Sag, there are numerous places on line with the bible. Google "kj version" for an example. If you want the new world translation, that's available on the official dub site.
Relationship Rescue (or how Dr. Phil got me out)
by Gladring 18 Replies latest jw friends
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Gladring
To give some kind of time frame to this it all started over a year ago.
Ok, so at this stage I was going to some Sunday meetings but wasn't out in field service at all. I was still technically an M.S. but eyebrows were being raised and people talking. Some of the elders tried to put me under pressure to make a decision to step down but I told them that I was not going to make a rash decision.
Around this time I was chatting with an old friend of mine on the phone. He had left the org about 7 years ago but he was never baptized so I kept occasional contact with him. We used to be best friends but I'd kept him at a bit of a distance when he left. He had been reading The God Delusion and had some puzzles for me. "Have you read the account of Jephtha's daughter?" he asked me, "Jephtha offered his daughter as a burnt offering to God".
"No. That can't be right." I replied "She went to serve at the temple".
"That's what I thought" he said, "but I checked it out. It says 'he did as he had vowed'"
I told him that I'd check it out for myself. I got quite a surprise. It turns out he was right. The Jews even have an annual festival where they remember the sacrifice that Jephtha's daughter made. Where had I got this idea from? My Book of Bible Stories. The book says that she served in the temple. The best we can say is that we don't actually know what happened to her, but we have faith that God didn't accept human sacrifice. Why make stuff up? Why lie to children? I felt annoyed that the misrepresentation that had been slipped into my brain whilst I was young had left me ill prepared to offer a defense for the bible to someone who was more knowledgable. Imagine if this had happened on the field service.
My friend also related some of the discrepancies between the gospel writers, especially the problem of the dating of the census of Quirinius mentioned in Luke 4. So I looked into these. Unsatisfied with the non-answers given in the society's publications, I researched for myself on the internet. I could start to see that all was not as I had been taught.
At this stage I still had respect for the Bible but was starting to understand that the literal reading of it that the Witnesses adhere to could not be maintained.
Last October I attended a one day assembly. It was becoming harder and harder to listen to the material and not crack up. I took notes of things to look up later. I was listening to the baptism talk, a talk I must have heard hundreds of times in my life as a witness. It was all new to me. What stood out like a sore thumb was the second question asked of the baptism candidates. " Do you understand that your dedication and baptism identify you as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses in association with God’s spirit-directed organization?" Where in the bible did it say that? I always thought that baptism was about you and god and a symbol of dedication to him. Where does the org. fit in to this?
On the way home in the car my wife was driving and we were talking about the assembly. I started talking about the problem I had with the baptism questions. We were talking about all kinds of things. I'd heard the idea that when parents are not getting on that the kids find a way of blaming themselves. I'd been playing with this idea in my mind for a while. My parents were both married before and I was born in to a family of half siblings. There was always tension and fighting but I was too young to understand. All of my half brothers and sisters rejected "the truth" and when I was 9 my parents and I moved to"where the need is greater" leaving family behind. I started to talk as the thought was forming "I wonder if ..." and I crumpled in a heap. I had an emotional reaction that was like being hit by a steam train. Years of repressed memories and feelings came flooding back. As a child I had seen the pain felt by my parents when my siblings rejected the WT. Maybe if I was a witness everything would be ok. The emotional reaction was so strong I know this is how it happened but I had somehow convinced myself that I freely chose to get baptized. This was a key moment for me.
More issues sprang from the assembly, I'll try and post info on that later.
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sass_my_frass
Hi and welcome! I'm glad you had a scales-falling-from-the-eyes moment, you'll find that you have many of them. I have tried for ages to pin down what it was for me and I just keep getting so many.
One of them was thinking of all the times OT god killed children just because he was spiteful and petty. The Israelite wars, the kids who were killed for teasing the smelly old prophet, the kid who was killed for touching the ark of the covenant when he was actually trying to stop it from falling over. They're all fables, I know that now, but it made me wonder how loving this guy really is anyway.
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troubled mind
Dr. Phil might be waking up more JW's than he will ever know .
The book he wrote "Self Matters " is what finally opened my eyes and gave me the strength to question my JW upbringing . That book helped me realize the feeling I had of never being good enough was not authentic but something I learned because of witness opinion and assumptions .
