Posts by IMustBreakAway

meaning did you always have something to give to people or witness to them at 'every' opportunity or did you look at it as a 'job' where you only gave things out in service?

Service was always mind numbing pain for me. There was a time when i was pioneering that i would go into coffee shops and just try to start conversations with people. That was fun but they rarely ended up being about the bible.. Mostly just about god and such.. I told myself that i was putting a rational and informal face on the ministry so that when someone next came to their door they would be softened.

For a while i thought about trying more random wittnessing. Like pretending that my car was broken and wittnessing to whoever pulled over to help me. Never tried it though.

7

Hanging by a thread

by IMustBreakAway in

except that instead of feeling like a thread it feels like a giant knotted iron cable pulling at my heart.

we are among the 5th generation of witnesses, my great grand mother went to rutherfords funeral, and being a witness has always been central in their lives.

i went to bethel like my brother, and uncles before me and sat at the same sewing machine that my grandfather had sat at when he was there.

IMustBreakAway

My wife knows. She accepts. She is one of the most lovely people i know. She dosen't agree with me she believes that god exists and for her it doesn't matter if she is a wittness or whatever, it just happens to be what she was born into. She has often told me that if she had been born an egyptian she would worship ra. (she isn't very rational but she understands the underlying social issues..) She is the one that is pressuring me (slightly) to reveal my true nature. She thinks i am being disshonest to myself and others.

As for the beard, well they wern't thrilled. But i got jilted by people telling me how much they loved my talks that i had to do something to get off the list. And i look way better with a beard.. (my aunt says i look hawt...)

7

Hanging by a thread

by IMustBreakAway in

except that instead of feeling like a thread it feels like a giant knotted iron cable pulling at my heart.

we are among the 5th generation of witnesses, my great grand mother went to rutherfords funeral, and being a witness has always been central in their lives.

i went to bethel like my brother, and uncles before me and sat at the same sewing machine that my grandfather had sat at when he was there.

IMustBreakAway

I am still hanging by a thread, the thread that keeps me is of course my family. Except that instead of feeling like a thread it feels like a giant knotted iron cable pulling at my heart. My family has always been “strong in the truth.” We are among the 5 th generation of witnesses, my great grand mother went to rutherford’s funeral, and being a witness has always been central in their lives. I went to bethel like my brother, and uncles before me and sat at the same sewing machine that my grandfather had sat at when he was there. So getting D’fd though it hasn’t happened yet will be more akin to having my heart ripped out and stomped on than for some. And my mother will cry. What’s also bothering me is that I have a very special relationship with my youngest sister. When my older bro, and sis, had moved on I was maybe 14 and she was 8 and I babysat her and taught her (we home schooled) through most of her childhood. Even though I’ve moved out from home and am married we still are very close, and I have come to support her like a daughter. She is 14 now and starting to think for herself and keeps talking about getting baptized. I think for the moment I have scared her off of that for a little while. She knows that I am not spiritually strong but has no idea that I am atheist. I told she should wait and be sure. Etc.. and she seemed to buy that for a while. I know my excommunication will devastate her.

Part of me wants to just keep on pretending, go to meetings. (I haven’t been out in service in at least six months but I also wear a full beard so the elders pretty much leave me alone.) And wait until she is 18 and then talk to her. No one knows about my real feelings and I could keep them a secret.

What have you done in a like situation?

11

Do You Keep Your Old JW Books?

by Clam in

what have you done with your wts book collection?

have you sold them, burnt them, given them away or kept them as a memento?

the only one i kept was aid to bible understanding, which i still find helpful, even though there are errors, eg 607bc lol .

IMustBreakAway

I still have all of mine, minus the bound vollumes, i always thought they were a waste of paper. I had to keep them though. They are so colorfull!! Also i am not sure i could easily extract them from the thousands of books stacked in the floor of my house.

64

if God proved he was there would you serve him

by force in

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hiya all.

i just wondered this becus i know lots of people have lost faith in god and the bible.. but if today something happened that proved 100 percent that god existed, would you go back to serving him?.

IMustBreakAway

I read something recently that said that worshiping god is like sucking someone off who is constantly putting out smokes on your forehead. It's a great analogy. Made me laugh but also made me think. I currently don't believe in a god at all but if he were to have a personal conversation with me and demonstrate his power i would be inclined to think he existed. As for serving him? It would depend on his reason why. If it was something like "because i said so." Then no, i consider it more noble to die fighting a battle i know i cannot win.

It's interesting though, because if the whole thing was true(in JW terms) then that would mean that satan is actually winning. Because more people would be against god than with him. So how does that work? Jah looks at the records and sees that 6mill people worship him, and 5.9bill don't. Oh well just destroy em all anyway.

63

WHY did you exit god and the bible when you exited the dubs?

by gumby in

not all that post here threw the bible and the bible god out the window when they exited the dubs, but many have.. for me personally, i never doubted god or the bibles authenticity untill years later when i began doing a re-search on the bible canon and how it was formed.

from there, i began looking at the sceptics view of the bible and it's god which then changed my views.. i guess my question is, why did you ( those who disbelieved god/bible upon exiting the dubs)... throw god and the bible out the window before you had re-searched it enough to make you believe contrary?

if all you really knew was that the wtbts was bunk, what made you feel the bible and it's god was bunk too?.

IMustBreakAway

Thanks Mr. Thomas

63

WHY did you exit god and the bible when you exited the dubs?

by gumby in

not all that post here threw the bible and the bible god out the window when they exited the dubs, but many have.. for me personally, i never doubted god or the bibles authenticity untill years later when i began doing a re-search on the bible canon and how it was formed.

from there, i began looking at the sceptics view of the bible and it's god which then changed my views.. i guess my question is, why did you ( those who disbelieved god/bible upon exiting the dubs)... throw god and the bible out the window before you had re-searched it enough to make you believe contrary?

if all you really knew was that the wtbts was bunk, what made you feel the bible and it's god was bunk too?.

IMustBreakAway

I'm new here but i figure i might as well jump in. I grew up as a witness and have yet to have my atheism discovered. (though i grow bolder by the day, give me time it will happen soon) I have known the bible was contradictory since i started reading it and giving talks. My favorite (being the little iconoclast that i am) to point out to people was Joel 3:10 which was about beating you plows into swords instead of vice versa.. But i justified it in my head telling myself that belief was just that, and it didn't really matter. But this isn't the forum for my personal story. I studied about the bible, not just the filtered history that all religions want to give you, I studied the book of the Mormon’s history and others as well. Ultimately i decided that it didn't matter that i could be a good person and just love god, though it was fake because i didn't really feel that love in my heart. How i used to beat myself up because of what Paul said about doing everything you can but if you don't have love it is for naught. But that doesn't matter to me anymore. I still believed in God up until the point when i left bethel. I had been reading a lot about science and evolution and was still sure in my head that old analogy of it being more likely for a plane to be fully assembled by a hurricane in a junk yard than for evolution to be true. (even though it made a lot of sense to me). But when i started studying astronomy is when everything kind of clicked. I realized how unbelievably huge the universe is. (i mean really really big) And that the likely hood of parallel universes had overwhelming evidence. Suddenly those odds didn't look to bad to me. That combined with an unhealthy anger at a god that would continue to torture humans and animals over a bet with Satan placed the last nails in the coffin.

So basically i find it more probable that we evolved than there is a all powerful god that could make our lives perfect and chooses not to.