It is much more complex than the either/or choices presented.
I believe that they do sincerely believe what they preach and do love God...but the carrot of Paradise is a big part of it too.
Main reason JWs are JWs
by Batman89 40 Replies latest social relationships
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Blackbird Fly
i think its fear.
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LongHairGal
Batman89:
I would say "B". I think the "everlasting life" carrot is what attracted many JWs. However, I never quite bought this teaching and felt it had a lot of holes in it.
When I began my "fade" the first thing I did was make peace with the idea of death. I felt it was a cruel tease to entertain the thought of "paradise earth". The fact that I so successfully rid my mind of it means I probably didn't believe it deep down.
Jazzbo:
I never felt superior to non-JWs when I was in the religion. If anything, I felt a little silly. I also never "got" it how JWs who pioneered actually believed they were better than those who didn't. To me, they just seemed conceited about something I never wanted.
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Ucantnome
i think it's not easy to say. when i was a witness at one point i felt the end/tribulation was just about here and i thought i can't change things now but i probably hadn't done enough to survive. (not that i did a whole lot more after) i wasn't on the school. i was a regular publisher. i did feel i done my 100%as little as it may have looked. i also felt being a witness was the right thing to do and now it seems the opposite.
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LostGeneration
Underneath it all JWs remain JWs because they want something for nothing.
Trading decades in meetings and serve-us is actually minimal compared to billions of years in a paradise.
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Apognophos
That's a good article (though my inner copy-editor wanted to get out his red pen ). It really is amazing how we suspended critical thought because we wanted something too good to be true to be true.
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villagegirl
Sir82 - Cynical ? Two billion ? There are two billion Christians in the world
and the cynical ones are those 6-7 million, (probably more like 3 million adults )
who all think they are "superior" to all other Christians and they are "chosen ones" who
will see all other Christians destroyed at Armageddon for not following the "governing body"
This is the ultimate cynicism. JW's believe they "know-it all" and have "Special Knowledge"
and know "secrets" other people don't, and have all the answers, even though avery doctrine
they believe in was stolen directly from early American Adventism. Read Adventism in America.
That's a pretty cynical view of a couple billion people.... see above post by Sir82
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Mum
It's a wacko story, but here goes: When I was about 9 years old, my dad ran into his boss, a JW, doing street work. The boss persuaded my dad to have a "Bible study" in the Let God Be True book. My dad, the son of a country preacher, had never been interested in religion, but understood the value of "ass kissing" and having an inside track with the boss. After a few years, my dad got a great government job and discontinued the "Bible study."
A coupld of years after that, a friend of my dad's was killed in a coal mine cave-in. My dad had some kind of (probably drug-induced) "experience" that made him believe he had been present at his friend's judgment, and he stated that he knew his friend was in heaven. So, we started attending a large Baptist church near our house. The evangelist Jack Van Impe came to that church to have a revival. He gave two sermons against Jehovah's witnesses. Unfortunately, I knew that much of the stuff he sermonized about was not true.
As a result, after years away from any JW contact, I started feeling that there must be a reason why this wealthy evangelist felt so threatened by the little rag-tag groups of JW's in existence at that time. In my 15-year-old brain, I concluded that the JW's must be right and were being "persecuted" by the mighty, wealthy churches of Christendom. I started attending meetings and publishing. It went on for 17 years, until I could no longer tolerate my life as a JW.
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Apognophos
Wow, that's an interesting story, Mum. Did your dad ever show interest in the JWs after his Bible study?