I'm very saddened by but not shocked at your story. Each similar story bears its own pain. The thing is, I've seen some and heard more of equally bad experiences that I feel a bit blasé and unsurprised about such happenings (of course, not about the victims). I can still feel anger about those happenings but that's a hard thing to live with for any extended time. I don’t want to be angry all the time. I don't know what it will take to shock me about the JW organization. Nevertheless, I think it should all be heard. Please continue to tell it like you saw it. It's not just cathartic for you but also for the rest of us.
Posts by Etude
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162True Stories from the Tower - Part 1 "From Anointed to Pedophile to Bethelite"
by BluePill2 inbefore i dive into the actual write-up of this experience, let me put some things straight.. i have thought long and hard if i should write more about my experiences during the 10+ years at different branches.
during these years i worked from financial department, service department, home office and different it assignments.
as you can imagine one sees and hears and reads a lot of stuff going through different stations in different countries.
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First Post - Introduction
by Syme inthis is my first post on jwn, and i would like to take a few lines to introduce myself.. i currently am still in the organization, though my conviction in the last 1-2 years is more or less agnostic/atheist (closer to atheist).
i am an ex-elder and mts graduate, having served in another 3 congregations, apart from my home one.. the reason for the above-mentioned conviction shift has to do with science and rational, logical thinking generally, and with the grand theory of evolution, specifically.
it took me long, endless sessions of hard reading and study of serious scientific literature (plus cross-matching all the quotes and claims in jw evolution-related literature), to finally make the shift from utterly firm religious belief to doubt, and then to lack of religious faith.
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Alzheimer's hallucinations are demons?
by Once Blind inmy father has been suffering from alzheimer's for a couple of years now.
my mother keeps referring to his hallucinations as demons.
i haven't been to the hall in a while, i've been fading for 20 years now, but i find this amazing!
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Etude
Please make arrangements and take your mom to a session at your local Alzheimer’s Association chapter. Call them first and set it up. The counsel is free. I think that what will transpire might set your mom’s mind at ease. It will help everyone understand the symptoms and the progression of the disease. My mom died from the condition and I felt it was ironic that, after being a faithful Witness for a long time, she had no idea what God was, let along the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In the end, they all abandoned her anyway.
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he refused a transfusion... and died
by sister x ingrowing up my mom told me that my father passed away from a heart attack in 1989 and i always believed her.
a few yrs ago i went snooping in her closet and found my fathers medical records.
i took them without her knowing and read them when i got home.. i have worked in hospitals all my life and i am an rn, im use to reviewing records.
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Etude
Wow sister x! That's a hard thing to discover. If your mother is still a Witness, it seems to me she has chosen her path and her punishment. Being a Witness is piling insult on the injury of refusing blood for your father. I don't know the actual circumstances but it seems, according to you, that it was her decision to not give him blood. Well, you know how that goes. Either way, it would have been a life changing decision. Do you know how your father would have reacted if he'd lived and felt he violated some law of God? Would he have been angry? It's quite possible he would have been grateful. It's also possible that by giving him blood and suffering the consequences that would follow, your mom might have been happy along with her living husband.
I don't know. I'm looking at this from many angles. I hope you're mom makes a realization and can forgive herself, especially by leaving the JWs. You might try exposing her (in subtle ways) to the information about how hypocritical the WTBTS is about the blood issue. Use the "you can't have a ham and cheese sandwich" parallel with the "but you can have some ham or some cheese or some bread" argument.
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Why do Jehovah's Witnesses keep track of field service hours?
by Faithful Witness ini understand that they claim to have the responsibility to preach to every corner of the earth, so they can encourage armageddon to come quickly.
(matthew 24:14 "and this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
what rationale do they have, for keeping track of their hours and literature placements?
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Etude
“I've always likened an individual's time card as a medical record in the sense that when the Circuit Overseer visits, he can review the overall spiritual health of individual publishers and the congregation.”
