Seeds of Doubt.

by donny 26 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  donny

  Seeds of Doubt

  What was it about the JW religion that first gave you serious doubts as to its “truthiness?”

  For me it occurred in late 1984 when we were studying the brochure “The Divine Name That Will Endure Forever” which had been released at the summer convention that year. I had been baptized a year earlier and was still in the “unshakeable faith in the leaders” phase.

  One of the sections talked about the pronunciation of the name and how some complain that it should be “Yahweh”. That issue never did bother me. I always chuckled when someone would argue that there was no “J” in Hebrew and a few minutes later would refer to “Jesus.”

  However what did begin to bother me was the introduction of “Jehovah” in the New Testament. The brochure stated truthfully that there were no known existing manuscripts from the very early church era that contained the name. They all used “Kyrios” which was rendered “Lord” in English.

  The Society insisted that the name was there, however the scribes of the early church allowed the Jewish superstition of avoiding saying the name cloud their thinking and eventually all references to Jehovah were removed from the New Testament.

  This did not sit well with me. How could the most high being, who seemed to place a lot of importance on us knowing his name, allow mere man to erase his personal identity from all early church documents. That just did not make sense.

  Then I began to look at the translations of the New Testament in Hebrew that were cited in the appendix of the New World Translation. Perhaps there was some hope to be found there

  So I went to the library a few weeks later and did some of my own research. I looked up a couple of these Hebrew translations and discovered that these had done just what the translators of the New World Translation had done. They had taken the manuscripts containing “Lord” and rendered it as YHWH.

  However, unlike the NWT, the Hebrew versions were more consistent in their rendering of “Lord.” They used it in passages like Philippians 2:11 so if you translated it back into English it would read “and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is YHWH, to the glory of God the Father. “

  When I asked an elder about this he stated that “Those Hebrew versions were correct in ‘restoring’ Jehovah’s name to the Greek scriptures however they let the prevailing Trinitarian mindsets of the day to cloud their good judgment.”

  This issue caused the first crack in my spiritual armor. I tried to put it to the back of my mind but it would always pop back in from time to time. As the years progressed I began to discover other types of waffling and questionable methods of reasoning as well as outright misrepresenting of others when using their writings for quotes.

  What caused the first cracks in your armor?
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  Oubliette

  Donny: What was it about the JW religion that first gave you serious doubts as to its “truthiness?”

  Great question!

  I'm not sure exactly what was the first thing that got me doubting, but what I remember constantly bothering me was the lack of what I call academic credibility and honesty in the publications.

  WT publications constantly quote "experts" on a variety of subjects without providing references. Frequently they don't even give the name of the so-called "expert" being quoted.

  Even worse is their practice of constantly referring to another WT publication as "proof" of this or that. It always bothered me that there was now way to independently corroborate any foundational teachings outside of their own publications.

  Later, when I learned about their involvement in the UN/NGO scandal in around 2002/3, things quickly started to unravel for me.
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  Phizzy

  In my case , I really didn't have real "armour".

  As a born-in I accepted the idea that it was God's chosen religion in modern times, but I could plainly see the many problems with the teachings. I realised from the many changes in doctrine that it was men in N.Y floundering as to what is truth. I still thought that Big J must approve the thing though, as He had his name on it.

  I was not clever enough to spot what you did though. I swallowed all that divine name rubbish, it seemed scholarly enough to me, how ignorant I was !

  I often spoke out against the nonsense like some obscure little Conventions of Bible Students lurking in the trees at Cedar Point Ohio in the 1920's fulfilling Bible Prophecy, I laughed at that, out loud. I pointed out how ludicrous was their intepretation of Daniel along similar lines.

  What finally did for me though, was reading the book of Daniel one day, with no WT Specs on, and I realised that 1914 was simply not there.

  At this point I did not know that 607BCE was hogwash anyway, I could simply see that the prophecy and fulfillment of the 7 Times were in the one Chapter of Daniel, job finished.

  I stopped going in F.S straight away, I could not teach what the Bible did not, and I was the recipient of a "Shepherding" call because of not reporting time. The Elder saw my reasoning, and promised to return and explain and build my faith in 1914....... He never came back.

  I now see the full import of my Epiphany that day i.e : No 1914= no 1919= WT/GB are frauds.

  Job finished.
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  mynameislame

  Donny, looks like we have something in common. I also used the references in their literature and the public library to learn TTATT. I was studying the Creation book on my own and went to the library to look up the references.

  While I was DFed I spent my time trying to “make the truth my own”. That was something I never did while I was being raised a dub. While I would never have frequented an apostate site like this I was ok with talking to agnostics and atheists in an aol chat room. Yes I said AOL! I was sure that the truth would triumph so I began reading up on creation using the Creation book and much to my surprise many of the quotes and references they used in that book were from crackpots.

  Interestingly (or maybe not) Shortly after my study of the Creation book, the next three public talks at my KH were all the same talk about creation by three different people. It was one of the more spiritual things I remember in my life. By the third talk I was really thinking that somebody had to be trying to tell me something. After that it was hard not to be critical of just about anything that was said from the stage or their literature.

