praying for mass destruction and death

Cognitive_Dissident

So I was writing a paper the other day, specifically about the skewed world view that I had had as a Witness, and I typed the following -

Pain, misery, strife, these were all things that used to prove to me that Jehovah's Witnesses were correct in their assessment of a dying world which was soon to be liberated/obliterated by the hand of God. This "liberation" was something that I desperately longed for. I used to pray for it.

I stopped after that sentence and reread it. It had not ever really sunk in that in praying for "the end of this system" to come, I had been praying, and hoping, for the destruction of billions and billions of people. How screwed up is that? Loving, compassionate organization my ass.

Anybody else have experiences like this, where after leaving, the full import of a previously held belief hit them over the head with a two by four?

Cog

thom

I started having that realization about so many people dying in my late teens. I'd meet people or have friends and started thinking that God was going to kill them and it really bothered me. I stayed in until I was 39, but that thought really hit me hard sometimes and ate at me.
It was probably the biggest thing that got me to leave entirely. I decided that whether or not JW's were correct, I didn't want any part of a God who would do something like that. I actually still felt JW's were correct when I left and only started learning many things to show me otherwise AFTER I left.

Hellrider

That one you mentioned. I grew up in that stuff, but I never looked forward to that day. I dreaded it, I thought about it all the time, imagining how it would be like, Jesus coming from the sky, riding on his white horse with the sword drawn, and his army of angels, massacring everyone not JW (and me too, if I hadn`t been a good boy). So I believed it, but there was this voice deep inside that said that it couldn`t be real, it just couldn`t be so. I could accept that God could kill all the adults on the earth, but not the children. And we were told that "children ride on their parents tickets", hence the children og non-JWs (that would be...99.99 % of all the children on the earth) would be killed too. And I just refused to accept that. This was probably the one part of the doctrine that made me want to be free. So I never got baptised, and left at 17. When the Bible talks of the unrighteous, that their day will come, etc etc, I just can`t possibly understand how JWs can believe that this would include every single person, men, women and especially children, on the earth. Wasn`t Jesus the one that said "let all the children come to me?". I doubt Jesus would hold a child accountable for the actions of his/her parents. Still, this was what we were taught to believe. And they teach that today too, I assume. Perhaps they don`t say it out loud as often as back then in the 70s and 80s, but that`s what they believe. And Tom: Yes, it was like that for me too. I believed it was the "correct" religion for a long time, or at least a PART of me did. The emotional part. With the logical part of my brain I started dissecting, analysing, ripping the beliefs apart already in my late teens. But there was an "Armageddon-troll" deep inside me thru most of my 20s. And for that, I HATE the organisation of the JWs with all my heart! Their indoctrination and brainwashing can truly ruin peoples lives, or great parts of peoples lives. I wanna "do something". Get back at them somehow. But don`t know how. I am planning on doing some anti-witnessing, though. Maybe that`ll give me some satisfaction.

kid-A

In the upside down psychological universe of the dubs, they take giddy, gleeful delight when finding out about the latest horrors and disasters to strike "this wicked old system", it all serves as a pathetic reinforcer of their mindset, waiting for godot....and waiting.....and waiting.....and waiting.................................

Quentin

I think many of us get jolted like that. As a JW we, for the most part, lived in a seperate world where everything was filtered through the WT, then, for whatever reson, we leave. That's when the rubber hits the road. Out there in that evil, demon infested, god forsaken world dewll people that have, and show more concrene, unconditional love and plain old downright sympathy for us than was ever shown by anyone of Jehovah's chosen people. It's a wonder most of us didn't stroke out.

anewme

No, I dont think anybody is eagerly awaiting the destruction of millions of people.

Cognitive_Dissident

The psychological effects of the JW system of doctrine and belief on the minds of its members is something that I hope to someday fully analyze and research, hopefully publish if all goes well. It's a completely all-consuming mind-screw. It's outrageous.

The part that shocked me about my prayer for God's Kingdom to come was that in my mind at the time, I had plenty of the unwillingness to accept that God would arbitrarily destroy billions of innocent people, but that when I prayed for God's Kingdom to come on earth, the two ideas never bumped in to eachother, at least not consciously. The belief that God's Kingdom would be established on earth existed in a different compartment within my brain, away from the one that housed the thought that God wouldn't destroy innocent people. And the separation of the two trajectories was so total that they never created any direct conflict with eachother. I completely believed both of them.

It's that type of black and white ability to hold two conflicting viewpoints at the same time, with equal conviction, that was present all the time. And ultimately it's what led to the psychological breakdown that brought me to where I'm at now, reconstructing from the ground up, I guess.

4JWY

Yes, ha - having a steady diet of "death and destruction" for 42 years, I finally had had enough.

An elder had called after talking to my father who was "concerned" that I'd stopped attending meetings - I told the elder outright that "if I heard about death and destruction and the judgment of all one more time, I'd go running and screaming out of the Kingdom Hall!"

This was two years ago, and I've never heard from the elder again, except when he called to find out "if it was really so!" that my zealous jw dad had just killed himself. Death and destruction had permeated his every long winded comment for so many years, it finally got to him too.

kid-A

I remember as a kid being out in service and listening to the JW adults as they pointed out the specific houses of dead "worldly" people they would like to move into after armageddon. I dont think they wanted these people dead in a personal way, but virtually all JWs I knew eagerly awaited the destruction of the wicked, worldly people at armageddon and all the associated fringe benefits that would bring.

thom

---"I remember as a kid being out in service and listening to the JW adults as they pointed out the specific houses of dead "worldly" people they would like to move into after armageddon."---
I remember as a kid hearing people in car groups referring to a house now and then as a "goat barn". After a while I realized that their view of the people that lived there was pretty much as non-human, worthy of death.

praying for mass destruction and death

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