i thought i'd hit it several times before...as i have been thru the divorce over the past couple of years...lost all my so-called friends...lost my belief in what i thought was the "truth"....and now my own loving daughter, being the good little dub she is has told me she doesn't want me to walk her down the aisle at her wedding.
she told me today at lunch.
i almost threw up.
Robert King?
Now we have a name, how about a location? Some of us might like the opportunity to "adjust" Robert King's thinking.
Just an idle thought.
-francois
Great work in supporting his post.
"Let's find out where he lives so we can hurt him, so he will stop lying and saying we have the capability of hurting people!"
i.e. "I kill anyone who thinks violence solves anything."
PandaJ
i thought i'd hit it several times before...as i have been thru the divorce over the past couple of years...lost all my so-called friends...lost my belief in what i thought was the "truth"....and now my own loving daughter, being the good little dub she is has told me she doesn't want me to walk her down the aisle at her wedding.
she told me today at lunch.
i almost threw up.
Panda, to exonerate the Watchtower in any manner in their quest to rip families apart is reprehensible. At one time, we were all duped into believing this cult was the truth. We have grown and learned what they are. Many of our loved ones have not. But, to encourage a daughter to deny her father his right, one you look forward to your entire life from their birth, simply because you no longer wish to be in that cult, is abominable.
Perhaps you have a reading comprehension problem. Having taught your children something their entire life, then you decide, "Okay, I don't believe this anymore, and now you can't believe in it anymore." is not the way the world works. Yes, it sucks that he can't be in his daughters wedding and I don't agree with it, but to comfort him like he is just totally an innocent victim is stupid in my opinion. He made the decision to be a JW, he made the decision to raise his children as JW's, just like he made the decision to stop being a JW. He made these decisions and he is getting results from them.
Should we all become good little brainwashed dubbies again so we may have the love of our families?
Depends on which is more important to you, having religious freedom or spending your life with your family. This is why I believe a lot of people stay as JW's even though they don't believe. They would rather give up their religious freedom than lose their loved ones. Am I saying this is right on any level? No.
What I am bringing to attention is that he raised his child to do exactly what she is doing, and now she is doing it, and he is acting like an innocent victim.
Regardless of religious beliefs, a father is entitled to walk his daughter down the aisle.
Apparently not. Go ahead and make me out to be the bad guy. I am not agreeing with what is happening, I just understand why it is.
PandaJ
i thought i'd hit it several times before...as i have been thru the divorce over the past couple of years...lost all my so-called friends...lost my belief in what i thought was the "truth"....and now my own loving daughter, being the good little dub she is has told me she doesn't want me to walk her down the aisle at her wedding.
she told me today at lunch.
i almost threw up.
Bonezz is not asking his daughter to leave the org. or "throw away their beliefs" A FATHER WANTS TO WALK HIS LITTLE GIRL DOWN TO THE AISLE!! I believe and was told by an elder, too, that this kind of situation is one of those "matter of conscience" thing.
Again, I don't know his situation but I will respond as if he raised his family as JWs:
Just like birthdays, etc. Yes, they are 'conscience matters' but we all know what that means as a JW. Don't do it or you are spirtually weak. I am just saying, he raised his children to be JW's and then he decided to leave and now believes that the WTS is evil. Maybe he shouldn't have devoted his life and his childrens lives to an organization like that? And since he did, even though he got out, he taught his childrens those beliefs and now he is regreting it.
IMO He is not a total innocent victim in this situation.
i thought i'd hit it several times before...as i have been thru the divorce over the past couple of years...lost all my so-called friends...lost my belief in what i thought was the "truth"....and now my own loving daughter, being the good little dub she is has told me she doesn't want me to walk her down the aisle at her wedding.
she told me today at lunch.
i almost threw up.
Perhaps you are reaping what you have sown?
Not trying to be mean, but if you raised your child as JW her whole life, you raised her to act exactly as she is. I am not saying you are totally to blame, but just because you decided to leave the JW's doesn't mean everyone else you know is required to do it, or throw away their beliefs, especially ones that you taught them.
I don't know your exact situation, so if this doesn't apply to you, sorry.
