Did the Watchtower leave you in a No-Man's Land?

by JH 22 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  JH

  After becoming a witness, slowly we became programmed to believe that 99% of the world was not approved by God and that they were evil, and in the darkness, and would all die at Armageddon.

  Most of us left the Watchtower, or are on the verge of doing so, so at a certain point it's normal to be in a so called no man's land, where you don't believe what the Watchtower taught and at the same time you still believe that the entire world is not approved by God.

  I was just wondering how long you stead in this mode of beleiving that the Watchtower teachings were wrong, but at the same time, you still remembered and believed that the world was also doomed?
• 

  avengers

  Right before getting out I felt as if I was in no-man's land. (so to speak)
  Yet once I made the decision to do my own research without the limitations
  of the WT rules, I realized I had stepped into a Man's Land.
  The ones within the Tower, I realized, are the ones in No-Man's Land.
  
  You are not a man when you rely on the decisions of other men.
  A man makes his own decisions and is responsible for them.
  Within the Tower no man may think for himself.

  Therefore he's not a man, he's in no man's land. There are no men in that land.

  No Man's Land

  Andy
• 

  Maverick

  It was a couple of years. I was depressed and unsettled. I just could not reconcile how a loving God could be happy with all the things I saw within "His Organization"! I had a friend...EX JW I stayed in contact with and I went to see him last winter/summer. For the month I was in Australia staying in his home with his lovely family I read, Steve Hassans book on mind control cults, CoC, Carl Olof Jonsson's The Gentle Times Reconsidered, and In Searce of Christian Freedom. Well, after that I was over that bunch.(Depression gone!) It all made sense to me. All the pieces fit and I started working on getting out and taking as many people with me as possible. My friend also put me on to this web site. I have never looked back and never been sorry! Maverick
• 

  yxl1

  It took me about 7 years. 7 years of pushing it to the back of my mind. It wasnt until I started investigating the JW organization that these fears were laid to rest. www.freeminds.org and CoC were probably the biggest help.

  Since Ithen I've met many former JW's from my old congregation that, as you put it, are in No-mans land. It doesnt take long to reasure them that its all a load of hogwash, and you can see the relief spread over their faces within hours.
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  Sassy

  no man's land is a good way to put it.. You still have the things you believed for so long there yet you don't know what to believe any more.. when you look around and see crime is it a sign of the end? and if it is? is it what we were taught or something completely different. I am in so much limbo state about everything that I try not to think about it too much.
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  Nosferatu

  It took me quite a while to get out of no man's land. I still wondered about the 1914 Generation until I found freeminds 6 years after I left. When I read that they changed the Generation teaching, I was furious. That was the moment that any belief I had leftover from the JWs left me.
• 

  JH

  When I read that they changed the Generation teaching, I was furious.

  So was I. I was just hanging in by a thread, but when they changed their generation teaching, the thread broke.
• 

  got my forty homey?

  It took me about 8 years. I had met a co worker at my job who's story was very similiar to mine, raised as JW and df'd as a young man, terrible relationship with his parents. He turned me on to the ray franz books and this web site and I realized that yes, terrible things will happen to us (world) but there is not going to be no armageddon.

  9/11 was a perfect example. New York city was back in business in several days, as if nothing happened. Sure there is a lot of mental anguish for families and cirt residents, but the world did not come to and end.
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  nobody told me

  For years the I felt unsteady with the Watchtower. Breaking away takes an enormous amount of energy. Cults are very difficult to get out of. Years of Botchtower training does not go away over night. For me it was the months "before" I was disfellowshipped that was a no mans land. I was D'fed for being seen with a disfellowhippped person. Sorry Watchtower, they were a friend for 20 years and better than anything you ever offered. The shear rudeness of the elders actually made it easier to break away. The Watchtower does not give life, so what makes them think they can take it away, it is only in their minds that they think they have this authority. Once your mind realizes they do not hold life in their hands, you'll feel a lot better. Keep reading things from sites like this and you'll see how many lies the Watchtower really has, once trust is broken much of what they say loses weight.
• 

  garybuss

  Good thread, Thanks!

  I was there 18 years.
  
  It was not a narrow place to be for me. I wandered all around. I kept the notion that my end was near and I lived with a sense of impending doom over me like a shadow. My main problem was I still believed in the assumptions. Once I challenged those, there was nothing but the outline of a book publishing and real estate development business left of the Watch Tower Corporation(s).
  
  The unraveling of the superstitions and traditions that made up the assumptions that were the thread holding my core beliefs together was a fascinating project. I was almost totally lacking in support as I did it so and mostly I did it with books written by unavailable and often uncooperative authors. It was a bit of a lonely project. I see why many people prefer to leave it undone.
  
  When I emerged, I didn't fit in any world I knew. Now I fit in them all.
  
  The new me was not controllable by anyone. That frustrated those who had been used to controlling me. I have enjoyed watching them fail and I have enjoyed my new freedom and my new power. Mostly now I enjoy and appreciate the mother of my sons, my 2 sons, my son's family and my grandson.
  
  Newsflash!! Book distribution is not religious behavior.