I have enjoyed your posts and I wish you well no matter what direction your life takes. You have a good heart and mind and I am sure you will find the right path for you and your family.
LisaRose
JoinedPosts by LisaRose
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28
Can This Be True?
by Hold Me-Thrill Me ini was very tired today, still am.
age is getting to me.
that video will be shown to millions of parents around the world.
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53
Spirituality
by Jonathan Drake inif you are a current practitioner of some religious faith i would appreciate it if you abstained from this thread entirely.
im curious if anyone has had what could be discribed as a spiritual experience.
i'm currently reading sam harris book waking up and it's very good so far.
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LisaRose
I haven't had such a thing happen, but I believe in the possibility as it explains what people of faith experience, speaking in tongues, or why some JWs feel they are of the anointed. Since I don't believe God is talking to them I felt there must something that happens to a person that puts them in an altered state of consciousness.
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help catagorize my wife: I truely believe she suffers from cognitive dissonance and other things this stupid cult causes.
by goingthruthemotions ini find it hard sometimes to get a good idea has to how to communicate with my wife when it come to this stupid cult.. she is born in and stopped attending for many years and got baptized later in life.
i truely believe she suffers from cognitive dissonance and other things this stupid cult causes.. here is a breakdown of what i gather to be where she is mentally.. * she calls the borg her faith.
here are actions that she does that go against her thoughts:.
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LisaRose
When people are able to do something rewarding and express themselves and see it turn out well, they naturally gain confidence that will spill over into other areas of life. There's also the side-benefit of having interests outside the cult that can replace cult activities.
Bingo. I think you are right, one eyed Joe. The Watchtower is constantly harping on the fact that mankind is basically sinful and stupid and needs God to tell them what to do, and by God they actually mean themselves.
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help catagorize my wife: I truely believe she suffers from cognitive dissonance and other things this stupid cult causes.
by goingthruthemotions ini find it hard sometimes to get a good idea has to how to communicate with my wife when it come to this stupid cult.. she is born in and stopped attending for many years and got baptized later in life.
i truely believe she suffers from cognitive dissonance and other things this stupid cult causes.. here is a breakdown of what i gather to be where she is mentally.. * she calls the borg her faith.
here are actions that she does that go against her thoughts:.
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LisaRose
You might want to start by not thinking of it in terms of her "lacking mental capacity" and having a "lack of mental intellect" when it comes to the Borg, those are insulting and demeaning terms. A lot of very intelligent people were taken in by the Watchtower, what made them stay was the mind control used, not their lack of intelligence.
It's pretty common for people to say they believe things but then act in ways that are contrary to that belief. It's easy to skip meetings and do token field service, it's harder to actually admit you made a mistake and joined the wrong religion, that takes effort and a willingness to confront difficult issues and deal with emotional fallout from that. You will not get your wife to leave until she is mentally ready to do so.
If you want to help your wife, do not tell her anything, people do not like being told what to do. Instead try to draw her out and figure out what it is that keeps her clinging to a religion that she doesn't enjoy. Does she fear Armageddon? Does she enjoy the social aspects of the religion? Does she think other religions are corrupt? Once you figure out what she gets out of being a JW, then slowly start asking leading questions to get her to think.
Be patient, she made get there in time on her own, or you may help her out, but it may take some time.
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42
I asked where is the proof?
by disillusioned 2 inarguing with my husband again, i asked where is the proof that jesus looked down on earth in 1919 and chose a small group of bible students in america apart from them saying it in their magazines.
also where is the proof that satan and his demons were cast down in 1914 just because first world war started.
neither of these things are in the bible only in their magazines.
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LisaRose
“Yes, the end of this system is so very near! Is that no reason to increase our activity?… Reports are heard of brothers selling their homes and property and planning to finish out the rest of their days in this old system in the pioneer service. Certainly this is a fine way to spend the short time remaining before the wicked world’s end.”—Kingdom Ministry, May 1974, p. 3 -
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LisaRose
Should we still be keeping the 10 commandments?
If you mean do I follow every law supposedly written on stone tablets by Moses, no, why would I? If you are a Christian, why wouldn't you follow what Jesus said at Matthew 7:12: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."
