It was EXPECTED of me to get baptized and at 9 I was. What about you?
Did You Willingly Get Baptized or Were You Pressured Into It?
by minimus 48 Replies latest jw friends
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MadTiger
I sincerely loved what I called Jehovah, and loved what his Son did for me, and was willing to throw my lot in with the Jehovahs (*smile*), so I was not pressured at all.
Fast forward to the time when the lies started surfacing, and I redirected my expressions of spirituality and search for real truth. -
iamfreenow
It was a bit of both for me. I was baptised in 1960, just after my 14th birthday, and I was anxious to please my parents. Me being baptised did that, and I was happy to do it, but it had been suggested to me that it was the right thing to do, so there was some persuasion involved as well.
You were awfully young at 9 Minimus. I know they baptise many children of that age nowadays, but it hasn't always been so in the UK in my experience. It's increased as the number of adult converts has decreased.
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Scully
I was willing to get baptized at 12 or 13, but my parents felt that I should be older to make that choice.
By the time I was 15, I was not interested in being a JW anymore. However there was a lot of pressure to conform. Apparently baptism was a necessary step for me to regain my parents' trust again (not that I'd done anything particularly "wrong", just disagreed with the JWs and referred to them as a "cult") and start having social privileges again. So I ended up agreeing to a Bible Study and got baptized just over a year later.
Yes, there was pressure. But I didn't realize it until afterward. It was always a choice between being accepted within my own family and being treated like crap. Eventually being treated like crap for the grave sin of thinking for myself stopped being as attractive as the desire to belong somewhere, anywhere, which required my compliance.
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Sunspot
I was 31 years old and the first JW in the family. I was contacted in the d2d work just as the "URGENCY" and the continual hype about "1975- the END" was being uttered at every turn. I was scared that I wouldn't live through Armageddon unless I was baptized ASAP. I worked very hard at this, trying to meet all the WTS criteria before the destruction hit.
I WAS willingly baptized , but then I WAS pressured into it with everything I read from the literature or heard in talks and from my own study conductor.
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minimus
I wanted to get baptized because I was told that Jehovah would be happy and now that I was of "the age of reason", I should make my proper decision. Actually, I wanted to get baptized at 8 but my mother held me back until I was old enough.
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Thinking of Leaving
I completely felt pressured by the sister who studied with me, I was only 15 when I started studying, once I turned 18 she started saying things to like "so and so has been studying for this amount of time and he got baptized", what is holding you back?
Looking back it was the biggest mistake of my life. I wasted almost 20 years of life behind this religion.
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sspo
No pressure at all, i was 22 when i came in and loved the message and being able to understand the bible.
32 years later finally realized it was nothing but a big lie.
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Mary
Well I'm ashamed to admit that I 'willingly' got dunked. My parents were 'weak in the Troof' and never pressured any of us into doing anything. I started hanging around one girl in the Hall whose family were all a bunch of Stepford drones. She 'encouraged' be to get baptized because The End was so close that I needed some sort of insurance policy for entrance into the New System of Things.
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Insomniac
When I was 11, my folks had me go through the questions with the elders. I was told that I needed to get baptised, or else find a new place to live. As we were living in a strange city where we knew no one, and we'd cut ties with all our relatives, I figured I had noplace else to go, no one who'd take me in. So, I got dunked two days after I turned twelve. They drove me to an assembly in another state, rather than wait a couple of weeks until our own assembly was held. I'm not sure why they decided it had to be done right away, but it was all very strange. We arrived just before intermission, I got baptised, and we left as soon as I got dressed. As we scuttled out to the parking lot, my soaking wet hair got my dress all wet, and as I didn't have a coat, I froze my ass off all the way home.
The funny thing is, I now know that pretty much any one of my relatives would have rescued me, if I'd only called them. Think of how different my life might have turned out if my grandmother had raised me! I mean, I would have been raised Catholic, but I would have had a normal home...