need input: My wife is at it again...this time about the faithful and discreet slave (page 2)

tiki

Reminds me of the saying. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. You can barrage a closed minded person with reams of logic,fact, proof and reality but until they are willing to open their mind to it, it will fall on deaf ears and stir anger in some cases.

The Searcher

Your wife seems to be (thankfully!) having mental struggles regarding what she thinks she believes!

Help her to jump off the sinking ship which she believes is a life-raft - ask her if her faith and convictions are so strong and so important to her, does she have the strength to research and test them? Truth can stand for itself.

Heaven

The Marvster... excellent observation. This is what I've seen as well. JWs swerve off the course of discussion because they cannot refute things. Either that or they clam up. My Dad used to just stop talking because he couldn't come up with anything. This was accompanied by the stunned deer-in-the-headlights look.

goingthruthemotions... have you ever thought of buying Bart Ehrman's book 'Misquoting Jesus' and just leave it out where your wife can have a look at it on her own? There's some good info. about the gospels contradicting each other in that book.

freemindfade

Sorry my friend. I know the feeling. However I have to say you handled that very well. You merely presented the facts and it sounds like in a very good way.

The Marvster

Heaven, Re: swerving off the course of the discussion; absolutely right and it's infuriating when they do this, as can be seen by the frustration of GTTM's post... we shouldn't be surprised by this because when you look at the behaviour of the elders on the Australian RC and Mr Jackson himself, it's clear this is their tactic for 'evading' truth. The big boys are doing this, no wonder the rank and file follow their lead...

goingthruthemotions

thanks my friends for the support....this cult sucks!!!!!!!

it is getting old seeing my wife go into cult mode.....i despise this cult for taking her away from me and our family.

i wish i could turn back time and never get involved with this cult.

it has ruined everything i hold dear in my life.

she is unreasonable.

nmthinker

When I try to reason with my wife she becomes visibly agitated and lashes out. One night we watched the faithful slave is not 1900 years old video. She doesn't understand doctrine even though she is a regular pioneer. She asked for more explanation so I detailed the reason for the talk and why is was necessary for them to bring this up (post 2013).

Within 20 minutes we had an extremely heated argument on an unrelated subject. I won't go into details but it struck me how absolutely off the rails she went. I couldn't make sense of what what going on in her head. It was like a switch clicked in her brain and she became mentally unstable. My wife has never shown any symptoms of mental illness. She is an extremely smart and capable woman.

Anotjer time I shared how the way the elders deal with child abusers could lead to cases where know child abusers were in the hall unknown to other families. The discussion started calmly but within 10 minutes she basically exploded and was shouting every vile thing at me. What made this especially remarkable was that I had just shared with her something I hadn't told another person before (except my therapist) that I had been touched inappropriately by a MS (study instructor) when I was between 10-12 and that the brother is now a coordinator at his congregation. I was asking for her advice and support is how to handle the situation and confront the brother. When I turned the discussion towards the org's policies she shut down and became very agitated.

I'm convinced this is the cognitive dissonance which we hear so much about. I believe it is physically painful for her and causes her to act very erratically.

If your wife is listening to you that's step 1. But it sounds like she is experiencing cognitive dissonance, which is painful for her and causes her to lash out. Im waiting for the opportunity to talk to my wife when she is in her genuine self, away from meetings and indoctrination. It will probably be when we are on vacation next.

StarTrekAngel

Definitely this irrational thinking has nothing to do with your/our spouses self. Is undue influence at its best. Give them a break. Keep reminding yourself that this isn't the personality you fell in love with. Its hard, I know cuz I go thru the same things sometimes. Try and not rationalize in yourself that she/he is stupid or can think for herself. His/Her ability to do so is there, is just been deactivated.

Doing more research in the bible, it becomes very evident that despite being called "witnesses" we put very little attention to the countless times that men of bible times demanded proof or witness from God himself. Churches have exploited the "we go by faith not by sight" and "happy are those who believe without seeing", twisting the meaning and taking it out of context to manipulate people to quash their doubts. Just like you compared gospels to show that the FDS was an illustration, try and compare Matthew 24:13 with its parallel in Mark 16 (now conveniently removed from the silver bible) and compare with Romans 15:19

Even if the FDS was a prophecy, the GB can not provide witness of their appointment as such. They now say they were never appointed and that the appointment will happen at a later time. Even then, they still demand obedience as if they were already appointed. The illustration said the slave was supposed to provide, not force his co slaves to eat.

LisaRose

It's cult mind control at work. She believes that what the Watchtower teaches is the truth, so seeing something that is in conflict with that will arrouse cognitive dissonance. CG is an uncomfortable state, so she has to resolve that, the only way to resolve that is to fall back to the idea that "The Watchtower is the the truth", so your argument must be false, end of story. You will probably never get anywhere by challenging her like that, you are attempting to unwind years of conditioning, you are just causing her to put up her defences. Direct confrontation like that almost never works, in my opinion.

In my experience people break free of this in a couple of ways. One way is that something happens to them that is so extremely painful they are forced to confront the notion that the Watchtower is not the truth. Mistreatment by the elders or a fellow JW or other difficult situations can cause that.

The other is if the person learns critical thinking skills and starts seeing the logical fallacies on their own.

I have seen a few experiences where someone helped a loved one out of the organization, but it was extremely difficult and required a lot of patience. If you want to save your marriage and get your wife out, you need to back off for now. Work on strengthening your marriage for now. Rebuilt that trust and look for ways to get her to learn to think.

Pete Zahut

You are frustrated because you are thinking that FACTS matter to your wife.

Her belief system isn't driven by facts.... it's driven by the emotion that is produced when she hears somewhat plausible explanations of life's big picture issues . Although none of them are provable, they allow her to have a warm fuzzy feeling about her future and to wrap up all the unknowns in life into a nice little package, provided by the JW's and outlined in the products(literature) they sell.

A person has to be emotionally ready to face the hard facts of life and many use religion to shield them from having to face them...ever. Help her become strong as a person so that she doesn't need to hide behind a magical belief system to feel safe.

need input: My wife is at it again...this time about the faithful and discreet slave

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