the trouble with a decrease in numbers is that it means something positive too! "We MUST be near the end! Satan's got so many of them!"
halcyon
JoinedPosts by halcyon
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18
How many kids never buy into the JW B/S???
by navytownroger inat the conventions, there always seem to be parents gushing about how their kids are 'in the truth', pioneering, etc.
i'm wondering how many jw kids just flat-out reject all the jw b/s right from the start.
surely there are some kids who just say 'no way!
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halcyon
This reminds me of some counsel I once heard that kids at a cong picnic shouldn't throw a baseball around (in a huge grassy area!) because "what if the ball comes down near the picnic and hits someone and they get hurt."
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24
For those with a personal relationship to God....How did you get there?
by digderidoo inas some of you are aware i have been going to aa meetings since the new year.
the "god thing" linked to the aa was a real dilemma for me.. since this time i have researched well the jw doctrines and come to the realisation that to have a personal relationship with a higher power i do not need to believe in the witness doctrine.. i am at a point where i have been considering how i personally would interprate a higher power.. i have met someone within the aa who is an ex jw and have just had a conversation with him on the phone, which has got me thinking about this.. now he has said that his faith now has been built by replacing one brick at a time so to speak.
giving an illustration of his faith being like a building, he can replace an old brick with a new one until he gets a new building all of his own making.
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halcyon
I kind of always had one, sorta, even as a JW. God was with me through my divorce ("God, you want families to stay together! Why are you telling me to divorce him?"); I felt I could turn to Him and feel a communion with Him pretty much all my life. Sometimes it was hard and He felt very distant, but I always tried to reach him. BUT, one day while I was still "in" but doing a lot of questioning, I read a different translation of the Bible. I felt I saw the book in a whole different way, a very dynamic, loving way, and sorta realized that I had been neglecting Jesus all my life. So I (awkwardly) prayed to God to please thank Jesus for His sacrifice for me. I think it was kinda like a born-again prayer, in my own awkward way. I immediately felt a peace of mind come upon me. A total forgiveness of sins. Whatever guilty feelings I was lashing myself with, disappeared. I realized that something very significant had just happened to me, and that I had found it myself, outside of what I was "told" to do, and maybe even flirting with something "wrong", although I couldn't for the life of me agree that thanking Jesus for his sacrifice could possibly be wrong. But the way I came to it, I knew it came from the outside, and I knew that God was ON the outside.
As I was fading, I really felt God answering my prayers. I don't want to make God sound like my personal slave, but if I was entering a very uncomfortable situation, like say my dad was starting to ask too many questions that I didn't want to answer, I would pray for some sort of distraction and one would ALWAYS and immediately occur, and I would be spared the interrogation.
God also helps me find things. :-) Way too often to just be coincidence.
So now I totally trust that God listens to me, even though according to the way I was raised, God should have turned his back on me years ago. But He hasn't. I trust him, because he's proven himself to me. It didn't come from anywhere else. It was something I found, myself. -
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Name Things That Are Uniquely "Special" To Jehovah's Witnesses
by minimus injws have certain must haves.
for example a jw needs his or her own "bookbag".
an elder needs an "elder case", something very big, because after all, he's an elder!
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halcyon
A Daily Text highly visible on the table or the counter.
A bookshelf full of old Brown, Blue, Green, Red and Gold books, again, in a visible spot in the house. -
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Question on good and evil...
by digderidoo ingrowing up as a dub i always belived mankind was inheritantly good.
that because of adam and eve being perfect, they then ate the fruit and so that sinful side was passed on through the generations.. since leaving i have often wondered whether mankind is inheritantly good or evil.. when wicked acts occur, this makes me think that some have this evil deep down inside of them.
yet when someone helps others i then think that maybe some have good inside of them.. so is mankind inheritantly good or bad?
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halcyon
I think people are inherently self-serving. They do what they feel is Right For Them at that particular moment. I've got a theory that nobody can go through with an action if they don't believe on SOME level at THAT moment that it is the RIGHT thing to do. If you ask me to kill someone, I cannot do it unless I believe on some level that it is Right. (this person deserves it; I am doing something good for them/society/their children/ if I end their pain through death.) If you ask me to cut off my own hand, I could find a reason within me that would make it Right at that moment. (This makes me noble; my hand is causing me suffering; I'm proving my obedience; whatever.)
Even helping others is self-serving, because it brings good feelings upon ourselves ABOUT ourselves.
Sometimes people don't find those good feelings within them, because of past experiences, current situational circumstances, or even the way their body chemically fires. In those situations, they do Bad Things when circumstances give them the choice.
Other times people find those good feelings within them and may even pursue them to a fault. These are usually the Saints among us, who seem so unselfish that they put their own needs aside. But they ARE getting a reward, inside themselves. We as society label their actions as Good.
ALL people can find a combination of both traits inside them, so I think it's a complex process of which one rises to the surface at any given circumstance. I must be honest or I can't live with myself, UNLESS the consequences make my life really bad, then it's easier to live with my bad conscience than to live with the bad circumstances. So I choose to lie.
I love my child dearly. BUT, famine has struck, and we're both going to die, so what should I do? I could eat my child and at least one of us lives. Or I could choose to die instead because I feel noble through my compassion. Or else I can't live with myself if I do such a thing. Whatever.
We all make the choices that we think we can live with, each moment of our existence. (I'm not saying that our feelings about our decisions might not change the moment after we've committed!)
I guess I don't really believe in Evil.