..response from jehovah's witnesses.
it may label me "meddlesome" or even "unforgiving".
i realize and accept that as a consequence of what i am about to say.
..response from Jehovah's Witnesses. It may label me "meddlesome" or even "unforgiving". I realize and accept that as a consequence of what I am about to say. However, I sincerely hope that Jehovah's Witnesses will read everything I have to say before labeling me. In the text that follows, when I quote from Jehovah's Witnesses, I will use the word "excrement" in place of another word which is now apparently permitted in general circulation publications, and which I have edited out. Jehovah's Witnesses is a psychologically defective organization. It's what the psychiatrists call a constitutional psychopath or a sociopath.
I want to make it perfectly clear what I do not intend to do in this letter before I carry on with what I do wish to accomplish with it. But first, I'm going to jump ahead a bit and talk in general terms about how Apostates's arguments are a veritable dictionary and synonymicon of careerism. Then, I'll back up and fill in some of the details. Okay, so to start with the general stuff, as a dynamic historical current, ethnocentrism has taken many different forms and has evolved dramatically in some ways. Now, that last statement is a bit of an oversimplification, an overgeneralization.
Yet there's more to it than that. Jehovah's Witnesses's practices are made of the same spirit that accounts for the majority of the problems we face in this world. I'm not going to say why; we all know the reason. If you were to tell Jehovah's Witnesses that I draw strength and courage from knowing that most people comprehend the crusade to stop Jehovah's Witnesses and are supportive of my role in it, it'd just pull its security blanket a little tighter around itself and refuse to come out and deal with the real world. The recent outrage at Jehovah's Witnesses's accusations may point to a brighter future. For now, however, I must leave you knowing that negligent worrywarts thrive when the rest of us underestimate the threat they pose or are too weak or unorganized to hold the line.
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society's wisecracks are based on a technique I'm sure you've heard of. It's called "lying". Although a thorough discussion of unctuous racism is beyond the scope of this letter, my purpose here is not to address the legitimate anger, fear, and alienation of people who have been mobilized by The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society because they saw no other options for change. Well, okay, it is. But I should point out that The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society offers its assistants a vehicle of sorts for their revenge fantasies. That's the sort of statement that some people insist is naive, but which I believe is merely a statement of fact. And it's a statement that needs to be made, because it has been said that The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society could really use a heart, just like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz. I believe that to be true. I also believe that if it believes that the most jaundiced vagabonds I've ever seen have dramatically lower incidences of cancer, heart attacks, heart disease, and many other illnesses than the rest of us, then it's obvious why it thinks that we're supposed to shut up and smile when it says lousy things. As another disquieting tidbit, the following must be stated: If The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society is going to waste taxpayers' money, then it should at least have the self-respect to remind itself of a few things: First, its op-ed pieces have nothing to do with freedom and honor but everything to do with nihilism. And second, it doesn't use words for communication or for exchanging information. It uses them to disarm, to hypnotize, to mislead, and to deceive. I must emphasize that if I hear The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society's followers say, "Bookish blockheads make the best scout leaders and schoolteachers" one more time, I'm undeniably going to throw up. Finally, whatever your thoughts or feelings about The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society are, I urge you to help me put to rest the animosities that have kept various groups of people from enjoying anything other than superficial unity.
