Posts by neverendingjourney

32

30 years after leaving utterly unrecognisable

by Number 6 in

this is the first time i have posted on here in many years..... i seldom visit now although this forum was instrumental to me in gaining my sanity in the early 2000's and recovering from the watchtower religion.. by chance tonight i was on youtube and caught a jw.org video which out of curiosity prompted me to look at the official website and amongst other things i looked up the music section.. why that i hear you ask?

music is my passion and nothing reminds me more or evokes more memories than the kingdom songs i grew up listening to.. i am 49 years old and my mother was baptised in 1974. i grew up in the era of pink songbooks and green bibles.

of the theology of fred franz and types and anti-types.

neverendingjourney

I'm 10 years younger than you and have been out since the mid-00s. The sidelining of doctrine was inevitable.

One of the advantages we had was the general public's ignorance. We could soak up the fake wisdom and knowledge of the WT and feel like intellectual giants because the public was ill-prepared to provide a solid counterargument.

Looking back, I remember how big an impact on my faith it was to encounter the rare individual who'd studied Witness teachings and could push back. Being unable to easily dispatch them with a proof text was humiliating. Sure, I pushed it all back into the part of my brain where I shoved things I didn't want to voluntarily access again, but the impact was real.

Fast forward 20 years and more information than even those rare people possessed is available to anyone willing to spend 10 minutes reading the JW wikipedia page. Return visits would get derailed by having to respond to info the householder found online.

So instead of updating the doctrine, which is too hard to do, especially for a group run by a committee that requires a supermajority to act, you push doctrine to the sideline and make it all about the community.

The religion's appeal is much more limited that way. They'll manage to recruit emotionally vulnerable people who don't care about doctrinal consistency, but the real push is in retaining captive born-ins. But the walls are starting to crack there, too.

13

"Its not about the numbers...Its about Love"

by Solzhenitsyn in

in the org did anyone ever tell you that its not about the numbers...yet the reality was that it was all about the numbers?.

i ran into a pimi who asked why my family and i were awol.

i told him that it was private and personal and i wasn't at liberty to discuss it.

neverendingjourney

We become very good at lying to ourselves as JWs. For me, it started with telling people I preached to that I was just there to share a message from the Bible and wasn't there to convert them. I could justify that by telling myself it was in the householders' best interest.

This kind of thinking could devolve into the absurd. For example, there was a guy in my congregation who once told a householder that JWs did in fact believe in the trinity. I was in shock. After the conversation ended, I asked him why he would say such a thing and he responded that a circuit overseer had once told him it was okay to answer this way during early visits because Jehovah didn't want us to scare away anyone who was otherwise rightly disposed to the truth.

After leaving the JWs, I began to see it as a spectrum ranging from clever word placement intended to convey a message contrary to the one we actually held (Do JWs believe only they will survive Armageddon? We don't say that. Only Jehovah can judge), to lying when the other party doesn't deserve the truth (was once called theocratic warfare in the publications and justified by citing Rahab as an example), to outright lying when it was viewed to be in the religion's best interest (such as the guy telling the householder we believed in the trinity).

I was comfortable with word games, but never truly became comfortable with theocratic warfare or outright convenient lies. The issue, of course, is that once you become comfortable lying to others, it becomes easier to lie to yourself.

37

2 Gallons of Coffee

by Solzhenitsyn in

that is how much coffee me and another elder went through as we camped out all night until 7 a.m. outside the home where suspected jw fornicators we're staying.

little did i know what a powerful contrast that would prove to be when as an elder i was faced with another case involving the allegation of severe child sexual abuse.

we disfellowshipped the couple based completely on circumstantial evidence of sexual wrongdoing because they simply "stayed the entire night".

neverendingjourney

The world is littered with JW's and former JW's whose lives and family lineage was ruined or forever altered at the hands of "unlettered and ordinary" Janitors, Carpenters and Window Washers masquerading as Bible Theologians and playing detective because they given the authority to deal with complex matters that even trained professionals wouldn't dare to handle on their own.

There was a teenager in my congregation who in hindsight was exhibiting signs of schizophrenia. Two elders were dispatched to investigate. They determined he was under the influence of spiritism because he would hear voices telling him to kill his mother.

These two elders, one a construction worker and the other a low-level municipal employee who was illiterate until he became a JW, prayed with the family and helped them conduct a spring cleaning where they threw away any items purchased second hand at garage sales and the like.

I lost touch with that family a few years afterward, so I don't know what ever became of that kid. Needless to say, it could have very easily resulted in a tragic ending. No professionals were ever engaged to my knowledge.

21

my story...

by Nikki collins in

many of you have asked about my story, so here it is.

it's a bit long lol.

however i still loved jeremy but because he wasn’t a witness i knew i could never be with him and have my family.

neverendingjourney

Congrats on being free from the control.

Making the transition as an adult is going to be painful. I went through it 13 years ago, but to paraphrase the Shawshank Redemption, we crawl through 500 yards of shit and come out clean on the other end.

Don't give up hope!

21

Window Washers

by Nikki collins in

i know @hiddenpimo is going to laugh at me for this because we had several in our old congregation, but what is with all the window washing businesses owned/managed by jws???

they are everywhere!

.

neverendingjourney

It's pretty straightforward. There are lots of JW window washers because WT leadership encouraged people to become window washers. It was a "theocratic career" that would buy you instant credibility. You want a part at the circuit assembly? Become a window washer and get paraded in front of the audience as an exemplary Christian.

When I graduated high school in the mid 90s, the WT was encouraging recent graduates to go to vocational/technical school in lieu of college. I followed their advice and enrolled in a 9 month welding program. Nine months and twenty thousand dollars later I had a worthless piece of paper and nobody would hire me. It took me 15 years to pay off those loans. But, hey, at least I followed Mother's direction!

