MINE was all of the ABOVE !!! BTW HAPPY VALENTINES DAY (Oh my gosh how unthecratic of me) ((((HUGS))))
What was the JW breaking point 4 U?
by ashitaka 61 Replies latest jw friends
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bigfloppydog
I began to see how double-standards works in JW families, control was another. Then when I started to think for myself, and speaking my mind that was not accepted, and family turned on me, I mean isn't everyone entitled to their own opinion, apparently not when it came to me, but seem to work for everyone else. Oh and one big one would be when I went out in service one day and was totally embarassed by someone, because I was shy and too stupid to keep my mouth shut. When the PO embarassed me, I no longer wanted to go out in service, just wanted to go home. What happened was totally uncalled for and if this person had any maturity at all he would have known better than to say what he did say. That was the start of my fading away from truth. Now I don't have to deal with arrogant people like him.
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FreeFallin
A lot of events and thoughts that I had pushed to the back of my mind until one day I knew I couldn't do it anymore. Being embarrassed by the Society always blowing their own horn, seeing that it was just a numbers game-no one really interested is us, just our field service reports.
Last Public Talk - 1994 when a young snot of a brother gave a talk and used as an example a worldly person we had both worked for. Here was a woman, up in years, good education, beautiful home, and an active lifestyle that I couldn't have kept up with, even tho I was 25 years younger than her. He painted her as a lonely, pathetic old woman, wasting time on a hobby that was of no benefit.(There are specific details about her life that he used so I know it was her.) My face was burning, my heart pounded hard as I heard his talk. I felt ashamed,sick, sorry and embarrased for all of us.
Last Memorial-Three years ago when a brother walked up to my husband and snidely said. "OH, you decided to make it." The tone in his voice was unmistakable.(The same brother who committed fornication with my girlfriend.)
Last Shepherding call - 1994 or 95. Total bull in a china shop routine. Makes me sick to even think of it.
Getting on the internet in 98 and reading freeminds and others. Coming here and learning about the change in 1995, sheep and goats, and generation of 1914.
Sorry to go on for long, but this has been really bugging me.
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LB
Wow, my reasons for leaving seem to lame compared to many of you.
It was a simple thing that got me started. A man was appointed as a MS that was a horrible man. I followed procedure and brought two witnesses with me to meet with the PO. They were respected members of the congregation.
Before long this man was giving parts and gaining more and more responsibilities in the congregation. I knew at that point things were bullshit.
Leaving became easy.
My wife left only because of the manner in which the regular pioneer sisters were gossiping about ME. Again if you are in the elders favor, anything goes.
Never Squat With Yer Spurs On -
berten
For me it was actually boredom that made me break with
the JW's.But at 22 and still living at home,I was too
afraid to say this openly.
So I went through the motions and pretented to be at
the meetings while I really was playing videogames at a
local arcade.Just before the meeting ended I sneaked back in
just in time to hear the closing song and prayer.
Of course this *had* to come out,so my family said if I
really was that disinterested I could as well stay away.
And I did,I have never attended one meeting again after
that.This happened 20 years ago... -
SYN
There were a whole sh*tload of different reasons why I left - I guess you could call it the flowering of reason, I guess. It was at that point in time when I was just starting to learn how to write really decent code, and I had virtually no spare time anymore, in between high school, the meetings, Feeled Disservice, and programming, so something had to go...
All along, since I had turned 13, I had always wanted to do things that all the other normal kids did. That, and I was constantly shunned by all the 'cool' JW kids, so I figured, screw you people, I'm leaving.
The coolest thing was that during my Judicial Meeting (or whatever you want to call it - I sure felt like I was being judged ), the elders asked me to write them a letter of Disassociation. They forced me to do this while they waited, and I can tell you this, my folks were sitting there too, and I was SWEATING! These two powerful old men, who back then still had a complete grip over my mom and dad, were watching me like eagles. I nearly burst into tears.
To this day I still laugh about what I did after that though. Towards the end of the meeting there was so much venom running through my brain from the unjust way I was being treated (and had been treated for the past years of my life), that I casually mentioned that I had spoken to other JW teenagers in our Hall, and I said that they had told me all sorts of naughty things which they had done.
The eager look on those Elders' faces was the best indication I ever had that if there was a God, this sure as HELL was not his organization. They looked like kids about to get fed candy, honestly. My revenge was incredible!
