by Batman89 38 Replies latest jw friends
When you were a devout JW
Did you feel that you had an actual "relationship" with Jehovah/God just from praying to him and reading the WT or bible?
or that this was actually even possible deep down?
or do you still feel that you have a relationship with him?(for those who still believe in God)
When I was devout JW, I had a relationship with a god I never really knew completely, but was structurally designed
by the WTS, for the prevailing purpose of the WTS.
Later on a realized that I had pretentious relationship with a ancient Hebrew god that never existed like all the other god(s)
imagined in human history.
Better to live in "The Truth" than not.
No.
I got a lot of comfort and peace of mind from praying.
Yes.
The Bible says the only name by which people are saved is jesus Christ.
Acts 4:12 No one else can save us. Indeed, we can be saved
only by the power of the one named Jesus and not by any other person."
If Jehovah and Jesus are two separate beings, or if God was in two places at once,
(like in String Theory, multiple dimensions) or whoever or whatever unseen forces are
remains a complete mystery to me. When I read the words of Jesus as reported, the things,
his brothers and best friends said he said, it appears he is a mystic, talking about dwelling in you,
and all of us being one. When questions Jesus said "I am not from this world" he also said he and
his father would come and dwell with us, he spoke of paradise to the thief, what Hebrew word he used
or Aramaic, and what he meant no-one really knows. Something happended to this Jewish young man
they called Rabbi. Mocking about people passing through walls? Physics now says that we are all
just light and energy and matter and energy are interchangeable. I do assign personality to God,
why should 100 billion Galaxies not contain other individuals and personalities besides our carbon
based life forms ? I do pray. I talk to Jesus directly because the Bible says everything has been
turned over to him. I pray to both Jesus and the I AM , the YHWH the mysterious absent force
and I see more good than evil and I do not understand anything at all except the very appealing hope
held out by Jesus to us all. If that means life in any form, anywhere, heaven or earth, I am glad.
Jesus said he reigned over death and the meaning of reigning with Christ to me, simply means to
survive and continue to live in some form with my consciousness after death.
I've never felt like I was 'saved'. But then I've never felt like I was 'lost' either.
I thought I had a relationship with Jehovah, but after a while I realized it was really just one sided. It's like loving someone from afar, you project to the person the qualities you think they have, they aren't there to contradict your fantasy. I now prefer reality.
Nope
I have helped a few friends and family leave. The hardest was someone who was happy to accept that the JW doctrines were wrong and that the organisation had gone wayward (after about 3 years of discussions) as many JW's feel this anyway.
The hardest issue was that they felt they had a relationship with this person called Jehovah and it meant more to them than anything.
Here is how I tackled it after much thought.
First I tackled the name itself, I showed them how it was formed from the sentence YHWH and the vowels feom adonai. I showed them that the scholars had realiaed this and taken it out of the KJ bible and this is a huge wake up call in itself. With JW's putting so much emphasis in the name, to easily show the name is wrong does much, not just for the beliefs in the religion but in the friendship they have with this imaginary father figure.
The most potent discussions came next where we spent months talking about who her god was. It began with me saying she had been sold another lie, that the god she imagined, the bearded man who looked down and cared about her was not in the bible. It was an imagined character that religions use to satisfy all our natural desires, for such a fatherly person to exist. Not only that, but he isn't even in the bible!
I asked her to find me the sweet friendly, fatherly god in the bible she imagined. For every one of the handful of ambigous nice verses.....ask for bread and he will give it.....there were literally hundreds of horrid ones. He will give you bread if you ask for it (even though he never does) but the same guy also commanded the bellies of pregant women to be sliced open. He will look agter the lillies, but he drowned millions of his own children in a rage of anger. He talks of forgiveness but established a legal framework for slavery and kidnap and sexist, sexual enslavement. He talks of being a father then asks a man to kill his only son on an altar to him. He talks of protecting his children but then allows satan to kill Job's kids, he uses a bear to kill several children for calling a bald man 'baldy', he commands the murder of children in several opposing nations, he commits every child to sufdering, disease and death over an apple and every JW prays for the day he kills billions of old, young, infant, women and men.
The silly analogies of from Watchtower of an exterminator who must exterminate the bugs to protect the house, suddenly seem sickening, not logical,
Everybody likes to imagine their father is a hero, but the god of the bible is a maniac. A horrid and evil dictator. The bible itself is the best cure for christian belief.
I remember being in bethel, working a mindless job on a machine at the end of the printing press. I remember spending a lot of time praying and I felt that was a time I was close to my god. In reality it was a time where I was close to my real self. I opened up about my fears, my wants, my needs and my doubts. It felt good.... I soon left bethel and not long after the JW's. When I look back at that time, I know that god didn't speak to me, he didn't show a sign, he didn't respond in any way....just as if he wasn't there or listening. But I was listening!
That time in my life is a sad one, though I enjoyed it at the time. I realised I would not be a JW FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE AND i didnt know how, when or with what consequences it would come about. I remember feeling like I had never been closer to my god, ironic as it has led to a path of research, effort, self examnation and eventually atheism.
It is interesting that the false perception of a being led me to be honest with myself.....talking to him about the things I dared not think about or dwell on, just as we had been instructed.
I do love the irony.....