Whether knowingly or not, the WT was steering their members into one of the most fraudulent and corrupt industries in America: for-profit vocational schools.

45

Do any of you born into the cult feel like your mental growth was stunted?

by rockemsockem in

being born in to me was devastating.

when you are a child born in and raised with the they vs us and they are evil and worldly and going to die.

not allowed to form relationships with anyone not one of you.

neverendingjourney

James Hetfield of Metallica and Ellen Degeneres were raised Christian Scientist. Beck was and is a Scientologist.

There are a lot of successful people who've overcome similarly screwed up childhoods. One of the biggest benefits I derive from telling people about my JW upbringing is learning that I'm not on an island. Lots of people have had to overcome similar challenges.

It doesn't make our upbringing okay, but it does put things in perspective.

45

Do any of you born into the cult feel like your mental growth was stunted?

by rockemsockem in

being born in to me was devastating.

when you are a child born in and raised with the they vs us and they are evil and worldly and going to die.

not allowed to form relationships with anyone not one of you.

neverendingjourney

In some ways, being a JW accelerated my development and in other ways is stunted it.

I left the JWs in my mid 20s. I had been in leadership roles since I was a 17 year old regular pioneer. My reading, writing and public speaking skills were well above average. I was much better prepared for college and the working world than the average person my age.

However, I was incredibly underdeveloped from the perspective of relationships and dating. We were never allowed to date normally and the principles that formed the foundation of a JW relationship were often completely at odds with those in the real world. Whereas being a rule-following JW was often enough to attract a female JW, in the real world you had to develop yourself more fully as a human being.

Women expected an interesting personality, romance, and excitement. Normal people spent their teenage years fumbling through romantic relationships honing their dating skills, and I was expected to learn this as a grown man when the stakes were higher and the tolerance for mistakes much lower. It was bad, but I worked through it.

11

No More After 34 (2034)

by blondie in

jw
friends

my husband and i were discussing the rally cry shortly before 1975, stay alive in 75 (1975), some here believe that the end might come in 2034 (some tongue in cheek) counting 120 years from 1914 the same internal between when god supposedly pronounced judgment on the people on the earth before the flood would come.. so it could be, no more after 34. i thought it was good and funny at the same time..

neverendingjourney

I don't see this current crop of GB getting back into the date-setting business. It's all "the end is near because we say so" with these clowns.

26

Remember 1992?

by Tobyjones262 in

anyone remember 1992?

i can remember i was in the cult.

times were changing at a rapid pace.

neverendingjourney

I've been on this forum for 12 years now. I faded a few years before that.

I've been pondering how the current crop of millennial ex-jws are different than the boomer/early-GenXers who left shortly after 1995.

I wasn't an "apostate" in the late 90s, but I do remember visiting the old H2O forum on two occasions. One was purely by accident as news had started trickling in of new GB appointments and I went online to confirm it. The second time was in connection with a search for the Creation book. That little blue book convinced me at 15 years old to forget my doubts and embrace the "truth" of the Bible.

During the few minutes I spent on that forum, I saw well thought out, lengthy debates about doctrine. Someone had gone through all the footnotes of the Creation book and pointed out how the quotes were misleading. There were echoes of that on this forum still when I joined 12 years ago, but the impression I got was that those debates had been thoroughly exhausted and were being brought up fresh as new arrivals discovered them. For the most part stuff like 607 BCE, blood, real WT history, had been settled.

But the JWs who were leaving and finding online forums in the late 90s were folks who were raised on Freddie Franz' ramblings and who were encouraged to do lengthy research into various WT doctrinal topics. Some folks fancied themselves JW scholars of sorts. It makes sense that a certain amount of reprogramming would need to take place in order to truly free yourself. I went through that lengthy process myself and it probably took a solid year or two.

However, if you go to the exjw subreddit today, which is full of millennial and post-millennial ex-jws, doctrine is hardly brought up. It's certainly not discussed as in depth as it used to be 15 years ago. I have to think that reflects the post '95 environment in the Witness world. The trend after '95 was steadily against "deep study" and more in favor of obeying for obedience's sake. There's no need to verify anything, just trust the governing body. People who grew up in that environment don't need the deep doctrinal deprogramming that I needed when I made my escape.

39

When you were an active JW, did you ever have dealings with a pyramid scheme?

by Tameria2001 in

i'm not sure why this memory popped up, and i was wondering if any others, when they were still active jw had dealings with a pyramid scheme involving other witnesses in the organization?

at the time it was 1993, and my husband and i were still newlyweds.

once in a while, we would attend a neighboring congregation because that was where he grew up, and some of his family was still attending there at the time.

neverendingjourney

Looking back on my childhood, there wasn't a single door-to-door scam that my mother didn't fall for (including allowing herself to be converted by JWs who knocked on her door). She was a poorly-educated immigrant woman trying to raise a family in a strange country.

Frying pans, tupperware, vacuum cleaners, cassette tapes and study programs to teach her to speak English, encyclopedias...all of it. And we barely made enough money to keep ourselves above the poverty line. We couldn't afford any of this, but, you know, payment plans.

My brother got sucked into Amway. He paid the up front fee to receive his starter package but moved away from it quickly when he saw too many religious parallels with the Amway folks and convinced himself they were under the influence of demons.

Homeopathy was popular, too. I'm convinced one local woman had munchausen by proxy. She'd go to quack herbalists who would diagnose various sicknesses in her children. They would take various sugar-looking pills throughout the day. Those kids were terrified of the world because their mother saw monsters around every corner.

The local congregations were hotbeds for this kind of stuff. They are communities of gullible people with underdeveloped critical thinking skills. For scammers it's like shooting fish in a barrel.