i was musing about being a jw the other day.im not scarred by it like many,i dont hate anyone in my old cong..theres a couple of idiotic elders of course,but in the main my biggest thing when i think of my past life is the farsical nonsense of it all!.
meeting attendance,knocking on doors...oh dear.. one of the stupidest things was being required to do talks.i mean,come on who really used to listen to that drivel..i mean really listen?.
i was an ok speaker,nothing briliant,competent ..even gave a pub talk once when all the elders were on a jolly up at elders school.. it occurred to me how robotic bros and sis were when it came to giving praise!no matter how crap the talk was,one would always get a "i really enjoyed your talk brother".every time.without fail.i know they were being nice,i used to say it all the time too.my dad once said it to me and i asked him what he liked most about it?he admitted he didnt remember what it was even about.i dont remember in 30 years man and boy ever enjoying a talk.. yep,its a nonsense religion alright.full of braindead robots.. did anyone actually pay close attention and really enjoy the "food"from the platform?
I think my lack of concentration when anyone is talking for longer than a minute is due to the fact that I had to sit and listen to drivel for 20 years. I just used to switch off and my mind would wander from one thing to another.
I never remebered a thing from the meetings and I never told anyone their talks were enjoyable - why encourage them!
think about this one: the bible says one day satan, the father of all evils, will be destroyed and by extension all the sufferings of the spiritual creatures and physical creatures.
i know the jw's teach that jehovah is allowing evil in order to prove a moral point that he is the only one who can effectively rule this reality.
however, imagine a paradise on earth billions of years after the destruction of evil.
this thought has always bothered me too, the angels and Adam and Eve were perfect were they not, with free will, then when they decided to use their choice they became imperfect and so Satan and his cronies were cast out blah blah blah,
so after much time (a few weeks God's time) Jehovah has a few faithful followers and the earth is returned to a paradise and they were made perfect. I'm guessing all these perfect people and the angels still have their free will otherwise what's the point - Jehovah may as well have a load of robots running around (or is that what dubs are?!)
so in this paradise someone decides to do something interesting and sin, and recruit a few followers then next thing you know is a whole new soddom and gomorrah has established it self so Jehovah has to go through the whole process again, poor old Jesus will have come come back and get crucified again . .
Just think, Jehovah is probably experiencing his whole own groundhog day!
morning all.
i was brought up a jw in a small town in north of england and we had a huge territory to cover.
obviously i was the only jw in school so just about everyone knew me.
I had some awful experienes at school, I used to get bullied by a gang of girls younger than me. They used to follow me around and humiliate me. I was so ashamed, I hadn't a clue about standing up for myself.
My parents were so intent on continually moving to where the need was greater that we were continually changing schools, I propably went to a new school each year. I never witnessed to anyone at school, I did my best to keep the JW thing a secret.
Although once the RE teacher, who was very fierce, was asking what sort of project the class would put together for Xmas. she picked on this poor kid, who was the child of a bible study, he said he would not do it - to roars of laughter, she said "why not boy" and he went and said "because I'm a JW" I thought for godness sake what's the matter with you. Then she picked on me - I just sat there frozen with terror, then she said "I suppose you are a JW too" I sort of muttered yes. After the lesson all the girls came up to me laughing hysterically, saying that I had got one over on the RE teacher, and fancy pretending to be a JW. I was so proud that I had fooled them!
I was so scared of running into school kids on the territory, I used to stand in dread at each door thinking someone I knew would open it. Strangely it never happened. I used to hate missing Assembly, not knowing any hymns, not being able to get involved in anything remotely interesting. One lad chastised me for offering him sellotape for the xmas collage he was making, he said you are not supposed to help!
My poor brother used to go to doors on his own at the age of 8 in remote territory. One couple of men ?? invited him in and he came away with a box of chocolates (that's not an expression for something else but he may have had a lucky escape)
its occurs to one that the floof would have destroyed virtually all vegetation,so where does wt say post flood vegetation come from?
didn't you know there was a roof top garden on the ark
i stopped going to meetings at age 19 or 20. my brother had been df'd.
my sister and her new bethalite husband had left the organization labeled as apostates, and my single mom followed suit.
i was pretty much raised by the congregation, though i lived with my isolated mother.
well yes and no really. I was brought up a JW so . .
