I've been having some good discussions with my JW brother-in-law about God, The Bible, and The Witnesses. He's really integrated into the JW life and I think he truly believes the stuff they peddle. It's clear that he has never done any research outside of the WTBS publications and has never really questioned his beliefs. I'd like him to start, but I have no aims of deconverting him.
Anyway, we were having a good conversation when he asked, "Have you ever been a part of a world wide organization?" He then proceeded to tell me about the feelings he had when he went to an international convention in Poland (feelings of belonging to a world wide brotherhood, having so much in common with someone without knowing anything about them - speaking the same language, etc). He then told me an experience he had when he bumped into a JW while on some other vacation (from stranger to brother in an instant). He thinks that his "world wide brotherhood" is unique, but since he's never been a part of any other world wide organizations, he's not sure.
So what I would like is to gather some testimonials from anyone who has ever been a part of a world wide organization (other than the JW's) who has felt similar feelings to what my brother-in-law has felt as being one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Is there anything out there like it?
What I'm not looking for (although it is welcome) is a deconstruction of the argument that this "brotherhood" feeling proves anything, means anything, or isn't expected based on the way JW's alienate themselves from the rest of society.
Posts by Eh
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2Need Help From Anyone Who Has Been Part of a World Wide Org Other Than JW's
by Eh ini've been having some good discussions with my jw brother-in-law about god, the bible, and the witnesses.
he's really integrated into the jw life and i think he truly believes the stuff they peddle.
it's clear that he has never done any research outside of the wtbs publications and has never really questioned his beliefs.
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Eh
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Eh
The mental gymnastics that I had to go through when I was a JW to reconcile their teachings with the world around me was incredible. As I got older, my mind couldn't keep up. I think that's why I'm out. So no, I don't think I'm smarter. Not smarter than them now and not smarter than me when I was in.
I mean really, how much smarts does it take to figure out and know things that actually ARE. The post-JW world is too consistent, too logical, too easy. I'm getting dumber by the second.
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Do you think the guys in the Governing Body belive in the Governing Body?
by Samuel Thorsen ini presume they do.
they are probably so intoxicated by their own power that they belive in the never ending rubbish.. or am i wrong?
is there other reasons to stay on the top of the hill?.
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I would guess it's a mixed bag. You could have some who really believe it on a base level, some who are deluding themselves, and some that think it's a complete crock. It would be hard to guess percentages, but it would surprise me greatly if they were all the same in their thinking.
I have a friend (and relative) who's a JW. He enjoys attention, but doesn't like to whore for it. He's a sucker for a compliment, but he doesn't show off. Outside of some woodworking projects, he doesn't have a whole lot going for himself that would gather in the accolades. I think that if I understood him better when we were growing up, I would have been more quick to compliment him.
Anyway, when he comments at a meeting "in his own words" (basically running some previously written text through a mental thesaurus or regurgitating the wording from the last time the point was discussed) he gets all the attention he needs. Every other week he gets up in front of the crowd and performs a simple five minute speech or runs through a fill-in-the-blank announcement form and receives heaps of kudos on a job well done.
He was thinking about Pioneering and when he would mention it he got even more attention. He went for it. Although it's just riding around in a car for 70 hours a month, he gets incredible commendation for it.
He's got one of those low-brow jobs that JW's usually have. It's not the kind of job that gets you much credit. No one's singing his praises at work.
So how is he ever expected to leave the group? He'll never receive the level acclaim he's currently getting for doing so little - no matter what he does in life. One hundred people telling him every week through words, and looks, and applause that he's just the greatest thing ever and all he has to do is lower his head and say, "Jehovah, Heavenly father, we come to you now to give thanks for the..."
So I talk to him. I try to feel him out. He's a smart guy. What's he doing in this group (And no, I'm not saying JW, dumb, ex-JW, smart)? And I don't know if I'll ever find out if he's for real. Is he doing it for the attention and knows it? Is he deluded? Does he really believe? The outputs are the same no matter what the answer is. And I have no reason to believe it's not the same at the very highest level.
Ray Franz. He was in the Governing Body. He was in and believed it - he was in and didn't believe it. Why wouldn't it be the same for any given member at any given time? -
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What's the official stand on aliens
by Eh indo the jw's officially have a stand on whether there is or can be intelligent physical life outside our planet?
would contact from or evidence of alien life fit in to what jw's believe and teach?
have they paved the way for the possibility that life may be found elsewhere in our solar system - intelligent or otherwise?
