Posts by OneEyedJoe

33

The Watchtower Corporation Religious Charities Scam Will Be Investigated By The Tax Evasion Experts

by frankiespeakin in

what say you about thier comming audit?

these guys arn't that clever they been using this cover for too long and now their goose is cooked, i'm thinking some serious violations are in the making for this greedy corporate ceos /governing body/faithful and discreet slave.. of course i could be wrong, but i think their goose is cooked!.

http://www.englishforums.com/english/originmeaningcookgoose/zggmx/post.htm.

OneEyedJoe

seems they have protection everywhere they turn

It must be Holy Sprit TM !

80

My Experience and how I finally let myself see the truth

by OneEyedJoe in

first off - for those lurkers who feel guilty just for being on this site and reading this (even if you don't read any further, as it is your right to choose that course) i want you to know that you're not alone in what you're going through or in what you are feeling.

if you read on, i hope my experience may be of some small help to you.. this may be long, but i'll try to organize it in a way that doesn't make it painful to read.

to start, i feel it is most beneficial if i'm upfront and honest with my goals from posting this, which are (in order of the degree to which they motivated me):.

OneEyedJoe

Instead of studying more books (which is obviously in your comfort zone), I suggest you make a study of your wife as a book. This will require asking her many questions. Filling out the survey as I suggested will give you the questions to ask. Knowing her personality, interests and dreams hides key to get her out. For instance you may ask,

Why do you think so-and-so left the truth? (Chances are she will mention HER chief doubt in the answer)

Did you ever dream of doing anything differently when you grew up? What was that?

If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would you do?

If money or time were no object, where would you go and what would you do here on earth?

Who is the person you would most like to talk to in Paradise, and what would you ask them?
For heart-to-heart conversations, I suggest you time them to be as far away from the meetings as possible, both in time and in distance. The cultic personality wears off the longer you away. Schedule vacations and times away so you can enjoy your wife's natural personality and get to know her as a person.

This exercise has the side-benefit of helping you be a more sensitive and with-it husband!

I've tried to work out how to ask her useful things...unfortunately conversation like this is so far outside my skillset that I'm not sure how to go about it at all. Any question about anything related to the "truth" immediately illicits the cult personality. and, since she was born-in, she never had very big dreams. She's a housewife (though by no means lazy) and enjoys it. That was pretty much her goal, and she's achieved it.

80

My Experience and how I finally let myself see the truth

by OneEyedJoe in

first off - for those lurkers who feel guilty just for being on this site and reading this (even if you don't read any further, as it is your right to choose that course) i want you to know that you're not alone in what you're going through or in what you are feeling.

if you read on, i hope my experience may be of some small help to you.. this may be long, but i'll try to organize it in a way that doesn't make it painful to read.

to start, i feel it is most beneficial if i'm upfront and honest with my goals from posting this, which are (in order of the degree to which they motivated me):.

OneEyedJoe

In fact, as a corollary to this, I would go so far as to suggest that if someone has not been harmed by the organization, you cannot and should not try to extract them from it. If the religion is "working" for somebody, there is little you can do to convince them to uproot their belief system and social life and possibly their familial relationships just because technicallyit's all founded on lies

That's something that I've been struggling with, too. She's not been overtly harmed by it, but I keep coming back to 2 issues:

1. It absolutely harms EVERYONE who's 'in' because they don't plan for the future and have to live in a perpetual state of waiting for something that's not going to happen. It restricts them from living life to it's fullest, and it restricts thier time (which is limited, if you aren't living forever anymore) and it can potentially kill you at any time if you ever need blood.

2. Since I'm awake, it's definintely going to harm our marriage if she remains in the cult. maybe not end it, but there will be harm done.

If she wants to go from this to being catholic, I won't stop her, but I think there's a difference between something that's just founded on lies, and something that's founded on lies and wants to control every aspect of your life.