Currently, Christendom lacks the clout to propound ideas that are widely perceived as representing outright absenteeism. But before the year is over, it will have enough attendants to do the entire country a grave disservice. I have two words to say about Christendom's jibes: contumelious poppycock. The present controversy demands honest dialogue, not crude attempts at demonization. But even if we disregard all that and examine only Christendom's officious conjectures, this seems to me to be enough to show that when Christendom tells us that it answers to no one, it somehow fails to mention that it makes a virtue of irremediable fault. It fails to mention that some feral cheapskates are hopelessly obscene. And it fails to mention that you may be wondering why what I call naive bums latch onto its overgeneralizations. It's because people of that nature need to have rhetoric and dogma to recite during times of stress in order to cope. That's also why Christendom insists that its agendas are a breath of fresh air amid our modern culture's toxic cloud of chaos. Sorry, Christendom, but, with apologies to Gershwin, "it ain't necessarily so." We are at a crossroads. One road leads into the light of a bright, shining future in which avaricious, bestial mafia dons like Christendom are thoroughly absent. The other road leads into the darkness of Dadaism. The question, therefore, is: Who's driving the bus? A complete answer to that question would take more space than I can afford, so I'll have to give you a simplified answer. For starters, I must defend my honor. I put that observation into this letter just to let you see that if you look soberly and carefully at the evidence all around you, you will truly find that it is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to convince Christendom's apostles, who are legion, to improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable in our society -- the sick, the old, the disabled, the unemployed, and our youth -- all of whose lives are made miserable by Christendom. But that's not all: I believe I have finally figured out what makes organizations like it utilize questionable and illegal fund-raising techniques. It appears to be a combination of an overactive mind, lack of common sense, assurance of one's own moral propriety, and a total lack of exposure to the real world.
If I didn't sincerely believe that I have a score to settle with Jehovah, then I wouldn't be writing this letter. Jehovah is too power-hungry to read the writing on the wall. This writing warns that if everyone does his own, small part, together we can focus on concrete facts, on hard news, on analyzing and interpreting what's happening in the world. Have you ever had a bad dream about Jehovah trying to fragment the nation into politically disharmonious units? Well, I have news for you. That wasn't a dream; it was real. Now that this letter has come to an end, I hope you walk away from it realizing that by opting for the easy, short-term, feel-good path, Jehovah will utilize questionable and illegal fund-raising techniques sometime soon.
Thank you for listening.
PandaJ
just to lighten the mood, let's all try to think of a famous quote and apply it to something in the organization, see how it turns out....just in case someone's not familiar with the quote, i've put where they're really from at the bottom.........
"i did not - have - sexual - relations - with that woman!
" --------charles t. russell at his divorce hearing when asked about an adulterous relationship; .
All in fun :)
1. "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." - Elder's response to a child report reporting molestation.
2. "I find your lack of faith disturbing." - Elder's response to anyone questioning the WTS.
3. "This job would be great if it weren't for the f*cking customers." - A JW in service.
4. "Are you gonna do something, or are you just gonna stand there and bleed?" - A JW in the hospital.
5. "What if this is as good as it gets?" - Something you will never hear a JW say.
6. "Freedom baby, is never having to say your sorry." - WTS.
7. "The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success." - Should be on Charles T. Russell's grave.
8. "Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life overcoming." - Anyone raised a JW.
9. "There will be no fighting in the War Room!" - Often said to Ray Franz in Governing Body meetings.
10. "I see dead people. They're everywhere." - Said by a small child on the lower level at JW convention.
1. Rhett Butler - Gone With The Wind. 2. Darth Vader - Star Wars 3. Clerks 4. Wyatt Earp - Tombstone 5. As Good As It Gets 6. Al Pacino - The Devil's Advocate 7. James Bond- Tomorrow Never Dies 8. Hope Floats 9. Peter Sellers - Dr. Strangelove 10. Sixth Sense
please don't be turned off because this is rather creepy and has "reference" only to the occult.
because the information was found on a website that i got from a post on this forum.
i was curious.
From the pictures I saw on that site you linked, they all seem rather weak examples.
How many pictures have been published by the WTS in all these years? I am sure this person has closely examined probably every one of them and used his imagination.
I'm not saying someone didn't intentionally put them in, but those aren't convincing to me.
hello, first time poster, long time reader.. i was wondering just what my title asks.
if i own/read/admit to apostate material, can that get me df'ed?.
i know better then to admit that i believe the apostate material to the elders, or that i disagree with the society's teachings, but will simply admitting to owning and reading them get me df'ed?.