Here is a key point in the book that I will never forget :
Just because you have believed something for a long time or have convinced yourself that you just are a certain way doesn't even almost make it true . You have to be willing to challenge virtually every single thing you have ever believed about yourself .
***** second profound statement is this :
REMEBER A LIE UNCHALLENGED BECOMES TRUTH .YOU 'VE EITHER BEEN TOLD ,OR TOLD YOURSELF, SOME OF THIS CRAP FOR SO LONG YOU JUST AUTOMATICALLY BELIEVE IT. That would never happen if you required yourself to deal only with the facts .
Seriously read this book .....I am sure it won't be long and the WTBS will be saying how bad Dr Phil is and true witnesses would never read his material for advice .
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Gladring
LOL :) I just started reading Self Matters yesterday.
For me a major theme of his is honesty, especially with yourself. Having seen how this related to my own life when I saw through the WT dishonesty I just couldn't act like nothing was wrong.
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Blasty
Some interesting things you brought up here Gladring. I'm of the mindset to question everything, and seeing what you've written here has generated some new questions for me. Thanks.
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Gladring
Ok, so after the assembly I trawled through the WTcdrom and traced all the changes to the baptism questions over the years. I thought Russell's questions were actually quite nice and that the changes to the questions in the 80s were a legal thing.
Another thing that happened during the assembly was that, whilst bored during the sessions, I decided to start reading the bible all the way through starting with Genesis. I didn't get very far. I got stuck in Gen 1. Verses 6-8 describe God creating the expanse and calling it heaven. Later, in verse 17, it describes God putting the Sun and moon in the expanse. This made no sense to me. The WT view of the world then meant that God put the sun and the moon somewhere inbetween the earth and the water canopy where the flood waters came from! I could not believe this. It was one of many moments that I've had since when I realised that I didn't know the bible as well as I thought. You know I must have read that passage so many times and not seen this. Anyway, after poring over the cdrom again, I wrote a letter to Brooklyn with that simple question. After about 3 months of checking the post every day they eventually sent a letter not to me but to the PO telling the cong. to answer instead. In the meantime tho' I had sent another letter.
After talking to my old friend I had decided I'd better check out The God Delusion for myself. I found it very interesting and enjoyed challenging some long held beliefs. Around November last year I decided to pick up the IsThere a Creator who Cares About You book. Some of the quotes in the book stood out because Dawkins quotes the same scientists in The God Delusion. The quotes just didn't sound right. Using Google and the Amazon reader I tracked down as many of the quotes from the book by myself. I was getting really angry at this point as I felt let down and betrayed. As luck would have it, this happened the week the CO came to town. He wanted to come and see me to ask how I was doing. I confronted him with the information that I had found up to this point. He had no answers and hid behind "I'm not a scientist so I can't comment but I'm sure the brothers have an explanation". He encouraged me to write to Brooklyn with my concerns. So I started to research for my letter. It turned out to be quite long but I realised I had to draw the line somewhere. The more I found out the more I realised the project could consume my whole life so I stopped after a week and sent my letter. It took them over 6 months to come up with a lame "an awareness of our limitations can help us to stay humble" excuse for a reply.
I had had this feeling that the religion was messed up from the day I started reading Relationship Rescue but when I found the distorted quoting practices I had proof. I knew that they were wrong and did not represent God. Now though I felt free to explore my beliefs and thoughts without viewing things through the WT filters. I suppose that Dr. Phil opened my mind but the dishonest quotes sealed the deal.
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Gladring
If you look in to the story of Jephtha in other translations and the original hebrew the daughters of Israel go and "lament" Jephtha's daughter annually. The word also has the sense that they would remember her. The Jews still carry this tradition today.
As far as the Genesis story goes none of it makes any sense to me any more but at the time I was arguing within the JW belief set and the bible itself. Chronologically or not it is impossible that God put the sun in the expanse (atmosphere). It became clear as I researched this for myself that the Genesis writer viewed the expanse or firmament as a dome and the JW view was untenable.
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MissingLink
It makes no sense for the jewish girls to mourn Jeptha's daughter in rememberance every year just because she went to serve in the temple. This would have been an honour. She would not have been the only one to do this. No, her sacrifice was "special". The story is clearly that she was a burnt offering.