by Dogpatch 501 Replies latest jw friends
It was a sickening experience, and the fact that many young guys who were part of it were pretty much trapped into it, and then began to rebel against the brainwash, sometimes by jokes or whatever, is a very liberating thing.
It was a sickening experience, and the fact that many young guys who were part of it were pretty much trapped into it, and then began to rebel against the brainwash, sometimes by jests or whatever, is a very liberating thing.
1914bs: jests. Or whatever. LOL.
Wow - I am kind of hurt that a couple of the ladies here kind of seem to be attacking these ex-bethelites who were good enough to make up this great thread and remind everybody of the rotten corpses behind the whitewashed tombs.
This has nothing really to do with male chauvenism per-se; if it existed at bethel, and it did, - that was the doing of just a handful of the elite, like Knorr or Freddy or Schroeder or such.
skally, I won't patronize you.
I'll just tell you how I feel, like you just did.
Humor can often be a 1000 times MORE effective than hatred and anger in destroying that which needs to be destroyed. Showing how foolish something is can be devastating. There's a reason that The Emperor's New Clothes is an ancient fable. There is a great truth to it.
And I'll also say that Snowbird comparing the posters on here to racists and misogynists is way out of line.
You two should probably have followed your first instincts and not read the thread, considering how it seemed to hit such an angry, raw nerve. I'm not sure what's going on here, but a bunch of old friends sharing stories from their lives is not exactly a racist, woman hating plot.
S4
I did not read the entire thread. That should have been obvious by the level of my anger. I read 13/14 and 15.
And I'm sure a few lurkers are glad I did!
Oh, and you are very much patronizing me:
Humor can often be a 1000 times MORE effective than hatred and anger in destroying that which needs to be destroyed
I stand by my statements seeler4. You are free to do so with you own as well.
Good day.
sKally
Well, am I glad that we got that over with. I hope.
Back on topic, for a great story about a volunteer visitor to Bethel in the old days, you have to read Seven006 and his account of "Freddy Brown Shoes".
A truly excellent view of life on the inside, from someone who was seeing it from the perspective of a true professional in the graphic arts business.
I will see if I can dredge up a reference link...
I believe that I know pretty much how you feel, and I believe that Tom and Randy and Warren and others also know how you feel. I think a lot of us former Bethelites still come across as a little too enamored with their own life as a Bethelite. We are "unrepentant". It still sounds like we are proud of our relationships and friendships with some of the same people that we can also see as "evil" from another perspective. So how can we still "revel" in the memories?
I'm responding mostly to these comments by sf:
"As you men all recall your glory days, has it dawned on you the horror and confusion so many of us as innocent and helpless children, were going through and/ or ABOUT TO GO THROUGH, as a direct result of twisted doctrine and lethal policies, due to our parents FOLLOWING YOU?"
For me, these were my days of growing up. I grew up in Bethel, a dysfunctional family. I was naive. I was too easily impressed by those I believed were spiritual leaders. But I survived. And I look back on "how I survived" without remorse. I lost nearly all my friends. I was heartbroken about so many people I loved that I couldn't speak to anymore. During that time I had a JW literally spit at my feet even though we were formerly close in our congregation.
My own parents, of course, stopped speaking to me for about a decade. I mean completely stopped! Years after leaving the JWs, I was nearly killed once when a car ran up on a sidewalk to throw me across the intersection. A year or so after recovery, I attended a funeral for a non-JW uncle, and when one of my parents started to apologize for their silence during that terrible episode, the other parent shot a scolding look that kept BOTH parents out of my life again for another few years.
I also know that, like many others, I lost several years of normal social growth and educational opportunities. I quit High School when I was still 15, to begin pioneering for a few years in advance of 1975. I missed education terribly and didn't start up again until a year after I left Bethel - 8 years of my life that I'd never get back. Raised as a JW I could probably count another 20 years mostly lost in service to an organization. I also helped bring several families into the organization that I can never help back out. I tried, by calling a couple of them and it just seemed to make it worse. Someday, I might hear that one of their children died from the organization's myopic view of medical treatment. Or, almost as bad, they live their life wasted in service to the "machine" that built itself up around a magazine (and vice versa).