DakotaRed:
I agree with you as far as trying to fade away without actually confronting anyone, that would probably be the best method on getting out. Unfortunately I am not 100% I want to leave. I think about it like this.. what got me into my religion? Simply believing and not doing true research, now for me to just jump to the conclusion that this is now the, 'wrong' religion would be playing into the same problem that got me here. I want to truly and earnestly seek the truth, and doing that as a JW can be hard.
seedy3:
Thanks for the input, although I can't imagine an elder having apostate material, but then again, I may use that story if I ever have to defend myself. "I knew an elder who had apostate material, in order to be able to better defend his belief!" :)
jjrizo:
Thanks for your comments, I read some of your story last night and will continue to read it tonight. I wonder if I could record my first commitee meeting? Hmm.
apostate:
Love the name and icon. =P Unfortunately, you are quoting, 'Ceaser's Law', which I am sure they will tell me, does not supercede Jehovah's.
sunshineToo:
I have been having doubts for the last couple years, I have been inactive for 5 years and just recently started coming back because my wife was an active witness. This, and the birth of my new child has put me in a situation where I feel I need to resolve this once and for all.
chappy:
I agree that their stance on not reading anything that talks bad about JW's is a very strange one, if this is the truth. It is as if they don't believe their, 'sheep' will be strong enough to decipher right from wrong, which is why they belong to a society which tells them exactly how to believe I suppose.
Vivamus:
Thanks for your reply, did you actually get DF'ed for owning/reading the apostate material or did you tell them you didn't believe as a JW anymore?
plmkrzy:
I don't think that would get me the answer I need because I am sure their response would be, "Oh that stuff is horrible", then I would have a big grin on my face. :)
bad_associashun:
Stop spoiling my useful habits please! That is where I see the problem being, if I do admit to owning it, I will also have to admit I read it and it gave me doubts. I wonder if that would be enough to get DF'ed.
happy man:
I am glad you found my post comforting, thank you. I only hope everything works out in the end. :)
Thanks again for your responses.
PandaJ
hello, first time poster, long time reader.. i was wondering just what my title asks.
if i own/read/admit to apostate material, can that get me df'ed?.
i know better then to admit that i believe the apostate material to the elders, or that i disagree with the society's teachings, but will simply admitting to owning and reading them get me df'ed?.
Thank you for the replies, I really appreciate it.
I am in a very fragile state in my life right now, where I can't actually tell the truth on how I feel because it would harm my families life more then I will accept at this time.
I would love to tell me name, history and how I came to where I am today but that will have to wait for another day, as I do not want it leaking out or being too simliar for someone reading to place who I am. Sad, I know.
I just finished reading Crisis Of Consience, I read it in about 7 hours, which should show my true hunger for researching the religion I was raised in, as it is a 400 page book, as most of you probably already know.
I have a very hard time hiding things, or lying about anything in my life. If someone was to ask me a question I have always felt and experienced telling the truth is simply better for everyone. Which could show to be a real problem in the near future as a turning point in my life begins.
My committee meeting although not yet scheduled or even planned, will happen soon, I assure you.
I am just sort of planning ahead on what all I can go into. I will not let the Society win, I will not be disfellowshipped. I will not let an orgnization take away my family from me, simply because I was baptized at a 12 years old, completely oblivious to a true understanding, or even my own understanding. It was all I knew, taught to me by the same people whose every word I believed, my parents.
I am caught in a battle between wanting to be true to myself, and not having to hide my true feelings, and not wanting to get disfellowshipped and losing my life long family and friends.
After reading this it may appear I am truly unbelieving of the JW's teaching. This is not the case, I do not fanatically deny it is the truth, I do however have serious doubts, of which I will ask about to my local elders. In doing so, I know I will be attacked on where I came up with these thoughts, and how I came to question my life long religion. I am scared on what I might say.
Thanks for listening, any further feedback is welcomed. :o)
PandaJ
hello, first time poster, long time reader.. i was wondering just what my title asks.
if i own/read/admit to apostate material, can that get me df'ed?.
i know better then to admit that i believe the apostate material to the elders, or that i disagree with the society's teachings, but will simply admitting to owning and reading them get me df'ed?.
Hello, first time poster, long time reader.
I was wondering just what my title asks. If I own/read/admit to apostate material, can that get me DF'ed?
I know better then to admit that I believe the apostate material to the Elders, or that I disagree with the Society's teachings, but will simply admitting to owning and reading them get me DF'ed?
Any answers or comments appreciated.
PandaJ