And in my experience, most people I've known have chosen to be Good when given the choice. -
13
what happens if I die?
by halcyon inwhat happens to a fader whose family is still jw if they die?
what kind of funeral do they get?
i know nobody shows up, but who presides over it?
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halcyon
no I don't plan to die. But I wonder, if I do, what would happen. I haven't been officially anythinged. I just dropped off the planet one day and didn't go back. I don't care what kind of funeral I have, since I'll be dead. It's for the survivors. But if I were there, this is what I'd want: someone to talk about me and how wonderful I was. :-) Then play one of my favorite songs. Maybe comfort my friends and tell them about how I was truly at peace at the end, that I died happy and satisfied with my life, because I'd been able to travel and learn and love and help people. I would hate it if someone held a "meeting" over my dead body. ;-)
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what happens if I die?
by halcyon inwhat happens to a fader whose family is still jw if they die?
what kind of funeral do they get?
i know nobody shows up, but who presides over it?
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halcyon
I have nothing planned, because I don't know the options. So I could pre-plan for an elder who hates me to have to preside, and then he'll have to?
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13
what happens if I die?
by halcyon inwhat happens to a fader whose family is still jw if they die?
what kind of funeral do they get?
i know nobody shows up, but who presides over it?
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halcyon
What happens to a fader whose family is still JW if they die? What kind of funeral do they get?
I know nobody shows up, but who presides over it? -
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Where was the joy they kept taling about
by heybaby inok, so i have been thinking about my time as a jw (i'm fading out - read my other posts for background info).
you know how you always hear how the ministry will bring so much joy and contentment, yadda yadda yadda?
i always hated service...always!!
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halcyon
I found joy when the two OTHER people in the car would get invited into someone's house for a looooong talk (45 minutes? YAY!!!) leaving me in the car to talk to a cute brother. How quickly that could turn to dread, though, when it was ME who was asked to go to the house with the Pioneer instead, and have to spend the 45 minutes inside there.
I found joy at assemblies, really I did, because life seemed SO simple and easy there. Life was a dream, as presented from the stage. Everything sounded so easy and wonderful and full of peace. Boring and stilted when "skits" tried to portray it, but that's just because those people were terrible actors with a terrible script. The talks made everything so black and white, that sitting and listening to "reality" (as presented) sounded so comforting. It was always such a weird disconnect when I actually got home and walked into the door of my not-so-easy actual life. It took many years for me to realize that I was just listening to a dream world when I was there.
There was joy as a child in peace of mind. Really there was. I could label things as "bad" and then stay away from them, and I felt peace. Never mind that I had no friends my age. I guess they figured I was boring or something.
I had joy as a child when grownups would praise me for being so smart. I lost the joy when, as a grownup, the praise went away and I discovered that my talent, that of being an intelligent woman, was going to waste. No one listened to a woman. I was just another "sister", and not even an attractive one or a pioneer one, so why bother with me?
I found joy in prayer, sometimes. I would struggle soooo hard to see up into that deep dark tube that connected me with God, and He would breathe down and connect me to him, somehow, with his warm dark breath. I thank the JWs for that, for insisting that I develop a personal relationship with God. Because I still have it! Only it's MUCH easier to see up into that tube. It's not so dark anymore, and SO much shorter! He's SO much closer now. And now He wraps His arms around me, rather than just breathing down that tube at me. -
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What Draws Out The Lurker/Newbies
by Not Feeling It ini'm sure this has been discussed.
i was wondering what attracts a lurker/n00b to post for the first time.
i made my first post in someone else's thread eschewing the "hi, i'm new" thing.. for anyone, particularly the lurkers/noobies:.
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halcyon
I first posted cuz I'm the kind who can't keep her hand down when a question is asked. :) I have too much to say.
But I'm still wary of the "introduction, here's my story" part, which it is SUCH a relief that most of you understand that without me having to explain it! Other boards/friends would be like, "why? What do you have to hide from? Aren't you an adult?" But of course, when you have family still in, and you've faded rather than jumped out, you still have to practice the whole spin control thing.
What has simply amazed me and taken my breath away, is that for so many years I had all these thoughts swimming around in my head about just exactly "why" I wasn't comfortable believing anymore. And then when I dropped in here, rather than being a whole bunch of "complainers" who are spewing "lies and half-truths" (what's a half-truth, anyway? It's either a lie or it's not.) you're all mostly (well yeah, complaining) but about EXACTLY the same things I had spinning around in my head!
It's not like anyone here has put anything new into my head. It's all there already, and I'm a highly rational, logical, intelligent human being. I normally see through crap in the secular world. I don't fall for "lies and half-truths" anywhere else in my life. I haven't fallen for any spammers, or gotten involved in any shady business deals for not reading the fine print, or had my life screwed up due to my own stupidity. Yet I'm sure if my mom ever got wind of me being here, she would INSTANTLY peg this board as the "cause of it all." It couldn't possibly be a rational, logical decision based on the realization that I needed to abandon a sinking ship.
Seriously, I have a finely-tuned sense of trends ... I am constantly "inventing" things right before someone actually invents them, I seem to be on the cutting edge of style, technology, and even financial trends before others, with not too much effort. And a bunch of years ago, I started feeling the "trend" in my gut that the WT organization is sagging, headed in the wrong direction, and was simply becoming WRONG.
And after I left, gosh was I ever right!
Yet I don't feel it's mine to tell anyone else what to do. Everyone must come to it by themselves. I wish my family could be reunited again, have a family reunion where it's not "us against them", and even if my parents don't agree with my decision, recognize that it is my RIGHT to make it!
See, I can't shut up. :)