Yes for the first 5 years of so after I left I just shut the whole thing out and pretended that I had not been any part of Jws, I tried my best to be a wordly person although it was very difficult because I had missed out on so much and felt a bit of a fraud. I celebrated Christmas and birthdays and pretended that I always had done, I learned so much in those years.
No because of the brain washing I have never been able to rid my head of all the crap it has been filled with so it has been impossible to completly block it out.
but I do not tell people that I was a JW and I do not tell them my parents are JWs, if I need to explain anything I just say they are very religious. As I moved away from the area when I disassociated myself I suppose it has been easy to hide.
I still have dreams (nightmares!) where I find myself sitting at the KH in a meeting - argh
Despite it all life is so much better on this side, even with the family hassles, it was so good to leave.
i am trying to compile a list of proof's, issues, lies, etc that prove that the wts is not jehovah's channel.
.
what are your top reasons for now believing that it is not the truth?
for me there is one big reason that proves JWs do not have the truth and that is the fact that JWs are permitted from researching into other religions
we all know that if all JWs started researching and digging around they would find out that their religion is nonsense, but of course if it was the truth then it would stand up against any evidence and there would be no reason not to test it. If it was the truth you would be encouraged to do as much research as you like to try and prove it wrong - if it was the truth they would have nothing to fear.
so what better way to stop JWs from doing this than making this the worst possible sin, why is looking in a few books worse than interfering with a child and ruining their life forever?
also when i was a JW I always wondered about the history and founding of the religion, why is it such a secret? Hmm, I wonder
anything by raymond franz is a given.. 1984. siddartha.
lord of the flies.
grapes of wrath.
"Your Youth, Getting The Best Out Of It" (The Youth Book)
'secially the chapter on masterbation...
spooky, this is word for word what I was going to say, we studied this with our parents and we were not youths, much younger. An interesting idea to introduce children's mind to this practice years before they would naturally find out for themselves. We also had to have homosexuality explained to us, my 4 year old brother thought it was hilarious - as did the rest of us. We fell about the place laughing and meanwhile my father's plan of a serious discussion about sodom and gomah dissentigrated before him, ha ha ha
my microwave is not heating up food.
it activates and everything seems to work, but it does not heat anything up.
i have taken out the panel underneath to see if anything is leaking or wires hanging out or exposed and nothing.
you make me laugh musty twang!
blind them with science, no one knows any difference so why should they question?
i was thinking a bl**dy great bonfire would do the trick, dowse the thing in petrol beforehand just to be sure
my microwave is not heating up food.
it activates and everything seems to work, but it does not heat anything up.
i have taken out the panel underneath to see if anything is leaking or wires hanging out or exposed and nothing.
mustang is talking nonsense, your microwave is clearly demonised, the best thing you can do is tear it out and burn the thing
use your stove and have a stir fry, it will be so much better for you
we were building a new kh- not quick build- and we had to vacate the old building and the new kh was not finished.
the elders decided to cancel all the meeting with the exception of the tuesday night bookstudy in homes.
we had no other meetings for about 4-5 weeks.
my parents local KH has just been demolished and they did a kwik buid thing, 3 congregations share the hall but the whole time they have been hiring halls, schools etc in the locality - none of their meetings have been cancelled
I remember trekking to the KH in the snow one Sunday with my dad, there was about a foot of the stuff which is a lot for here, well no other fool bothered to turn up - until we saw a vision, it was as if moses has appeared from over the hill. Well actually is was the nutter brother who lived out in the rural area way up in the hills. He had hiked 5 miles through snow drifts and had this great big staff in his hand. My goodness we were killing ourselves laughing, still we never bothered with the meeting as it was just a couple of kids and a couple of adults so Moses had to hike home again.
Incidently when our speaker wouldn't show up, we had the Watchtower study first and one of our elders would give a talk during the second half.
I remember this happening and it was hell on earth, when the WT had finished it felt like time to go (horray) but then we had to sit there through the torment of a public talk, evil
