by finger 15 Replies latest jw friends
I posted here the other day and got a great response.
My bro in law GF is becoming a jw but he thinks it wont effect them as a couple (he doesnt want to become one)
I just want to know if being a jw in England is any different than in other countries?
Me and my husband sense trouble ahead for him this was comfirmed by a lot of the replies i recieved by mainly peole from Canada and America.
I f anyone has experiances about jw in the UK i would appreciate hearing them
Thanks
Keep in mind that responses may be delayed because of the time difference. Try setting your alarm clock for 3:00AM and bring this topic up again. Your hope that JW's in different lands may be more lenient is a faint one. From the official WTBTS website:
You should attend their meetings and confirm this for yourself. No doubt you will be impressed by their unity. There are more than three million Witnesses worldwide in over 200 lands. Yet, Witnesses throughout the earth follow the same programs at their meetings. And because of simultaneous printing in many languages, at their weekly meetings most of Jehovah's Witnesses throughout the world study the same Scriptural subjects within a few hours of one another. The unity of Jehovah's organization is a modern-day miracle in this divided world.
My bro in law GF is becoming a jw but he thinks it wont effect them as a couple (he doesnt want to become one)I just want to know if being a jw in England is any different than in other countries?
No different at all - usual differences between standards applied in each circuit/congregation but you are right to sense trouble ahead - over time the GF will be alienated from "worldly" people and absorbed by the borg.
It has a 99% probability of screwing up their relationship.
Not only will "their" time no longer be their own, they will insinuate how they should behave, right down to what they do in the bedroom.
Let the buyer beware.
Ross - from Scotland.
cult = trouble
n'uff said.
usual differences between standards applied in each circuit/congregation
I’m in the U.K. and I’ve said before on this board that there seems to be quite a bit of difference between countries as far as the rules are applied.
My wife married an "unbeliever" (me) and had no problems with the congregation. We have moved five times since we married and she has had no trouble anywhere. My wife is aware that I will never be "absorbed" into her religion.
As far as our relationship is concerned, it would be better without this difference but I think it is about as good a relationship between a man and wife that you will find. We are both happy. It has been my observation during visits to Kingdom Halls that J.W.’s in England apply the rules that they are comfortable with and ignore the rest as only applying to other people.
My wife does not shun a disfellowshipped relative but will have nothing to do with a disfellowshipped person she does not know well.
They are a strange lot.
link
I've been part of one UK and several Australian congos (with many UK people), and visited a couple more UK congos and a couple of US ones. You live there and have lived this experience, so you know better than I. But you've raised a general point too.
As I've expereinced it, there are many British cultures where being sociable, or 'agreeable' is an important thing.
That, I think, comes out in the STYLE of enforcment rather than in the actuality - there's a thing about subtley ('hinting') and not upsetting others in some parts of Britian that seem 'nice', but in my limited experience covers a heart of iron lurking just under the surface.
Being 'unevenly yoked' is not only a rule, but part of the social outlook of JW's. If your wife was an active JW in good standing who and was known to have started a relationship with a worldly person, then it's inconcievable she wouldn't have been counciled and been deemed 'spiritually weak' irregardless of where she lived.
If she was 'on the outer' at the time they may have felt she was not then part of the congregation which is a reason for taking limited action.
The style might well have been 'nice' enough not to have traumatised your wife, and that's your good luck. Maybe she didn't care, maybe she didn't notice, maybe she didn't tell you ... but if it was known, the JW's did treat her differently.
Once you were married and moved on, it's a different story. She was almost certainly be limited in what 'privilages' she'd be alowed to partake in, at least for a period of a few years. For example, if you tell me that she was approved as a Regular Pioneer in the same year she married you, I could not beleive that to be accurate.
As time goes on, the issue will loose currancy - regrdless of where you live - becuase you're married.
They're unlikley to stop your friend's GF becoming a JW, and they will probbaly be polite and friendly to her BF. If they marry, things will settle over time.
But in the meantime she will be treated differently, she will be restricted in what she can do and where she can go (both 'spiritually' and socially) and the motive will be to prevent her being 'unevenly yoked'.
The local elders might be nice about it, or they might be nasty. But they will act that way.
If they don't, let us know and we'll dob them into Mill Hill as likley future apostates... :)
Max
Dubs in the UK are just as small minded as dubs the world over
Quick hijack... I recently moved to the UK. I live in an apartment in a converted house, like almost everyone else in my area. How do the British dubs go out in service? Do they hit the buzzer and talk to everyone via intercom and try to worm their way into getting a person to buzz them in, or do they have some other method?
All I can say is the Watchtower is as strict and heartless in this country as in any other, the horror stories are the same and the broken families and stupid rules have destroyed many right here in the UK. The further I get away from the Watchtower the more I see how disgusting that manmade movement is worldwide.
I find it strange to hear people make out that it isnt so harsh in the uk, huh? How harsh does it have to be before its recognised as a destructive cult?
Brummie
