by TheSilence 9 Replies latest jw friends
okay, someone recently asked if those raised as jws felt they would have gone for it as adults. my question is for those of you not raised as a jw, what convinced you that it really was "the truth"? ive often wondered and come upon my own theories as to why people join this religion, but i find that when friends ask me what makes people join i cant really answer in a way that they understand.
jackie
I would have to say it was a number of things. I wasn't raised in a religious home, there wasn't even a bible. I did start attending a church when I was about 8 with a neighbor lady and enjoyed it. Eventually the neighbor lady moved and nobody came by to see if I would like to still go. I think I was about 12 when she moved.
I met JWs when I was 18, they seemed to be a caring bunch, making arrangements for me to attend meetings. I admired their knowledge and ease with the bible. They were really pushing the idea of 1914 and the generation who would see the beginning and the end. It felt exciting to think I would see the end of this system in my lifetime and be able to see the resurrection of loved ones.
I was slow moving, I got baptized at 25. I felt pressured at the time to do it. I would have been happier if I could have just kept studying. there was a number of us that had studied for a long time, and there was a big push to get us baptized, we fell for it.
Sadie
Good question
I went in as an adult... 27, but I was very vulnerable.. I had recently broken off my relationship with my son's father and my own father had passed away only 2 months after that... I was under a lot of stress...
The loss of my father hit me very hard, and I began searching for answers to questions that I had no real reference to. When the witnesses knocked on the door, they seemed warm, kind and very sincere... and they seemed to have the answers to my questions... I didn't really understand the issues but hey... the answers sounded great!
What I didn't realize at the time was I was looking for a safe haven, I was in a place I had never been before emotionally and I was looking for security... and the WT provided an appearance of that.. and I was fooled by it. I don't think the problem is especially stupidity... although I do feel quite stupid for being duped ... I think it's a matter of reference and vulnerability... I beleive that if I had some kind of religious reference that helps you to identify cults... or even better, some real training in logical thought, I think it would have gone a long way to help me be less vulnerable to the WT.
Also, the way the WT presents it's material... they word it in such a way as to make it appear foolish not to agree with them.. It's sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant.. but hey, effective... who wouldn't want to live forever in perfect health having everything you ever wanted and spend eternity with loved ones... and if all you gotta do is sell magazines and books to get there.. .well, let me at them books and magazines... simple emotional appeal... not in any way logical...
It took me ten years to realize my mistake... I was such a busy little JW that I didn't have time to reflect.. not once in ten years... but, then I broke my leg in several places... (would you believe stepping off a curb on a friday the 13th... hahahahaha. how's that for luck eh, don't knock it.. I got my life back... lol ) ... and suddenly I had lots of time to reflect. Within weeks of that... I started to find out the truth about my religion and I started to see the flaws in my own reasoning.... I started to see a business where a religion once was... and I woke up... but you need time to do that... and the WT is very good at stealing your time, at indoctrination and fear tactics.. breaking my leg or being laid up somehow was the only way I was ever gonna have that time....
It's funny that JWs haven't much picked up on that ... they are all gung ho about visiting people in hospital... where most can't actually do any real research.. .but they are not so enthusiastic about visiting the infirm at home... where all the books, all the reference material.. and best of all, the computer, the WT CD and the internet are...big mistake... yep.. they left me alone, to my own devices... and I found out the real truth about the WT...it kinda makes me laugh...
I was gonna go on... but there's enough there for another post... lol
Inq from the broken but free class
my husband had some witnessing when he was a young lad, their postman was a witness and would come by on his weekends off. they were Lutheran, His mother said she didn't need it but her son might.LOL
it wasn't until we were in our thirties that I answered the door and they asked if they could come back, I said ok but I might not be there. Hubby then gets them the next time and thinking that he's chased off the Baptists and others that he could do the same with the Witnesses, so he would bring up questions that they had to go and do research on. I guess we should of been doing our own research because knowing now, they did always have the answers but they were their answers. Plus his father had passed away early on in the study and we thought it was great that he had some literature in his house and we wanted to see him in the new system.
for me, I have always had a belief in God and being raised a Catholic there was little study using the bible, so I was taught new things such as what happens at death, the paradise, and I wanted our sons to have a religion that both of us were in.
now I feel I have to learn the bible all over again, this time I use the internet and other books for my research
from a Jackie
I don't think I was necessarily a stupid person when I joined JW's.
1. I was however a child in an adults body (now I'm 32 and only recently am I starting to feel like an adult). My parents did not raise me to be critical thinker or to be a solid, independent person. My mother was really the exact opposite, if it were up to her she would control my whole life, even now! At 22, I found the world to be confusing, depressing, and too much for my mind to handle. Also, people who knew me before I was a JW thought I was kind of self-righteous, with a holier-than-thou chip on my shoulder. I really thought I was a 'better' person than most people (narcissism 101) and JW's play into that mindset perfectly, of course.
2. JW's offered a structure and routine that I needed in my life at the time. And instant friendships, no effort required. I took to that like a bird to flying. I look back, and it seems like it was religious addiction. JWism, like drugs, took the harsh edge off of reality by explaining life in terms of "nothing is supposed to be this way, and pretty soon it won't be anymore, so just hang with us and everything will be all right".
3. Also, I found the Creation book to be very convincing, I thought they were such geniuses for debunking evolution so thoroughly (at least I thought they did, until I started reading some 'rebuttals' of it on the internet). And yes, life is a pretty miraculous thing, but JW's think that they're the only ones appreciative of that fact, which is unfortunate.