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So from what I've read here it would seem that the WTBS has left things vague enough so that if life is found elsewhere, they can add it to their rhetoric without too much trouble. Shame - I was hoping to find something that may happen in my lifetime that would cause a mass exodus. I'll keep looking. Still, there's hope that there are others like jaguarbass who would be shaken by such a discovery. That's good to know.
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What's the official stand on aliens
by Eh indo the jw's officially have a stand on whether there is or can be intelligent physical life outside our planet?
would contact from or evidence of alien life fit in to what jw's believe and teach?
have they paved the way for the possibility that life may be found elsewhere in our solar system - intelligent or otherwise?
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Eh
Do the JW's officially have a stand on whether there is or can be intelligent physical life outside our planet? Would contact from or evidence of alien life fit in to what JW's believe and teach? Have they paved the way for the possibility that life may be found elsewhere in our solar system - intelligent or otherwise? I'm just wondering if future discoveries of this nature would cause any uneasiness for JW's or if the machine would just keep turning. I don't have any society publications, so if you find any quotes, please copy/paste the text. Thanks.
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Do people really change?
by Anti-Christ ini was talking about this with some friends yesterday, i believe that we do not change, we might change the way we see the world around us, we might change our belief, we will learn new things that will make us change our outlook on life but when it comes down to it i think we are who we are.
my friends say that we do change, that we are never the same person year after year, i was the only one who did not agree.
i told them that i have seen people "change" but deep down there were the same person, all they change was their "mask".
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Me: I have changed.
You: Yeah, but have you REALLY changed?
Me: I used to be over on that side of the room and now I'm here.
You: But you still think the same - you haven't changed.
Me: I used to be a JW and now I'm not.
You: Okay, but you're still the same with different beliefs.
Me: I don't know, it seems that changing those beliefs has really changed me. I no longer feel that I KNOW things. To me, that's a core philosophy. If your core philosophy changes, you've changed.
You: Well, perhaps it's that "core philosophy" that allowed you to leave that group in the first place. If you really felt that you KNEW things before, you'd still be in there - you haven't really changed.
It reminds me of the time I posited that nothing new had been invented in my lifetime. It worked great for casual conversation where people respond with things like DVDs, Blue LEDs and The Internet. But then people started going deeper (femto-second pulsed lasers, MEMS, the world-changing Segway). It started getting harder to show that the thing they would mention were actually based on other ideas. In the end I had to fall back on what the definition of "invention" was.
It's the same here. What's the definition of change? An atom in my body just gave up an electron - I've changed. I am still the person who was born to my mother - I have not changed. What really is the point of the question?
Here's my changes: When I was in early grade school I was very serious about grades and education. I was a perfectionist with all the positives and negatives it brought. I can remember that in Kindergarten, my 5's looked like my S's and I got marked down for that (my numbers and letters looked like a typewriter). When I was in the 1st grade I thought Vicky was cheating off my paper so I purposely put down some wrong answers and then forgot to correct them before handing my paper in. In the third grade I was taking a multiple choice test and found there to be too many of the same answer in a row so I changed one that I wasn't completely sure of and got it wrong. I could go on. I will die remembering exactly the mistakes I made in those early years.
When I was in the fifth grade, I started getting Migraines. Not just strong headaches, but strong headaches with stroke-like symptoms - half of my body would tingle, lips would go numb, couldn't recall some common words, fish-eye vision, etc...
I was referred to a neurologist who sat me down and explained to me who I was. He knew so much about me without personally knowing me. It was incredible. He gave me some advice and I was so impressed with him, that I took it.
The rest of my years at school are all a blur, but I do know one thing - before fifth grade I never seen a letter less than "A" on my report card. After fifth grade I saw the whole alphabet. I went from the gifted and talented boy to the kid with "potential". I found my place as the class clown for years after.
To me, that CHANGE was very deep. My entire philosophy changed. So much so that my physiology changed - I stopped having migraines.
Then I got serious about my parent's religion - Jehovah's Witnesses. No more fun and games. Life was important and I needed to show that in everything I did - another fairly sizable change for me.