Spiritual health my ass. It’s all about control. If they don’t like the numbers, you can expect a talk from the platform or an article in the magazines or even direct counseling to you for not dedicating enough hours. When you train somebody right, you’d be surprised what they’ll do for you, how far they’ll go for you. When I was around, I was amazed how many people fudge their hours. They went out to visit somebody for 10 minutes but counted the whole 40 minutes it took to go there and come back as dedicate hours. It turned out not to be a pleasure to preach. It became a chore.
Please, tell me when in the 1 st century did they go around taking peoples spiritual temperature. Tell me where they sent those hours and to whom, back in the first century. Tell me how the duty of a Christian in the first century changed from a “publisher” to a “pioneer” to a “special pioneer”, etc, etc.
If “spiritual health” is what they’re measuring, then reporting hours is the rectal thermometer they use to determine it. Anyway you look at it, it’s not very pleasant considering it’s not even the only thing they like to probe you with. I don’t know about you but I like to keep my spiritual health (anus) free of objects.
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Honest survey question on effectiveness of 'apostacy'
by Simon init seems like lots of people have big dreams of 'destroying the watchtower'.
it's usually linked to a story of how they were wronged and want some revenge.
do these 'in your face' attempts to convince people that the truth isn't the truth really have an effect?.
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Etude
The reason I started as a JW at the age of 16 was because, while watching the world and the things that happened in it, I had an intrinsic need for justice and protection. Because of some opportune people that showed up at my house, that need was hijacked and misdirected. I suppose that I was shaped by my environment, not just about the concept of God but also by seeing a challenge of established views. After all, the Hippie Movement set the tone for that in my generation.
So, my drive to question was already there. I guess it just didn’t stop after I swallowed the fairy tale. I remember crossing Columbia Heights going from one Bethel building to another and seeing a group of apostates with signs picketing on the side walk. I had never seen that before. Even though I looked at them with a little disdain, I do remember wanting to know what they were protesting about and why they were so brazen to be in public that way. Later on, when I had known for a while that we were not supposed to speak to people who had left the “Truth”, I still maintained contact with an ex-sister who I had determined was a decent human being. I guess it was the inconsistencies I observed while a JW that made them implode in my mind.
To consider your question Simon, whether apostasy (as I saw it) was effective in my case, it’s difficult for me to tell which came first: whether my questioning attitude drove me out or examples of people (apostates) made me leave. I think it was the first case. Many other people had the same examples I faced and never got out. So, I don’t think one can actually argue against the colossal edifice of rules and justifications the WTBTS has built and cause people to leave, even with logic. It seems to me that the exit process is a very individual journey.
Still, I feel a sense of duty pointing out how wrong a person can be when they aren’t logical about they believe and ignore hard evidence. When I was a “witless”, I spoke at his door with a Catholic man. He said to me that his parents were Catholic, he was baptized a Catholic and that he would die a Catholic (even if he seldom went to mass or even followed Catholicism well). I had just demonstrated to him that Mary was not always a virgin. But that didn’t matter to him enough to change the belief of her beatification, what mattered (I suppose) was the tradition he inherited and the idea that he had to have something with which to identify. At least, I felt that I had given him a piece of information that corrected his understanding. Beyond that, it seems that it is an individual responsibility whether the person acts on that or not. It works for some people and it doesn’t work with others. I never really know. But whether it works or not, I can’t help but argue against nonsense. Short of cult deprogramming, the way they used to do it in the late 1960s and 1970s, I don’t see a way to get somebody out who doesn’t want to get out.
So, if activism against the JWs means having a fervent desire to correct a wrong, I guess I’m one. But it’s much more than that. For me, questioning in light of doubt is a universal drive I have. It doesn’t really matter what it’s about.
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Atheists, what is the best argument FOR God?
by bohm inthere are no convincing arguments for god, but some are worse than others.
i thought it would be interesting to see what people consider the best (of the bad) arguments for god?.
in my oppinion it is the fine-tuning argument from cosmology.
