One of the most defining thing that made me question JW church after 27 years was seeing the funeral discourse outline. (page 2)

stuckinarut2

I realised only recently that I never really had the chance to REALLY grieve for those who had died! As a good witness, we were supposed to hold it in, otherwise it might imply a lack of faith or belief in the resurrection hope!

It wasn't until attending a proper funeral (ie non witness) that I experienced the cathartic and appropriate grieving process that humans need to go through!

It makes me wonder how many witnesses have bottled up feelings that they have never dealt with....and what emotional damage that does to them....

Rainbow_Troll

When my dad died, my mom had a brother from the congregation do the funeral sermon. I'm not sure my dad would have approved given his feelings about religion and, to be frank, his platitudes about the resurrection hope seemed rather baseless since my dad had plenty of opportunities to convert while he was alive, but never did. In any case, it didn't offend me so much as leave me perplexed.

Still, it was nice of him to speak so well of someone who did not share his beliefs. JWs can be breathtakingly decent when they aren't shunning their friends and refusing to allow their children life-saving medical treatment. Granted, we are all multifaceted; but JWs can take it to Jekyll-Hyde extremes. If I didn't understand it when I was JW, I never will...

My Name is of No Consequence

That's kind of the way it was with my father's memorial talk a few months back. The talk was about 30 minutes but only 10 minutes had to do with him directly.

stan livedeath

my dad died january last year. he had been very ill in hospital for some weeks. he was 94. a jw for nearly 60 years. i made a careful study of his will for any funeral requirements. there were none.

i arranged a simple non-religious committal at the crematorium. just myself and a few friends of mine present. no way was i having any jw's there. they had totally abandoned him in his last 2 years.

joe134cd

Stan - it's sad how how quickly many of their most loyal members are forgotten. It just amazes me at how they will put in countless hours knocking on empty doors and yet could spear a few minutes to see how an elderly sick member of the congregation is. Absolutly disgusting.

GLTirebiter

The year was 2009. The funeral was for the brother-in-law of my wife's friend. I recall that the elder recited the same obituary I read in the morning paper, word for word and in a near monotone, followed by the Official Standard Funeral Talk. It was as if the elder had never seen the obituary before reading it, let alone that he (presumably) knew and ministered to the person he was talking about. I felt very sad for the brother and sister-in-law of the deceased, because that so-called "Service" (pun intended) showed such disrespect for the dead and his surviving family.

Finkelstein

hardly mentioned anything about the deceased. Yet hijacked the event with cult propaganda.

As one said before a JWS funeral is 30 minute info-commercial for the Watchtower Publishing house.

ToesUp

If your a heavy contributor to WT they will tell all about your time, effort and donations towards Kingdumb interests. If you're a lowly publisher, they stick to the outline. We experienced this first hand with an friend who died. It's all in WHO you know.

backformore

I haven't posted on here in a long time but reading this made me sign back in for the first time in years.

My mom passed away back in December. I imagine most of you all don't know me so I'll just say I'm about as big as an apostate as you can be. Literally, I rather enjoy walking around wearing my t-shirt that has the word APOSTATE in big red letters on the front. I'm good with my JW (though not very hardcore) parents. They are older, not very well off, and I'm the very definition of middle class so I help out with stuff when I can. Also if my parents want to see their grandkids I made it plain from the very beginning they would only be doing it on my terms which includes no JW crap.

So anyways, mom died back in December. Of course Dad and my sister are going to have a big JW funeral at a funeral home. In Mom's family, she is literally the lone JW. Mom has a big family, Dad has a small very JW family and a decent chunk of their congregation so the room is about half JW and half non. Elder what's his name gets up there and preaches for a while and actually mentions Mom for maybe five minutes at the most (she liked the beach and Gatlinburg, real insightful stuff believe me). As he was finishing up, however, I stand up, walk to the podium, get in front of the mic, and do my own very positive service about my mom I had been working the past couple of days on for all the non-JW's in the room. Well, mostly positive. I did start it with "So now that we’ve heard about the religious beliefs...Not all of us believe that or came to hear about that today.". I then played a Vince Gill song about losing someone that my mom loved and went and sat back down.

How'd it go over? My wife was proud of me. My kids thanked me because, according to them, they said it seemed like the JW guy just used her death to try to sell his religion to everyone and they just wanted to hear about their Grandma. My mom's family all went on about how great I did. My dad and sister thanked me and said how what I did was so brave. At the end when everyone is walking past the family a few JW's even broke the norm and told how much they liked my service. There were some that barely spoke to me at all and you could tell how horrible they thought I was but screw those people, it was my mom's funeral and I'm her son. Nobody's forcing them to be there so big deal.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you don't like how something is going, get up and change it if it is someone you're closely related to like a parent or child. You may even be surprised at who is feeling the same way as you but just isn't brave enough to do something about it.

nonjwspouse

Before my husband became re interested in the JW, a former neighbor of mine ( that I never knew was a JW, and was a close friend of his family long before I knew my husband), the former neighbor died and I told my husband we need to plan to go to the funeral. He was very determined at the time that we not go. He said, "you wouldn't want to go, it's not like funerals you have been to.. You wouldn't like it, it's different" Though he wasn't able to explain any farther from what I recall. I know I was asking why, as usual. ( This is in the beginning of our marriage when he was open with me, and before the JW claws got into him again) So reluctantly I didn't attend. I can't recall if my husband went or not.

Later, after he became interested again, caused a huge upset in our marriage trying to forcibly "teach me how I was taught everything wrong" etc.,and I had by then learned ttatt, this former neighbor's wife died. This time my husband wanted me to attend . I asked him why the change of heart about JW funerals? As per usual these days, he never has an answer for questions like this, It's always "I don't know.". I attended one funeral then decided never again. I have stopped being invited to them anyway, or not told about them. We were excluded from a cousins wedding that he know quite well. That one was an obvious one. My husband was excluded as well. due to me" an opposer", I am sure.

One of the most defining thing that made me question JW church after 27 years was seeing the funeral discourse outline.

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