by ashitaka 61 Replies latest jw friends
For me it was the Miracle Wheat scandal that Pastor Russell was involved in. I told him repeatedly that the bread tasted worse than the bread from the market. I think all he saw were the dollar signs.
"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son." Dean Vernon Wormer, Faber College
DB... interesting post! How in the world, though, can you still sit through those meetings, and EVEN go out in service, if you know what's up? It would make me crazy! I gotta hand it to you... I'm having a hard time biting my tongue with my friends and family... and I don't even really attend anymore!!! Jbean
Well for me it was..........
the way they treated me personally. It's a long story. One day I'll post it. They gave me a deadline to meet with them, or else!!!! Having all disregard for my personal situation. It was either complete compliance and control OR nothing. I had always had my doubts, but I was raised in the org. so I was in and out and in and out...bla bla bla....
I would NEVER go back.
When they disfellowshipped my child my eyes lost the blinders. Thank God.
I have a question. Why are the words that are used to kick sombody out of a religion so long? Disfellowshipped; Excommunicated; Disassociated;
Pureheart
-Beer
-Hash
-Hypo Kats
-Embarassment
-Reality
-Chicks(move this one to the top)
Beans
So many of these posts hit home. For me it was not the personalities and the shortcomings of the friends - I'd grown used to that. My decision to leave was intellectual and based on reason and research.
The straw was certainly the generation change. It came in the midst of a period of critical examination of the WTS and its theology, and just seemed a slap up side the head telling me I'd been duped for all those years.
Stopped field service around that time, though I turned in time for a few more years. Stopped attending the bookstudy (the Greatest Man book was also important to my thinking. I saw how different Jesus was from what the WTS and most Witnesses were. But just as important it also showed me that the gospel accounts are really contradictory and not to be trusted as "gospel."). I went to my last TMS when the new school overseer began to counsel the friends by telling them how many times they said "ah" in their talks. Jesus - what drivel.
Now it's been at least three years or more since I attended at all regularly. Did not go to the Memorial for the first time last year. Never plan on going again.
You can add the influence of the Internet in there as well - not so much for what it taught me about the Witness' history, but much more so for the access it gave me to scientific info. When I realized that Genesis was just completely myth and impossible to consider as actual history, I not only moved on from the Witnesses, I also moved on from Christianity and all other religions. They are simply relics of ancient myths, and for the most part doomed to pass away.
S4
The beginning of the end was when things literally did not add up. What shall we have this month utilities OR food. Then add getting blasted with talks about lame sacrifices. The keep them poor, exhausted, in the dark, and guilty, control strategy had its limits.
Reading "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang
The breaking point was the movie Dinosaurs. I felt that no 'loving creator' could have created such violent creatures. That was step one.
#2 was realizing Genesis 1:30 firmly contradicted modern scientific knowledge about the dating of dinosaurs. The existed eons before Gen. 1:30 was written. Gen. 1:30 indicates that all flesh ate green vegetation.
So, i decided to cease meetings until i read books on evolution on my own. My sister, Waiting, also sent me a box of books and printouts re the WTBS. Then also she told me about this place.
The rest fell like a house of cards. That was 11 months ago.
Pat
"It's easier to put on slippers than to carpet the world." (from "Stuart Saves His Family")
The shallowness of the golf-claps after a talk, the obvious gossip about everyone who wasn't in the know,
that 'ah' counsel I remember.
I'm a hell of a public speaker, and people used to say that I didn't smile enough.
I told the person who counseled me that it's inappropriate to smile during a dissertaion on Armageddon.
He said, why not? It's joyous for us, but not the world.
Callousness, that's another reason. Labels-every JW had one.
We could list these all day. I found out that friends were molested, people lied about, elders almost getting into fistfights during back-hall meetings, people getting abortions and hiding it (and getting away with it), just hypocrisy, pure and simple. But for some reason, you end up saying that it's 'just human imperfection.'
Perhaps that's why doctrine was the real last straw for a lot of us.
ashi