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Etude
I think there is a fundamental problem with beginnings and causation. Maybe it has to do with our limitations of time and maybe even the idea of time (some physicists say it really doesn’t exist). It works the same for God and Science. When arguing about who made he who made God (ad nauseam), I think of a period when Science assumed that the Universe always existed (in Newton’s day) and then when it was changed to an eternal alternation of contraction and explosion (the Oscillating theory of the Universe). But now, based on expansion rates, we don’t expect it to contract and can calculate that it is approximately 13.8 billion years old since its beginning.
The difficulty stems from asking what was before the universe became or how the matter for the singularity of the Big Bang came to be. Science’s Holy Grail is to find an ultimate answer that not only explains how it all came to be but also why it came to be the way it ended up being. So, for Science, the question of beginnings remains a philosophical one and almost as fleeting as it is for a theist. The difference is that Science can afford to speculate (guess) with much greater confidence.
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first T-day dinner this year
by Hortensia ini live in a seniors-only apartment complex.
management has a tendency to patronize us, which is interesting and rather entertaining.
today we had our annual t-day dinner for the seniors, catered by a local church.
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10,000 year old spear point found in FL - man is only 6,000 years old?
by Comatose inhttp://www.cnn.com/2013/11/16/us/florida-spring-artifacts/index.html?hpt=hp_c2.
as evidence piles up, will we reach a tipping point where people begin accepting the age of humans existence?.
he described as "phenomenal" the preservation of the finds, whose location as many as 5 feet deep in oxygen-free sediment had protected them from decay.. they include a suwannee projectile point -- a spear point -- whose estimated age of 10,000 years puts it "right at the cusp of the end of the ice age," arbuthnot said.
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Etude
What you all don't understand is that when Adam was cast out of Eden, many of his descendents retired in Florida. Let's face it, land was easier to get and there where lots bogs and everglades to hunt in, especially after the Great Flood. That tradition of retirement remains to this day.
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Etude
I don't know how true that account is. It just seemed to me that it's much like many instances I've heard about and situations the WTBTS itself uses to convince that the shunning practice works and can make people return. Here are a few examples:
"The situation is different if the disfellowshipped or disassociated one is a relative living outside the immediate family circle and home. It might be possible to have almost no contact at all with the relative. Even if there were some family matters requiring contact, this certainly would be kept to a minimum, in line with the divine principle: 'Quit mixing in company with anyone called a brother that is a fornicator or a greedy person [or guilty of another gross sin], . . . not even eating with such a man.' " —1 Corinthians 5:11. http://www.watchtower.org/library/w/1988/4/15/article_01.htm
From the same article as I cited above, consider how the practice of alienation is encouraged:
“Lynette's sister later told her: 'If you had viewed the disfellowshipping lightly, I know that I would not have taken steps toward reinstatement as soon as I did. Being totally cut off from loved ones and from close contact with the congregation created a strong desire to repent. I realized just how wrong my course was and how serious it was to turn my back on Jehovah.'
In another case, Laurie's parents were disfellowshipped. Yet she says: 'My association with them never stopped but increased. As time went on, I became more and more inactive. I got to the point of not even attending meetings.' Then she read material in The Watchtower of September 1 and 15, 1981, that stressed the counsel of 1 Corinthians 5:11-13 and 2 John 9-11. "It was as if a light bulb were turned on in me," she writes. 'I knew I would have to make some changes. I now better understand the meaning of Matthew 10:34-36. My decision was not an easy one for my family to swallow, for my son, five, is the only boy, and they love him dearly.' It is hoped that losing such association will touch the parents' hearts, as it did Margaret's. Still, the discipline involved helped Laurie: 'I am back out in the field ministry. My marriage and family are stronger because of my change, and so am I.' ”
The example is designed to show how shunning within a family works. No kidneys donated in the story, but the situation and the pain is the same.