When you were fully in, did you believe that you would not die? (page 2)

sir82

I don't think I ever really fully bought into it.

If I did feel anything like that, I ascribe it to the typical "I am immortal" thought that nearly all young people have, which of course leads to all sorts of risky behavior.

ttdtt

Any reason in particular someone gave me a Dislike?

LisaRose

Someone probably just hit dislike on accident ttdtt, it happens sometimes.

I converted when I was 13 in 1969, andI did believe I wouldn't die because we all thought Armageddon was going to come in 1975. After that I wasn't as sure and by the time I left in 1999 I had long since given up on the idea.

pale.emperor

Absolutely.

I used to honestly believe i would never die of old age. It was a very comforting belief. But then as i approached my 30s i noticed the old ones dying off who also thought they'd never die of old age. I've never feared death and i still dont. What comforts me now is when i do go at least I'll get to experience what dying is like. Then poof! I'm gone.

And if there is a god/gods/goddesses I'm more than capable of presenting my side of why i stopped believing.

life is to short

Yes, I was a born in and like stephane it was drilled into me that I would never die and I totally believed it as it was fed to me from birth on.

LITS

Wayward

No, I never really bought into that particular fairy tale. I HOPED it might be true, but never really deep down BELIEVED. It got even harder to accept as I began to se the old timey rock solid JWs who had been around for the 'Millions Now Living Will Never Die!" announcement die off. They REALLY believed but they're all gone now. My mom still says she hopes she'll never die but she doesn't seem too certain. Its sort of a wistful "Wouldn't it be nice" daydream for her.

I'm just starting to come to terms with knowing that someday (far in the future I hope!) my mom is going to die and I'm going to have to deal with it. My own death doesn't really bother me. It's the idea of possibly outliving everyone I care about that bothers me. I've seen what happens to the elderly who don't have anyone and it gives me some sleepless nights.

LoveUniHateExams

When I was fully in, I really believed I wouldn't die. I though maybe I'd age a bit, but not die.

Then the 1995 generation change happened.

flipper

Like some here who were born into the Witnesses- up until about age 25 from birth I believed I'd live forever. But by 1989 when I was 30 years old and raising young children for myself as a father - I started getting doubts about the end ever coming as it had been 75 years since 1914. I started thinking for myself in my own mind- although I didn't share these thoughts with my fanatic JW wife at the time or she would have ratted me out to the elders big time. I realized living forever was a lie.

So I stayed silent with my doubts for another 14 years until finally exiting the JW cult in 2003. Like the opening post states, " everyone else who has ever lived in the past has died " - very true -" NOBODY lives forever, nobody lives forever." As David Gilmour once stated in a song for Pink Floyd on the " Momentary Lapse of Reason " album. And THAT is what JW's and the WT Society have had for YEARS to believe this crap. Not only a MOMENTARY lapse of reason - a virtual PERMANENT lapse of reason

DesirousOfChange

Yes I did - and I am still having a very hard time adjusting to the idea that in the not very far future I will blink out of existence.
Being cheated out of decades of a life of my choice doing things I would have enjoyed, making a contribution to humanity, is a hard pill to swallow. ~ ttdtt

That's a familiar conversation that we (my wife and I) have had more than once since awakening. I bought it all -- hook line and sinker -- not so much for her, but still as a born-in she was on board with Paradise. Now I wonder how I was so gullible! WHAT B^LLSHIT! And I believed it all.

As JWs we were convinced that we were "special". God chose us as "His People". Nearly everyone else will die at the hand of God, but NOT YOU! (Admittedly as a teen and 20-something, I kinda felt I'd probably die too due to all the "fun" I was having, badboy that I was.) Isn't that narcissism? But I suppose that everyone wants to think that somehow they are "special".............................DOC

Magnum

ttdtt: Yes I did - and I am still having a very hard time adjusting to the idea that in the not very far future I will blink out of existence.
Being cheated out of decades of a life of my choice doing things I would have enjoyed, making a contribution to humanity, is a hard pill to swallow

Those are my words, too, exactly. I'm still having a hard time accepting my mortality.

I often contemplate how little time I have left and that I don't really have time to do the things I wanted to do (and planned to do in the "new world"). For example, I've always been fascinated with bamboo. There are certain types that take some years to really develop. So, my thinking is that I don't have long enough now to plant those types and see them develop.

I collected books that I didn't have time to read while on the JW time-wasting, life-wasting routine, but that I wanted to read post-Armageddon. I now look at those stacks of books and think that I'll never get to read them.

Even though I did believe I would live forever, there were always nagging doubts. I wondered about things such as teeth and knees in a "perfect" body. I reasoned that they would still wear out and that they don't naturally grow back. I also thought that having one species on earth that lives forever just didn't seem right. It just didn't fit the way things work. Everything dies. Non-living things recycle. The sun will one day expand and engulf earth. There were just so many things that made me have nagging doubts, but I did believe it to the extent that I gave my life for it.

The irony is that I looked at some of my non-JW peers who were living life to the full, and I thought they were getting just a few years, whereas, I would have eternity. It turns out, though, that not only will I not have eternity, but I was robbed of even the few years that my peers had.

When you were fully in, did you believe that you would not die?

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