Posts by grey matters

What has helped me is to be close to non JW family - aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. I come from a big family. The members that are JW are significant to me, but they are not the majority of the family. I try to remember that to keep things in perspective.

As far as closure is concerned, the more I study and realize that a lot of the doctrines were wrong and the dates were a bad guess, the better I feel about being out. I've done well in business. A lot of my friends don't know I was ever a dub to begin with. It is difficult to be entirely at peace with it. But I have learned from it, and am trying to have a balanced perspective.

12

I couldn't believe what I heard

by snarf in

jw
friends

i posted last week about wanting ideas to bring up for a visit from my old teacher and her elder husband.

the visit went awesome, they only managed to stay for 3 1/2 hours then made up a lame excuse and bolted out of here as fast as they could.

i am very grateful for the responses i recieved, although we never made it to those issues, i didn't get a chance.

grey matters

Way to go! Good job keeping them from jumping subjects as they tend to do when backed into a corner. And I don't think your reasoning is way off. It sounds pretty balanced to me. All in all, I think that was a tactful way to push back without being beligerant.

44

Questions for those born or raised in the truth

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

raised in the organization

"for those not born into the organization .

not having been born into the organization i believe.

grey matters

Mysterious,

Wow. You really nailed it. I read the first couple of replies and thought, What? It didn't suck? I thought it did! Of course, we are all different, so the experience affects us differently. That having been said. There is a lot of feeling in your post. I relate strongly to those feelings. I never felt superior to the kids around me. I felt like an idiot.

The thing that might be unusual about my experience is that I have had some wild swings here. Growing up, I hated it. We had one kid my age in our congo, and he didn't really take it seriously either. I had an aunt (non dub) that was really close to my age. So I hung out with her and her friends. Whether my parents realized it or not, most of my close friends were worldly. I think they mostly just felt sorry for me. I don't think I pondered "The issue of Universal Sovereignty" as a kid, but I thought the whole religion was a bunch of garbage, and was embarrased to be stuck in it.

My parents were very restrictive, and I was stubborn and rebellious. I almost moved out at 17. My step dad of course thought that was a bad idea, and in retrospect I agree with him. But I felt I couldn't take it anymore. He made a deal that he would ease up on the restrictions if I agreed to stay until I was 18. I did, but at 18 I was out and never went back.

The weird thing about it is that it was a couple of years after I moved out that I got serious about the religion. The relationship between my step dad and I improved dramatically. For the first time, I felt accepted by him. I thought maybe that I had not given the religion a fair shot. I liked a lot of the things the religion supposedly stood for, like helping our neighbors. Anyway, I dove in head first and ended up thouroughly involved in the religion througout my twenties.

In the end, I decided I was right the first time. During my fade, I remember feeling really detached. They had me run the sound system. I remember sitting there, all the way in the back and all by myself, feeling like I was watching the meeting through a glass window. It took awhile to go from feeling that some in the the organization had problems to the whole organization had problems to the basis for the religion wasn't true at all. That was a shock. I had the same feelings about boundries mentioned by Mysterious and JWFacts. The way I explain it, the belief structure wass so rigid and inflexible that when it was really stressed, it couldn't bend or even crack. It just shattered. And there I was trying to figure out what the boundries should be, with no guidence at all. I rejected the guidence I had received to that point, because I couldn't trust the org anymore. And I didn't feel I could turn to another religion, as I had been taught for so long that all religions besides this one were useless. It was a real struggle not to just go to the opposite extreme, as I have seen some others do - what I call the pendulum effect. There can be so much anger when pushing away from this religion that you just want to break every rule they pushed at you. That is not a good idea.

I have the feeling of detachment that I mentioned earlier when I think about my past in the org. I was such a different person then that it doesn't feel like it was me. It feels like I am reading it out of a book.

