How does one become a JW???

by Downdog01 15 Replies latest jw friends

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  Downdog01

  Hi All,
  Every source I've looked at is very vague and my witness friends just keep encouraging me to stop asking questions and come to meetings. My sense is, since I disagree so much with JW doctrine and the way it is presented in Awake and especially Watchtower that I'd never make it as a JW. Still I am curious what the process is and what "tests" if any one must pass.
  Any info will be much appreciated.
  Thanks,
  Downdog
• 

  Oldhippie

  In a nutshell you will have to submit to a home bible study which will indoctrinate you on JW teachings. You will be required to be regular in attendance at meetings and will eventually have to engage in the public or door to door ministry. Once you have expressed a desire to be baptized, you will have to be questioned by the elders. There is a long list of questions that you will be required to respond to. If they are satisified with your answers, you will be allowed to be baptized. Than they have you.
• 

  Francois2

  Ask for a copy of the questions that you must answer in the affirmative just prior to baptism if you want to get down to the nitty gritty gang bang.

  Essentially, you must give up your own thinking ability. You must subscribe to things that do violence to your own sense of love, mercy, and compassion. You also must agree to concepts that were discarded by thinking, feeling, sincere people two thousand years ago. You will be required to cut off your relationships with friends and family members whom you love because they don't share your new system of beliefs; they will become nothing but worthless "wordly" people whom you may not associate with. Your value and worth to the congregation will be measured by the amount of time and by your success in selling Watchtower propaganda from door-to-door, an activity you will learn to despise.

  You will be expected to accede to the thinking of elders who haven't the sense to come in out of the rain. You will be expected to ignore irrefutable evidence of child sex abuse. You will be expected to look the other way when a male JW abuses his wife and children emotionally, psychologically, and physically. You will be expected to give your life without complaint if a medical procedure necessary to save your life is not approved by the noted medical and spiritual experts at WT headquarters. You will give up any pretense of owning and controlling your own free time. If you are not at every one of the five meetings a week, plus several hours of peddling WT propaganda door-to-door, you will be hauled before an ecclesiastical kangaroo court to explain yourself to those same men soaking wet from the rain. Your intimate relations with your partner will come under the scrutiny of the elders in the congregation, and you can be humililated before the congregation if you like to do anything viewed by the JWs as even slightly kinky. Oral sex is verboten, as are several other interesting activities. Plan on spending your summer vacation sitting in an overcrowded, overheated auditorium, eating powdered eggs for breakfast, listening to dull speeches delivered by pompous, illiterate, jackasses attempting to explain away the latest failure of JW prophecy as a "natural enough mistake to make."

  In short, prepare to kiss your life goodbye. And realize that I've only been hitting the high spots in this story. If I have exaggerated one point, I invite any other good apostate to point it out. Do not listen to any JW in this regard because the truth is not in them.

  Good Luck, and please accept my condolences.

  Francois
• 

  outnfree

  Downdog,

  Read your other thread about being in love and was tempted to write "RUN, DD, RUN for your LIFE!" -- but I didn't. Until now.

  Nonetheless, I will be the information booth.

  One would attend meetings at the Kingdom Hall (that's FIVE meetings per week) and have a personal Bible Study with a brother (your girlfriend couldn't hold it with you -- male + female alone together = opportunity for "loose conduct" (you'll find out what that is later)) and study a WT publication which gives you the basics on doctrines.

  What this publication and the meetings will not forthrightly tell you is this: Should you decide to become a dedicated, baptized member of Jehovah's Witnesses and later change your mind, you will be shunned by everybody in the organization, including your family -- that is, all your family members not residing in your own household. While officially family members not residing in your household may have limited (non-spiritual) contact with you, in practice they will not, because to do so would put them in the category of "spiritually weak" which is NOT a categorization to which any JW aspires.

  OK, so you go to meetings, and you are completing the book. If you've progressed (meaning given your own thinking processes completely over to the Society) to the point of being convinced that you've found "The Truth," you may wish to become an "unbaptized publisher." You would tell your study conductor and have a short meeting with two of your local elders who would explain that you must now be living a Witness lifestyle, because you will now be representing Jehovah out in service. Now you would add a sixth meeting to your week, because you have to attend a Meeting for Field Service before you commence your public ministry (the house-to-house work). Don't be alarmed. An experienced publisher will accompany you to the doors, having rehearsed a simple presentation with you in advance for you to use when it's your turn to preach.

  After some time preaching, attending meetings and having completed the book, you may or may not have decided to dedicate your life to Jehovah. If you have made such a decision, you will inform your book study conductor and the elders once again. You will be given a copy of a publication called "Organized to Accomplish Our Ministry." (This publication will ONLY be given to you after the local congregation is fairly certain that you, as an unbaptized publisher, have made a sincere commitment to JWdom.) You are then told to read this publication and to study, in particular, the Questions for Baptism that are found at the back of the book. The elders will arrange for you to have a personal Q&A session on each of the three sections under the Questions for Baptism. There are scriptures to memorize that show the underlying principles that should guide your answers to the questions. The elders ask the questions and YOU provide the answers. In some Kingdom Halls, you will have a different elder for each section. This is so that more of the elders get a chance to know you and your personality (which had better be meek and humble). If you pass this oral test, you will be considered a candidate for baptism and will be completely immersed in symbol of your dedication to Jehovah at the next circuit assembly or district convention (large meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses).

