Posts by OneEyedJoe

33

Losing Faith

by cappytan in

i've always been a "spiritual" person.

i've been an avid bible reader since as early as i can remember.

i read the bible cover to cover for the first time when i was about 17 years old and have read it at least twice more since then.

OneEyedJoe

Jesus, is it new member day? Lots of new folks, great to see.

Welcome. I'm in a pretty similar place. Its been about 8 months since I found TTATT, and I'm still trying to found a way to exit without ruining my marriage or damaging my wife's relationship with her family.

My advice (for what it's worth) is to take it show and do lots of research. Have you cone across jwfacts.com yet? Lots of information there (as week as here) to help you see that you're not crazy and there is indeed many things amiss with the jw organization.

Also, feel free to pm me of you ever need to talk/vent/whatever. It sounds like we're in similar situations, and for me it's been a huge comfort knowing I'm not alone. So, thanks for sharing.

52

New member, no longer just reader...

by freemindfade in

jw
friends

so i joined very recently and began posting and commenting without a formal intro.

been reading for a while, decided it was time to jump in.

mentally i am completely cleansed of this thing, but still have to maintain a minimal involvement for spouse and family.

OneEyedJoe

One of my favorites is how amazing a habitable planet is.

Haha, yeah. I just love that - clearly the planet was made for us since it's so perfectly suited to our needs! Umm...if we had adapted to the environment that we live in for roughly 4 billion years, you'd expect our needs to be pretty closely aligned with what's available...

I once likened going to the meetings every week to being stuck in the 5th grade for your entire life. My wife didn't react too favorably to that comment.

52

New member, no longer just reader...

by freemindfade in

jw
friends

so i joined very recently and began posting and commenting without a formal intro.

been reading for a while, decided it was time to jump in.

mentally i am completely cleansed of this thing, but still have to maintain a minimal involvement for spouse and family.

OneEyedJoe

Welcome. Seems a lot are coming out of the woodwork in the last couple days.

Still with a free mind able to rationalize, question, and just think in general, sitting through a meeting is agony.

Yeah, I thought I hated meetings before I woke up, now it's a whole new level. I'm one of the many here stuck in for my wife for now. Sounds like you may be in a similar situation. If you ever need to talk/vent/whatever but don't want it to be public, feel free to PM me.

90

Kingdom Consolidation and Sales are coming – Reliable Source

by thedepressedsoul in

i heard form a reliable source that a kingdom hall consolidation is going to be happening in the us.

currently they are looking at every kingdom hall to see if they could and should sell it.

any kingdom hall that has not been updated and is in a bad location (long driveway, not in a visible location etc...) will be sold.

OneEyedJoe

Based on the LDC talk that's been going around, I kinda expected this. I would've expected them to go the other way with it, though - sell off the recently remodeled KHs for the income stream, then pack everyone into the most outdated halls. That way once the new ones get built everyone will be so relieved to be out of the old crappy building they'll be less likely to question things.

There's a definitely a noticeable thinning out of late. Last year's memorial was the first one I can remember where we had seats for everyone in attendance, and this time the back rooms were probably only half-full. only a few years ago, the memorial would mean that about 20-30 people would be standing along the back wall.

9

...all the More so as You Behold That Day Drawing Near

by cofty in

when i was a jw we had a 60 minute public talk - interval - 60 minute wt study.

60 minutes on a tuesday and 2 hours on a thursday.

apparently every single meeting was essential.. we also had to get to 2 circuit assemblies every year that consisted of friday evening, morning, afternoon and evening on a sat and morning and afternoon on a sunday.

OneEyedJoe

This is one of those things that I think probably bothers most JWs in principle to some extent. The problem is that they're all so relieved to have less cult activities taking over their lives, that they're sure as hell not going to complain. At least that's how it was for me. I remember being a pre-teen hearing about these 7 day conventions from my parents and this scripture was called to mind, but I didn't dare mention because 3 days was a cake walk in comparison.

32

November 2014 WT - Points out the fact that Knorr supported false teachings.

by objectivetruth in

- it's amazing to track the confusion and stupidity contained in wt articles.

- in only one watchtower you can find multiple contradictory statements, and representations of truth that are simply lies made up on the fly.

- as an example the nov,15 2014 wt has the following quotes : -.

OneEyedJoe

Its sickening sitting there listening to the comments on this article. Its like everyone is trying to one-up each other with GB worship. The resident old-timer elder even made a comment about how knorr saw that a change was needed and instituted the GB! Anyone who's read CoC knows just how false that is!

25

I can't send any PM's thru this site.....

by Newly Enlightened in

hi simon, i can't send any pm's thru the sites email system.. please help!.

kim.

OneEyedJoe

Yep - I can reply to pms, but can't send new ones from someone's profile page.

13

Becoming officially inactive

by All for show in

jw
friends

i don't want to turn in my token time anymore.

it's only a few hours counting what we do with the kids.

i don't want it counted for their skewed statistics- or to just for the sake of doing it.

OneEyedJoe

From what I've read on here, you'll probably get a call from your service group overseer or the secretary requesting your time, and depending on how much "fear of man" is in 'em they may press you to make something up even if you're insistent that you've not done anything ("aww, surely you've had a few conversations about spiritual things with your kids that would add up to at least an hour?"). They might do this to avoid the lecture from the CO when he finds that they have a new inactive person upon his next visit.

Like I said, though, that's just based on what I've read on here. If it was me, I'd wait until the move, then never give the new elders any contact info (or inaccurate contact info) and stop reporting then. I guess a lot of it will depend on what your husband's situation is at that time, too. hopefully you'll be able to wake him up before the move and make a coordinated exodus from the cult.

15

List your favorite, overused scripture by JW's!

by thedepressedsoul in

the title says it all.

list a scripture that is way over used.. it could be a scripture that the point is completely missed by how they use it.

it could also be one that they use so much it's as if the rest of the bible didn't exits.. my two favorite are proverbs 4:18 and ezekiel chapter 1 +a few verses.

OneEyedJoe

I think the aspect of the indoctrination that kept me mentally imprisoned for so long was the notion that you can't trust yourself. Usually they're pretty subtle about this, but sometimes they're pretty up front about it. So while it's not the most overused scripture, it's certainly up there:

Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is more treacherous than anything else and is desperate. Who can know it?

Feeling like your life would be better outside the cult? It's just your treacherous, desperate heart fooling you.

14

w15 04/15- More Shunning!

by wifibandit in

full set : http://imgur.com/a/zubma.

.

OneEyedJoe

It seems like a rare moment of honesty, though - the abstract asks how something (disfellowshipping) that brings so much pain can be for the good. Of course if they maintained that honesty they'd answer that it isn't for anyone's good.