sounds like it's worth watching.. .
elizabeth vargas' yearlong investigation into the independent fundamental baptist church airs friday, april 8. .
try to imagine the pain and humiliation of a teenage girl, just 15 years old, who says she was forced to stand in front of a new hampshire church congregation and confess her "sin" of being pregnant.
Watching this now .........OMG ........it is making me so angry !!!! You could just insert JW and it would be oh so familiar .
I wonder how many Witnesses will watch this and recognize the similarities ??? Or will most watch and say "Oh how terrible ,see how bad worldly religions are ."
she's 77 and both mum and dad have been witnesses for nearly 30 years.
they've been pretty hardline in their time but just recently things have changed.
today, to my joy, mum wanted to celebrate her birthday so i bought her a big bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates (yeah i know, not very imaginative) and intend to take them out to lunch tomorrow when i've got more time.
Very good experience ,thanks for sharing . Amazing how when people are given the opportunity to use their own conscience ,they come up with more reasonable conclusions than the Society .
I also am surprised the Elders have not shut down their little study group .....Around here that kind of thing is nipped in the bud pretty quickly .
i just found out that a husband of an old friend committed a suicide and i was wondering if there are any letters to elders or any wts rules concerning funerals for those who committed suicide.
i've looked in the elders book and letters to boe index and didn't find anything.
some posts here say they can have the funeral at the kh and some here said they couldn't hold it there because suicide was involved.
In our area the congregations are acutely aware of depression and the terrible effects it can cause . When a young man committed suicide here they had his memorial service at the hall conducted by an Elder . In a close by hall another suicide victim had their service at a funeral home with an Elder conducting . So attitudes have softened and individual circumstances are considered . As others have brought out you are pretty much up to the mercy of the local BOE.
if you just want the juicy details where i leave, i'll make disclaimer where it begins, if you just want to know what happened with the elders and organization after i realized it wasn't true, i'll mark that seperately.
we didn't do jack shit in service, or in the congregation.
maybe this was how jehovah came about?
Welcome Jonathan ,I like my coffee with one sugar one cream ...
Very interesting story ,thank you for sharing . I hope one day your wife will also be on board,she sounds wonderful . In my family I was the one that quit ....I know the horrible feeling it is to look into the eyes of hurt of someone you dearly love . Over the past five years slowly we have worked through that initial shock ,and now I freely share stories form the forum with my husband . So you just never know .
i'm going to a party this weekend, the hostess has organised a fortune teller to come in and tell peoples fortunes if they want it.
i don't belive in this, but i'm i will be told " go on!
its just a bit of fun!
Yeah I would do it for fun . Since I have left I have done little things I would have never done as a JW just to prove to myself it was all Superstition . I have attended Church services ,celebrated holidays ,smoked a little ,gambled at a Casino, those kinds of things.... just to see how I personally really felt about them .So far celebrating holiday's is the only thing that has stuck with me . Last summer at a street fair I had my aura (?) read . It was a group of Spiritaulists and they sat and talked with you then gave a reading on what your energy was making them feel . It was fun ...strictly entertainment to me .
in school we had a goofy teacher who used to make fun of some of the wrong answers we would give.
if they were really bad his ultimate put down would be to say that our answer was "not even wrong".
little did i know at the time this is actually a technical term coined by a theoretical physicist for a statement that is not susceptible to falsification, we just took it to mean that our answer was very wrong indeed.. the more i move away from the jw mindset the more i find myself disagreeing, not only with the answers jws give on various issues, but the questions themselves that frame the debate.
big thumbs up
(please, no jws come in here to convert me, i don't want to talk to you).
i left the jw religion after twenty years.
i had one teenager and two small children then.
You really do not know how they would of turned out had they remained JW's either . You may think if they had stayed in the confines of the religion they would behave better.However many young people rebel as they get older ,and end up DF'd from the Witnesses. They could be just as screwed up . They are adults now ,and it is up to them to act accordingly . The youngest one in College seems to be headed in the right direction ,correct ? Each are individuals and will follow their own path,religion or not. We left when our youngest was 18 ,and the other two were in early 20's. They have all decided on their own (we did not influence their decisions) to stop being JW's . From our personal family experience leaving the religion has had no bad effect on our kids lives .
my job took me to a residential part of town that i would never normally have any reason to go to.
i had to go to a specific address.
i found it quite easily and parked the car about twenty yards from the customers home.. i had a sense of deja vu - but an unpleasant and rather disturbing one.. i took a good look around me.
I felt relief when I finally decided to quit going in FS. My husband was never very regular so there was no pressure from him to continue on . What I do recall as being an odd experience was the last time I prayed . I remember it vividly .We were on a motorcycle ride out in the country and I said a final good bye prayer . It felt strange like something left me ....no not Holy Spirit.. more like oppression . It felt odd ,but not bad .....just the feeling of truly being independent I think .
well, it's that time of year again.
the memorial season is upon us and jws the world over are getting ready for the celebration which this year falls on 17 april.
for the first time since 1975, yours truly will not attend and i couldn't be happier.
Our last one was 2005 . We had just started our fade and an Elder came over to the house to invite us personally ,so we went . Some people came up and hugged us with 'Oh we miss you ', one Elder said that and followed it with ,"I guess I could of called ,huh ? ".... Many more went out of their way to stick their noses in the air and let us know how poorly they thought of us .
I knew when I left that night I would never go to another one again . The ceremony is pointless.
AA will most likely be happy to have you back .....