  Prior to your immersion at the assembly/convention, you will be asked two questions. The first is something along the lines that you are a sinner and recognize that Jehovah sent Christ Jesus to pay for your sins. The second is along the lines that you accept membership in Jehovah's spirit-anointed organization. (Notice, please, that the holy spirit here is not really said to be operating on you, nor are you asking it to operate on you, nor are you being baptized in its name -- rather, you are pledging allegiance to the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.) You are expected to answer affirmatively to these two questions, sing a song and then retire to the rest rooms to change into your modest bathing suit (don't forget your towel!) and on to the baptismal pool. Once dunked, you are considered to have died to your former course of life and to be made anew as an ordained minister of Jehovah's Witnesses. (Your faithful meeting attendance, completed book studies and diligent preaching work are the pre-requisites for your ordination.)

  You would then become a full-fledged peon in the Organization. A peon, sir, because despite being an ordained minister you are still merely a lowly publisher. You are not an auxiliary pioneer, a pioneer, nor a ministerial servant* nor an elder*. You haven't yet made it to the travelling work -- circuit overseer*, district overseer*, nor become a missionary or a Bethelite. You have many years (literal and of field service!)to go before those privileges of
  service are open to you. Before advancing to any of those higher positions, you will have to prove your loyalty again and again to the organization. (Oh! it also helps if you actually are a good and kind person.) However, proving your loyalty again and again to the organization tends to make one a bit hard-hearted and jaded and, well, you just keep surrendering your will and your mind over to them and you may turn out an automaton.

  But if you don't turn into a self-aggrandized (WE've got God's Holy Spirit and nobody else does) automaton, and actually have a conscience and dare to be an independent thinker? Then you end up on a message board like this, because you will have become an inactive, disassociated or disfellowshipped EX-JW (and quite possibly an apostate!).

  I hope this clears things up for you.

  outnfree

  * these positions, as well as those of Branch Overseer and Governing Body member are only open to males. Women are not taken too seriously in the WT World.
• 

  Amazing

  Hi: I agree with Outnfree, 'Run for your life.' IN addition to all the crap you will go through as a JW, they will subtly create negative feelings about sex in a way that it stands a very good chance of harming your marital and sexual relationship with your future wife.

  What you might think about is how to get her out of the religion, rather thank you getting into the religion. Your situation reminds me of a matter I learned as an Elder, and I will make a separate post on it. It will have the word "Sex" in the title. - Amazing
• 

  Flip

  ...Every source I've looked at is very vague and my witness friends just keep encouraging me to stop asking questions and come to meetings…I am curious what the process is and what "tests" if any one must pass...

  Ultimately, two things:

  · Relentlessly prove that you’re an exclusive consumer of WTBTS publications, for either yourself and for others.

  · Indirectly and in many different degrees based on ones abilities, encourage or motivate others to eventually or continue to be consumers of WTBTS publications, exclusively.

  Although there are many examples of experiencing both positive and negative personal occurrences once associated with the WTBTS, you will not be fully accepted until the organization is secure in the knowledge that your loyalty to the organization can be quantified by carrying out the above two agendas during your tenure as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  Anything else while in association with the WTBTS is fluff.

  Flip
• 

  Downdog01

  Thank you Amazing
  I look forward to the post you mentioned.
  Sincerely,
  Downdog
• 

  anglise

  Hi DD01,

  Cant add anything much to the points covered other than the fact you will be 'love bombed' by all the JW's you come in contact with, until of course you are dunked and then it will change.
  Up until that point they will appear to be the most loving and caring org on the planet.

  Just a warning.
  We were in for 18 years having chosen it in our early 20's, and we have seen all of it.

  Just remember the 'truth ' they will teach you now is not the 'truth' you would have been taught just a few years ago.

  Please keep reading and ask all the questions ie 1914, 1975, the generations, Bulgaria, disfellowshipping/shunning etc and make them answer.
  Especially ask what would happen if after a few years you simply changed your mind and stopped associating.

  I wish this info had been as available 18 years ago, then I wouldnt have raised my children in a cult.
• 

  Prisca

  Before you get dunked, make sure you read "Crisis of Conscience" by Ray Franz.
• 

  BugEye

  Francoise

  I quote you:

  If I have exaggerated one point, I invite any other good apostate to point it out.

  
  Therefore I would like to take the oportunity to point out the error of your statements.

  eating powdered eggs for breakfast

  
  Im sorry, but this is simply not true, at least here in Australia. We are not even given the priveledge of prepared food here, its all BYO.

  Sorry to be so critical Franciose, but you nust be accurate you know.[8>]

  Dave