a child concerning the Big A. I have been reminded of some of those because of things going on in Iraq.
  
  I am not yet convinced there either will or will not be an Armageddon. I no longer fear it. Perhaps that is because of my age and that I left WTS close to 30 yrs ago. I have made peace with my decisions. Some people get more religious as they age but I seem to have gone the other way. I will accept whatever Jesus/Jehovah decides is best for me. I don't think I could change their minds anyway at this point and I don't want to try.
  
  
  "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)". [That was my favorite song as a child. It's the one I never forgot and means even more now.]
• 

  wozadummy

  Any thought process that deals with death must have some effect on people even after rejecting the whole package of teaching, but I think it affects some more than others.

  For example someone I know left and DA'd 16 years ago but still is in daily fear but I left only 18 months ago but only have small problems about Armaggedon occasionly -why?- because I re educated myself on the source of the teaching and gradually built up an armour against these feelings.

  It's a bit like cognitive thinking , I look at the potentially damaging thought and reason on that thought whether it is valid - for instance would a loving god kill billions of people that are not neccecarily living bad lives by his standards when they have never heard of him because he sends as a whole preachers to most of the population ,hardly ever ,and to the smaller number of the population all the time? In the bible it describes the cruel and graphic way people are to die en-mass for lack of knowlege ,if this is the real god ,the one the WTS descibes then I don't want to serve this one forever with people who are in line with WTS thinking ,I could'nt think of anything worse.

  In this way you can kill off the thought processes than enslave one to fear.
• 

  bigmouth

  Who still fears the big 'A'?
  
  Oh, sorry, I thought you meant Arsenal! :)
• 

  Dismembered

  One word with no reservations, poppycock

  Dismembered
• 

  lfcviking

  Why do you hold this fear, though?

  Well 'lonleysheep' i don't really know, but all i can say is that its always there in my subconsious thoughts. Its maybe down to the JW's manipulative use of this scripture to achieve the end of instilling fear into you the impressionable mind, and hearing this repeated warning of the big 'A' over several years of association with them it gets firmly mentally embedded and is thus hard to get rid of.
• 

  lfcviking

  Dis, what do you mean by this?

  poppycock

  ?
• 

  SacrificialLoon

  For the longest time after I 'faded away' I still had some reservations about armageddon. The closest analogy I can think of is when they have elephants trained that they can't break free of the leash. When the elephant is young they leashed with a very strong rope or chain, and the young elephant learns that it cannot break free if something is tied to its leg. As the elephant becomes more docile, and struggles less the trainer can replace the heavy rope with a dog leash and the elephant will stay put. It has been conditioned to think that if something is tied around its leg it cannot break free.
  
  Fear of armageddon was one thing that kept me from completely breaking free, but I realized how silly it was . There are still a few more "leashes" I think that I need to recognize and break, but the specter armageddon is not longer one of them.