Posts by OneEyedJoe

38

Talk to my Dad about beards.

by LovingLifeNow in

jw
friends

so i spoke to my elder dad the other day, and he asked if i still am sporting a beard.

i said yes, then i said, "i thought the society said its ok to have a neat trimmed beard now?

" he said "no, no, no..if you read the article , it says in countries where it is accepted" so my response was "ummm, its pretty accepted here in america"..which he says "it reflects your spirituality" "if another wittness saw you, they would know you are weak"...i was like, "ok, i don't get it, and i follow christ/god, not men..." then he said in his hall" if a brother came in with a beard , he would not have privelages" then i just gave up, and tried to change the subject..ugggggggggg if these people would just listen to themselves , they would see the sillyness of there teachings...

OneEyedJoe

Why on earth would someone wearing a Beard "stumble" someone ? Jeez, if something like that upsets them they ain't gonna' last long in the JW's anyway.

If someone wears a beard it can definitely stumble many int he congregation. Seeing someone defy the leadership would make them want to confront that defiance but in doing so they are very likely to realize that the cult's stance doesn't have a leg to stand on. That would be quite a "stumbling block" indeed.

I've seen a number of times people post with some implied shame that they woke up at least in part due to the beard issue and I don't think this shame is warranted. It's a perfect issue to wake up to - seemingly low stakes and yet it encapsulates one of the greatest examples of the cult's hypocrisy and willingness to manipulate information and scripture to suit their ends. It seems like a small thing to start so people are less afraid to approach it, but then upon discovering the fraud they can't help but see it everywhere else.

7

When Your Adolescent Questions Your Faith

by Funchback in

https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/wp20120201/adolescent-questions-faith/.

this article doesn't touch on the topic of what a parent shoud do if their teenager has made an educated decision to stop attending meetings.

but, hey...what else do you expect from the watchtower coporation?.

OneEyedJoe

Not only does this force the assumption that any doubts a kid might have are due to some other emotional problem not related to the cult (lack of self confidence, lack of friends, overwhelmed by the ~~Orwellian control~~ christian standards) but they're also reinforcing that if the kids leave it's the parent's fault for not handling their kid's doubts correctly. Again, it couldn't possibly be the cult's fault for being a fraud.

29

why does no one ask questions ?

by midnight in

i always felt bad for asking questions , did anyone else ?

what question did you ask or want to ask but feel it was wrong ?

mine was regarding the circuit assembly and the amount defecit anounced .. also 1975 i got a stern reply too when i was studying in the 90,s.

OneEyedJoe

I never once felt bad for having questions, but I learned at a young age to keep them to myself. Asking my parents the sorts of questions that I had always resulted in 3 things: I'd get an unsatisfying answer accompanied by a stern/concerned look, my parents would force me to do more "bible study" of cult propaganda, and I'd get more scrutiny around how I was spending my time and who I was friends with at school, etc. I wanted the cult to be true, and all their deeply unsatisfying answers to what should have been simple questions that everyone had thought about only left me with stronger doubts and I didn't want that. Coupled with the punishment of more study and my parents ramping up on trying to isolate me from the world I quickly learned to just not ask questions. It was better to assume there was a satisfying answer to my questions than to hear the excuses they'd actually give me.

51

Did you ever have a discussion with an apostate that helped your journey out.

by jwfacts in

there seems to be a number of different ways that apostates try to get jehovah's witnesses realise they do not have the truth, ranging from subtle comments to aggressive attacks.

do you have any that looking back helped you finally leave.

some of the methods include:.

OneEyedJoe

The only apostate thing that I ever encountered prior to waking up was when I was probably 14 or 15 - my friend (similar age) and I were at a door together and the person at the door gave us a little pamphlet that gave lots of information about CTR - talking about how he sold his business and made the equivalent of about a million dollars and sunk it into publishing bible literature and then he started his own stuff. I think there was something in there about miracle wheat and some of the other cons of the time. It all sounded so outrageous to me - we actually read through it with my friend's family after we finished for the day and we all had a good laugh. It just solidified to me that apostates must be conspiracy theorists and are all crazy.

After I woke up I went to one more convention (2014 international convention) as I tried in vain to wake up my wife. That was my first time encountering protesters at a convention, and they were trying to hand out pamphlets and were reading from a bible some scripture about jesus and shouting at us about how it's only through jesus that we can have salvation. I tried (but failed) to catch back up with them on a subsequent day to explain to them that nothing they're doing is helping and give them some better tactics, because it seemed to me that either they couldn't be exJWs or they were so deluded by whatever evangelical group they landed in upon exiting that they thought they could reach people by just shouting bible "truths" at them.

jwleaks and jwfacts were by far the biggest influences on me waking up as far as the actions of apostates goes. Ironically my encounters with apostates had a smaller influence on me than all the rhetoric about apostates. I could accept it when I was told that apostates were bitter/angry/lazy/selfish/etc and that's why they'd left and even that some wanted their own followers, but what always bothered me was when we were told not to take their literature even if they promised to read ours if we read theirs. Obviously if one was the truth and one was lies, it would be clear which was which and we might have a chance to sway this pour lost soul, but no we were told to write them off and run away. That always struck me as hypocritical (which of course we were always cursing hypocrisy in others...) and never sat well. Also a few times I heard my elder father talking about how important it was that apostates not be able to get JW literature (this was about the time that the first watchtower library CD was released) and I just couldn't rationalize why that'd be a problem - shouldn't they be encouraged to have the "spiritual food" that we had? I just couldn't understand the fear that people had about these apostates that were armed only with lies.

