by OnTheWayOut 44 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
After having come in like a bat outa hell,then after 12 mnths,having 2nd thoughts,the P.O.came round for a shepherding visit,decided I was a lost cause and tried to sell me life insurance.(Honest truth) A few weeks later his brother came round with a softer approach trying to sell me the same thing.I ended up being in for 33 yrs. How thick was I???
smiddy
Sorry to tell you that the life insurance probably had an exclusion so they wouldn't have to pay out if you were destroyed at Armageddon...
On the day of my baptism...a sister who was a friend of the one who studied with me, came up to me and said 'Well...you've been a nightmare for Sister So and So to bring to baptism haven't you? ...' She really meant it nastily and I was so shocked I was speechless....I had been quite proud of myself that I'd questioned everything so thoroughly ...now it was evidently (tm) a slur on my reputation....should have set off running that day...
Loz x
When my mom forced me to stop communicating with my df dad the minute I turned 18, and he was no longer obligated to pay child support to her (aka necessary family bidness).
.... when 11 years ago, a proud grandpa and grandma brought an infant child to the meeting on Sunday only to have 6 out of 7 elder's wives make massive circles around the proud grandmother and infant.... had they judged the child because she was 'illegitimate' or because her mother was 'disfellowshipped'? Or had they judged the proud grandparents because the child was 'illegitimate' or her mother was 'disfellowshipped'?
Doesn't matter why - we should have walked out and never looked back at that moment. Assholes are assholes. My wife [the proud grandmother] left mentally at that moment. So did I... a little. It took another 4 years to 'put it together'.
Jeff
The quiet voice in my head that would say, even as a teenager, while reading WT articles, it sounds like they're guessing here. And the Proclaimers book, the Rutherford transition--I remember saying to myself, gee, this sounds more like a power struggle amongst businessmen than it does a story about the origins of THE Christian congregation.
There were also those talks with the anecdote about the guy who decides to leave the JWs, goes to a bar and gets beaten to death the same night. I always figured, well, obviously not everyone who is not a JW has been beaten to death in a bar, so...isn't there an orderly, rational way to leave this religion if one wanted to? Shouldn't we be happy to stay, not merely afraid to leave?
-sd-7
What should've tipped me off to JWs as a religion:
....the fact that the elder conducting a Q&A discussion always called his own wife Sister so-and-so and called his children Brother or Sister whatever.
....the fact that we called some men elders and yet titles in other religions were considered wrong.
....the fact that every effin' prophecy evidently has a secondary fulfillment in our day. (Oh, wait, that was one of the things that tipped me off.)
What should've really tipped me off if I had the reasoning powers of an adult before hearing it:
.... a talking snake that tricked the first couple to eat a piece of really bad fruit
.... an omniscient god not being able to locate his pet human creations
.... the entire OT and most of the NT (a real time-saver)
I should have known better simply from... the name, "Jehovah's Witnesses". Who were we kidding? None of us "witnessed" anything.
I Should Have Known Better Simply From.....
That we were taught that we could live forever without ever experiencing death.
