by stillin 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
You can't deny it. Look at them. Smiling and brimming with good cheer. Is it sort of like the person who buys a lemon of a car and won't admit it? Or more likely, they actually do get some joy out of their beliefs, even if they are mistaken. I refuse to allow myself to get all long-in-the-face at the meetings just because their joy isn't my joy.
Sorry, just venting
It's a smug fear based sort of joy. My mother is so joyful the result is bouts of depression medicated by prescription drugs.
That's some joy alright.
Absolutely no one would have guessed I was depressed to the point of thinking about suicide every waking minute. Most people said they wanted to have a marriage as happy as our was - he was abusing me.
Appearances are worthless when you have to hide even from yourself
Yea, They think they walk as " Wise persons "
Until they are forced to answer things about their own religion they can't answer
Josie you nailed it on the head!
I've had many an "aha moment" with Jehovahs happy people when I found out a few things about certain elders and families, and these were the families that are held up as an example to the congregation !
What's the saying? "Ignorance is bliss". That's JW's in a nutshell.
I was happy at times as a JW. But it was surface-level stuff. Thought I had lots of friends, I was part of something bigger, unified with lots of people who are fairly decent folks.
But underneath I was stressed as hell, I wasn't taking care of myself, and I wouldn't say no to the elders as they pressured me into more and more unpaid labor. That resentment was like a slow boil underneath it all. I think that is how it is for a lot of folks in there. They just can't figure it out as to why they aren't really happy in their religion, but they are bombarded with all of the propoganda that they are happy, that they are serving Jehovah, that there is no where else to go.
It takes either a shot of courage, or a bad experience at the hands of another JW, preferably and elder. A WTF moment can help them stop for a few seconds and say "This shit isn't right, and I'm not going to sweep it under the rug"
The literature can do this too, and the nu light stuff. But they have to be paying attention, and we all know that JWs don't pay much attention to their own doctrine.
I do agree with Hassan though, if they are truly happy in the cult, there really isn't going to be anything that we can say or do to help them see the light.
They are constantly ill if my JW family are anything to go by. Sick people are not contented people! By contrast I last visited my doctor a year ago.
Especially at the KH people put on a happy face...after all you have the TRUTH. I did a sleepover at a fellow sister's house, both parents jws, pillars of the congregation, looked down their nose at people like me with a non-jw father. But the daughter had decided I was her good deed. Dad was out of town on a job so it was just her and her mom. The next am I heard screaming (just like home) and looked out and here was the perfect jw couple saying words to each other that were "inappropriate." Then the father saw me and quickly shut up and pretended nothing had happened.
There are many unhappy people in the WTS thinking that they themselves are the flawed ones and thinking all the others are so "good." What goes on behind closed doors is shocking.
Happy... while deep down feeling guilty, unworthy, wondering if they will survive Armageddon, and on an endless treadmill of works.