I was 16, pregnant for the second time, recovering from a near fatal car wreck, and married to a controlling verbally abusive athiest. I was lonely. My mother had arranged for me to be married to my rapist so I felt abandoned and unloved. The witnesses were kind and loving. I had feelings of panic because I could of died and I had no real religious knowledge. As a kid we had gone to whatever church was closest to the house. We moved a lot so I had been to many different churches. It bothered me that all I knew was that I was Christian. I had somewhat of an understanding that God and Jesus were seperate and my grandmother had told me that there was no fire in Hell that it was the grave. I was thrilled that the witnesses taught that too. That was something that I had not found in all those other churches. I thought that to be found acceptable to God that you had to attend a "church" and be baptized. I was unbelievably naive.
Loris
LOL @ Dan.... Loved the questions at the bottom! Brought back memories.
rem
I brought up in a non religious household, but always believed in God and was what can be considered a spiritual person. I'd always felt somehow disconnected from my physical nature, and questioned the meaning of Life the Universe and Everything. LOL
I met the JW cousin of a stoner friend of mine and she gave me some basic info, but I never looked into it until that fateful day when they came to my door and I accepted a study. The study process took me a long time.
I studied with them for years, but not in earnest. I used to play cat and mouse with my study conductor, by often hiding when she came to by because I didn't feel like it that day. She was very persistent though. I guess the fact that I was occasionally home and had a study was enough to keep her coming.
Anyway, I finally reached a point where I felt my life was totally out of control. Without getting into all the gory details of events leading up to it, one night I was praying and had an "experience". I didn't know what it meant though, and the next day I called the my study lady and started really trying to take it to heart. After that point it took me about 9 months to take the plunge.
The thought of a paradise earth appealed to me alot. I also could see the sense of no hellfire, no trinity (although my view of that has changed somewhat) and that the governments were controlled by Satan. I've always been suspicious of the government and the establishment, so the WTS view made perfect sense to me. I kinda liked the idea that "reality" wasn't real (lots of drugs in my past..LOL) and was able to assimilate to that sort of mindset rather easily.
I guess basically I was at a bad place and the JW's offered an alternative.
We were raised as a fairly non-religious family. My parents tried taking us 4 kids to church when we were all young. When you have 4 hyperactive children in the 60's (before ritalin), it's not a good idea to take them to church.
Anyways the witnesses found their way into our life in the early 70's. Both my parents started studying, but my Mom stuck with it. I studied until '77., then buggered off.
The only real observation I have is that everyone in my family who followed 'the tooth' only did so after experiencing a major calamity in their life. It seems that when people are in this vulnerable position, they are most susceptable to the crap these vultures dish out.
I'd go into more detail, but there are things I've NEVER talked about to anyone, and things in the family that have to remain there.
This is a tough question. I couldn't narrow it down to just one specific thing. As lame as this sounds, I really liked our study partners. And contrary to a lot of things that are said on this board about witnesses being slightly dense, this particular couple was intelligent and the conversations we had concerning the bible and outside of "study", I felt were intellectually stimulating. I was definitely a dumb christian. I was one of those who just believed in God and the bible and all that mess because my mama, my mama's mama, and my mama's mama's mama...etc (you get the picture) did. I had no idea why I believed in the trinity, hell, and all those other things that they knock on your door with every intention of debunking. I had been in and out of church most of my life but had, for about five years, been pretty "busy" in the church with things like choir, youth choir/drama (oddly, I was the director), singing solos, being in a "christian" singing group called one accord (I liked to sing; can you tell?) but I didn't know squat about why I was a christian other than I just was.
I had gotten out of the church, after a bad experience, and had looked into several other beliefs systems...mainly nature based such as wicca, pantheism, etc but had really found anything that stuck. During the time I had left christianity, I had gotten a divorce, had a baby illegimately, and married a control-freak who had given me the choice of either giving up my friends or him leaving me. I am still married to this man. After I married him, I felt a loneliness like I've never felt in my life. He was very insecure and didn't want me working (in order to control my contact with other people), he didn't like me talking to anyone...and I was really ashamed to anyway. I tried to maintain a cool disposition so that my family would think that I was blissfully married and hadn't screwed up my life again. As far as my friends were concerned they didn't like the fact that he didn't like them and didn't want me around them, but they didn't want to make things any harder for me, so they backed off. The witnesses showed up on my door and I didn't want to talk to them, at first. But once I did, I really liked them and I started looking forward to them coming. I was very apprehensive about talking to them but they did things that other churches never did for me. They taught me. They opened the bible and showed me why I should believe what they were saying to me.
I always told my mom that I would never be baptized. And I never was and never will be. Many things I questioned so much that I knew baptism would be completely out of the question...ever. Too many scriptures I would find that contradicted what the witnesses were teaching...too many scriptures that contradicted other scriptures (although I wouldn't admit that to myself at the time). I found out about their involvement with the UN, then I stumbled over silentlambs.org, then I found a site that showed quotations from their own literature that proved that they strongly discourage independent thinking, and it was like a snowball affect....and the rest is history. Looking back, I find it amazing that I believed even a small percentage of the things I did. And I don't know how they ever convinced me of some of those things. It was just such a slow and deliberate process that I didn't know what had happened until it had already happened. If they had just come right out from the get-go and announced, hey we believe Jesus Christ is reigning invisibly from heaven right now and has been since 1914 and he was Michael the archangel...and we are the sole representatives of Jehovah God, himself and he only speaks through us....I would have shown them the door.
Sadie
