They question/analyze everything- except the Watchtower

by OnTheWayOut 20 Replies latest jw friends

  • OnTheWayOut
    OnTheWayOut

    Many of you were probably the type to question everything or analyze everything, yet
    just accept whatever the WTS says. You broke out of that. Tell me your story about
    someone you know like that, or yourself like that.

    My wife- I told her about an incident at work where somebody got hurt. She asked "Why
    did he do ..........? She asked about my day, then said "That took only so long, what else
    did you do? At her job, she figures out others' shortcomings. She went to college and
    analyzed everything the professors said. She's learned to doubt information in the News.

    All that, but I try to talk to her about 607 BCE or "This Generation" and 1975, other subjects
    concerning the WTS, and she just shuts down. She sometimes disagrees with the general
    directions from the WTS concerning education or setting career goals, but she says they have
    a good reason for saying it that way. Several times, she asked me why I didn't comment at
    the WT study, and I say that I didn't agree with the point being discussed. She just stops the
    conversation.

    Tell me your stories.

  • OnTheWayOut
    OnTheWayOut

    Oh, we walked around in the Museum.

    There were all these displays about humans activities 13,000 -15,000 years ago.
    I would stop and read the information. She would be fascinated by social stuff or
    progressive stuff about humans, but would just skip anything that talked about
    proof of what humans were doing MORE THAN 6000 YEARS AGO.

    She probably didn't want the conflicts in her head.

  • Brother Apostate
    Brother Apostate
    They question/analyze everything- except the Watchtower

    You had me hooked just from the title of this thread.

    All I will say now is that I realized at age 8 that this was not the "truth", too much hypocrisy from the get-go.

    BA- Perhaps (perhaps not) I will elaborate later.

  • drew sagan
    drew sagan

    In the most basic sense, it's because we fear change.

    You can debate mundane subjects all day long when you are JW without any problem because many of those topics do not have a central part in your world view and hope for the future. Anybody JW has put a huge amount of trust in their organization. So when someone comes along and starts to challenges you there isn't the same interest in looking at it from differant viewpoints because of the potential concequences of what may happen if they find something they do not like.

    I get where you are coming from. I myself wsa in the position of trying to help my wife see that the WTS was false. Time and time again I would try to engage in discussion, but she would lock me out. I didn't know how I was going to break through.

    But one day it did. What I didn't realize that it was little things, small tiny things that didn't add up that helped my wife leave the WTS. Not many people just wake up and realize that the WTS is wrong. Sometimes it can take many differant personal events and things noticed before they start to see the other side.

    During my time of doubts my wife was trying her best to keep it positive about the WTS. She would read the mags and was studying her Watchtower and book study information. She knew I had doubts about the WTS but was determined to keep a positive veiw and hope for the best that we where not 'falling out of the truth'.

    Eventually she came through. How did it all happen? I think I showed here one copy of an old Russell book that had a pagan symbol on it and also read Luke 21:8 and discussed it for a few minutes. It all changed right then, but not only because of the things we talked about, but because she was ready to talk about these things. Later I would find out that she had held doubts ever since she was a child about the WTS but went along with it because she didn't know anything else.

    Little things over time. Everthing from a lack of love in the congregation, power hungary elders, bad arguments in Watchtower magazines, and everything in between. Little things over time help a person confront their fear of leaving.

    -Drew

  • sspo
    sspo

    Your wife is just like my ex-wife, any reasoning or logic is completely lost or don't want to hear about it.

    They shut down, when you ask for an answer they walk away and start looking at you as an apostate.

    I'm surprised your wife did not turn you in to the elders with the idea you are spiritually sick and need help from them.

    They do not have answers to your questions and yet they feel you are wrong and the GB are the only ones with the truth

    I try to keep in mind i also behaved like them for 30 years and so they cannot help it.

    You know my story and outcome of my marriage of 26 years for questioning the watchtower.

    I hope you have a better outcome

  • themonster123
    themonster123

    well, i used to question everything I was learning when I was studying to get baptized (at 15, about 6 years ago)...(I grew up in it by the way)..., but I always was satisfied with a scripture here and/or there. ie; MY question would be like "how come there are only 6 million JWs?" Well, "The path leading to everlasting life is narrow and cramped. the one leading off into death is broad and spacious."

