i have only been here a couple of weeks, and while i find most of you to be kindhearted, understanding and supportive, i can't help but get the feeling that there are some of us who are not who they say they are.
i'm not trying to be presumptuous, but do you think some people pretend to be x-witnesses just to mess with us?
Well thank goodness then. I'm just a cross-eyed cat so I have nothing to worry about. However, I did spend a night in a Holiday Inn Express.
Seriously, yeah, it's inevitable. Some people probably pretend to be JW's, and some JW's prolly pretend to be ex's.There's even a group in Brooklyn that pretend to be God's representatives on earth, but 99.9% of the earth thinks their nuts.
Dave
You have made my day. My laugh quota has been filled. I can go cough up a hairball now.
just curious how different individuals have reacted to the though of celebrating holidays after they left the jws...?
any holidays you have more trouble with than others?
does halloween freak you out?
I felt VERY guilty celebrating holidays because I never had them growing up. For a couple of years I was sorta on the fringe of celebrations, only doing it because my father had remarried and his new wife was into holidays. I remember one year I even got told off by my mother because I didn't send her a card for Mother's Day...I always found that ironic cause she was the reason all of us got into the jw religion to begin with and then she was yelling at me on the phone for forgetting this very important holiday that I had never celebrated before. 
However...after 6 years out, having reinvented myself as a person instead of a jw, I don't feel bad anymore. I don't care if these holidays were pagan in origin...how much of christianity is pagan in origin for crying out loud?!
/begin rant
God, old guy, white robes, robust looking with long white hair and beard...that's Zeus for pete's sake!
/end rant
The holidays for me are times to get off work and get together with family. To remind them that they're loved and cherished because in the normal hub-bub of day to day life sometimes we forget to tell them that. Plus it's times for presents and more presents! J/K.
would someone still mistake you for a witness?
hmmm...i'm gonna have to go with. NO.
My hair has been through just about every color of the rainbow. The only reason why it looks semi-normal now was cause I got married a month ago and thought it would be received better if my hair was blond versus fire-engine red like it was before.
I wear huge, clunky earrings 14 gauge and smaller (sometimes). I've got a tattoo of a grasshopper on my calf and I'll probably get another cause I like them.
I still dress modestly. I don't think that will ever change...but then again I don't have a beautiful figure so at this point I consider it a niceity to everyone else that I cover up the jiggly butt. However, now i've got nifty shirts that expound on the virtues of sarcasm, how my cat can beat up your cat, and how Guiness is so much more than a breakfast drink.
I cuss and I drink and I act like a loon. I belch when I speak and I howl at the moon.
I married a worldly guy and even lived in sin! ::gasp!:: I take martial arts, and I celebrate holidays? Why? Because it gives me a chance to see family and friends and to remind myself that I'll never be alone again!
Of course I'd be mistaken for a JW. ark ark ark
The cross-eyed cat has spoken.
i feel that i was dealt a bad hand in the gene department.
even before my conception, i was a loser.
my father was an only child, whose parents died in a car wreck, 1 week before i was born.
Oh...let's see.
I got depression from my mother. Mental illness features prevalently on her side of the family. We're talking clinical depression, schizophrenia, manic depression. You name it...well I've got aunts and uncles that will one up you just because it's a personal matter of pride for them. 
I got GERD from mom and dad. Yeah me!
My mother has diabetes, high blood pressure, arrythmia, high cholesterol...all of this leading from Empty Sella Syndrome (damaged pituitary gland.) All of her glands are malfunctioning...however, thank Bob, that doesn't seem to be a genetic issue that would pass down to future generations. My mother's dad died from a massive heart attack and he had raging diabetes. My mother's mom has blood clots pretty bad and has lost about 2 feet of intestines from them. weeeee.