Emery:

I really think the only thing that keeps her in is the fear of the big A, and the hope for eternal life in paradise. I talked to her about some biblical things (144000 being literal) and she basically said she didn't care if it was wrong, because the only reason it matters to her is so she can know how close we are to the end. I also mentioned the contradiction in the fact that we can't donate blood, but we can take vaccines and use fractions derived from donated blood. That seemed to be a touchy subject so I stopped at that point. (also, to my horror, I found that she's elected not to allow any fractions on her blood card)

How can I ask what initially made her think it was the truth (she was born in, so it was probably just her parents telling her it was the truth from birth) without setting off alarm bells that her husband is doubting?

80

My Experience and how I finally let myself see the truth

by OneEyedJoe in

first off - for those lurkers who feel guilty just for being on this site and reading this (even if you don't read any further, as it is your right to choose that course) i want you to know that you're not alone in what you're going through or in what you are feeling.

if you read on, i hope my experience may be of some small help to you.. this may be long, but i'll try to organize it in a way that doesn't make it painful to read.

to start, i feel it is most beneficial if i'm upfront and honest with my goals from posting this, which are (in order of the degree to which they motivated me):.

OneEyedJoe

That's a great point...I guess I never thought of it as 'believe this or believe nothing.' In fact, I'd long thought to myself "If I wasn't a JW, I'd be an atheist" and I was always comfortable with thought of being athiest. For her it's possible that it'd be entirely different. If anyone has any ideas how to build up the safety net, I'd love to hear it. I'm at a loss there.

She's not science oriented, but the quotes are taken so far out of context I don't feel like you'd even have to understand evolution at all to see the dishonesty. In the case of the darwin quote, he states that it seems rediculous that the eye could've evolved, then in the next sentence explains how it could happen. When it's quoted, though, they stop at his saying it seems absurd, and write " More than a century has passed since then. Has the problem been solved? No." If you read Darwin's writing, you see that the "problem" was solved in the next sentence!

But this is why I'm here...trying to figure out the best approach in a vaccuum is a daunting task. So far the above is the only thing I've come up with that I could present without her immediately going on the defensive against me, but maybe that wouldn't even work. She knows I hate service, and shes a little less of a thinker (though still smart) than I am, so I don't have a habit of asking her questions on things that I could've been asked in service, so I can't use that one. Besides, no one can ask a difficult question in service anymore since all we do is hand out leaflets for the householder to throw away.

Ugh, it's hard not to feel hopeless thinking about it...Sometimes I think the best strategy would be to get DF'd for asking questions and record the JC, or just straight up DA, but I want to try other things before I start burning bridges.

80

My Experience and how I finally let myself see the truth

by OneEyedJoe in

first off - for those lurkers who feel guilty just for being on this site and reading this (even if you don't read any further, as it is your right to choose that course) i want you to know that you're not alone in what you're going through or in what you are feeling.

if you read on, i hope my experience may be of some small help to you.. this may be long, but i'll try to organize it in a way that doesn't make it painful to read.

to start, i feel it is most beneficial if i'm upfront and honest with my goals from posting this, which are (in order of the degree to which they motivated me):.

OneEyedJoe

Thanks for the words of encouragement Emery (and everyone!).

I've been thinking about posting a request for comments on how to awaken my wife, I guess now's as good a time as any. My current plan is to "discover" the mis-quotes in the creation book. My wife makes little comments about me watching my science shows whenever they say anything about evolution, and she's been making thinly veild comments about my recent (albiet slight) decline in apparent spirituality - so my plan is to tell her that I took her criticism to heart and decided to do some extra personal study. Since I'm a big science nerd, the creation book would be an obvious place to start. My narative (I feel a little bad for misleading her in the spirit of theocratic warfare, but I'm sure she'll thank me in the end if it works.) is going to be that I saw the "absurd in the highest degree" quote from Darwin, and was surprised that Darwin himself would discount his own theory like that, and I excitedly found The Origin of Species on google books and looked for the section where he admitted he was wrong. Then, upon finding that the way it's quoted is completely misleading and dishonest, I decided to look up other quotations and references. I copied the book from the WT library CD to google docs (ostensibly so that I could read it in my spare time at work, since I don't have a hard-copy of the book) and added comments to all the misquotes. My plan is to ask her to look at it because it's been bothering me, and maybe I'm overreacting. I think I'm going to try to work in something like "this just seems awefully dishonest for an organization that calls itself 'the truth'" and see how she reacts.

