by Band on the Run 50 Replies latest jw friends
Jim_tx .........
{You may be thinking that I was into some really bad stuff. You would be wrong. I wasn't smoking or drinking or doing drugs... or anything else that we were taught to be soooooo bad. I was just... I dunno... weary, perhaps?}
Jim that is just so SAAADDD.
How many lives have been ruined by this cult's indoctrination!
Fyi .... I think you are the sweetest person and would never think bad things about you! (mrsjim ... noI'mnotflirting)
clarity
No, I always felt not good enough. I hoped that I would be able to "walk on through" to the New System and plead my case and hopefully Jehovah would take pity on me.
Sure I did...... Well, you have gotta be positive !
I got to see a lot of stuff in the congo and I figured that "we"were all human with shortcomings so why not me as well . Judging by some of the comments above, it seems I had more positive influences growing up and I was not made to fear failure ("We all have to rely on God's mercy", not merit)
I could really see the reward in my mind's eye...the English rural idyll, driving a horse-drawn cart down a country lane, in the sunshine of course , greeting everybody as a "bro"....(kind of like Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings films) ..
O K I know that sounds silly but that is what we were taught to believe in, as a reality. Also I wanted to believe that nobody would be oppressed or hungry anymore.
Why was I not more concerned about the billions who would be killed? I don't know. Every now and then I would wonder and worry, and that aspect and my indifference horrifies me now....but we just had to "leave it in God's hands". May be that is a psychological insight into why seemingly ordinary people can be induced to carry out or at least tacitly support terrible acts if they believe that it is for the greater good?
I would not claim to be an expert in these matters . I just knew that if Jehovah said it was right, then it must be OK........
I assumed that I wouldn't live long enough to survive Armageddon,
because it had been inculcated in me from my youth
that I would die (horribly) during the Great Tribulation.
(Uplifting thought, that. "Good night, children. Sleep well..." )
I felt that I would live through Armageddon into the paradise. I was good most of my life, even before I was a jw. So I felt that God was to reward me with something for my faithfulness.
I wasn't really sure. I figured that those return visits I never went back on, or those movies I just loved watching that had violence or one scene of immorality in them, or those video games where they used magic, or that music where the woman talks about immorality, would all come back to get me. And that's to say nothing of the masturbation and so on...
On the other hand, I wondered what there really was to look forward to, as a young adult. I figured, maybe I'd have to bury the bones of the woman I loved and know that God killed her and spared me so I could live forever with that image seared into my mind. Or worse, have him erase it all to ensure that I'd feel "better". And then...how many more millions would die once Satan was released? I'd have to spend a thousand years thinking about that, wondering if after everything, I'd somehow fail, or they'd dig up an old copy of 'Star Wars' and put it in a theater as part of the final test, and then I'd be fried by God for going to see it.
So it was up in the air for me, but I figured, at least until I lost my virginity, that I had a pretty fair shot at it. Or at least, that if the great tribulation was going to be as horrible as they always said, that I'd be nuked or otherwise killed well before Armageddon anyway.
Hence, I didn't bother dwelling on it. I figured we would know once it started and that all we could do was deal with the challenges of the present and not worry about it.
--sd-7
No. Never felt I did enough. Never knew if my salvation was guaranteed.
NO....I often likened myself to the parable of the two sons....A man had two sons, and he came to the first, and said, 'Son, go work today in my vineyard.' He answered, 'I will not,' but afterward he changed his mind, and went. He came to the second, and said the same thing. He answered, 'I go, sir,' but he didn't go. Which of the two did the will of his father?"
For the decade I pioneered I ways always short on my time. I felt like I had promised Jehovah something I could not deliver and He would have to destroy me.
I remember, even before I was a teenager, thinking that I would never make it through Armageddon; or if I did, that I would fail the second test at the end of the thousand years- and all my family would be happily playing in paradise, but I would be gone and forgotten forever. Somehow Watchtower teachings must have connected with the dynamics of my dysfunctional family and produced these feelings of doom and despair in my mind that gradually lessened, but never went away completely: so I never got baptised; there seemed no point, as I couldn’t ever be ‘good’ enough. Strange how there is residual anger is still just under the surface 30 years later…
Yep. I did think that I would make it. I may have done occassional "wrong" but overall thought my effort was good enough to get me through.