When I was 26, I gave up the JW's. For me it was a BIG change. I didn't just give up on knowing that the WTBS was the truth. I didn't just give up my belief in The Bible, or God, or the supernatural. I gave up on the idea that you need to help others know what you know. Heck, I gave up on the idea that it is possible to "know" something. I gave up on the idea that it's important to find out what is real and true or that "real" and "true" even mean anything. I've given up on any idea that anyone has anything over anyone else.
If that isn't "change" according to you then no, I have not changed - I am still the being who was born to my mother. -
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Is Your Life THAT Much Better Off Since Leaving The Witnesses?
by minimus inwitnesses love to say how "miserable" the "apostates" are when they .
leave "the truth".. how would you respond to this statement from your own personal experience?
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I assume that when they say that apostates are miserable they are talking about their classic idea of the person who "wants to do bad things" but still believes JW teachings. The people that supposedly rationalize their departure from The Truth by focusing on personal differences and petty organizational foibles that have nothing to do with their relationship with Jehovah. To that I'd agree. If there are people out there that fit the JW idea of apostates, then I'm sure they are a miserable lot. I mean, anyone who measures their lives against anything to do with JW's can't be THAT happy.
As for me and my family, we are a lot happier. Of course we are the ignostic/agnostic/atheist Zen Buddhist type. We aren't that interested in why the Witnesses are wrong and we don't care that our relatives are still in there. There's a pretty short list of people I'd actually want to de-convert.
I have some ex-JW friends who are overall more happy, but still have issues with JW stuff. Mostly their problems are with family that are still JW's that won't talk to them etc. So while the whole of their lives are better, the areas where their lives aren't so great have to do with people who are still Witnesses.
So I guess you could say that the JW's are succeeding to some degree in making other people's lives a little miserable, but on the whole they're just not that important.
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Did You REALLY Believe?
by Eh ini don't believe jw teachings anymore.
i don't believe the bible is anything more than a religious text written by men.
i have no reason to believe there's anything beyond the natural world.
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I don't believe JW teachings anymore. I don't believe the Bible is anything more than a religious text written by men. I have no reason to believe there's anything beyond the natural world. But I used to be a JW and I did believe all this before.
Or did I?
Since leaving the group I've been having trouble convincing myself that I believed it. I remember saying that I believed it. And when I mentioned this internal retrospective question that I had to someone else they said, "You had to have believed it... why else would you have been in there?" The idea being that you have to believe in order to pound on people's doors, and to become an object of hatred, and to teach your child about Jehovah, etc. But I don't know if belief is really a requirement.
But I can't really trust my thinking now to interpret my thinking then. Instead, I've decided to analyze my behaviors when I was in it. Were my actions consistent with I supposedly believed?
I put in the hours and had a number of responsibilities in the congregation. I told people I was one hundred per cent sure of what I believed in. I prayed. I was scared of demons. I gave talks in spite of not liking to be up in front of large audiences. So yeah, there were a lot of behaviors that would make me think I did believe.
But there was this one thing that I can't explain. And mind you, this was when I was in the thick of it. At first glance it may seem like it proves that I believed in something, but maybe not. You see, I once tried to make a deal with the Devil. And I have memories of very zealous feelings and actions before and after this. It's very strange to me.
There was this chess tournament at work - twenty people. I wanted to win. I figured I would do well, but there was one guy in particular that I had played many times and had never beaten. There was another guy who almost always won when we played and still others who would beat me on occasion. There were also some unknowns. One guy played all the time online, but never at work so we didn't really know how good he was. There was one guy who I'd never personally played, but who had beaten others who had regularly beaten me.
So I prayed to God for help. But within a minute of praying I realized that this wasn't something that God would have any interest in granting. It was selfish. It was self aggrandizing. it was an Earthly pursuit. So I took the matter to the opposition. "Look Satan, if I win this thing, it's gonna really go to my head. And I'm gonna want to play more chess with these guys. They smoke and tell dirty jokes when we play. This could really lead to something bad for me. Maybe some female co-worker will think I'm pretty great for winning this thing and... who knows?"
I went from trying to con God into helping me out to trying to get The Devil to do the same, but for opposite reasons. "God, if I win this thing people will think I'm a smart guy. I talk about you and they'll listen. You should get in on this thing. It could be good for both of us."
Seriously, could a guy who believes in all this JW/Bible stuff really do such a thing? How do you know if you ever believed? When I did - I did. Now that I don't, well, I don't know.
