How honest should I be with a JW on Facebook?

by Quillsky 27 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  LongHairGal

  I am a fader and have some F.B. 'friends' who are out of the religion as well as others who never got baptized. What would happen if an active JW 'friend' goes nosing through my friends list? ? I would have no tolerance whatsoever for any calls or visits from the spiritual police. Ten years of fading has given me a zero tolerance for intrusiveness or attempts at control by these deluded people.

  Besides, I cannot even be myself with active JWs so why friend them? Even if you set controls what happens when F.B. again changes their privacy settings and 'outs' everybody? They did this recently.
• 

  Terry

  The "Evil" of the Watchtower Society is that it destroys a person's right to reality.

  In our dealings (and yours specifically) with any active JW we cannot deny them their right to reality either.

  Rational decisions can only be made when we know what is true and what isn't true which means we have

  to have clear and uncorrupted information about our options.

  False religious teachings give us a map to a world that does not and cannot exist while, at the same time, destroying our map to

  the real world we are living in.

  If we lose our vocabulary for describing the real world and lose our map of reality we are stuck in a limbo world of imagination in which the voice of but a single authority becomes our guide. And a guidedog is only for the blind.

  It would not be a good idea to be less than one hundred per cent honest with any friend or acuaintance about who you are or your status as an Ex-JW.

  Remember, medicine is often bitter and can even make you sicker.....for awhile...

  If any of us is to be a "medicine" for others still in the Organization we have to be GENUINE as a confidante, friend, advisor and provider of information.

  It is best to avoid pure polemics.

  It the truth can set us free from "THE TRUTH" it can only be because reality is better than fantasy and a genuine life is superior to a dreamworld.
• 

  mrsjones5

  "severely limit the number of JW's you have on your Facebook - only close family and people that you share close history with."

  That's what I'm doing on FB right now, it seems to be working out. Thankfully I have a good mix of jw and nonjw family members who are all linked as friends. I think the mix helps keeps the jw rhetoric down to a minimun.
• 

  MissingLink

  The truth will set you free. Asking "how honest should I be" should be a red flag.
• 

  av8orntexas

  Accept her. If she starts to preach to you, or get all preachy on your wall with comments, simply defriend her. I have several dubs on my facebook page. I probably only speak to one regularly. He is a former bethelite, now married to a non-JW. The other, also an former bethelite, was always very open-minded. He has his four-year degree and like the first guy, makes no mention of being a JW.

  The guy with the four-year degree, I'm not surprised went off to college. He was always smart, and when we pioneered, it was obvious that the whole JW scheme of things was not that 'crucial' with him.

  But yes.......I limit my contact on there with UBER Dubs...you know..the ones who need to post EVERY day whether they're in service, when they're studying for the meeting, how GREAT the meeting was that day/night. Uuugh. What happened to that scripture about praying publicly and making a big scene ? Am I the only person who gets sick of that on FB ??

  Accept her,but you can always de-friend her or set what you want her to see and do regarding your profile.
• 

  cantleave

  I have got rid of my my JW facebook friends and made my profile unsearchable.
• 

  ana_dote

  I did the same thing as cantleave...

  chances are, if she's a "good" witness....simply telling her that you are "no longer a witness" (without any explanation, as that is neither necessary nor her business....altho I guess i'm just assuming you were a JW, I could be wrong since I don't know you) should put her off from even WANTING to friend you....at which point, you can ignore her friend request and the situation SHOULD fade/drop. If she persists in wanting to be friends despite this, then I would perhaps suggest saying something along the lines of what was already mentioned...that you usually just keep very close friends and limited contacts on your page and that you mean no offense, but since you two aren't close anymore you'd prefer not to add her. You could also mention not wanting to offend her if you felt like being uber nice.....catering to her "conscience".

  Just my two cents :-) I like to keep peace and make things as smooth appearing as possible so that people can see that non-jw's aren't mean, evil people like they're made out to be. Plus, if you "kill them with kindness" they would feel less inclined to speak nasty of you to others....HA! who knows, maybe because of your kindess they'll be "won without a word" HAHAHAHAHA!
• 

  Quillsky

  Yes, I'm a former JW, technically baptized and never DF'ed....... so far a 100% successful fader. I can sense she's probably an in-forever type - but at the back of my mind is the thought that what if she were one of those Witnesses that just needs a prompt to know that it's okay to stop believing the crap, you know?

  Then I think, why do I care so much? I like the idea of "killing with kindness", but that would mean I have to bring up my status as a definite non-JW. Should I even risk having her make trouble for me? She comes from an old-school (Bethelites/ pioneers/ elders) JW family that has, in a minor way when I was still "in", made trouble for me before on one of those cultish unwritten rules. Not her fault, but it's where she comes from.

  I made the mistake, I think, of engaging in a catch-up conversation. Also, she and a close JW relative of mine are now FB friends, so she will be seeing my name around (wall comments and so on) so it will be pretty obvious that I haven't added her. But I think that's the way I'm going to play it.

  (Just to be clear, I don't severely limit the number of people I have on FB, I have hundreds of friends/ colleagues/ relatives/ schoolfriends/ acquaintances - I just limit the number of JW's I have on Facebook.)

  I'll send her one last friendly message so as not to be rude, and then drop it, and hope she does too.
• 

  ziddina

  Sounds like a good decision, Quillsky...
• 

  ana_dote

  That sounds like a good idea.

  I totally understand about not wanting to open yourself up to potential annoyances/trouble because of bringing up the non-JW status. It IS a bold move, so not everybody wants to go that route.

  Honestly, facebook can be such a fickle thing that I have a good feeling that her interest in you will wane. She probably was just excited to find your name among some contacts. Once your communicating becomes next to nothing, she'll probably get too lazy to keep in touch. Shoot, I had JW friends on my facebook for a little while after I decided to fade/leave who were supposed to be actual good friends of mine and they NEVER talked to me on facebook lolol I can only imagine how little you probably have to worry over with this chick.

  I hope it all works out for you tho :-)

  And I think the majority of us faders with facebook have gone through the period of deleting all our JW friends lol I actually even deleted both of my sisters! HA!