my mom is pretty cool.
81 years old and still going fairly strong.
my older sister was the first one to leave the dubs in our 3rd gen jw family.
Like RR I would need a seance.
My mum was very small minded and despite the fact that she rarely if ever went out on the door knocking, she couldn't handle the thought of any of us leaving the stupid cult.
My father has had several opportunities to redeem himself over the years and he has pissed all of his chances away. We are going back to the UK in August and I doubt that I will see him.
so many times we hear " i'd die for you " or " i'd die for **insert name/parent/lover** but would you really?.
the death may be a painful one and ask yourself if somebody else really deserves your life.. when someone said that to me i told them they probably wouldn't, this person got a little offended and when asked if i would die for them i said "no".....that didn't go down too well.. .
without a second thought, but only for my wife and daughter.
I'd sooner kill for them though....
haven't seen any magazines in that period.
have they released any articles about HOW TO USE THE BLOODY CAPS LOCK KEY?
any of you remember what was exactly the first thing that crossed your eyeballs to lead you into doubting the wts?.
beards.... odd I know but follow my thinking on this.
In the 80's there was a load of noise about how you wouldn't get used in the cong if you had a beard. It was clearly a case of making up rules outside of what is in the bible and was down to the opinions of men. This was clearly in contravention of the last verse of Revelation and also quite akin to what the pharisees were doing in the time of Christ. So if the GB were making it up according to their own opinions then it is clearly all a load of rubbish. Then I started looking more closely at other rules and regulations and it all unravelled.
when i discussed this with some ex-jws in the past, they have pointed out to me that the following is not done in actual pracrice.
of course it is not done in practrice ... that is why i referred to it as a "secret" because elders do not normally disclose such information, either because they fear its effect, or because they have not thoroughly paid attention to the "pay attention" book.
in this post, i am not arguing about actual practice ... rather what the undisclosed, withheld, secretive information is ... and how being armed may allow """some""" jws to relax their conscience.. a secret that elders will not openly tell you.
The original point of the post is clear, it underlines the double standards that are applied through the literature and also underlines how manipulative the application of control is throughout the organisation.
My father is still in the borg and his first grand child will be born in a couple of weeks, it will be interesting to see how he reacts to this. I cut him off after he decided not to come to our wedding 6 years ago and I could be an arse about it and not allow him any contact with his grand daughter, but I want to be the bigger man about it. I could so easily remain bitter and twisted but with the help of counselling I have got past the desire to return the hurt caused over the years including the lack of respect through shunning.
The bottom line is this, those still in will shun you if you are df'd or da'd. It's heartless and childish but you have to remember that they are mentally deficient and are therefore not wholy responsible for their actions.
our exit from the watch tower society was fairly speedy.
within about 3 months, we'd ceased attending meetings and lost all of our friends (apart from hobo ken and his wife).. what was shocking - and only confirmed that we were right to leave - was how our decision was met by our so-called friends.. we were leaving behind people whom we'd enjoyed friendship for over 20 years.
we were leaving behind friends who were closer to us than our own families were.
This is a great thread. I think it underlines two things for me:
1) They are so scared of having doubts that they do not want to hear your reasons for leaving for fear that you will destroy their tenuous faith. I would suggest that if someone's faith is that fragile then they should seriously reexamine it (didn't we get loadsof watchtowers about examining our faith.....)
2) They have no real love. Unconditional Love would cause empathy; empathy would cause them to want to understand your perspective and your reasons for your position.
There is a concept called cognitive dissonance, it is where you have an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. I would suggest that these two ideas are 1) Watchtower teachings are bullshit and 2) if I don't keep to the teachings I won't get through armagheddon.
The only way to go back to feeling comfortable is to remove the dissonance, or contradiction. The only way for the sheep to do this is to blank out the belief of point 1, no matter what evidence they see to the contrary. The easiest way to do this is to ignore or distance themselves from any evidence that it is all rubbish, why do you think that there are so many articles in the literature about not questioning the teachings? If you question the teachings then you create dissonance as you uncover more evidence of point 1, which often leads to a removal of dissonance by stopping your belief in point 2, the road to freedom.
http://cinemablend.com/television/why-the-battlestar-galactica-finale-is-a-huge-copout-and-it-doesn-t-matter-16337.html.
I haven't had a chance to see the finale yet, just saw Ep 19 last night and I hope they tie everything up well. There have been a few cop outs this season and it would have been great for them to have another season to bring all of the sub plots to a more rounded conclusion.
most people here in the poole/bournemouth area of dorset (and i know i'm generalising) are not very... well, inquiring minds seem to be an aquired taste around these parts.
i mean, there are lots of intelligent people, but they tend to be the ones who steer clear of 'the troof'.
those who are in 'the troof' around here don't tend to have the neccessary brain capacity required to realise they are in a cult & thus they don't leave in great numbers, & those who do leave tend to do so for shallow reasons (they want sex) as opposed to my reason for leaving (i realised it's all a bag of shite).
PP, are you in Bournemouth? I have family there and you would be about the same age as my step bro.
Drop me a PM and we can chat. I live in Australia now but can totally relate to how you feel, I left at 18 for completely shallow reasons; although I had been aware that it was bullshit for a couple of years before hand.
excerpt from cr 359, "the temple of god" p.915.
russell...in his own words...... .
"i am very glad to have this particular opportunity of saying a word about some of the things in which we agree with our masonic friends, because we are speaking in a building dedicated to masonry, and we are also masons.. .
I am a Mason, kind of.
I was raised to the third degree of a craft lodge two years ago but resigned from the lodge around 12 months ago due to work and family commitments. To be honest I was starting to feel that it was somewhat frivolous and would never amount to anything substancial.
Firstly, it would be nice if you stopped using the bloody caps key, it is rude.
Secondly, no, you would not find any Freemasons in the JW congregation as they are quite paranoid at any more liberal approaches to religion; Freemasonry develops a very laissee faire attitude to religion and is non denominational, however it is based on Christian/Judaist precepts.
