How I Became a JW

by philo 13 Replies latest jw friends

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  Disengaged

  Hey ALT with 32 post since June, you must be hair alot

  IBBEROEAN "Just making sure!"
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  normie67

  Philo
  Interesting post.....I kind of feel the same way you do on this subject. I was baptized to fit in with everybody else and please Mother!! I'm still very active within the Org, but still many doubts. I guess I'm just still in to please everybody else............

  normie
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  philo

  Thanks for all the replies, folks.

  And for the support, Englishman.
  Its interesting how people like Alternative, Sue, Fred, YK, et al, seem to thrive on the sensation of occult admiration, they need to be reviled. Interesting, but sad.

  Hippikon,
  I've been meaning to say for a while that you are one of my favourite posters, and I don't often tell people I love them. It's a shame you're not a sheila.

  Your sense of a worthy cause was how I also thought.

  When my father died, I realised I had no expectation of seeing him ever again, he was just dead, or rather he was NOT. So I changed my rationale totally. I saw myself as a low-ranking [MS] soldier in God's army. I had learned too much about the Organisation to see it as loving and motherly anymore, now it was a taskforce with a mission, I was a cog in the gear train. I read military history, strategy, lapped up the best war movies (the horror, the horror - Apocalypse now). This stuff struck deep cords in me. Horrific bible stories, once glossed over, now really meant something, they actually sustained me.

  I knew my conscience was being violated every meeting I attended, I knew I was telling lies from door to door, but that was OK -- I had a mission and the end justified the means: Theocratic Warfare.

  I guess this is how I continued until the generation teaching was dropped. I didn't snap. It was more a case of being war weary. I had done my best, my tour of duty. The old cliché raise its head, "what are we fighting for" when our leaders are old men and don't seem to know themselves.

  Neyank,
  :When we were going door to door,was it really to tell people of God or was it to sell the orginization to people?

  Spot on. The 'Organisation' brochure, succinctly entitled (JWs unitedly doing God's will world-wide) was produced to do exactly this. I remember being rather uncomfortable about using this one with my studies, but you had to, at one time every 'bible' study was supposed to finish with ten minutes of Org Brochure. I soon got used to it. I guess I was "applying the technique [of doublethink] to the process itself" in a way.

  philo
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  philo

  A new-found place
  Led by angels
  Empowered for good
  With Reasoning and compassion
  Against ignorance I engaged 'The World'.

  Feeling the forces of darkness and light
  Enchanted to be an atom of truth
  Accelerated toward living and dying
  For the final cause

  As one they spoke:
  Gather and huddle among us sheep
  Safe from the wolves
  Exemplars of love
  Humble but honest exemplars of love

  Lifted from water, Washed of myself
  Subjected to law, Induced into order
  Reduced and refined, Defined as of "Us"
  18 and a Brother

  Raised the curtain: the act begins
  Of qualities new
  Line by line
  Quantities placed
  Step by step
  Qualifications met

  Manifesting spirit for the corps
  And door to door showing myself
  Frame to frame
  Contentedly doing, and doing again

  Seeming my place amidst the compelled
  United in one unit in a column
  By hundreds and tens, adding or subtracting
  From sullied or saved

  Down, head down
  Lowly high-blown
  Pasted, untasted Scriptures to view
  Gap-filling gruels
  Groaning fools
  Gnawing plainchant

  Magazines selling
  Creases and collars
  Polished pattering
  Doubt suppressed
  And hours to impress on the soft terrain
  Of the unteachable

  Step up:
  I spoke to the multitude
  To the moulded and manoeuvred,
  To approximate that holy shape:
  The public speaker

  Victory of body and troubles of mind
  Brought unrequited thought
  And I voiced my small voice
  And dug calm nails in the listening wall

  And on I prayed aloud on the stage
  Weaving loathed acclaim for my name
  From the fibres and the formulas
  Of model material

  But as one man fell to icy oblivion,
  And I heard low "Resurrection Oh"
  Weak bromides,
  Then I comprehended my gain and my loss

  Slowly it came, and without hope
  I found my own unjust judgement
  In a new place
  With the former things not called to mind

  Yet how light that congenial care
  Which took to the air
  As double honours announcement made
  And stepped heavily from the stage

  If angels beckon a second time
  I will fall at their feet
  Then to the dust I will ask
  Only to be shown Christian love

  What price you paid in human sacrifice
  Of gentle histories
  To fulfil the words of he who sighed
  "By their fruitage will you recognise"?

  For my friends -
  That famous love of yours was weak
  And I gaped at your efficiency
  At your own hearts' bloodless surgery

  When in every one of your places
  Would I have done to you the same,
  My brothers?
  Oh to my shame, I would have.