by RULES & REGULATIONS 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
lots.. lots.. the dress code one of them. no beards, heck jesus and all the men back then had beards. no goatie. not even a little thingamajig (forget what they're called) under the lip. no piercings. all because it's "the image of this world", but yo if someone has a neatly kept beard for instance, i'm not gonna think he's a murdering motorcylce gang person. geez
A0
I think for some of us, it was the collection of little things that had no scriptural backing - ( field service reports, no beards), for others it was the huge gaping holes in their doctrinal teachings, or maybe even a combination both.. It just seems like once that can of worms opens, the questions in the back of your head never go away and depending on how good you are at suppressing them, the average person will desire to seek out the 'real truth'
To use a popular movie quote, some people just 'can't handle the truth', so they sweep all of their doubts under the rug in their mind, and just keep going along with the whole program.
Great thread.
A Christian - very succinct, thoughtful post - as others have said - sad though.
However did we believe it all. Indeed.
In the Witness world we are taught that any legitimate concerns we have will be dealt with in God's due time. As for all the other concerns, we are taught that, if we doubt, we must be spiritually weak. The answer is: more meetings, more field service, more personal study (but only of the organization's publications). And because we are also taught that to critisize the organization or it's teachings is apostacy, we keep quiet about our doubts. We file them away in our minds, in a locked drawer (perhaps behind a door marked "Beware of the Leopard.")
And so we feel very isolated. Very alone with this sick feeling in our stomachs that all is not well.
For myself, I finally clicked on a link to this website and discovered that I wasn't alone. It made me feel better and worse at the same time. Better, because my doubts (which I had revealed to my family) had been explained away as being the result of my being depressed (read "crazy"), and now I could see that a lot of other people felt the same way. And worse, because my worst fears were realized.
Cate
Here!Here!