If you mean do I believe it's wrong to kill my neighbor or steal, then yes, in that sense I follow some of the ten commandments, but those are universal laws, most religions and countries have rules about that kind of thing. Frankly, there is nothing special about the ten commandments and some of them aren't even practicle in this day and age. What if doctors or policemen kept the Sabbath and refused to work? Tough luck for you if you had a heart attack or your house gets robbed . Also, my neighbor doesn't have an ox or a donkey, so I don't worry about coveting it.
As for the ten commandments being eternal, well, eternity is a long time, check back in a few million years.
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Help? :(
by BlackWolf ini apologize for how rantish this is but please hear me out.
anyways i'm a 15 year old girl and i've never really wanted to be a jw.
its just never been something thats made me feel happy or loved.
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LisaRose
I am so sorry you are in this situation right now, that must be very hard. Your parents are probably trying to raise you the best way they know how, but they are being deceived by a manipulative religion, so their decisions are not their own. Do your best to do all they ask, hopefully they will give you more priviledges as you show you are responsible.
It probably seems like forever, but in three years you will be an adult and will have more control of your life. Until then you need to do all that you can to prepare yourself for the life you want. If you have access to online resources, then focus on learning all that you can. If you dont, see if you can get books at the library. Art school is possible if you apply yourself. If you went to a regular school you could get help with this from a school counselor, but check to see if there is anything like that for home schooled teens. Do everything you can to prepare yourself to qualify for scholarships and grants.
We had a young lady here on the board who was home schooled also, and her mother didn't bother to teach her anything so she actually couldn't even read. She studied on her own and got her GED, and went on to college. If she could do it, so can you.
Good luck, I hope you get to follow your dreams.
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New WT video: Like taking money from a baby!
by WingCommander injust when you thought may's jw dot org video featuring wide-eyed cult lunatic gb lett guilting the masses into giving every last dime they have couldn't be topped, your children will now be fed a guilt-inducing cartoon in which they are guilted into giving every last cent they have to the wt cult.
the wt entitles this one, "give us your money!
even your children are to be shaken down!
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LisaRose
Wow, a child can't even enjoy an ice cream cone without being made to feel guilty. Just when you thought they couldn't go any lower.....
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What triggered your doubts / awakening?
by Tornintwo ini am sort of new here, used a different username for a while but things got 'difficult' at home so i've since been lurking.... what i would be really interested to know, if you don't mind sharing, is what it was that triggered your doubts and initial research which led to awakening, was it a bad experience, injustice, changed doctrine?
for me, it was seeing mistreatment of young ones in the congregation, they're under so much pressure and as soon as they go even slightly astray they are shunned, either informally (as bad associations which pushes them further into the 'world') or formally - with elders dying to throw the book at them so they even lose their family.... ...then reading about child abuse issues in the press.... ...which led me to silentlambs.
...then jw facts, this forum and coc, wham!
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LisaRose
It was the cumulative effects of a lot of things, being stuck in a bad marriage to a disfellowshipped person. Being treated like a second class citizen because of that. Health and family issues that made it more and more difficult to live the JW life, and being judged for that. Having a better than average job where I was respected and paid the same as a man doing the same work made it odd to be treated as a "lesser vessel" by the brothers.
Learning to think logically and starting to question things, like the generation change, because i had been around in 1975 and didn't get how "this generation" could be more than one generation. Seeing the question from the readers about the UN and thinking, huummm.
I finally reached a breaking point and it all just hit me one day that there was no evidence that the Watchtower had any special knowledge or was in any way being directed by God.
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They lie about everything, why don’t they lie about annual publisher growth?
by John Aquila injwfacts show that publisher growth was 15% pre- 1975 and has decline to about 2%.
what prevents them from fudging the annual growth and keeping it at something more positive like 10%?.
"a great crowd that no man is able to number".
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LisaRose
It might seem like they could get away with that, but they really can't. It would work for a year or two, but it would quickly become very obvious due to compounding, the effect of percentage increases over many years.
For example, if a country had 500k publishers and they reported growth of ten percent a year, they would have 978k publishers in only seven years, almost double. People in that country would probably be aware that no congregation they know of doubled in the last seven years. They would also wonder why they didn't need more kingdom halls, more magazines, books, etc. It also wouldn't match data from people like the Pew research center. I think most people in the organization are basically honest, and something like this would raise concerns among too many people.
It's like companies that fudge the numbers to prop up stock prices. Creative accounting can only get you so far. This actually happened in a company I worked for. They lied, hoping the market would go back up, but it didn't, they got caught out and people went to jail. I think they would do this if they could, but it's just not something they can get away with.