Need encouragement

naazira

friends i need your encouragement to turn my back on the organization. i am feeling sad after telling my conductor that i will be changing to a new congregation. this is so far from the truth. i have bipolar disorder and my illness tells me to stay but the logic says to leave. words of encouragement would be nice. i dont want to be a coward and go crawling back.

Ding

If you tell them you've decided not to become an unbaptized publisher or get baptized they will quickly lose interest in you.

Stay firm and maintain your freedom.

Crazyguy

Jesus is the way the truth and the light, hang in there and read your bible, the truth will set you free and acurate knowledge will gain you life, not JW knowledge. Dont forget to pray for wisdom, holyspirit, blessings and guidence.

ruderedhead

naazira, if you have been researching the wt, you know leaving is the right thing to do. If you have bipolar disorder, staying in is probably a really bad idea. I think it is the brainwashing and guilt doled out at the meetings/assemblies/conventions that is making you hesitate. We have all been there. It takes time. Don't worry about what you told the conductor. It's not like the wt hasn't lied to you, and you are doing what you need, causing the least amount of damage. Keep coming here for encouragement.

Take care of yourself.

whathappened

Dear Friend,

Please get help for your bipolar disorder. You need to focus on your health right now, not getting into a lifetime commitment with a volunteer publishing house disguised as a religion.

I was in this religion the first 56 years of my life and I know what I am talking about. The guilt feelings they will produce in you, making you feel inadequate will do you no good.

I have many friends and relatives who have bi polar and anxiety disorders and they have all improved since leaving Jehovah's Witnesses. The constant stress of meeting and assembly attendance plus getting in time in field service is not good for anyone.

To thine own self be true. God is not going to be mad at you for not joining a cult. Remember that.

snare&racket

"Coward" and "Crawling" are far from the motives that send people back, its LOVE of family and friends, FAITH in what has been said to you and HOPE of what was promised.

That being said, faith is to believe without evidence and once you KNOW contrary evidence exists, that faith is nar impossible to ressurect, it requires much self loathing and self deceit.

Hope is not fixed, it is interchangable. I once hoped to live forever, now I hope to pass my exams! The idea of living forever at the expense of the world being destroyed or the inevitable ceasing of others having the privelage to live, allows me to recognise the selfish folly that hope was that I once held so dear.

Be quite sure with yourself what it means to want to live forever, what the deal is......

The god who promises such things promises them to those that follow his maniacal demand for worship, never to question his right to kill, to demand blood, to exercse his authority via genocide, infanticide, slavery, rape, stoning, racism, sexism, homophobia, intolerance.... etc.

Be very aware of what it all was, that we/you once wanted. When people pray for Armageddon, they are praying for the destruction of everyone around them that dont go to meeting or go on ministry, its a disgusting want. Far more extreme than any muslim extremist, for EVERY JW wants this, even at the expense of dead babes and children. Go take a walk in a city or by a beach or in a park, look everyone in the face and ask whether they deserve to die so that we can have a hut in a prety garden and stroke a tiger. It is disgusting to me now.

Open your bible and try to find the god you imagine in your head, the fatherly bearded one.... you WONT find him in the bible. That god has been sold to you by religion and ironically yourself. As you contemplate the fluffy bearded, hebrew speaking god who pats you on the head as he calls you 'son'... go read how he demanded the death of everything but the virgins of the Mideonites. How he demanded that babes be killed and the bellies of the pregnant were to be slit open. Read about the lake of fire he has prepared for eternal destruction. Who would do that shit?

If that is not enough, BUT is SHOULD be. Read Gen-Revelation I promise you from the bottom of my heart, the god you read about will shock you, offend you and will be VERY foreign to the one you imagine listening to your prayers.

Perhaps get a book on cancer, go read how it works, how it invades and kills tissues and causes organ malfunction, think hard about the mindset that would CREATE such a disease as a punishment for a woman eating some fruit. (of course we can explain the evolution and process of cancer without the need of a god/punishment/sin)

The Watchtower company has never been so easy to leave, because it has NEVER been so easy to be informed. Their dodgy finances, their shadowy legal loopholes, theri cars and mansions, their military companies (Rand Cam) and their lies. I could not in good conscience ever call myself a member of that organisation EVER. It hides paedophiles as well as any other religion, it has the blood of hundreds of thousands from denied medical treatment. It has misinformed with great detriment so many people for so many decades on topics such as rape, vaccines, organ transplant, sexist inequality, child abuse, masturbation, world history, science and development, higher education.

Visit watchtower=quotes.net and look at what they were telling people before you were even born!

The people can't even get god's name right ( a laughable combination of AdOnAi and YHWH = YaHoWah). What are they but a shameful sham! They are laughable amongst scholars. Who joins such a con in 2013? Just the needy, the lost and the vulnerable.... that makes WT nothing but a predator. When was the last time you saw a physicist start studying with the JW's or a doctor, or a historian or a biochemist? It wont happen!

But then there is the prickly issue of LOVE that I have avoided so far. For me I just left and I let my family decide whether they were going to love me or not. I cant make people love me. they cant make me worship someone I dont believe in. Our lives are too short to spend it working for free for a publishing company, JUST because it would upset our family if we didnt.

When you do leave, they wont arrive with books and facts and evidence, hoping to show you the error of your judgment, instead, its just emotional blackmail and punishment via emotional stonewalling, a very childish and telling stance when someone is examining the truth of a matter. All this because of a refusal to now just consider the opinion of 7 men in brooklyn. How dumb that is ! Especially when they admit to no education, being just human and knowingly making mistakes.

Once you leave for good and look back, it is such a huge and obvious con, so much so that it lends towards them believeing it, because it would have to be such an evil and huge con-job for it to all not be true.... but then, they believe the scientologist followers are subject to such a con, the catholics, the protestants, the evangelicals, the buddhists, ths muslims..... BUT not them?

There is much to weigh up and it is a huge decision.

For me, I let the evidence decide for me. That is the best advice I can give.

Spend a year deciding, there is no rush. Read the bible, all of it. Read FIRST what science is and how it works and then what it has to say and of course what history has to say. It makes it very easy to decide when you realise the bible puts the flood at the time Egypt was knocking up pyramids ....doh.... Read all views on the JW's, both good and bad. Then decide.

Dinosaurs make the desicion very easy, neanderthals make it easy, evolving pathogens make it easy, historical sumerian texts make it easy, historical court and newspapers articles RE:WT make it easy, old WT literature make it very easy, current WT literature makes it easy, google makes it easy.....

With enough effort, you dont even have to make a desicion, it becomes obvious.

Snare x

The best of luck, pm me anytime you wish. Bi-Polar is a condition that requires medical management as you know, don't EVER fall for the WT fallicy concerning mental health etc. It is as real as a broken bone. Don't let them blame your leaving on your health, that is an ignorant prejudice born from lack of knowledge and insight. If you feel the pressure of leaving the JW's, which is heavy and hard at the best of times, be sure to ask for extra help from your doc xxxx

Life outsie of WT is amazing, its free, its beautiful. Life starts to makse sense. Humankind is a beautiful and awesome entity itself. The world is becoming a better place by the moment, ignorance and self decepion halts all these perceptions. I am not saying life is easy post JW's, but it is a REAL life.