For some years, ever since we moved into a new congregation, I had been generally ignored and mocked by the 'cool' JW kids, never invited to any of their numerous social occasions, nothing like that - needless to say I was as lonely as all hell. Plus back then I looked like crap too, what with not being able to buy the clothes I needed to wear to look like them, pretty bad acne, *horrific* hairstyle, ad infinitum...it was a bad time, and those people treated me like a low-life. I was always nice to them, especially at the school which they and I both attended, but in return I was just shunned.
So when those elders asked what I knew about those kids, I started making up all sorts of nonsense, and they fell for it, hook, line, and SINKER. I concocted all sorts of drivel about how immoral those kids had been, that they smoked dope, anything I could think of, and the elder d00ds wrote it all down. Idiots.
Followup: About two weeks later one of the 'cool' JW kids came running up to me at school (it was a girl, probably the worst of the lot, and the one I had flamed the best in the Judicial Meeting), and slapped me squarely across the face, screaming at me! She was SOOO pissed!
Strike Three! OUT!
The earlier in the forenoon you take the sun bath, the greater will be the beneficial effect, because you get more of the ultra-violet rays, which are healing. - The Golden Age
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DIAMOND
The breaking point for me was when the Great Milton Henschel gave a talk at our Convention. This man first of all had to sit down for his entire talk. Then he began to stutter and stammer and lose his place. Start talking about one subject and end up with on another one. I even think he fell asleep once. Right then I said to myself...This man and a few more like him are making life and death descisions for me and my family. NO WAY. The next day I started my journey out.
Even though I am slowly fading that was the starting point for me.
diamond
I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!
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rem
Wow, Prisca - your last straw was almost exactly the same as mine!
I remember conducting the bookstudy out of the Greatest Man book. I could see the similarities between the pharisees and the WBTS. I started doing a lot of outside research and bringing it into the discussions. Those bookstudies were fun! I was also doing research on 607/1914 and the 144,000 among other things and that was it for me. I knew that this religion was a sham.
My first and last public talk was the "You Will Reap What You Sow" outline and I went into how we should not be like the Judiazers who made so many rules. I went into beards, blood trasfusions, voting. I had a couple meetings with the elders afterward because my talk upset a few of them - they thought it sounded apostate. Well that's funny, because many people were telling me and my family that it was one of the best talks they had heard because it was different somehow.
They tried to steal my outline by tricking my wife, but she knew what they were up to. I did finally give them a copy of my outline and they went over it as a body. Good thing I was able to support everything I said with carefully picked WBTS publications! lol
I remember crying myself to sleep one night after reading a chapter of COC that was posted on the net. It was the chapter about 1914 and 607. I just broke down because I knew my faith was based on lies. It all happened pretty quickly for me - probably a matter of a couple weeks at most. That was about three years ago now.
rem
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." - Mark Twain
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25ashitaka25
I made the same pharisee paralells. Understand that one completly.
I just stopped attending bookstudies five years ago.
Regular meeting, two years ago.
Just mounds of bullshit, so much you can barely see over it. I got tired of the smooth hypocrisies myself; putting your viewsin a public talk was pretty cool, though. Ill bet it got a bunch of people thinking.
You have to free their minds first before laying the heavier stuff on them.
ashi
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DB
I have read this thread with great interest. I am still active (I was just out in service yesterday...yippie for me!). Anyway, while I am still in, my heart and mind are pretty much out.
Almost all of the comments made above hit home. Prisca made an excellent observation about the scribes and pharisees in modern-day form. I have always felt that the application was not really fulfilled in Christendom, but rather in congregations of jws.
Then there was the generation thing in 1995. For years prior, I had checked almost every issue of the Awake, looking at the masthead and waiting for their "before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away" change or get deleted, and sure enough, it happened. The article that explained the change did not convince at all, and their blaming "some of Jehovah's people" for speculating about certain dates angered me, since it was the FDS that fostered such speculation. I remember sitting at that WT study, thinking, hey, I never came to such conclusions on my own, this what I was TAUGHT to believe. We were TAUGHT to expect the end within a certain time-frame; we did not make it up on our own, and yet that is what was being implied.
There were many other factors responsible for my heart and mind not really being "in" the organization, there are too many to mention here.
Oh, berten, I like your idea of slipping out to the local arcade, LOL! There is a Dunkin Donuts not far from my KH, and I have been thinking of slipping out to enjoy a snack and some coffee during the meetings. During circuit assemblies, I have been known to leave and snack in the car for awhile. I also used to go driving around during the sessions with another brother when I was a teenager. I guess old habits never die, LOL.