81

What part of the bible makes no sense to you?

by JH in

.

please make this less than 100 lines....

grey matters

I remember once being assigned the bible reading where the story was about a particular patriarch. I don't remember where it is in the bible now. But this patriarch had a son die, which left him with a widow daughter in law that he was supposed to marry. He did not wish to do so. But she knew he was going to a distant land to transact business, so she traveled there and posed as a prostitute. He had sex with her and she got pregnant. Then she went back home. When he got home and found her pregnant, he was going to have her stoned for fornication. But she was able to prove that the child was his. Nothing happened to him, except that he felt humiliated.

I remember thinking "why me? Out of everyone that could have been assigned this material, how did I get chosen to stand up here in front of 100 people and try to make sense of this?"

29

what a revelation!

by solo in

jw
friends

this is my first post and what a revelation this site has been to me (excuse the pun) if only this had been available when i walked away from the "truth" in 1987, it would have made life a lot more bearable for me.. i was brought up a jw and was baptized at 14 because i thought it was the right thing to do, endured a very strict upbringing combined with the dreadful routines of worship, study and door knocking.

we were deprived of any enjoyment (tv, friends, outings, fun, etc).

education was a bit of a disruption, having moved to where the need was greater our schooling was interrupted so many times we never made any friends.

grey matters

Welcome Solo! Good for you for having the guts to make a tough descision and stick with it.

51

A Friend Just Asked Me Why His JW Family Is Stocking Up On Food......

by minimus in

jw
friends

all of his family are witnesses.

they told him they are "storing and stocking up" on powdered milk and non-perishable items.......this is the second time i hear that witnesses are doing this in preperation of "the end".

grey matters

I finally got to use one of my favorite movie lines when I said...."I guess you can't make fun of my lifestlye anymore."

Tremors! Right on Justice One. I love that movie.

12

Will What Brought Down the KKK (Embarrassment!) Help Bring Down the WTS?

by Seeker4 in

jw
friends

below is a section of an interview with the brilliant writer and rationalist sam harris.

i read it a couple of days ago, and it has been churning around in my conscious and sub-conscious ever since.

this is partly because i'm working on a satiric novel regarding a jw-like religion (think crisis of conscience as written by monty python and edward abbey), and what harris said here really connected with what i'm trying to do.

grey matters

I'm not familiar with Sam Harris, but I read Freakonomics earlier this year and thought it was great. I agree with you about the harm in publicizing supposed "secret information". The organization is built on status. Those "in the know" feel priviledged for having access to "special information" that others don't get to read. The more BoE letters, Pay Attention books, etc. that show up online, the better. It makes that "special information" ordinary, which diminishes the feeling of status and fosters disillusionment. I'm glad that the WTS spends time worrying about the implications of this, as evidenced by the resolution at the district convention. They should know that every time they put their fingers on a keyboard, they run the risk that their words will be broadcast all over the Internet. The only other thing they can do to maintain secrecy is to use the tactic described by BroSun1 on another thread, where they have CO's and DO's pass instructions verbally to elders with instructions not to take notes. But that only works with a limited amount of information, not the volume that they are used to pouring out.

23

To ThirdWitness re JW's and Child Molesters

by BroSun1 in

just a short introduction.

by the time i left i had the privilege of being an elder, had given public talks, memorial talks, wedding talks and convention talks up to circuit assembly level.

dear third witness

grey matters

Welcome from a fellow newbie BroSun1.

This doesn't surprise me, knowing that they knew for years that Russell got his math from the Second Adventists. They let us keep on believing it was Russell for as long as they could until someone else published that it wasn't!

16

What is the big deal about 1914 anyway?

by grey matters in

what is the big deal with the wts about 1914 anyway?

it wasn't their date to begin with.

they got it from the millerites/second advendtists.

grey matters

Thanks for the responses. I think things are going to get difficult for them with the progressively weaker argument for 1914, and the waning interest in it. I doubt that most people give a lot of thought to WW1 these days. I don't think it has the emotional impact as an event that it did years ago.

And yeah, Headmath, if the 144,000 were sealed in 1935, I would like to know why there are brothers on the Governing Body who are supposedly of the annointed, who are in their mid 50's.