by Realist 14 Replies latest jw friends
I've had little if no trouble. Only one of my brothers and his family are 'hovahs, and they still talk to me. He doesn't know the exact nature of my departure,(da'd) kind of a "don't ask don't tell" situation. Yet, my brother knows that I don't agree with the WTS teachings anymore.
So, yes, I'm relatively unaffected. Oh, there was that period of 2 years after I left that I thought I was going to fry at 'geddon, but then I got on the net.
TR
Realist,
I like your point about "losing paradise." I'm not sure if you mean the prospect for a future paradise earth or the "spiritual paradise" that we left in the congregation.
For me, besides all of the losing friends and family stuff, one of the most difficult things was realizing and coming to terms with the fact that I really was going to die someday. All my life I had grown up thinking I would live forever and never have to die. Now I don't know how I could have beleived such a thing... and maybe I really didn't, but I still never came to terms with the fact of death and that it was real for me.
I remember talking to my brother about it too when he realized the same thing... it was kinda sobering. It just goes to show what kind of fantasy land the witnesses live in.
rem
rem,
i can imagine that accepting mortality must be one of the hardest things (damn its hard for me and i was never religious! )
JT,
do you have the impression you completely wasted your childhood or is it like...ok my childhood was great but we had to do this stupid door to door thing...?
JT,do you have the impression you completely wasted your childhood or is it like...ok my childhood was great but we had to do this stupid door to door thing...?
of course not, jw taught me not to steal, to respect sister old and to be respectful of my parents- but by the same token as a jw child i was told many lies by the wt,
many of the things that should have been a normal part of growing up and being a child i was told not to do and the reason given was not presented as the opinions of the boys in writing,
instead i was told it was the will of god himself and not to obey would result in my death
WELL today i realize it was all a lie meant to instill fear so that i would march in line like a goood little YES MAN!!
FOR A religion that claims to be the ONLY CHANNEL to god on the face of the earth, the lives of it's children should in noway be the lives that many of us have lived
but then again what can you expect from a religion(BIZ) that is built on lies
Leaving was simple for me. There was no trauma. I simply stopped going. I still don't know if I am DFed, DAed, or what. But it helped that the rest of my family (mother and sisters and their husbands) was slipping away at about the same time. Yeah I left a few friends behind. But that was nothing more difficult than, say, moving to a new city.