Did you REALLY believe? How do you know?
Oh, and I won the tournament. What does that say? -
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Atheists, Agnostics: Do you still pray?
by Eh infor people who left, not only the organization, but also the canaanite/judaic/christian/islamic/bahai god, do you still pray?
before we left the group we (my wife and i) were questioning the bible and the existence of god.
being witnesses, we were uneducated and never heard of things like pascal's wager, but we (my wife especially) had come to a similar idea - even if the whole thing were ballocks, there was little harm in continuing.
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For people who left, not only the organization, but also the Canaanite/Judaic/Christian/Islamic/Bahai God, do you still pray?
Before we left the group we (my wife and I) were questioning The Bible and the existence of God. Being Witnesses, we were uneducated and never heard of things like Pascal's wager, but we (my wife especially) had come to a similar idea - even if the whole thing were ballocks, there was little harm in continuing. So my wife continued to pray after I had stopped.
She still does. She doesn't hold out any possibility that this guy is real, but she still prays. It's no longer a Pascal's wager thing at all, but I think that's fine because prayer probably has some positive psychological effects and there doesn't need to be a receiving end for some good to come of it.
I decided to follow her original idea though. I'm kind of covering my bases, so to speak. If he were to exist, I guess I'd want to have a dialog with him. And I don't see it hurting anything if he doesn't. So you know, every time I see a particularly sad situation (crippled or mentally handicapped person, kids getting shot up, genocides, etc.) I say a little prayer.
And you know, it doesn't always make sense (the content of the prayers). I mean, Jehovah doesn't have a mother so certain titles I bestow on him have little meaning. He isn't a physical being so there's certain things he can't do. To be sure, I do add things in like, "Why don't you materialize a body and go..." And I don't know Hebrew so I can't talk to him in his native tongue, but I know lots of single word Yiddish phrases so I throw those in sometimes too.
And it makes people feel better. I'll be with my family or some friends and maybe we pass some sad situation and I pause a minute from my conversation and when I return I say, "Sorry, I just had to say a little prayer." And they'll be like, "Oh cause of that kid in the wheelchair back there?" "Yeah," I confirm. And I think they feel good about it cause they say, "That's so nice."
So I still talk to God. How about others here... Do you still pray? -
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Is Active Disbelief a New Development?
by metatron inin decades past, i can't ever recall anyone who 'left the truth' , who openly believed it was false.. i knew lots of people who drifted away but none who actively proclaimed that what the organization.
taught was false.
usually, you would bump into them and they would say , "i know its the truth but.
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I'm currently keeping up with five different former JW's (so if you throw me into the group, we're talking six total).
Of the six of us, four left for non-intellectual reasons.
The other two (this includes me) left on a different basis, but our leaving was gated by at least one of the other four.
So the real base impetuses for all six departures (even if by extension) were emotional (more classic).
If you were to ask anyone of us why we left, we would all say that we left because of intellectual differences (the new).
I think it's rare for a person to leave purely from reasoning that The Truth isn't the truth. On the other hand, I think this intellectual understanding, however and whenever it comes, makes the separation stick.
Another interesting thing to note - of the six of us, four have made a b-line for behaviors and practices that we were taught not to take part in. The other three men in our group all have beards, for example. One guy smokes a pipe, one cigars, and one of the ladies is trying cigarettes. None of this bothers me (outside of the fact I think these otherwise intelligent people wouldn't be making such poor choices health-wise had it not been for the fact they were raised JW's and are experiencing something similar to teenage rebellion aka exertion of newly-found independence), but they do seem to have a sort of mental list - "now that I can, I'm going to..." It does move me to call into question their initial motives for leaving.
It would seem that JW's want you to believe that people who leave are immoral unethical sinners who've let themselves be stumbled. Ex-JW's seem to want to be thought of as thinking people who have discerned the truth of The Truth. Like everything else, I'm sure the answer lies somewhere in between.
It may be that this "active disbelief" is gaining ground, but perhaps it's only that the perception was once more heavily weighted on the moral departure and now that perception has shifted to the intellectual. Either way, things are looking up for those looking to tear down the WTBS. Remember, it's the perception that will drive things so, where things are equal, downplay the moral/ethical/emotional and up-play this "active disbelief" idea.