I'd love to hear some ideas as to ways she might react and how I should respond. Or if you think this is a terrible idea and I should take a completely different approach, feel free to say so. The only other time I've expressed doubts on anything, she got very emotional and said things like "you're scaring me" because of how I talk. So I'm hoping that presenting it to her in black and white and asking her to help me explain it away will prevent that. Or at least my hope is to prevent her from seeing it as a me vs her thing. I'm not really sure what might be the thing for her that would hit home and make her wake up, so I figure the best strategy for now would be to show her things that I could plausibly could have happened upon with sincere motives, through no fault of my own.

She's going to be a tough nut to crack, though. Getting DF'd will be a huge fear for her, because all her family is in and while they're not the most 'spiritual,' they'd definitely shun her. The other issue is that they did a heck of a job developing a phobia of 'worldly people' in her that will be difficult to get past. I've read Hassan's latest book, but I haven't found a workable way to apply his approach towards fixing the phobias without outing myself as an appostate. Right now I'm thinking I'll have to wake her up completely, then help her deal with the residual programming...

9

Does Genesis Prove Science Right

by themaccauk11 in

does the biblical account prove the scientific theory of how the universe came into existence.

OneEyedJoe

I think you need to read the definition of the word prove. The only thing that it proves is that people have long been trying to explain how we got here.

37

What words has the WT redefined?

by Splash in

these days, virtually every public talk speaker thinks it's interesting and intellectual to include a dictionary definition of some word.

often the word is in common use and needs no explanation, such as 'exercise', or 'knowledge', or whatever.. now contrast that to all of the words that the wt has it's own meaning for, and referencing a dictionary for the common understanding of it would be viewed unfavourably.. words like 'generation' or 'men' (as in jesus is mediator between god and 'men' - 1tim 2:5-6).. what words have the wt redefined that you know about?

- i'd like to compile a list if possible.. splash.

OneEyedJoe

The biggest redefinition they've managed to pull off in the minds of the loyal:

Truth

15

How Did "Shepherding Calls" Go For You?

by minimus in

jw
friends

did you loath them?

did you feel it was a "privilege" to have the elders care deeply about your spiritual well being?

if you were an elder or ministerial servant, did you enjoy going to the homes of the sheep?.

OneEyedJoe

The last one I had almost had my wife (still very much 'in') in tears due to the anticipation of it. Apparently sheparding calls in her youth were always just 2 elders coming by and telling her family everything they need to improve. The last one we got was clearly driven by the fact that the CO was coming soon and the last time he'd been by he reamed the elders for not doing sheparding calls enough, so they wanted to be able to report that they'd called on everyone in the congregation. It lasted about 15 minutes (so the elders spent twice as long driving as they did at our house) and essentially went like this-

Elders: You guys need to talk about anything?

Me: Nope. I'll let you know if we do.

Elders: Cool, see ya.

79

Your final WTF? Moment!

by restrangled in

jw
friends

it was a long time coming for me.....when i read about the extened generations, after being raised on1914 being the be all end all, and millions would never die....that was the end.

i was part of the 1975 fiasco, the 6 month only truth book studies, suffered through a disifellowshipping and their version of a rewind.

i finally am free and hope others can eventually look in instead of inside looking out!

OneEyedJoe

The final straw that got me past the fear of looking at appostate sites was the generational overlap BS. The thing that convinced me that it was definitely a cult was when I was looking at jwfacts and saw the mis-quotes in the creation book that are no different than out-right lies.

40

Blood in whose army!?

by sunny23 in

used this method to logically convince my friend who is also dfd of one of many reasons as to why i shall never return and he agreed.

let me know if anything is false or misleading and we can revise :).

blood transfusions:.

OneEyedJoe

There's similar reasoning on jwfacts as this, too. It also talks about how jews see blood transfusions as fine, which is quite a testamony, considering they can't eat a cheeseburger because of thier wide application of a very specific scripture (that says not to boil a kid in it's mother's milk, which is nothing like putting cheese on a hamburger). You'd think if anyone was going to ban blood, it'd be the jews...