greetings all:.
i just want to say howdy and thank you .
.
Welcome! My husband was also freaked out at first by what I told him when I first started addressing all my doubts and concerns. I tried to keep things calm, and after he had time to think about it all and come to his own conclusions, he quit completely before I did!
I wish you the best, Cate
i started a thread last week about when each of you exited the jehovah's witness cult.
i received about 41 responses from different people on the board and the years they exited the witnesses.
i went back and analyzed the dates you gave me and it was apparent from your replies that 25 of you left between 1998 and 2009 a period of about the last 10 years.
All I can say for certain is that 1995 was a turning point for me. Not so much for the change of "understanding" about what the generation was, but because of the way it was handled. It brought back my feelings from 1975 and made me start thinking about all the doubts and concerns I had felt for years.
Cate
do the jw's still believe that they were chosen by jesus as god's one true religion, by what charles russel taught?
do they stand on that or do they feel they were chosen later under rutherford?
if they accept that russel was chosen and rutherford changed things up, wouldn't rutherford be an apostate?.
As far as I can tell, no matter what you point out about the crazy beliefs from Russell's day, or Rutherford's, or Knorrs, or more recently, they (and we once) were trained to believe that it doesn't matter. They believe that God chose Russell and didn't care about the crazy things he taught and gradually clued the JWs in to the correct understanding of things as time went on. I really believe that only those of us who had started to doubt and question anyway would be impressed by any history of foolishness.
Cate
i don't know the talk # but the most boring talk title ever had to be "who are qualified as ministers of god?".
next came "parents - are you building with fire-resistant materials".
We had an elder give the talk "A Godly View of Sex and Marriage" with his fly open. That was interesting. Another gave that talk and announced that "masturbation is wrong although everyone has done it." That caused quite a sensation.
Cate
the use of the word "soon" at the kh is used so much by jw's.
that it has almost turned into a "soon" doctrine.. i counted the word soon 15 times at the meeting yesterday during the.
public talk and wt.
Gary you kill me! What a perfect response. Use their version of "soon" against them!
And as someone else alluded to: JWs love to focus on a particular word used by a Bethel Heavy--as if somehow some new word they are using means it really is, actually, finally...almost here!
Cate
after more than 20yrs without a relationship....after more than 5yrs without hearing a word from her, i called.. out of the blue, i just called.. me: hi, mom, it's me lisa.
mom: oh, hi.. me: well, it's been a long time, i just wanted to check and see how you and dad were.. mom: we're fine.. the conversation ranged from, the weather, my husband, my children and grandchildren, (whom she's never met) my animals, gardening.
we talked about how dad was doing now, (after a stroke) how he walks with a cane, and uses an electric wheel chair when they go to walmart.
Quandry: What a lovely idea! Somehow The Borg separates people from the normal family feelings, and then tries to make that new feeling seem "right." For LisaVegas to remind her mom of the normal loving feelings a mom feels for her babies is such a good idea! I would try it!
Cate
hiya.... .
i've been lurking here for over a year...(on the old forum and then this one)...i also post on several other forums.... got a long story, but i won't go into that right now.. some of you know me from the other sites, just figured this was a natural progression into apostahood to register here.
see ya'll 'round!.
((((Phee))))
Welcome! I'm so sorry for what you've been through, but so happy that your life is now good! This place is wonderful. Just learning that you are not alone means so much!
Cate
after more than 20yrs without a relationship....after more than 5yrs without hearing a word from her, i called.. out of the blue, i just called.. me: hi, mom, it's me lisa.
mom: oh, hi.. me: well, it's been a long time, i just wanted to check and see how you and dad were.. mom: we're fine.. the conversation ranged from, the weather, my husband, my children and grandchildren, (whom she's never met) my animals, gardening.
we talked about how dad was doing now, (after a stroke) how he walks with a cane, and uses an electric wheel chair when they go to walmart.
Good for you! Doing the right thing is its own reward; if your mom continues to talk to you, that's even better. One thing that led to my departure and my husband's is that we realized we could never cut off our children. We also said "no" to the elders that tried to insist they get baptized at a young age. It's heart breaking to think of the families that have been destroyed because children get baptized, then grow up and decide they want to do something different. Or the people that get disfellowshipped and then are forever cut off from their families because they decide they don't want this religion anymore.
Cate
you`ve probably had this topic before, but there always was this one thing which kept bugging me: here in germany it is pretty common for married jw couples to celebrate their wedding anniversary each year.
do jws in the us or elsewhere do the same?.
well, the reason i`m asking, is the fact that i never really understood what the hell is the difference between such an event and a birthday party?.
Marriage is God's arrangement, but so is birth. Remembering the vows we made when we got married and focusing on continuing to make the marriage work; remembering the importance of living the life you were given in a way that God would approve; what's the difference? It's all in how you spin it.
Let's face it, we celebrate anniversaries because we are happy to be married and because it is fun. We would celebrate birthdays because we are happy to be alive and because it is fun. How many people really spend their wedding anniversaries in soul searching and meditating on their determination to keep their marriage vows?
Cate
as i was exiting the society back in 1992, the elders were frantically trying to reason with me and kept saying that i was trying to run ahead of jehovah or running ahead of the organization?
just what does that entail?.
or they would tell me to "wait on jehovah" and eventually some of my beliefs/issues will be in line with the truth.
This is one of my big issues. If God doesn't lie, then what would you call "revealing" information to his earthly agents that is wrong? What they call the light getting brighter, is nothing more than correcting things they had wrong. Now that's fine, if you admit it. If the organization was to say, "We are trying to figure things out, but sometimes we get it wrong and have to make corrections," that would be okay. But what they do, in effect, is blame all the wrong information on God and make it a disfellowshipping offense for anyone to disagree with them. When they say that we shouldn't run ahead of the organization, they are saying that we might be right. Why should anyone have to wait to do things or see things correctly until the organization does. Why is it necessary to die rather than accept an organ transplant one year, but the next year you can accept one and live? You didn't just prove your faithfulness to God; you followed blindly an organization that had it wrong!
Cate
