by stuckinarut2 27 Replies latest jw experiences
Just wanted to ask a question of those who were born in as I was.
How did you feel to have been "privileged to have been born into the only true faith - The Truth"?
Did this make you feel confident, or proud - or perhaps arrogant?
How did you reconcile the fact that 99% of the earth's population was not born "into the Truth"?
As a child, did you ever question these things?
Stuck it's quite hard to put myself back into the mindset but I think rather than confident I just felt odd. I say felt, 'rationally' at the time I though it was the truth but feelings often connect you to what's really happening don't they. Not going into assembly at school, sitting in a classroom on my own while they had the Christmas party. Yeah it just felt odd and didn't give me very good social skills.
Later I started pioneering and I just thought I was lucky enough to know the 'truth' and we had to try and spread the word because people's lives depended on it. Yeah sounds weird and pompous now. So probably I was weird and pompous. Sounds about right.
I distinctly remember looking around the beautiful area I live in thinking "this will be ours soon "
A stupid naive assumption of an indoctrinated 8 yr old
I do remember the entitlement felt as though u had the truth , u were someone special who was in "the know" of the real truth and therefore in line for the rewards promised , luckily this didn't go to my head so to speak and I still lived as a fairly normal kid ,kinda just living my life with that stuff in the back of my mind but it was always there ..
Very nervous and timid to approach my high school teacher to giver her the school brochure as I just wanted to blend in and dreaded doing it but was under duress from my parents ,
Worst thing ever was 1 sat morning for F.S the territory I dreaded most was assigned to my family and a girl I fancied lived there , we actually called on her house and omg I was so shamed then she followed us up the road with her friends on their bikes poking fun ... I was mortified as my dad could see this and as we were driving off beeped his loud horn and waved out the window ,
Turns out the girl liked me too but that's not the way to be introduced , forever shamed out ...
Stucky - How did you feel to have been "privileged to have been born into the only true faith - The Truth"?
I constantly questioned this. Why me? It seemed more like luck than anything. I felt uneasy about it but locked those feelings away. If I'd been chosen by Jar-Hoover because of my parents, why did I feel worthless all the time? Today, I know it's because the WBT$ is nothing more than a nutty cult.
Did this make you feel confident, or proud - or perhaps arrogant?
I felt worthless. At least my schoolfriends who didn't know 'the truth(tm)' weren't so guilty of spiritual laziness as I was.
How did you reconcile the fact that 99% of the earth's population was not born "into the Truth"?
I didn't. I ignored it at decided to 'wait on Jar-Hoover(tm)'.
As a child, did you ever question these things?
I didn't dare.
How did you feel to have been "privileged to have been born into the only true faith - The Truth"?
I felt fortunate. I remember even before i started school i would talk to Jehovah in my head all the time. Like he was my best mate. It felt like he was really there, just for me.
Did this make you feel confident, or proud - or perhaps arrogant?
I was a shy boy until the age of 18. So growing up i felt confident that i was in the one true religion, confident that i'd never die of old age but i wouldn't say arrogant. I was genuinely interested in people and what they believe and why. Of course, i had an answer for all of their personal beliefs so, maybe i was a little bit arrogant without knowing.
How did you reconcile the fact that 99% of the earth's population was not born "into the Truth"?
I just looked at it like being an Israelite slave in Babylon. These people were mostly all bad and that Jehovah will surely keep the good ones alive even if they're not JW... wont he?
Nope. Not until i was about 19. Then dismissed those doubts until the cult got nuttier and nuttier when i was in my late 20s.
Q. #1. No! My first 4years in school I had very hateful teachers. They would go out of their way to ridicule me in front of the whole class. First two years the teacher would not even let me sit with the class. My desk was behind the teachers desk. A lot of physical and emotional abuse by those teachers. It made me hate school. Never did I feel privileged to be a cult member.
Q.#2. No! It made me feel weak and scared.
Q.#3. Because of what I went through I was hoping for the death of all those bad people.
Q.#4. As a very abused child I never thought about it. I was at the time 100% cult. I knew nothing else.
Still Totally ADD
I never felt 'privileged' but thought about my 'fortune' of having been born into it, my mother and father both having been converted a few years before they met and married (they were both in their teens). I often wondered to myself how I would have reacted if someone had knocked on my door. As an introvert and hating people knocking on my door for whatever reason I think I'd have sent them a way with a 'sorry, not interested'.
I never felt totally confident that I had 'the truth', some things niggled away at me at times but i would put them aside and I would do the usual talking to myself that it must be the truth, because of all the reasons spouted in the WT literature and from the platform.
I never believed that God would destroy 99% of the earth's population, just because they weren't JWs, it never sat well with me. I would tell myself that God knows hearts and he'd never do something like that. That it would only be the truly wicked and evil ones that would be dealt with.
I questioned things a lot. I'd sit in the meetings and get side tracked by the bible (from the time I could read at 5). I always loved books and the bible was a way to entertain myself at the meetings (they always bored me). I was fascinated by the stories and gained a good knowledge at quite a young age. As I got older some things just didn't add up but I would tell myself maybe I had got it wrong... after all this was 'God's Organisation'..... wasn't it????
I felt as if I didn't serve it. How could I be this lucky? To be born into the right religion. But it made me feel guilty because I knew I was in it by default. Never would I have had the courage to change religions like my mum did. I just wouldn't have done it. That made me feel bad. On elder explained that me being in the truth was my mum being blessed.
I was proud because I was 100% confident it was the truth. No doubt at all.
I accepted everyone else was going to die because being born in, I was numb to the people in the world around me. The phrase' the wicked will be destroyed' was banded around so much, as a child I just clumped the people in the world all together and assumed everyone must bad.
I was also an abused child, so no, I didn't question anything. I once dared to ask about evolution and my mother went completely berserk at me. So I learned to shut up and do as I was told.
I was 100% a JW robot until this year.
When I was maybe eight years old, I suddenly said to my mother, "mummy, thank you so, so much for making me a Jehovah's Witness." She was so happy that she got my father in the room so I could repeat what I'd said.
I did it. I'd found the holy grail to making my parents smile. Within a couple of years, I was baptized and a pioneer.
This year, I sent her and my father a long email in anger - furious that they had raised me in a cult and angry that they wouldn't hear me out or have any accountability in the matter.
My, what a couple of decades can do to a puppet child.
Blindly went along. Never complained. I had a horrific time in the congregation as a teenager. It has affected me to this day.
As I got older (late 20's), I started to feel something wasn't right. I did not feel the love and saw the hypocrisy. It was all downhill from there.
