My cousin tried to help when I was just a study. He tried to give me some printed material he found online about the JWs, but of course I fell gullible to the Satanic persecution rhetoric and declined. If only I knew then what I know now......
Before you learned the real truth about "The Truth", did anyone try to help you get out of JWs?
by JimmyPage 23 Replies latest jw friends
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pirata
Once in field service, the householder accepted the magazines, then put them in the garbage can beside the door. We said "What are you doing?". He said "You don't need those. You only need the Bible. Don't be misled by men.". I don't remember much more than that, but it has always stuck in my memory.
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Quillsky
Yes.
It helped that it was a work colleague, so not someone I knew in a religious or family or door-to-door context. When he discovered I was a JW he revealed that he happened to know a lot about Jehovah's Witness beliefs, including some things that I didn't then know or grasp, through no particular interest on his part but because he was someone who knew a lot about a lot of things.
We never debated hard-core doctrine. The best way to describe our discussions at work is that he was gently mocking of the general beliefs, but in an intellectually honest and worldly-wise way.
So I invited him to attend a meeting, since he was sort of an "interested one". He good-naturedly agreed. After the meeting some young brothers and sisters were planning on meeting up at a restaurant for a meal and invited me, but one ministerial servant explicitly said that my "worldly friend" was not welcome to join us. It was extremely embarrassing to try to explain this to my colleague. I would say that over the few months of these small touch-points my eyes began to open.
An interesting post-script is that many years after this happened, the judgmental MS, who had since left the organization himself, ran into my former colleague socially and apologized to him for saying he was not welcome to join us at the restaurant after the meeting all those years ago.
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BabaYaga
Great question, Jimmy.
My answer is no. Outsiders (oh, oops, I meant "worldly associations") were always very respectful of my "beliefs" and no one who knew anything about the Witnesses (even someone I worked with who had been a Witness at one time) ever said a disparaging word.
All is well. I trusted my own mind and heart... which is the best way to go.
I am finding this thread incredibly interesting... with most folks saying they would have distrusted anyone nay-saying anyway.