Posts by OneEyedJoe

13

Genesis chapter one can make your life meaningful and joyful

by venus in

literal reading of genesis chapter one brings no benefit because you would see god as speaking to fishes and birds (genesis 1:22) which we know is not possible.

however, with “a king’s mind” if one looks for the implied truth behind its literary allusions it may bring immense benefit.

(proverb 25:2) for example:.

OneEyedJoe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Ud7-EkZEI

In case the link doesn't work exactly right, start at ~1:07

20

Who can guess the number closest to memorial partakers ?

by Chook in

my punt 16144 , do you like my last three numbers !.

Wouldn't be surprised if they stop reporting it this year. Especially after another poster here said that at the convention the person giving the closing talk said that the number of partakers didn't matter. They'll probably plant this seed a time or two before quietly removing the stat from the yearbook maybe with a half page explanation.

15

boyfriends jehovah witness mom

by whatisthis12 in

my boyfriend is an ex new jehovah witness and today i got a message from one of his friends asking if i could delete a comment he wrote on one of my pictures because my boyfriends mom is harassing him about it.

he also basically told me that she has people who added me just to view my profile and let her know!!!!

she also sends him messages and pictures from the watchtower.

OneEyedJoe

You really need to talk to your boyfriend and come up with a plan of action. As I and others said in one of your other threads, the first thing to do is to make 100% sure your boyfriend knows its a cult and is never going back and that he's made this decision based on immovable facts. If that's not the case, you need to get him there quickly or walk away. Next up you need to have an open talk about his family. He is or was a JW so he'll know how to expect JWs to behave just like us, but furthermore he knows the people involved personally so he'll probably have greater insight into what to expect than any of us here will. It's a very bad sign that you have to learn about this all from strangers on the internet when the person with whom you ought to have close/open communication knows more about the situation than any of us do. You need to work on your communication or your relationship is going to fail with or without cult drama.

Once you've laid everything out with him then you need to decide what to do. Do you really want to stick around with him and all the cult drama and potentially be dealing with it on some level for the rest of your (or his parent's) life? Don't be afraid to be honest with yourself about what you want out of this. If you really want to stay with him, then that's great, but if you don't then that's fine too and you'll be doing no one any favors if you stick with it when its not really what you want. Again, if he's not completely resolute in his feelings about the cult, you need to include in your decision process the very real risk that he'll go back to it at some point (maybe a year, maybe in 20 years) and completely up-end your life together.

As others have said, this behavior from his mother is very typical of a JW in her situation. In some cases the only way to stop it is to cut off the relationship. Some JWs are able to adhere to strict boundaries if you set them and fight to maintain them. It all depends on their maturity level and objectivity (sometimes a JW will have just enough objectivity to see that their behavior, though motivated by their religious beliefs, is neither rational nor productive). Again, your boyfriend will have a better chance of guessing how this will go.

Good luck to you.

29

What religions/organizations aren't a cult?

by Jules Saturn in

so we've already established that most religions can be classified as high control groups, we can name the wbts, church of scientology, lds, etc.

the list goes on and on.

but are there any religions or organizations that aren't classified as a high control group or aren't as bad as the ones i've just mentioned?

OneEyedJoe

While JWs / WTBTS certainly has many of the hallmarks of a cult , I sometimes think it is better understood in terms of a commercial religious literature publishing and ( with that trade in something of a decline , increasingly nowadays ) real estate trading business that exploits free labour.

You can best understand the business decisions of the WTS by viewing it as a publisher turned real-estate empire, but you can best understand it's control over and negative impact on it's volunteer work force by viewing it as a cult.

29

What religions/organizations aren't a cult?

by Jules Saturn in

so we've already established that most religions can be classified as high control groups, we can name the wbts, church of scientology, lds, etc.

the list goes on and on.

but are there any religions or organizations that aren't classified as a high control group or aren't as bad as the ones i've just mentioned?

OneEyedJoe

So we've already established that most religions can be classified as high control groups

I can't say I agree with your premise.

I think most denominations of christianity probably don't qualify as being a cult in my mind - even though all use some of the same methods of control as cults do. You'd be well served by thinking of cult more as a spectrum - some groups are more or less culty but all are at least a little culty.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find any group that doesn't exert some form of control that's similar to methods used by a cult. Because cults use an amplified version of social influence to control people, you'd expect to find diluted versions of those methods in any social interaction. So, yes, literally every religion (and bridge club or book club or workplace or political party) will have some elements of cult influence, but in most cases these do not go to the point of becoming what we would usually identify as a cult because their influence hasn't gotten extreme. Maybe if you leave your book club you won't talk to those people as often, but they won't shun you completely. Maybe members of a political party discourage spending too much time investigating alternative ideologies, but they won't kick you out if you do and come back with new ideas for discussion.

Edit: it might be worth adding that I say this as an atheist: just because all religions are factually wrong, doesn't mean they're a cult.

10

CounselIling for Ex Cult Members

by Disassociated Lady 2 in

i wanted to ask those of you who were born into the jws and eventually left as an adult, whether any of you have had any counselling?

i know from experience that being programmed by a cult since birth does not give us the social skills and knowledge to function and interact with people in the outside world as we were taught to avoid it.

those of you that have had counselling, do you feel that it has helped you?

OneEyedJoe

I spent about 8 months with a therapist while I was still married. Most of my time there was spent trying to save my marriage, but some of it focused on assimilating into society and developing normal relationships with normal people and getting past feeling like an outsider or worrying about being seen as weird or whatever else.

It definitely helped - just the practice of talking to a "worldly" person (the therapist/counselor) can help.