  Another time I applied for reinstatement and one of the elders said to me “its the truth, its the truth, its the truth!”. I remember thinking who is he trying to convince? I’m not sure if this was before or after the previous experience.
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  leaving_quietly

  I was a toddler when my parents became JWs. I always accepted everything as truth. Changes never bothered me. I bought into the whole "new light" thing. But, I eventually had my own crisis to deal with, a marriage going bad. For me it was the lack of scriptural backing for the three acceptable reasons for a spouse to get a separation: willful non-support, extreme physical abuse and absolute spiritual endangerment. When I researched these myself (because I had (still have) such a sucky marriage) and found no Biblical backing for these, I wondered: what else has no backing? I read the Bible, some parts over and over, and found things in there that flat out contradicted what WTBTS taught. I compared translations. I used the Interlinear and Emphatic Diaglott a lot. After this, I made a conscious decision to "make the truth my own".

  I asked myself: why DO we say 1914 is when Jesus was enthroned? How would I explain that in field service? Where do we get paradise earth from? Again, how do I explain this from the scriptures?

  I quickly found out that not only could I not explain these things scripturally, but if I tried to do so, it would take serious leaps in bible verses taken out of context to even attempt it. I also learned about the wiggle phrases used in the literature: "in a sense", "evidently", "perhaps". And I learned how cherry-picking verses works. I learned a new term, eisegesis, which is a study of the Bible to make it fit a preconceived notions, which is exactly what WTBTS does.

  After learning that I could not defend what I long believed in, my faith was extremely shaken. But, I was an uber-JW up to that point and have an uber-JW family. So, leaving, even fading, was not a realistic thing for me. I didn't know what to do. I could not talk to my wife about this. She said I was being negative about the Society and it was affecting her faith. I recall remarking: "that says something about how strong your faith is, doesn't it?" That didn't go over well. So, I continued on my "journey", as she calls it. More studying, more comparing translations.

  During all this, I was made aware of how far JWs had come from actually listening to Christ. So, I focused a lot of time and energy on what he said/taught/did. I could see pretty clearly that if I wanted to continue believing in God (which I did), I had to focus on Christ. So much of what Christ said is the plain opposite of what WTBTS teaches. I found that much of what WTBTS does and teaches are things he denounced the scribes and Pharisees for doing. I realized that my faith all my life was simply misplaced in an organization that sets themselves up as "the truth", as "the way to salvation", as "God's mouthpiece". Today, I am mentally out. I am physically in... for now. For how long? I don't know. Time will tell.
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  JWdaughter

  One thing that made it easier was the full collection of "Studies in the Scriptures" that my mom then had possession of.

  The next thing was an elder who freely explained to us what happened in 1975 (and the years before for him, personally). He did not criticize, but he did not whitewash. He just spoke his truth.

  Soon after, the youth meetings (where he told us that) ended and then soon, he was no longer elder and last I knew he moved out of the area he had lived all my life (he had been an elder as long as I was alive til then.)

  None of those were "it", but they were all straws on the camel's back. I lost that conviction of my childhood upbringing of "knowing"it is the "truth". I then questioned EVERYTHING.
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  PaintedToeNail

  I was reading the book "Awaken the Giant Within" by Anthony Robbins. There is a point in that book about beliefs and how they are legs holding up your 'table' if one of the belief legs gets kicked over, does your belief still stand? I started examining what I believed as a JW and realized that the 'legs' cannot hold up the 'table', there isn't proof. Shortly thereafter, there was a Watchtower study article that said something to the affect 'Even if you are going out in service and to meetings and studying, if you aren't doing it because of love Jehovah, your works are invalid.' I never did any of those things out of love, it was only to save my own skin at the big 'A'.
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  GreenhornChristian

  I began to doubt after sitting on my my first JC. As a new Elder I just sat there taking notes as asked. Probably with my jaw dropped to the floor. I was so naive. It took me 8 years to finally stop attending.
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  Heaven

  I actually began to doubt God first. The Ethiopian Famine in the late '60s/early 70's had me questioning why God does not help people in need. I was a pre-teen at the time.

  As I moved into the teen years, more adult topics were being introduced to me and a number of things began to occur.

  1) I started disagreeing with the Watchtower's interpretation of scripture. The field service reporting of time wasn't in the Bible for example. There was nothing in the Bible that said going door-to-door peddling Watchtower publications ensured my eternal life either. I was not happy at all with the guilt being heaped on me to go out and do this, especially when my Mom didn't do it. I did not feel it was my right to try to push a Religion on anyone. (BTW, I never did any field service).

  2) I wasn't believing the 'only JWs would survive Armageddon' idea either.

  3) I could not reconcile with their blood policy.

  4) The misogyny was becoming very clear to me.

  5) The math wasn't adding up. It is impossible for JWs to preach to all the inhabitted Earth. There aren't enough of them -- the Earth's population is growing too fast. There are also people alive today on this Earth we know nothing about.

  6) Around the age of 15 or 16 my Mom did a complete reversal on the Theory of Evolution. Up until then, it was bogus in her eyes and she vehemently swore Darwin was evil. I suspect there was something in a ragazine or book that was a softened stance from the Watchtower on Evolution.
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  Giordano

  I always had doubts even about god and jesus let alone the WT Society.

  I was in at 12 out at 23. When we decided to start a family I knew I would never allow my wife and any children not to have a life saving transfusion (this would have been in the mid 1960's). I realized then if that was the way I felt being a JW was no longer an option. There were other big doctrines as well like Armageddon which sounded as dumb as believing in the Flood.

  I guess when I understood that god was always silent and jesus nor anyone around him ever bothered to write down exactly what was said that dedicating my life and my families lives to the WT nonsense............... That was some 48 years ago........I've enjoyed my JW free life, family and (newer) friends.