Posts by sd-7

175

Were you Stalked or Chased After Once you Exited the JW's by Elders ?

by flipper in

jw
friends

i tried to fade off the map by moving 30 miles initially in 2004 after i exited in late 2003 .

the first several years they didn't bother me.

i ran into a elder from my former congregation in late 2005 in an antique store - he tried telling me i was wrong for stopping attending meetings.

sd-7

Ah, but here's an interesting story that just got jogged in my memory. My mom was stalked by a JW elder, back when she was still fairly new amongst them. The elder apparently followed her to her mother's house (my grandmother's house), and was concerned she might've been visiting some random man, but I guess once he realized that wasn't the case, he moved on. To my knowledge she was never directly confronted about it, but it was evident to her that this elder was following her. Kinda creepy, in hindsight. Really creepy, in fact.

Funny. I remembered asking her once, "You're telling me that in the 20+ years you've been in, you haven't seen anything that seemed out of place?" No, she said. I guess being stalked by an elder must not have readily come to her mind in that moment, but certainly we'd seen our share of weird stuff together over the past two decades. Ah, well.

--sd-7

175

Were you Stalked or Chased After Once you Exited the JW's by Elders ?

by flipper in

jw
friends

i tried to fade off the map by moving 30 miles initially in 2004 after i exited in late 2003 .

the first several years they didn't bother me.

i ran into a elder from my former congregation in late 2005 in an antique store - he tried telling me i was wrong for stopping attending meetings.

sd-7

I wasn't really stalked, as finding me didn't require any effort by the elders, since I live 5 minutes down the road from a Kingdom Hall. I got a visit from elders or at least a check-in from them maybe every September since I left? They want to know if I have any desire to be reinstated and if so, if I know what the procedure is. It's pathetically predictable. I get that it's their job, they're instructed to follow up with people they've thrown to the wolves and ask if they want to be brought back to the wolfpack (not a contradiction somehow, trust me), but one would think they would use some elder-brain judgment about it.

It's amounted to mild annoyance or upset over just seeing these people who sort of traumatized me in their judicial committee. Especially the chairman--it seems like he has a nearly personal thing against me, you know? I can't figure why, since he never even got to know me at all before the committee since I was new to their congregation.

I can't tell if he might've invented a scenario where I was this abusive, womanizing husband who had previously seduced my wife into premarital sex and then commanded her never to tell the elders for fear of some dire consequence from me. That kind of thought could easily surface when you don't know someone, and I don't know what the elders from my old KH said if they wrote a letter about me when I moved. One would think it was horrible, despite having served faithfully for nearly two decades without serious sin up until then.

I'm just grasping for straws here, but it's just that at the end of the judicial committee, when he was discussing my fate with the other elders, I've honestly never in my life heard an elder sound so pissed off, literally shouting down the other two elders. I can't help thinking he wanted to dive over the table and throttle me for having the audacity to question the organization.

To my knowledge, though, only thing they do is keep calling back on me every year to see if I've finally gotten tired of my undying spiritual thirst and want to come on back to the desert...

--sd-7

18

Why you CAN'T make sense of it.

by baltar447 in

jw
friends

going through an dealing with a mentally ill spouse (living hell, long story, pm me if you want details), and talking to others who have dealt with the mentally ill, i've come to an epiphany.. you cannot make sense of "crazy".

that's why, when you get out of the wt, get out of the mind control, and try to reason with your loved ones or friends, it will not work.

we are dealing with people under mind control and i believe that is a close cousin of mental illness.

sd-7

Honestly, I recognize I'm a little crazy. I also understand that the process of ending one's belief in the WT can't be done to just anyone. I understood from the beginning that no one I knew would believe me. Because they were all satisfied by their cult experience, whereas I was not. I had too many unfulfilled promises, too many cold, heartless words I read or heard said to me by people I trusted, too many problems with no solutions to be found beyond the stale, inhuman words in their literature. Ultimately, that is the key.