But Bethel is a lot like serving tours in the army. Impressionable kids who think too little of their sergeants (and too much of the generals and presidents who got them there) STILL have many great memories of their time with the friends they made. Kids may end up going into the service of some imperialist and/or fear-mongering national organization, or it might always be a "just war", but the kids don't know the difference. And more importantly, does even the murder and mayhem of war erase all the good memories of what we did and how we coped with our own naive incompetence? Or how some were fortunate enough to be put in circumstances that helped us find our way out? Does it change the people we knew as friends?
I am still thrilled every time I hear of another Bethelite who makes it out of that place with few visible scars. I know what they and all other former JWs lost. Some Bethelites may appear to have lost very little from the time they spent there. But a lot of them more obviously lost much more because Bethel represented a path of a "life investment" that precluded other careers. Many cases were much worse than mine, but I know how close I came to disaster. I didn't use my spare time at Bethel to prepare for a life outside, because I thought it was my life's career. I ended up attending all the meetings of TWO congregations, and I used my spare nights to finish the Aid Book and a hundred other Wt publications. When I thought that this still left me enough free time, I auxiliary pioneered a time or two. Fortunately, this stupidity burned me out soon enough. It made me look elsewhere for spirituality.
That said, I agree with the danger of seeing these days as "glory days", when we were in the heady height of our youth. It's possible to forget that it was all "loss". I don't actually forget that it was loss, but it's probably not easy to convince others. Still, I don't fret over it. What's done is done. I'm sorry for supporting it, but I didn't know any better and I'm not beating myself up for it. I choose to remember the good times along with the bad, accentuating the good times.
I'm not saying we don't filter our own memories, consciously or otherwise. But I didn't become a different person after leaving. When I was in Bethel, this caged bird "sang" in there, too. Maya Angelou might have said it was a coping mechanism that would have caused difficulties for others to interpret. ("I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings." 1969.) But I think, for me, it's a lot simpler. I'm like the "Bird Man of Alcatraz" remembering BOTH the birds and the cage, but I choose to LIVE with the better memories.
Betty Botter is my true literary hero. I like to repeat the following to myself (5 times, fast):
Betty Botter bought a bit of bitter butter. But, said Betty Botter, if I use this bitter butter, it will make my batter bitter. So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter and it made her batter better.
Me too, James!
I know Dave's story. The whole story is linked here often, and is a great one. Interesting how his visit to Bethel was such an influence on his leaving the Witnesses. Sort of like AwakenedatGilead finding that Gilead is what proved to him that the Witnesses didn't have the truth.
S4
Dave's (seven006) Bethel visit stories are available from this page:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/member/5756/topics/3.ashx
Or go to the individual links below:
My two week consulting trip to Bethel (the beginning of the end) Part 1
My two week consulting trip to Bethel (the beginning of the end) Part 2
My two week consulting trip to Bethel (the beginning of the end) Part 4
My two week consulting trip to Bethel (the beginning of the end) Part 5
MY CONSULTING TRIP TO BETHEL (starting over) PART 6
(As promised) BETHEL TRIP part 7. Loosing my balance
(Can't find part 3)
This is one of the single best threads I have ever read and participated in.
I will suffer no guilt for reminiscing with others about our shared history.
I have read each page of the thread and have seen no posters make light of how much importance brothers and sisters out in the congregations placed upon Bethel and how that did affect the lives of millions. It is certainly disgusting that the WTS directs individuals lives to such a high degree. But, that doesn't preclude those who have escaped the machine from reliving shared experiences.
The simple fact is these things happened, and by retelling these true tales the mystique that Bethel is a spiritually magical place can be exposed as a falsehood.
For any of us who grew up with Witness parents who thought beating the crap out of us was scripturally acceptable or who cajoled us into joining the school at very young ages and guilted us into being different at school over the holiday issues and used our family vacations to visit bethel and work where the need was greater and used any available extra money to grease the palms of bethel heavies this thread can be as liberating as it can be enlightening and frightening.
I guess I also am mystifed by the anger by our two posters. Even the Treblinka survivors enjoy talking about the time spent together in the camps. It's cathartic, that's all. We escaped from the evil empire and now we enjoy discussing our shared experiences and contacts amongst ourselves. I think the anger is misplaced and misdirected personally.
