by chuckyy 40 Replies latest jw experiences
Becoming an elder pretty much nailed it for me. My actual epiphany came at the Pioneer Service School when the CO commented regarding Nathan Knorr: "Nathan Knorr was only 37 years old when God appointed him over the whole planet! Only 37! Can you imangine that?"
No. I couldn't.
It was the culmination of everything...it all starting clicking into place...
all the mismatched pieces of the JW puzzle that I tried to cram into a picture just did not fit anymore,
and a real picture emerged.
The lack of love, the hypocrisy, the unscriptural doctrines like disfellowshipping, JC's, service, the scriptures they used were even obsurd...
The governing body being spirit directed yet have imperfect teachings of men, just did not make any sense.
If they are spirit directed, they would not make mistakes.
The flip-flopping with the blood, 1995 generation change.
I couldn't believe I used to just trustingly believe it was the truth just because they said it was.
I left and this was before I learned about the UN, about malawi / mexico, about pedophiles being allowed to remain in the congregation, Barbara Anderson, CoC.
All of those were just nails in the coffin containing my belief in the truth.
The lack of love caused massive cognitive dissonance, causing me to pull back or step away. Once you step back other things come in to focus. Lack of love is the reason for the dwindling numbers in the organisation at the moment.
Around the age of ten years old, I was with my mom on a return visit who we had offered a bible study to. In my small world view, she was the nice lady that I brought magazines to every 2 weeks. After she declined the study, I asked my mom what would happen to her if she didn't become a jehovah's witness. My mom told me that she would die. In my mind, my return visit was a very nice lady and I couldn't comprehend the idea that she would be killed for the simple act of deciding not to study with my mom and I.
I couldn't accept such an idea then and I don't accept it now. It's just too bad that it took me almost 30 years to fully awaken from this cult and make my escape.
Now that I think about it, I don't recall ever bringing magazines to that return visit after she declined a bible study. For such an important, life saving work that we were supposedly doing we sure didn't put much effort into overcoming a simple rejection. Mom said she would die at armageddon. If that's the case then why not put some real fricken effort into saving this poor woman's life!
Years later, I now realize that it's all busy work to keep the mind controlled cult members enslaved to a failed concept.
Like most on this thread itwas the lack of love. The willingness to believe in gossip and lies and still have the balls to say that you are in "the truth"! Also the fact that one of the elders was molesting his daughters and his wife was makred when she left him and he continues to this day to hand out sweets to the kids at the kH.
As has been mentioned - the total lack of love.
When I and my family needed love and support, through my depression and attempted suicide (1996). What we got was me being reproved by a Judicial Committee. Eventually the the Elders getting my JW wife to get me out the home because I was a "spiritual danger" to the family. But no thought given to my "spiritual health" at the time. The only "help" was attend the meetings , go on field service. I have often said if they had said to me "We'll help you and your famly get through this" I could well still be a JW now. But instead people I had known for 25 years turned their backs on me. I think I was in some form of shock for a few months. because wasn't it supposed to be "Jehovahs loving organisation" all those nice articles on how they looked after each other etc, I had read over the years.
Then one day I came across a book called "Awake to the Watchtower" in local library, picked it up thinking another of those books having a go at the WT. Started to read it, was still reading it 2 hours later. That book started me on the trail of looking into the WT. The library had internet access, so you can guess what happened next.
Then in August 1999 sitting in a Service Meeting I realised I no longer believed it all, that was my last meeting. I eventually DA'd in September 2001. Which meant since then my JW wife and two JW daughters have no had contact with me. Though two other children who were JW's DA'd also at the time and three others never became JW's.
But as I said above if it wasn't for that lack of love at the beginning of it all. I would never had done any research on the WT and discovered what I now know. Again, as I have seen often, doing what they think is right, often backfires on them.
Plenty. I did not like the way they kept promising things would turn out, only to have nothing ever turn out like they claimed they would. Sisters would not want me around, and they would tell me that it would change (it only got worse), and they told me to just meet other men (itself a reason for me to go apostate).
I didn't like the ever-increasing workload. They were hinting that my being single was a blessing, since I could (=was expected to) do more than myself plus any kids; that is mathematically impossible since anything kids would have done would have been added to my own work, and adding two positive numbers always gives you a number that's greater than either one). And, no matter how much I did in field circus, they always wanted more. I would have a hard time going in at noon, since they always had some specious reason for me to have to stay out until 2:30 or later in the afternoon. Of course, they always had something to say about my dress and grooming.
It was also tiring. They just don't understand that the average Witless does not work 9 to 5 like everyone else. Instead, they usually work nights. Putting a meeting at 7:30 in the evening is like putting a meeting at 3:30 or 4 in the morning for worldly people. And you can't stay up all night working and then go out in service all day and go to the meetings that night. Time was also siphoned off into the work, which seemed to go on endlessly.
Then the mathematics didn't add up. As I did well in freshman algebra, I could think of equations where the line, when graphed, is close to zero and getting ever closer, but will absolutely never reach zero. I could see Armageddon as paralleling this: close, getting closer, and yet will never actually get here. For sure, no reason to stay in and waste my life and time on this. And there was the issue of children being born--and having to be reached. When one group is reached, the next would come of age and have to be witlessed to as well, starting a new cycle that could go on forever. It didn't add up.
I think next time they had better come up with a specific contract. And if the promises are broken, the sisters continue to be aloof to me, or deadlines are missed, extremely harsh and devastating consequences to the Watchtower Society would result immediately. Articles that are mathematically open-ended would also have to be closed off so only a finite, known time would have to pass that I would agree to in advance (that cannot be extended without setting off extremely severe consequences).
In the spring of 1988 there was an anti education rant talk at a circuit assembly. Our two older children were just entering their teens and wanted something better for them than washing windows. I had been concerned for some time about failed prophecy. That talk just pushed me over the edge as I could not plan my life or the lives of my children around what was obviously a false hope.
The seeds were planted with my realization as a young adult that the Creation book was full of spectacularly poor scholarship. We first studied it when I was a kid and I absorbed it lock, stock, and barrel (why wouldn't I?) but as I learned more and more about what evolutionary biology was all about I realized that the theory had been sorely misrepresented by the Creation book. The writers of the book either didn't understand the science and predictions of evolution, or were lying to us about them. Either alternative was bad.
This realization allowed my mind to be more skeptical and less automatically accepting of what I was hearing everywhere in my life, including at the Kingdom Hall. More and more logical fallacies, outright lies, misrepresentations, misquotations, and scriptures taken out of context or blatantly misunderstood became obvious to me.
But the real turning point was when we had our first child. I looked at her tiny defenseless body cradled in my wife's arms and realized that I would rather die at Armageddon than allow her to die because I didn't let her have a blood transfusion. And I decided that any God that deserved my worship wouldn't ask me to do that. I remembered Matthew 12:7, "If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent." (NIV) and I knew then, all at once, that the Witnesses didn't have the truth.
Of course I'm still enslaved because of my family situation, but we're working on it. :)
Blood law not bible based.. 607 bce is wrong according to everyone else in the entire world. Pharasee's invading the minds of 90% of all congregation members and governing body. Watchtower rules not based on the Christian Greek scriptures. And the NET. - We believed what????????????
