Posts by OneEyedJoe

12

Did you become more antisocial after waking up?

by paradiseseeker in

jw
friends

i've been shy my whole life, but during my teenage years and early 20s i managed to be more comfortable socializing and made many friends in different parts of my country (jws of course).

that was before i woke up, because i saw myself being a jw for the rest of my life and thus i made an effort to meet new jw friends.

however, after i woke up, i lost interest in meeting new people because knowing that when i leave they will be gone... feels like a total waste of time and energy.

OneEyedJoe

Yeah, I think it's inevitable that, in your situation, you're going to be much less inclined to be social with JWs. Not just the fact that most of the acquaintances you make will quickly abandon you when you make an exit, but also the mental and emotional stress of having to hold part of yourself inside to do it. There's always an undercurrent of JW nonsense in any group of JWs (at least in my experience) and having to repress yourself in order to not rock the boat or out yourself as an apostate before you're ready can take an enormous amount of effort. What's more - that habit of repressing yourself is very unhealthy and (I'm finding) can really come back to haunt you in future relationships even after you've left the cult entirely.

As someone who's very introverted myself, I empathize with your plight. I'd suggest that you really try to make an effort to make friends with non-JWs. You might even try being open with non-JWs about your current situation. I wouldn't open with it, but once you've both opened up about your personal life a little, it could be appropriate. I've found that I've consistently been surprised by the empathy and compassion I've received when doing that, and it can help you to train yourself to be more open and authentic, which will only help you make more friends. You're in a difficult situation, and you're likely to need some support system at some point - better to start building it now.

21

Watchtower May 2018

by Listener in

the may 2018 watchtower is now out and thought i would make a few observations.in this article we get a story about gb sam herd.

the recurring theme throughout is the struggles he has had as a black man.he was born in 1935 in a one roomed log cabin in liberty indiana.

his mother raised him in the baptist church.

OneEyedJoe

One thing that stood out to me from the beginning of this story, that I don't think anyone has mentioned:

One day, two JW girls [...] waved him over as he was driving his red convertible through town. He promised the girls that he would think about attending a book study.

[...] In 1958 [...] he married one of those young ladies that invited him to the book study, Gloria.

Were his eyes opened by learning that Jehovah was god's name, or was that just a detail that he picked up in the study in order to impress Gloria with how much he'd payed attention because he was hoping to hook up with her? This is one of the most common methods of cult recruitment out there - pull people in with attractive members of the opposite sex. Granted, JWs don't seem to do this on a coordinated basis, but the proportion of members that originally joined this way (along with those that originally joined after some traumatic experience - death, breakup, illness, etc - or after moving somewhere that they know no one) is quite telling. If it really were the truth, you'd think that people (especially ones that eventually find their way to the very top) would be joining out of sheer love of truth, not to hook up with a pretty girl or to make friends after they've relocated, etc.

35

The Constant Mindchatter After You Leave

by pale.emperor in

i've been out almost 2 years now and consider myself wide awake to watchtower propaganda and well on my way to recovery from the mental abuse we've all experienced.. one thing that just will not go is that i constantly think of jwism and watchtower and get myself all annoyed at their lies and blatant twisting of facts in their broadcasts and magazines.

it's so bad that it's the first thing i think of when i wake up, then i have these mental arguments in my head proving the jw teachings false and then getting annoyed because no jw will listen even if you tried to tell them.

i call this constant thinking and mental reasoning and mental arguing "mindchatter".

OneEyedJoe

I tend to take a practical approach combined with a bit of the idea behind the alcoholic's prayer - change the things you can, accept the things you can't change. So if you can't change something (i.e. that your family is in the cult, that the cult exists, etc) you just have to accept it and move on and force yourself not to dwell on it. If it doesn't have any tangible effect on anything, then why worry about it at all?

If you find yourself dwelling on some aspect of the cult, just ask "does thinking about this affect anything?" or "If I figure this out, how would it change my behavior?" and if it doesn't matter (i.e. dwelling on the flaws in the cult's argument about the 144k being literal or not, if you see the bible as a whole as having no divine value) then you just move on. Try something akin to mindfulness meditation - allow the thoughts to pop up, but don't entertain them. With practice you'll dismiss things quickly and not dwell on worthless cult stuff that has no bearing on your day-to-day life anymore.

14

Jehovah's witnesses in bible prophecy

by godbless in

good day to all on this discussion board.

i am "godbless" and i am new to this discussion board.

i live in westmoreland, jamaica.

OneEyedJoe

Before you go jumping headlong into a cult, you should probably check out jwfacts.com and freedomofmind.com. There's plenty of information out there on how cults use social pressure to gain undue influence over their adherents to control and take advantage of them.

The JW religion is not, nor was it ever, "the truth" as they claim. Their being involved with the UN is a mere drop in the bucket of problems with the "religion."

10

The Preaching Method Has Flip-Flopped Again

by pale.emperor in

im currently reading a book called jehovah's witnesses: portrait of a contemporary religious movement (https://www.amazon.co.uk/jehovahs-witnesses-portrait-contemporary-religious/dp/0415266106).the researcher is a social scientist, was never a jw, who studied with the witnesses solely to write this book.

his research has been quite thorough and objective which is commendable.he mentioned in the book how rutherford didn't want his colporters (pioneers) giving their own sermons or bible interpretation, but instead he had them going door to door with his records.