So it makes sense to me. It's just hard to accept, that's all.

--sd-7

24

Daily Text for February 28, 2013 !!! ENJOY !!!!!!!!

by DATA-DOG in

thursday, february 28. jehovah will make known who belongs to him.-num.

16:5. korah lost sight of the fact that jehovah was directing the nation of israel and consequently failed to show loyalty to those whom god was using.

how much wiser it would have been for korah to wait on jehovah for a clearer understanding or for adjustments if those were really needed.

sd-7

Can we acknowledge the position of those taking the lead among us and submit to directions we receive?

But wait, I thought serving God wasn't about emphasis on stuff like position, you know--isn't that supposed to be what separates JWs from Christendom, that they're all brothers and there's no clergy class? Oh. "You may not have noticed it--but your brain did." They've convinced you that they're not lording it over you, and in doing so have made it all the easier for them to lord it over you.

The tutor--the Law--was supposed to lead the spiritual children to Christ, and then they were supposed to grow up. The Society has become the tutor that doesn't seem to know how to get to school. Or has intentionally gotten lost because he realizes that once the students find Christ, he'll no longer be in charge of them. Hmm. Wonder which one it could be?

--sd-7

19

For anyone unsure as to whether JW's are a cult..please read...

by lostinnj83 in

if the informaiton i am posting is redundant or has been posted, please forgive me.. i know we are all at different stages of this journey.

for me i am still "in" but working towards being out and leaving.

any one in this position or who has been here knows how diffucult of a time this can be.

sd-7

When I first started studying Dr. Robert Jay Lifton's research, and really I only heard of it while reading Steve Hassan's book 'Combatting Cult Mind Control', I was just...stunned at how it all fit the JWs. It made me realize, they could have killed us all and we would have gladly gone over the cliff. It's a hurt that never fully heals for me.

Long before I ever began to question my beliefs, I probably watched a TV movie or two about cults and I'd said to myself, if I ever found out I was in a cult, or if the JWs ever asked me to do anything crazy, I'd leave. Little did I know I'd actually be faced with that decision. I'm just glad I made the choice to leave. Once you know for a fact that they're doing this, you know you have to get out for your own safety.

--sd-7

41

New May Awake! Am I being unreasonable or does this sound crazy!?

by toweragent in

my friends usually walked me home after dark.

but one evening i was so tired that i decided to call a taxi.

the driver didnt take me home.

sd-7

Excellent connection, Cadellin. Under Watchtower Law, the 'slave' just determines which parts of the Mosaic Law are still in force and which are not, rather than letting the New Testament handle that. You can't get a tattoo, based on a "principle" of the Law, but you have to shave your beard, going against the very next verse in the Law. When it becomes so arbitrary, you see very clearly that it's subject to personal opinion, to the whims of a few men.

--sd-7

81

More connect-the-dots madness...

by cedars in

jw
friends

that's right, a knife and a baby in close proximity.... .

http://www.jw.org/assets/m/ijw13fr/502013178/ijw13fr_id-502013178_e/502013178_e_cnt_1.pdf.

anything goes, so long as you're proving how "wise" king solomon was.. .

sd-7

"FAMILY ACTIVITY: Without speaking, one family member could
act out the part of one of the characters in 1 Kings 3:16-28.
The rest of the family should try to guess the identity of that character."

Sounds like a JW Vengeance Dad meme in the making...

THEY GUESSED WHICH BIBLE CHARACTER I WAS

AS I CUT THEM IN HALF

Of course, no actual death happens in this story, but the threat of violence and the drawing of a violent image is certainly present. The child draws the knife and the baby. As someone who has small kids, if I see my child connecting the dots on this picture, I'm going to have to throw it in the trash and demand that no further drawings of this sort be used for my children's activities. This really is not a proper way to involve children in worship. I can understand reading the stories to them--and that, I think, from the Christian perspective would be perfectly fine--but these pictures are going to stay with them.