I however at 27 have a cholesterol count of 240. I take martial arts, so that means exercising 3 days a week for 1.5 hours at a time. I don't eat the best, but I don't eat meat(in general other than fish ie. salmon), I drink soy, don't eat dairy other than cheese, because cheese is the most divine milk product. Anyhoo...before I go off on a HUGE tangent...I am probably an excellent candidate for yet more drugs! WOOHOO!
My dad's side? A lot of them stroke. My dad's lost a sister to stroke, and an older sister has had 3 already. His father died of brown lung disease from working in the steel mills in pitts. His mother died from I'm guessing broken heart.
So...we're fine here. We're all fine. How are you?
in another thread i started someone askedi still believe in jehovah, but now, i'm having doubts about his name???
is jehovah really god's name?
if he wanted his name to be known, he's all-powerful, omnipotent... i know that he has the power to make sure that his name is used correctly.
Name #1 - The first name that God told Moses about was Hayah . Hayah is a Hebrew word meaning I AM. Part One of this analysis discusses Hayah .
Name #2 - The second name that God told Moses about was YHWH. YHWH is a Hebrew word for which we have only the four consonants. We do NOT have the vowels. Ergo, we aren't quite sure what YHWH means, or how to pronounce it. Part Two of this analysis discusses YHWH.
Moreover God said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: 'The LORD (YHWH ) God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever , and this is My memorial to all generations.'" Ex 3.15
By combining the vowel signs of 'Adho . nay and 'Elo . him' with the four consonants of the Tetragrammaton the pronunciations Y e ho . wah' and Y e howih' were formed. The first of these provided the basis for the Latinized form "Jehova(h)." The first recorded use of this form dates from the thirteenth century C.E. Raymundus Martini, a Spanish monk of the Dominican Order, used it in his book Pugeo Fidei of the year 1270. Hebrew scholars generally favor "Yahweh" as the most likely pronunciation.(6) Aid to Bible Understanding, Watchtower Bible And Tract Society, 1971, pp. 884, 885.Please note: Hebrew scholars generally favor "Yahweh" as the most likely pronunciation.
Bruce Metzger, who criticizes the KJV's misusage of Jehovah, gives additional information:
The form "Jehovah" is of late medieval origin; it is a combination of the consonants of the Divine Name and the vowels attached to it by the Masoretes but belonging to an entirely different word .... (1) The word "Jehovah" does not accurately represent any form of the Name ever used in Hebrew. (2) The use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom the true God had to be distinguished, began to be discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.
I know it's a little choppy, but some food for thought.
just wanted to say hi.... its my 1st time on here...it looks good.. are there many here from aus??.
i am 37 - male - was a jw all my life until 2 years ago.
used to pioneer regularly and was a ms. thankfully i questioned everything in the end and found out who god really is and the history of the jw's....my wife and i were shocked after reading coc and c/freedom.
ok there are so many americans on the map now i had to split you all in half.. valis was kind enough to let me place the maps on his website until i found a new home for them.. photobucket seems to be a good option - at least for now.
so i have uploaded the new maps which have been updated to include everyone who has asked.. so if you were wondering where we are from.
or how close you are to other jwd posters in your area just take a look.
i'm 36 yrs.
old and was a jw for 35.i did everything from pioneer to bethel to ms to elder, school overseer ect.
, ect.
Talking to you could affect their faith? I always got a bang out of that type of reasoning, even when I was a jw. Just how strong could your faith be if talking to someone who's no longer in it could jeopardize your relationship with the Big G. What a load of Banta fodder.
Glad to see you here! Welcome Onesong...from one newbie to another...you'll have more posts than time of the day to read. It's an awesome source of information and questions are answered! No one threatens you with being Apostate (unless you would like someone to tell you that over and over again - different strokes and all) or anything! It's like they're people here and they want to help and chat and move forward and learn or something.
"On second thought, Forget Camelot. It is a very silly place."
sooooo glad to see so many new posters.
the borg is loosing control of some anyway.
singing with glee!!!!!!.