My parents never pressured me (which I have realized now). But of course there was the pressure from the talks and the literature. One day an Elder approached me in the hall "What about baptism?"
I made up my mind (not really) in that narrow environment, got tru the questions and finally got baptized at age 16.
When I was changing cloths together with another newly baptized JW my age from a nearby congregation we had a dialogue:
He: "We are lucky, aren't we?"
I: "Why?"
He: "Because we may belong to Jehovah's people!"
I:"Yep."
This was a strange dialogue to me, because I never had that affected piety.
This other guy later got befriended with a sister from my congregation. But when his Bethel application was accepted he dumped her.
Getting Baptized, did you really want to, or did you feel extreme pressure?
by run dont walk 34 Replies latest jw friends
-
GermanXJW
-
kelpie
I did it because it was "expected" of me and to get the approval of my mother. I was always the "good" daughter and did what my mum wanted, which meant getting baptised.....
I think about 80% of young ones got baptised ofr similar reasons.
Kim
-
maxwell
I didn't really feel pressured. I was 12 years old. My parents had done a very good job of immersing me in JW rhetoric. That was the only way I knew how to look at the world--the only paradigm I had. I remember when I was 7, my dad suggested that I join the school. And when I was 8 I started doing my own simple presentations. When I was 9 or 10, probably 10, I don't remember whether it was suggested to me that I might become an unbaptized publisher, but I do remember one of the questions was, "Are you doing this because your morther or elder father told you to do this?" The correct answer was no. In our family study, which we had regularly, my father did express his desire that one day we would become JW. But he never gave a time table and neither of my parents ever pressured or even suggested to us individually that we get baptized. I basically believed the JW philosophy myself, because that was the only philosophy I knew. And there was an article in a Watchtower that kind of motivated to go ahead and do what I always knew I was going to do anyway. I was 12 at the time and I decided at that young age, that I knew what my life was going to be so I might as well go ahead get with it. I knew what was right and there was no excuse for not doing it. Of course, I was wrong, as I had never considered any other path in life. Although I was too young to decide something that serious, I do remember some JW rhetoric for pressuring your children to pioneer. Some parents pressure their children to become doctors or musicians and start grooming them for this as soon as they are born. And now I think of some monarchs. I suppose if its just your profession, sometimes its not so bad, but in other cases, you realize that your path in life has been predetermined by someone else and it starts to bother you.
-
drwtsn32
Oh yeah, I was pressured. But only to not be "out done" by my younger sister. When she was 11 she decided to get baptized. I was 14 and it just wouldn't have been right! So I decided to get baptized too. I even told the elders that my decision had nothing to do with my younger sister. I bet that looked suspicious.
-
Undecided
I was baptized twice by the JWs. Once when I was 7 years old and another in my 20s. I did it because 1900 years ago some man in the Jordan river did it and he got a dove to fly down and light on his sholder and he heard voices.
I didn't get anything, so I guess I wasn't accepted either time.
Ken P.
-
Elsewhere
The only reason I got baptized was because the elders started to pull me to the side and tell me that they were [ahem] "getting worried" about be because I was not baptized. You see, I was born in the bOrg and was approaching 20.
"Getting worried" (Translation): If you don't do what we tell you, we will start telling people that you are "spiritually weak" and therefore "bad association".
-
Hapgood
Yes, I felt very pressured. My husband and I studied the Truth book together in the early part of 1975, yep the end was coming real soon,so to be saved you had to be baptized. My husband and I were baptized together at the summer DA before the fall of 1975. I really didn't understand what I was getting into, my husband was grasping the jw teachings like wildfire, so we were studing at his pace, and I was kind of left behind feeling real stupid I didn't understand most things. There was a large group getting baptized at out Kingdom hall at that time, so I was able to slip through those baptismal questions. If it would have been a smaller group getting baptized, they probably would have caught on that I really didn't know what I was getting into and they probably would not have let me get baptized.
-
Lady Lee
I did it for 3 reasons - none of them the right one
I felt pressured by my mother
I had been abandoned by my mother a few years earlier and had just retruned to live at home. I so much wanted her aproval so she wouldn't send me back to foster care so I did what I thought would make her proud of me
And I felt so alone in the congregation. Most of the late teen kids were already baptized. They all hung out together and I was on the fringe - tolerated but not accepted. So I thought if I was baptized they would accept me as one of the crowd.
None of them worked. My mother is only proud of me when I am making her look good. And the crowd still ignored me
Well at least the pressure to get baptized ended. Then it was pioneer Ain't never enough
-
bluesapphire
WoW about KGB.
I felt extreme pressure. I had so many unanswered questions. Even at my meeting with the elders prior to baptism I asked some difficult questions that they had no answers for. One elder recommended I wait to get baptised. He was the only one and since the majority thought I "knew enough" to make the decision that I would be killed at armageddon if I didn't commit.
Needless to say, the reason I got baptised was because I knew that if I didn't all the friends I had made and all the fun party times would be over. Everyone expected me to be a full fledged witness or else. No I didn't have cognition of this fact, it's just the feeling you get. You never really put it in words but you know.
So I did it. Big mistake.
-
KGB
refiners fire,
That's what they do best is take away your rights to decide, even though they teach that God say's to be of all things they still look down upon you when you question they're doctrines. Telling me that I was good enough to be a husband was not all that I was told. Things like you could not receive Jehovahs blessings unless you were knocking on doors was another, and that I had to give up all my friends outside of the kingdom hall was another. Well they don't know it but it was them that made me check out all things and you see where I am now, certainly not going to they're meetings. But church was sure good today and I was sure glad to be there........Just not at the kingdom hall (lol)