inspired from another current thread.
i note some people are asking if they are allowed to participate in a questionaire for ex jw's if they are just fading or have not been df'd?.
my own situation is this: tecnicaly i am a jw, baptised as a young tweeny and never reproved, df'd or da'd.
I know with absolute certainty that I'm not one in my heart. And I've broken free from a great amount of the mind-control (I don't think a born-in EVER is 100% free of it) at this point. However, at the point of fade I'm in, I'm still viewed as a JW by everyone who knows me. I'm looked at as "weak" or "sick" by those IN and as "lapsed" by "worldly" associates. So what am I really?
I don't know.
we have been told that the announcement that "we are no longer of the jehovah's witnesses" will happen at the meeting this evening.
so i will be celebrating tonight!
lol.... in all seriousness, it seems like any other friday, but inside i feel like this is a big step!
Congratulations!
I don't know when mine will be. I half dread it and half look forward to it.
okay, i have read some posts about new efforts to "reach out" something is up.
my elder dad who entered a "cease fire" with me about a decade ago on the topic of religion reached out for the first time since.
he specifically invited me to the kh and bragged about the memorial attendance, the end is surley near....etc.. etc.... .
When 2012 passes and nothing happens, they will use it as evidence that "the world" doesn't know what it's talking about in regard to the end. When 2014 passes and nothing happens, I hope the cognitive dissonance will become too much for many and they'll leave in droves.
in my cong i could name more than half the brothers who seemed to revel in squashing the sisters back into the door mat where they belonged.
nothing personaly irrated me more than being treated like a lower form of life simply because i didn't have a penis!.
but i never saw any brothers make a stand, or try to treat the sisters better.
The sisters always liked me because I treated them as equals. God, I was a lousy Dub.
But to be honest, I saw both extremes in the congregations. While the official doctrine was that sisters were subjugated, often times I would see families where the wife was obviously the head of household. For every domineering husband, there were probably two or three domineering wives.
Then again, this is a male perspective, so take it for what it's worth.
eventually i would like to do a deconstruction on the entire book but for now, lets start with the prologue, which claims to be written by the governing body of jehovah's witnesses.
if anyone feels this is useful, please let me know.
] in your life and thus keep yourself in gods love .
I thought it would be hard but I probably spent about 45 minutes on the prologue and another 45 on the first three paragraphs (and A LOT of that time was spent trying to get the formatting right with this board's flaky software!). I think the fact that I am right in the thick of reading Hassan's "Combatting Cult Mind Control" at the moment makes seeing the mind-control (or thought reform) in the text easier. That said, it is frustrating to go through, with the realization that millions of people (hundreds of which are/were personal friends and family) are duped by this psycho-garbage.
okay, i have read some posts about new efforts to "reach out" something is up.
my elder dad who entered a "cease fire" with me about a decade ago on the topic of religion reached out for the first time since.
he specifically invited me to the kh and bragged about the memorial attendance, the end is surley near....etc.. etc.... .
Sorry to hear that.
My mom still asks if I attended the meeting even though every time my answer is that I will never attend another meeting at the K.H. again. Sometimes it just doesn't sink in after decades of indoctrination. Be thankful you got a decade of peace, bro.
it was only this past weekend that i finally stated (both aloud and in print) that i would never attend another meeting again.
like many brothers before me, i have decided to symbolize this new dedication to freedom for myself and my family with a beard..
So my kid comes up to me and is looking intently at my beard. I ask, "do you like my beard?" The answer? "Wow, there's a lot of white hairs in it!"
This morning, less than a week into it, I shaved it off. Vanity, thy name is Mad Sweeney.
Maybe when I'm either bald or grey up top I'll try again.
just curious of anyone else's experience with this watchtower behavoir.. i ran into a df person 2 weeks ago and she tried hiding from me, my guess she was embarrassed and knew i shouldn't talk to her, but i approached her anyway.
we hugged and talked briefly.
she told me she was disfellowshipped, she knew i wasn't attending meetings.
The word "doubts" is loaded-language Dub-speak to describe "knowing facts that show the WT is BS". In the Dub-controlled mind, doubts are sinful and need to be purged with the 'help' of the elders.
When I spoke to a family member about some of the things wrong with the WTS, they responded something like, "I understand you're having 'doubts' about 'the truth'..."
I answered, "No I'm not. I have NO DOUBT AT ALL that it is FALSE."
In Dub-land, when one has 'doubts' he/she needs to approach the elders for 'help'. ('help'=reindoctrination) So when we use that term while speaking to Dubs, we're triggering that response in them; we need the help of the elders.
i know that my daughters abuser was a min servant when he abused girls in the cong then got reprooved when found out , i presume he was then stopped from being a min servant but he never answered at meeting s despite every meeting standing at the back counting people present .
when i started attending meetings i wondered why he never answered but was not too shy to count people every meeting , when i asked my bible study conducter she never really gave a straight answer and looked embaressed .
i thought if you had been accused of abuse you could not have priveliges ..
