I know a witness who had his daughter leave the religion, and live on her own with nothing to do with jehovah!
The dad just cannot get his mind around the fact that he cannot even speak to his daughter.
Hopefully he will wake up in due time.
from the dec. 15 "let's take a swan dive off the temple mount in regard to employment" issue, page 28.
"teenagers have experienced opposition from unbelieving parents.
some have even been ordered out of the home, but they were taken in by kindly witnesses.
I know a witness who had his daughter leave the religion, and live on her own with nothing to do with jehovah!
The dad just cannot get his mind around the fact that he cannot even speak to his daughter.
Hopefully he will wake up in due time.
i was in a congregation once which had a large number of desperately poor people in it.
there was an elderly sister, she lived near me, a sweet woman, who became homeless because her ramshackled old house caught fire.
around that same time one of the overseers (imagine that using a slavery term), i forget if it was district or circuit overseer, came to town wanting a new rv/truck combo.
Great story, thank you for sharing it
i thought it would be good to discuss it to understand what caused some of us to exit suddenly, or some to exit gradually .. myself , i had been in 44 years , had mentally had doubts for years before exiting - but injustices by the elders and my doubts about the " generation " doctrine led me to exit suddenly one night before a meeting.
the elders pissed me off , i went to my seat, picked my books up and walked out - never going back.
so what is your story and reasons ?
I had doubts for two years, viewing all the hypocracy in the hall drove me to the edge.
But family ties and "friends" kept me hooked.
My Mom died in Sept of 08 and i was just morified by the complete lack of concern by my so-called friends.
A month later i wrote my DA letter and never looked back.
if you look at the previous post, i wrote down what the final nail in my jw carreer was.. and i'll tell you right now, i have absolutly no intention of returning to this religion,,,, but several things have happened and i would appreciate your personal thoughts on the matter.. when my mom died, about the same time my wife became baptized as a mormon, she was a witness for 20 years before.. she was satisfied spiritually so i left her to her own beliefs.
besides i was in no mental position to continually argue about it.
she developed lots of new friends, and i focused on myself, dealing with the death of a parent was alot hard than i thought it would be.
If you look at the previous post, I wrote down what the final nail in my JW carreer was.
And I'll tell you right now, I have absolutly no intention of returning to this religion,,,, but several things have happened and I would appreciate your personal thoughts on the matter.
When my Mom died, about the same time my wife became baptized as a mormon, she was a witness for 20 years before.
She was satisfied spiritually so I left her to her own beliefs. besides I was in no mental position to continually argue about it. She developed lots of new friends, and I focused on myself, dealing with the death of a parent was alot hard than I thought it would be. So I attended a grief support group at a local hospital and it helped me tremendously.
But now that it has been a little more than a year, I find myself getting angry at the fact that my wife seem to have carved out a whole new life with the mormons,, and I seem to be an afterthought many times.
Lately I have gone to services for different religions, but 30 years of jw thinking really dull the edges of anything new I hear or learn.(remember EVERYTHING outside the jw world is evil.
I have always been a spiritual person, and i have done a lot of work helping abused large animals, when i was a witness many times this aspect of my life was looked down on. I get much satisfaction helping something that cannot speak for itself, I feel a great sense of spirituality in this. yet, there is an area in my life that almost seems to need an organized religious system.
My wife is very happy with what she is doing, but there is no way I will get involved with a religion that has such a weird/screwed-up system of beliefs.(I've do my homework regarding the Mormons, and it rivals the witnesses in many ways)
Whenever Iam invited to a get together with them I get the jw "so your not a fellow believer" feeling. And there is an awkward relationship there.
So,,, has this feeling of not being attached to anything happened to anyone who left the witnesses, how did you deal with it, and what did you focus on ?
i know there has been countless threads on this, some say the paedophile scandal, others say the blood ban, some say the conduct of their elders, others say the petty rules etc.
but there is usually one thing that seals every one's fate, tips you over the edge,finishes you off.i was fading, very closely to full inactivity, off the book study list, and very sporadic meeting attendance, which took me to the very last time i set foot in my kingdumb hall, this is what happened;.
it was the memorial of 1994, i hadn't set foot in the place for months, but thought a show at the memorial would keep the wife happy and the elders at bay for a bit longer, i drove to the hall being careful not to get there too early(the wife was already there and had saved me a seat) i walked up to my seat about mid way in the hall so a lot could see me, it was packed probably about 200 there, as i sat down ( about 3/4 mins to go) a sister in front of me turned around and said"we haven't seen you in a long time!
my Mother died while I was considering leaving, and after 30 years of being in the same hall (attended all meetings, did the normal jw things)
only FIVE people sent a card or even took the time to acknowlege that she had died. yes, she was a witness longer then me.
30 years of revolving my life around a religion, all the so-called friends I thought I had, and only 5 made the effort to send a card.
Boy did I get upset, what a loving bunch of so-called "christians" they are.
I wrote my da letter one month afterwards and just walked away.
What's a trump?
someone who just built a huge hotel in Chicago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyakn5ediju&feature=email.
This lady has some serious mental issues, talking to her kid that way !
I once worked for a witness painting company back in the early 1980's.
They were what is called a "slop and mop" business, we would go into apartment complexes and paint the empty units.
We would paint 2-3 units a day !
Well, I also worked PT for several witnesses that had their own painting business, and everything had to be perfect, no drips, wrinkles, holes,
or spots.
Anyway, while working for bro. slop, crew members would do alot of talking about their pioneering, talks, and service expiriences.
My wife just had a baby and I was more interested in making sure they were fed, and had a roof over their heads.
Service stories were the last thing on my mind.
There was an elder who ran the crew, (bro. full of himself) who didn't like the fact that I wasn't as spiritually minded as other employee's
so after two weeks of painting with them this guy told the witness owner (who was a drinker and abused his wife ) That I wasn't doing very well
Never mind that I had been painting for over two years with two other bro.'s PT who enjoyed having me work with them
So they let me go one morning. And the thing that burned me to no end was bro. full of himself didn't even have the courtesy to say anything to me ! He just loaded up the van,, watched me leave, and continued mixing the paint.
It must be more important to have spiritually encouraging things to say during work than being concerned with a young family !
Dam that was a discouraging time for me working only for the witnesses
i have been struggling to find my place.
i still consider my self christian...but the more i have been learning about my old faith, its been making me feel like i need to find something else that makes sense to me.. i know im not aethiest.
i have always felt that there was a higher power out there.. agnostic?
I'm in the same boat right now, trying to sort out what i believe vs what religion teaches
do you have the revelation, its grand climax at hand" book"?
it is a fascinating book backed up throughout with scriptures will open your eyes but you must read it from beginning to end.. the above is a quote from my jw friend, inactive for 30 years and thinking of sheepishly returning.
is the book cited above a scholarly and dependable commentary on revelation?.
After having studied it for three times, I began to realize how absurdly dysfunctional the JW religion can be.
It was the beginning of the end for me starting on study #2 !