    But, after a while, I realized I wasnt' understanding the Bible in its full context-and even if I did "understand" it in full context, i would still only understand it in a Jehovah's Witness context! So....I started to wonder with this thing called the Bible- how can there be one book-but everyone's interpretation the world over is so different? Maybe...*mine* was ...*wrong?* Then, I started to doubt the Bible itself.

    Other than that, i had so many questions (all of which I asked and got answered for the time being), but after a while, I tired MYSELF out asking so many questions and my brother and others would tell me," You have to stop looking at the details, you have to start looking at the big picture-where is this world heading? You can see it's getting worse and worse," so I was told that, so I belived it. AFter a while, i just accepted what I believed to be true and ignored the things that bothered me.

    But we all wake up one day. And I finally have.

  • moggy lover
    moggy lover

    This is not necessarily an uncommon attitude among the followers of the WT movement, even those relatively well educated in secular disciplines of study. I am not exactly sure of all the possible reasons involved in why this has become so, but there are several sites out in e-space that have contrived to investigate this phenomenon.

    It is possible that a person with no firm theological convictions, or Christian beliefs, such as I was, do indeed, for various reasons become fascinated with the entire mecanism of the WTS belief system, and are willing to abdicate all spiritual responsibilites to the leadership, possibly in some vague belief that the WTS, simply on the basis of its use of the tri-syllabic word "jehover" has an infallible grip on these matters.

    The perception among all in the R&F, as was in my case, is that the WTS leadership is a sort of totemic unit devoted to nothing else but a constant peering into Bible matters, attempting, by some alchemy, to divine its many secrets. Such an attitude is, no doubt, tacitly encouraged not just by the elders in each congreation, but also by the constant, often mesmerizing, effect that interminable meeting attendance encourages. WT study articles are not actually designed to enlighten, but to indulge. They are a sophoritic, lulling the R&F into a sub-conscious acceptance of all its pronouncements, with the resultant degree of lack of dissent becoming entrenched.

    As was in my case, I can say, with a certain basis for conviction, that as long as your wife is a constant meeting attender, and remains an undemanding receptacle for WTS influence, she will be unable to be "see" things in an uncritical way.

    The WTS leadership is a secretive, manipulative group invested with a mystique that is almost medieval in its character, and being pliant to all their statements is not looked on as being superstitious. As long as she is convinced that the leadership is exclusively a divine spokesman, she will, with equal vigour, oppose anything that assails that conviction.

    She will need some mechanism, some trigger, which will unhinge such a deeply held belief. In my case it was when I became an elder. A WTS follower of the first water, I failed to see any need for a critical analysis of the WT leadership's more demanding impositions, for as long as I was in the R&F. When I became an elder, however, and finding myself in the unenviable position of having to impose the WT diktat on others, I slowly, as if awaking from a deep sleep, began to see the gaping flaws in their make up. Having begun, though in a somewhat imprecise manner, this awareness rapidly accelerated, to become, I believe with the approval of God, a full blown realisation of the futility of WT thinking.

    Look for this trigger. In the case of your wife, it may manifest itself in some intellectual, or even sociological, dilemma, then watch the process snowball.

    Cheers

  • OnTheWayOut
    OnTheWayOut
    I'm surprised your wife did not turn you in to the elders with the idea you are spiritually sick and need help from them.

    This is what I have fought and fought for. Open conversation with the wife, without her turning me in.
    She hasn't turned me in yet, but we rarely have open conversation.

    I have to continue to build on both sides.

    What's strange for such an analytical person, this is month 5 for me to not go out in field service.
    She never asked me anything about field service when I stopped going. She never asked me anything
    about the bookstudy when I stopped going at the beginning of the year. She knows that my answers
    will be something that disturbs her JW world, so no questions.

  • jaguarbass
    jaguarbass

    I always questioned and I was always chastised for questioning. For those that don't question the publishing company is their rock in troulbed waters. Some people need something to believe in no matter how foolish it is.

  • OUTLAW
    OUTLAW

    ..."They question/analyze everything-except the Watchtower"..???..A Pearl of Wisdom!!!..Remember this moment in your life...OUTLAW

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