The elders decide which "privileges" (in Dub-speak "privileges" = unpaid labor) to take away and which ones to let a guy keep. They're not always taken away completely.
eventually i would like to do a deconstruction on the entire book but for now, lets start with the prologue, which claims to be written by the governing body of jehovah's witnesses.
if anyone feels this is useful, please let me know.
] in your life and thus keep yourself in gods love .
Chapter One (first subheading, paragraphs 1-3). Keep the advice and comments coming.
I'm still looking for a word or phrase to identify the changes from "you" to "us" etc.
Sorry about the formatting...
Chapter 1-This is What the Love of God Means
“This is what the love of God means, that we observe his commandments; and yet his commandments are not burdensome.”—1 JOHN 5:3.
DO YOU love God? If you have come into a dedicated relationship with Jehovah God, your answer surely is an emphatic yes—and rightly so! [Appeal to Emotion. Not only is the emotion of love appealing on its surface, the most common answer a reader would give, "an emphatic yes," is praised by the writers as "rightly so!" Therefore, the reader's esteem is boosted right away, for agreeing with the writers of the book. To acheive further emotional boosts, the reader will desire to continue agreeing with the writers as the book progresses.] It is only natural for us to love Jehovah. [Now that the reader is Emotionally committed by giving the correct answer to the opening question, there is a change in status. "You" are now one of "us." Before the first paragraph is finished the reader is given an Emotional boost by answering a question in an approved way and based on that approved response being accepted as a member of the group.] Our love for God is really in response to his love for us. The Bible puts it this way: “As for us, we love, because he [Jehovah] first loved us.”—1 John 4:19.
2 Jehovah has taken the initiative to express his love for us. He provides us with a beautiful earthly home. He cares for our physical and material needs. (Matthew 5:43-48) [These verses, like John chapter 5 from the prologue, are primarily about Jesus' command to love other people, even strangers and enemies, in a way similar to that of God's love for people.] More important, he looks after our spiritual needs. He gives us his Word, the Bible. In addition, he invites us to pray to him with the assurance that he will hear us and will give us his holy spirit to help us. (Psalm 65:2; Luke 11:13) Above all, he sent his most precious Son to be our Ransomer so that we might be delivered from sin and death. What great love Jehovah has shown to us!—John 3:16; Romans 5:8. [The use of "us" in this paragraph may simply be grammatical, but it continues to link the reader to the writers as members of the same group until the writers decide the appropriate time to change to "you" or "I" later on. The scriptures referenced and the tone of the accompanying text lead the reader to another Emotional response based on a sense of gratitude and justice. "To prove that I am thankful for all these things God has done for us, I owe him obedience."]
3 Jehovah wants us to benefit from his love forever. Whether we will or not, however, is really up to us. God’s Word admonishes us: “Keep yourselves in God’s love . . . with everlasting life in view.” (Jude 21) [Why the ". . . " instead of the removed words, "while you are waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ"? Is it the use of "you" or the mention of "our Lord Jesus Christ" that was deemed removable by the writers?] The phrase “keep yourselves” suggests that to remain in God’s love, action on our part is required. We need to respond to his love in concrete ways.[Non sequitur. The phrase "keep yourselves" suggests maintaining a status quo and implies INaction more strongly than action. Also, "we need to respond" is dogmatic and not supported.] An important question for us to consider, then, is this, ‘How can I demonstrate my love for God?’ [This sudden change to the singular first person is powerful. The writers risk the grammatically awkward use of both "us" and "I" in the same sentence to elicit a desired Behavioral response to the previously established Emotional desire to prove one's gratitude to God, to pay the owed obedience by taking "concrete" action to "demonstrate" the reader's "love for God."] The answer is found in the inspired words of the apostle John: “This is what the love of God means, that we observe his commandments; and yet his commandments are not burdensome.” (1 John 5:3) [The reader's desire for an answer to the question, "How can I demonstrate my love for God?" is immediately gratified with the answer: "observe his commandments." That the contexts of the scriptures cited and quoted so far referring to "commandments" apply to the command to show love to other people in practical ways is conspicuously not mentioned.] We do well to examine carefully the meaning of these words, for we want to show our God just how much we love him. [By using the phrase "how much" the writers now quantify love as something that can be shown in ostensibly measurable amounts. This, in addition to the phrase, "We do well to..." begins to establish the phobia of not doing enough to show God "how much we love him." Also, use of the phrase "our God" brings an air of exclusivity to the reader as a member of an elite group. Establishing an Emotional desire in the reader to Behave in a way that will prove the reader's love for God and pay him back via concrete actions sets up the writers with the perceived authority to use the rest of the book to outline exactly what actions the reader must perform.]