I can still remember one of my earliest childhood memories from 'My Book of Bible Stories', with Abel lying in a pool of his own blood. I can remember staring at that picture for a long time, and feeling an emotion I couldn't fully quantify until I was much older--I felt disturbed.

But this is...hmm. I think I'd like to share this with my old therapist, just to see what she would say. There are worse things that will happen to the kids who grow up as JWs than drawing on this picture. But this is peculiar, at least.

--sd-7

41

New May Awake! Am I being unreasonable or does this sound crazy!?

by toweragent in

my friends usually walked me home after dark.

but one evening i was so tired that i decided to call a taxi.

the driver didnt take me home.

sd-7

"Therefore, a victim who was unable to scream but otherwise did all she could under the circumstances can leave matters in Jehovah’s hands."

I think we should bear in mind the exact wording of this most recent ('03) quote. It doesn't say that the woman is not guilty; it says she can leave matters in Jehovah's hands. So this actually doesn't say the woman is not guilty for being raped. If anything, it's a code for saying she will get a judicial committee where "Jehovah" (ie. three elders) will determine whether or not she was actually raped.

If she didn't scream, there is nothing in this sentence that really says she's in the clear (just as there is nothing in the sentence that really says she isn't in the clear, either). Two factors are put before what will surely be a committee: (1) did she scream? (2) If she did not scream, did she otherwise do all she could under the circumstances? If the answers to both are 'no', then it is theoretically possible and maybe even likely that some elders would DF her. I'd like to think that most wouldn't, but I do believe some most certainly would.

Either way, would there really be a point in her screaming in an abandoned field? It's abandoned. Who's going to hear you scream? Will they call the rapist in to testify that he heard her scream? What's the point in this quote? Just to tell them they should scream, which implies to me, at least, that the same rule is in effect, but they just can't (or don't) overtly spell it out as they used to.

--sd-7

25

Addressing The False Claim That Jehovah's Witnesses Do Not Think "Independently"

by Bangalore in

jw
friends

addressing the false claim that jehovah's witnesses do not think "independently.. .

http://defendingjehovahswitnesses.blogspot.com/2013/02/addressing-false-claim-that-jehovahs.html#.

from a wt apologist.. .

sd-7

If it looks like a Duck,Walks like a Duck and .. It must be an..

Quacks like a Duck .. Ice Cream Truck..

"Evidently, some ice cream trucks may indeed 'quack like a duck' in modern times, thanks to custom-made horns and music devices. They may 'look like a duck' in terms of the way paint was used in a sophisticated art design. They may 'walk like a duck' perhaps due to neglect of auto maintenance, which may cause the vehicle to wobble as a duck might while walking. Can we assume, then, that these are in fact, not ducks, despite looking like, walking like, and quacking like ducks? By no means!"

--sd-7

16

What happened immediately after your Judicial Committee was over?

by civicsi00 in

whenever i went to my judicial committee (over 3 years ago), the elders opened with a prayer for jehbooboo's guidance.

then they followed up with their loyalty question, "do you believe in the faithful and discreet slave?".

of course i answered "no", and shortly thereafter i handed over my disassociation letter.

sd-7

From my Borg court thread here on JWN nearly 3 years ago:

It was maybe 10-15 minutes before they called me back in to tell me I was to be disfellowshipped. Announcement will be made on the 10th, right after the special assembly day. The thing that seemed particularly hypocritical was that they just ended the committee right there--no prayer, nothing. Just, that's it. Bye. If you really hope that I get "restored" spiritually, why not have the decency to offer one last prayer in my behalf? Instead, just cold silence.

It was as though a chill wind passed through, the utter silence. I was grieved at how unyielding they were, how they couldn't see that I wasn't a bad person because I disagreed. I glanced at each of them, said, "Take care," and went home to give my wife the news. I can still remember the look on her face, and...the hurt never really goes away, knowing that maybe that wasn't what she expected or what she hoped for, maybe she hoped I would rethink my beliefs. Everything had already gone to hell weeks before. The rest was just ceremony.

--sd-7