Hey i joined this thread recently and thought this was a good way to introduce myself. I am 15, still going to school and I live in the uk. A good chunk of my mum's side of the family are jws. My dad isnt religious and loves to get into biblical debates with my mum.
Currently, I am still attending the meetings. This is purely because as my mum puts it "[i am] too young to make [your] own decisions and until you are an adult I am responsible for your spirituality." She knows I dont want to be a jw anymore, a few brothers and sisters in my kh know I have doubts (my mum didnt want to attract too much attention) but to everyone else I'm getting along just fine in the "truth". I don't have to go on the ministry anymore though because my mum agrees there's no point me spending an hour every week trying to teach people about stuff I don't believe in.
I've been going to the meetings for a few years. I can't put an exact number on it but it was when I was 7. (I remember because my last Christmas present was a ps2).
when I first started going I never really paid attention in the meetings and my grandma studied the my book of bible stories with me. I was always encouraged to answer up in the meetings but after the first couple of times I still found it boring.
at school life wasn't really that much different for me except I had to memorise the reasons I didn't celebrate Christmas or birthdays anymore.
It wasnt until I started going on the ministry that I realised how boring it was. I can honestly say that I've never enjoyed the ministry. Ever. My field service group was small and everyone was elderly and all had the idea that on a Saturday morning, school is the best conversation topic ever. Still i thought that if I wanted that pet penguin after ammERgeddon (that's my bristolian accent for any other English people reading this) that I should just stick it out.
While all this was going on I was always being encouraged to set spiritual goals for myself. I usually just made some up on the spot to keep people happy. Still haven't become an unbaptised publisher after I set that goal back in 2011. I don't think there's any point denying that I'm lazy as fudge. This is what probably kept me from questioning anything for such a long time as well as fear of any "evil apostates". It was really a matter of memorising those answers in the reasoning/young people ask book I'm case anyone at school asked me anything.
After I turned 14 I started questioning stuff I read in the publications. things like women being submissive and whether or not being gay really mattered to god. One big one though that really made me think was the story of Noah's ark. After doing some research through the publications and stumbling onto jwfacts I came to the conclusion that it couldn't have happened. When I first went onto jwfacts I tried to covnince myself that I wouldn't read anything that I deemed "not based on facts". Meaning anything I thought was just hate speech about jws I wouldn't read. But like every cheesy ass cartoon will tell you, "learning is fun" and I couldn't help but read everything I could find on the site.
By August of last year I finally told my mum that I didn't believe i what jws teach. she still thought I should come to the meetings because if I didn't go anymore, I could miss the answer to one of my questions. We then wrote all of my doubts down into bullet points. I think there were about 6/7 main ones. The first one being Noah's ark. We originally planned to go through each one but we got stuck on proving Noah's ark is real and I guess we still are there now. my mum invited a brother who she thought knew enough about science and stuff to help me came over and together they tried to convince me I was wrong. A couple weeks before the arranged date he gave me some material he thought would help me make my decision. Unfortunately for him, I had read all of it before and i wasn't really affected by it.
Well that's why I thought he was coming. Apparently my mum gave the brother the idea I wanted a study of some sort and he came over ready to study 'The Origin Of Life' book (which I already looked over before telling my mum i wanted to leave anyway). We debated for a a couple of hours with no change in opinion. Since then I haven't had an actual discussion with him but he always gives me the old smile, handshake and "nice to see you" at the kh.
More recently, 2 weeks ago when I discovered I have a bible reading in April coming up, my mum suggested that if I really didn't want to do it I could always ask to come off the ministry school. I spoke to the head/chair guy and he wants to have a proper discussion at another time. I've been waiting since then but he's always been giving talks away or busy. Hopefully I can talk to him tomorrow and leave once and for all.
if I were to put my beliefs on a scale of 0-10 (with 0 being atheist, 10 theist and 5 agnostic) I'd say i was about a 2/3.
anyone know if it's too late to put this in the experiences category?
...OUTLAW