by sleepy 16 Replies latest jw friends
I have:
Learned to evade personal questions
Learned how to handle peer pressure
Learned how to study
Learned to enjoy life without drugs, etc.
Learned my neighborhood like the back of my hand
Learned how to spot a great break place
Learned how to eat anywhere for $3 or less
Learned how to question authority
Learned how to be trusting without being gullible
Learned how to hope
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1) Learned morals (although good moral parents of any religion would have done the same thing)
2) Learned public speaking (never use it now)
3) Learned not to fear meeting the public from door to door (I don't plan to ever sell vacuums so this doesn't really matter)
4)Met a few friends (they all shun me now)
5)Learned the Bible (with a JW slant, so I guess that doesn't count)
The more I think about it, I realize that the person I am today is not a result of any good I gleaned from the JWs. It comes from decent parents and family. Had they been Catholic, Protestant or whatever, I would be the same.
So to the JW leadership: thanks for nothing.
Dan
Actually, I cannot think of a thing that I would have not gotten anyway outside of the Borg, including conflict non-resolution.
1. Experience in public speaking -- but I was in drama classes for years before becoming a JW.
2. Had an ironclad excuse to offer guys who propositioned me.
3. Could ignore scary current events, because God was gonna fix everything.
4. Holiday season was cheaper than it is today (and, of course, much less interesting).
5. When I was a new jaydub, it was still considered "untheocratic" for a married sister to work. So I got to stay home.
6. Thrills were VERY cheap -- even going to the beach instead of to the meeting counted as a "guilty pleasure".
7. I still remember a few of the proof-texts I learned as a JW (and admit it, chums, most of our favorite scriptures were just that -- verses taken out of context to prove a point). It impresses my Unitarian friends, most of whom know ethics and logic a lot better than they know scripture. But I have more amusing and more honest ways to impress them.
8. Having lived a "chaste" life for over twenty years, all the sex toys are still fresh and new.
GentlyFeral
Well on the surface I learned nothing worthwhile at all at the KH. However many people tell me that the years in the Organisation and the awakening to reality and the struggle to leave and the subsequent growth thru the eyes of someone who has experienced the above have formed the person I am now. I am probably slightly wiser than I would ahve been without the JW experience. But then who can say?
Marilyn
* learned the proper distance to hold a microphone!
* slushy orange juice!
* can remember addresses
* call all books by their color
* Drive in reverse down a busy street with kids screaming!!!
* I can turn around ANYWHERE!!!!
* a frumpy wardrobe
Ahhh the list goes on!!!!!
Ven
"Injustice will continue until those who are not affected by it are as outraged as those who are."
It gave me hope that there is a God and that Jesus was and is a very good being. I was borderline atheist and thought Jesus was just an evangelist when I started to study. The JWs gave me new hope. I was also able to deal with the fact that the wicked just die, there is no more torment. I didn't even want to worship a God that after a hard life he would then torment people in a demonic hell. So I have alot to thank them for.
And if you think about it, all friends are conditional to some extent. JWs are just the extreme end of it.
