my wife's parents are in very bad shape.
they are both 2nd gen jws.
my father in law worked for a large american manufacturing company in the 60s and early 70s.
I'm not sure what the talk was trying to accomplish.
What the ORG calls a 'love of money' and 'materialism', other normal people call 'concern over basic needs and amenities', and 'modest financial protection for their family'.
This has been expressed before, but I can't get over the irony of building a religion dependent on folks who have the least to give.
at the 1988 divine justice district convention of jw’s.
i had stopped going to the meetings for six months.
before that i was fading, but it wasn’t deliberate.
Great story. I've often wondered how many JWs really, truly believe the blood doctrine and would refuse no matter what...
...and how many would willingly consent to a life-saving transfusion if it could be kept secret....
spoke to my younger brother dan yesterday (he da'd about 6 months ago).
he was telling me that he got a visit from our older brother the day before.
our older brother was raised a jw but never committed, lives a full-on "worldly" life - smokes, binge drinks, hangs out with non-jws, but he's been studying for about 6 years would you believe?.
Meet these dumb ideas on their own terms, in their own court...
Where in the Bible does it talk about demons inhabiting inanimate objects?
This is just more extra-Biblical crap that the JWs swear they don't engage in...
i had a deep conversation with my elder father today about the bible.
first i talked to him about luke 16:19-31. the one where jesus makes this crazy illustration regarding the afterlife.
of course he had to look it up on the watchtower library to be spoon fed his beliefs.
Yes, it's often this way. One eventually gets the idea that the beliefs don't really even matter.
If the WT Society directed that JWs believe the moon is made of candy, there we go...it's about adherence to the authority. Not any specific idea or belief.
Anyway, it may just be a valuable thing that you can talk to your father - about anything at all, never mind religion. If you place your expectations in the outcome of these conversations, you may just be setting yourself up for frustration.
I say this as someone working on letting go of these expectations. Dragging these along in life can make you weary.
anyone that you miss from this site, dead or alive??.
i miss farkel, blondie and a host of others!.
Maximus
Metatron
Farkel
et al.
i was having a conversation with another ex jw about difficulties when you have been a born-in and indoctrinated from birth.
it just is so disheartening that if and when you do wake up and leave that all that crap is still in your brain.
you just can't unplug.
I found it tremendously helpful to spend time talking to a professional therapist who was familiar with these specific circumstances and issues. He was able to show me the faulty 'programming' I was operating with and provided some tools for working past the JW conditioned nonsense.
I was a born-in, and left at age 18. I thought that simply separating myself from the religion would be enough to render me 'ok', but it wasn't. A decade later I was still tripping over all the learned dysfunction from my quite painful childhood.
If you're needing some help here, but aren't in a position to see a therapist, at least do some reading and explore the concepts of cognitive distortions and automatic thinking. Learn what's at work in your JW-addled brain that's making you so frustrated. Know what you're up against. Then you can start to make things better.
As difficult as this is, this is well-traveled territory. You can learn a lot from others who have tread this path...
"oh i'm not going to worry about it, armageddon will be here by then!".
-including me.
"This might be the last Christmas season we have to get through...."
hello everyone, i have an on and off again ex who is a jw.
each time her family gets involved and she's gone again.
i'm debating biting the bullet and doing the work to become baptized, so we can follow through with our engagement.
The emotional cost of breaking up will be infinitely smaller than what you will both bear, should you undergo this.
It's clear that you don't *really* fully believe in the religious doctrine (if you did, we wouldn't be having this conversation).
You will not be able to fake your dedication to this cult. It will wear you down
It will put a big cloud over your marriage. A cloud that only YOU can see, but can't talk about and resolve. You'll be miserable, or maybe insane from trying to convince yourself that you're happy, and it was all worth it.
She's not worth it. No one is.
I used to think I knew someone who was, but I was wrong. Now I realize that I couldn't have been right in that regard, because you (or I) can't live a life for someone else.
Don't do it, even if for her sake. If you pretend to believe (but really don't), she will feel deceived when you eventually give out.
Good on you for putting this out there. There are people in this crowd who know. Look at the overwhelming message you're getting...
roll call for the benefit of newbies and lurkers.
in one sentence tell why you left the org.
not 2 sentences.
Hypocritical parents and an extraordinarily miserable childhood made up my mind for me.
how in the hell would it ever work?
everyone is youthful, everyone is perfect, everyone's personality is loving and kind.
how would you choose somebody?
So I wonder, why would perfect people have to spend time dating, to see if they're compatible and want to commit to each other?
I mean, if you're each at an optimum level of perfection, wouldn't you both know right away? Love (or not) at first sight.
Then if it's not a go, smile, shake hands, and resume picking fruit. If it's on, you blissfully skip away holding hands, thankful for that small intimacy in an eternal and sexless marriage that death will not rescue you from...