(i have some converted to mp3, they're very boring).

OneEyedJoe

At the 2014 convention Losche was on stage going on about how the use of videos in the ministry was revolutionary and a big step forward and that it was not a return to the old days of using a victrola to play rutherford's sermons. He made this assertion without anything to distinguish the videos from the old recorded sermons.

It's almost as if they're used to whatever they say being taken as fact without any need for substantiation. Weird.

11

Relationships after the Big A

by carla in

there was a post recently where the person was df'd (or da'd or fader?

) and had a friend who had already died.

let's call the fader/df'd person joe and the dead friend bob.

OneEyedJoe

It's whatever's most convenient to manipulate the target audience into (re)joining or staying in the cult.

If it's someone who can't bear the thought of shunning their apostate child and is saddened by the prospect of spending eternity without them, it's the latter - the former things will not be called to mind. If it's someone that you want to guilt into coming back, it's that people will miss them - put the grief of a hundred people on their shoulders to make them feel guilty and return.

42

Would You Go To A Memorial Service For A JW )if you were no longer attending the KH)?

by minimus in

jw
friends

some of my old jw friends are sickly and getting on in age.

so far, i’ve only gone to my mother’s memorial and have avoided the kingdom hall altogether.... your thoughts please?.

OneEyedJoe

For anyone other than my parents - no way. My parents are getting older, and my father isn't in fantastic health so I've given this some thought off and on. I'm still not sure what I'd do, but it'll sure be a fight with my living parent and still-in brother for it to not be at a KH. I think I'm simply going to insist that the speaker actually talk about the deceased and completely omit the cult sales pitch, being prepared to walk out should the sales pitch begin.

33

Manmade rules

by Jrjw in

i was talking to someone a few years ago and he said in his congregation they have a rail of white shirts prepared in the cloakroom for if a speaker doesn't have a white shirt on.

it was a rule in their hall that all brothers in the platform must wear white shirts when going talks and if the speaker won't comply when asked to change into the shirt they provide an elder in the congregation will do the talk instead.

i have never known any other halls do it so it must be a rule the elders have made up without gb input.

OneEyedJoe

I've heard of the exact same thing regarding white shirts playing out elsewhere, I think it was the policy made up by the crotchety old PO at the time.

In some congregations in west texas there were some near-rebellions when a CO insisted that cowboy boots were inappropriate for a speaker. The culture there is such that in many cases a man's boots are, by far, the most expensive shoes (and indeed article of clothing) that he owns and they are thus considered formal wear. In comes a CO from another area and he wants to make up rules to suit his sensibilities...

I had a friend of a friend that got DFed for fornication in his 30s (even though he'd married the girl he had sex with, and she was only privately reproved) because he'd been reproved for fornication a couple times in his late teens/early 20s and the BOE had a 3-strikes rule. Therefore, regardless of his repentance (he absolutely was) he got the boot.

I remember lots of rules about service time and privileges - in various congregations I was in, there were limits of somewhere between 6-10 hours a month required to have any "privileges" including carrying a mic.

I was once told that because I didn't comment often enough at meetings I wouldn't be allowed to read the watchtower because "people might be like 'oh, who is he?' when [I] get up to read." I was told at the same time that my wife would also need to comment more for me to get to read the watchtower at a meeting.

There was once a local needs talk given because an elder got wind of a group (ages ranging from 25 to 33) that went to a twilight movie. Apparently there is no such thing as a "good" vampire, and any fictional depiction of a vampire is to be avoided at all costs.

My mother was once told not to wear a pair of earrings (they were small, hardly noticeable pendants with a sun, crescent moon and a star) because they might stumble someone.

I'm sure there's more. Basically whatever the most pious asshole on the BOE deems to be wrong - that gets banned. Sometimes it becomes a race to the bottom as each elder tries to outdo the others to prove how righteous they are by finding fault and restricting even the most minor things.

28

Why do ex-JW's talk so much about being ex-JW's?

by Sour Grapes in

is it because we were in the cult watchtower compound that we talk about being ex-jw's when we stop being active?

i have never heard anyone say that i was an ex-catholic or an ex-lutheran or an ex-baptist.

they just stop going to their church and don't talk about it.. years after not stepping inside a kingdom hell, many of us still have to talk about being ex-jw's.

OneEyedJoe

Great question. You've inspired me to go on a car forum I frequent and ask those guys why they're always talking about cars.

30

Well...It's 2018 and still no ''Armageddon''

by RULES & REGULATIONS in

1972 : we started studying with the jehovah's witnesses when my uncle became an elder and put fear into our family that armageddon was close.

1974 : my mom, my brother and i were all baptized after all the convention talks and watchtower magazine articles that 1975 would likely end this system of things.

1999 : being told that the year 2000 was going to mark the 6 thousand years of mans existence and that the 1000 year kingdom in the new paradisewould come in the year 2000.

OneEyedJoe

They were smart enough not print anything about 2000

There were a couple places where (in the context of talking about the completion of the preaching work, I think) they said something like "all before the end of this millennium" and then it was changed, essentially, to "soon" in the bound volumes and on the library.