27

I want to know what celebrations JWs don't consider pagan?

by Chook in

i could only think of weddings and wedding anniversaries .

OneEyedJoe

I don't think they could regard Thanksgiving as pagan since it was inaugurated by Christians, but it's still against the rules. Really, the whole "it's pagan objection" is just an excuse to isolate JWs from non-JW family members.

Yeah, thanksgiving isn't considered pagan. But they cast it as a holiday designed to promote national pride and it is therefore banned under the "no part of this world" clause. If it ain't one thing it's the other.

The only real structured celebrations that I ever knew of as a JW were anniversaries and graduations. All the others were either pagan, nationalistic (memorial day, labor day, 4th of july, etc - I never knew of anyone who dared even have friends over to grill on those days) or put too much emphasis on a person and bordered on creature worship, or some combination thereof.

I refuse to list the memorial as a celebration. It wasn't and isn't.

22

I have a theory related to the cult spectrum

by ILoveTTATT2 in

jw
friends

translating jwfacts into spanish has made me critically analyze pretty much everything paul has written.

i would say paul is right 90%+ of the time.

some things are just things that are outdated, on other occasions, things are partially right and just need to be tweaked.anyhow... one of the articles is "where else would i go"?since i am an atheist, ideally, for me, the answer would be "become at least agnostic, if not atheist, and lead an evidence-based life".

OneEyedJoe

I think differentiation is probably more a symptom than a cause. Cults are lead by an authoritarian regime that typically seeks to inflate their sense of importance and control their followers. How are they to show that they're god's divine channel if not by changing doctrine somewhat? Religions that aren't cults probably have more mainstream views just because they don't seek to control their followers so there's less incentive to going out and inventing new doctrine - they just follow whatever is the norm and don't place nearly as much importance on it.

It also seems that you're unnecessarily restricting yourself to cults based on christianity. There are cults that don't have any doctrine that relates to christianity (therapy cults, pyramid/investing scheme cults, etc) but it's not that fact that makes them a cult because there are other groups that have a similar format/goal but are healthy (healthy therapy groups, normal investing clubs, etc).

Furthermore when a cult becomes mainstream and begins to shed some of its control (the early catholic church and even early christianity seem to have been cults in their day) the doctrine necessarily has to be viewed a little less stringently because the only way to prevent differences of opinion on doctrine is to exert cult-like control on followers. As the control fades the doctrine becomes fuzzier and drifts to more mainstream teachings that most everyone can agree on and avoids ones that are more contentious.

15

Australia Take 5: “I was sexually abused by a JW elder as a child”

by darkspilver in

take 5 is a popular weekly 'women's magazine' based in australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/take_5_(magazine).

the following 1,100 word story is from their website - don't know if it's in the printed version.....take 5, may 5, 2017.

OneEyedJoe

I don't get it. What does a tin of Milo have to do with her situation? How did it trigger her memory?

Small details from a traumatic memory can trigger PTSD. Maybe the abuse happened somewhere and there was a tin of Milo in view and seeing it again triggers that memory. Maybe in an attempt to not be 'present' for the abuse she focused on something on the shelf that caught her eye. Point is, life for someone that's put through this sort of abuse can be challenging in ways that someone that hasn't lived it would be entirely clueless to.

19

JW.org Childrens Page: Expanding My Circle Of Friends

by pale.emperor in

https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/family/teenagers/worksheets/expanding-circle-of-friends/.

some things of note here, it looks to me that they're encouraging young ones to befriend older people and "people not like them".

could this be because many of the young ones are now leaving?.

OneEyedJoe

This isn't a new thing...I remember growing up in the 80s and 90s kids were often encouraged to befriend adults (often specifically the older folks) in the congregation. To me this always felt like it was sorta along the same lines as the whole "we don't need birthdays/christmas because we get presents all year and it's always a surprise!" in this case its more "there's no lack of people to befriend, we can make friends with all these old people!" Kids in the cult will often (especially these days as things thin out) feel socially restricted and I think this is an attempt to get them to replace friends of their own age with cultists.

It is definitely curious advice to give right now when you look at all the child abuse issues they're having, though.

40

Do you air on the side of caution?

by compound complex in

well, that would be an airer.

it's all in how we hear the spoken word.

when a little boy, one fellow thought "world peace" was "whirled peas.

OneEyedJoe

For all intensive purposes, I try to air on the side of caution. Unfortunately I think this has caused a lot of people to start taking me for granite.

51

Bearded students on Ministry school?

by NikL in

jw
friends

so at last nights ministry school we had 2...yes that's right two that had parts and gave them with beards.. i found it interesting.

i thought the consensus was that you couldn't have any extra privileges if you wore one.. maybe the school is different?.

anyway, anybody else seen this in the u.s.?.

OneEyedJoe

I had drinks with my MS brother a while ago and he excitedly (and without me asking anything about the cult) reported that some other congregations were letting men with beards read the watchtower on stage. What a revolution this was! He was hopeful that it would migrate to his congregation so he could have a beard.

I guess I've finally gotten some distance from this cult...it really struck me how absurd and childish all this was.