First, if you're facing severe distress (thoughts of suicide or depression/anxiety that makes it difficult to function on a day-to-day basis) you should seek help right away - waiting will only make things worse and could be life threatening. You don't seem to fall into this, but I just wanted to put that disclaimer out there.

Assuming you're doing "ok" but just want help to move forward my advice would be to first make sure you've educated yourself on how the cult has controlled you and ways that it's influenced you that you might not realize. Books I'd recommend are freedom of mind or combating cult mind control (Steve Hassan - probably would be fine with one or the other), and EXiting the JW Cult: A Healing Handbook - this has a lot of helpful stuff that's very JW specific (written by a woman that became a therapist after leaving the cult). The reason I suggest doing this before you start seeing a therapist is because it can definitely save you a lot of time (and a therapist's time can be costly) because you'll be going in with a better understanding of how you've been affected and what you want to work on the most, and you'll be better able to articulate it to the therapist. Most therapists won't have much, if any, experience with cult victims, so you want to educate yourself so that you can educate them most efficiently. If you're already read up and have a strong understanding of how social pressure, emotional manipulation, and propaganda were used to control you, then you're on good footing to start working with a therapist that might not be as familiar with cult control mechanisms.

My next piece of advice is to make sure you find a therapist that you mesh well with. Any good therapist will tell you from the outset that they want you to feel free to move on and work with someone else if you don't feel it's a good match. Some might be a little resistant to your characterization of JWs as a cult due to the great care the cult has taken to maintain a good image to the world - be prepared for that. They'll probably come around after some discussion about why you categorize the JWs as a cult, but you'll need to be prepared to articulate it (which is another reason some self education is useful). If they put up too much of a fight (I haven't encountered this, but I've heard a few tales of therapists, especially religious ones, that are reluctant to accept that damage was done by the cult) then you move on. It's just like hiring someone for any job - they might be a great candidate but if they don't fit in the company culture or if personalities clash, they won't be as effective.

Lastly, you should know that 95% of the work of therapy takes place outside of the therapist's office. You're going to need to be ready to work on things yourself, and don't expect it to be super easy. It'll take work and commitment. Don't get discouraged if just talking to someone an hour a week doesn't lead to some major breakthrough. They'll help you with strategies to use, but the real benefit comes from going out into the world and trying them and learning from experience.

I wish you the best of luck in your cult recovery!

11

Reject WT Thinking - November 2017 WT article commented (p. 20)

by Master_Bob in

i really liked this kind of articles when back in borg, because they address the issues i was most concerned about.

or at least i thought that they address, because they don't.

i marked all the deceptive techniques and logical manipulations they use as a mental exercise and would like to share with you.

OneEyedJoe

Their use of the phrase "fog of information" seems particularly Orwellian to me - they use their newspeak to reverse the meaning of words. Suddenly information is confusing, not illuminating. Just like the 'slave' is the one in control and a 'privilege' is just another task heaped upon your shoulders and 'truth' is really a body of lies.

38

Latest Study Watchtower - JW's NEED to confess to elders

by The Fall Guy in

watchtower november 2017, page 10, paragraph 8 - "today, a christian guilty of serious sin needs to seek the help of congregation elders to recover.

) why is this so important?

first, the arrangement for elders to handle cases of serious sin comes from jehovah, (2nd lie!

OneEyedJoe

I read one bible commentary that said that this verse is talking about literally sick people. Like those needing to be healed. And that they believed prayers of others could make them well. Notice that sins being forgiven is tacked on at the end as a side note. The main point of this scripture is about healing the sick.

I think that's the only honest reading of that scripture. And it makes sense, too, because these writings are all building on top of stories about Jesus and the apostles working miracles and healing people, so why wouldn't there still be some residual faith healing going on? Of course it seems ridiculous to anyone with half a brain these days so that passage gets interpreted as figurative (just like the four corners of the earth, 7 days of creation, and so many more unreasonable passages).

It's also pretty clear that the bit about confessing sins is encouraging a culture of openness and honesty wherein people are up front about things they do wrong and in return they're also willing to be quick to forgiveness. This goes along with the frequent admonition to refrain from judgement - it's a lot harder to be open about passing judgement on someone when everyone knows all the times you didn't do so well yourself.

43

New Announcement At The 2017 - DF'd People To Sit At The Back Of The Hall

by pale.emperor in

has anyone else heard this?

a poster on another thread said it's a new rule brought in at this years convention.. last year they were told to shun even non df people and now this?

a religion cant force someone where to plonk their ass surely?.

OneEyedJoe

I always thought that this was existing policy - I've never seen a DFed person sit anywhere other than the back row or in the back room during meetings.

A religion cant force someone where to plonk their ass surely?

Why not? If the DFed person is at the cult meetings it shows that they either still believe it's the truth or they at least are trying to be reinstated for family. In either case it means that the cult has something on them and if they don't obey it doesn't give them what they want.

12

so confused!!

by whatisthis12 in

is it possible to keep a somewhat relationship with your family if they are witnesses and have a "worldly" girlfriend?

i just posted a post, and found this site to be very helpful.

sorry to repost but my other thread brought up some other questions.

OneEyedJoe

I'll drop another vote in the box for "he's not mentally out of the cult."

Based on the conversations I've seen and been a part of here over the years, it would be very unusual for someone in his position to consider going to a convention just to see his sister's part on it if he really understood the extent of the disgusting nature of the cult. Maybe he doesn't believe it right now. But if his reasons for not believing are shaky and based on emotion or personal experience (which cults are really good at getting people to reinterpret), then those reasons could easily come crumbling down at some later time leaving you in a whirlwind of confusion and ultimately having to make difficult decisions about the future of your relationship/family.