i have been lurking on this site for the past 2 months.
for the past few years i have been going to the meetings and doing fieldservice out of guilt.. my husband (twisty) told me regularly i only do it out of guilt but i denied it and said it i want to do these things because i love jehovah and it is the right thing to do, but how can it be the right thing if you don't feel welcome and it feels like everyone is judging you the moment you walk into the kingdom hall.. it has taken a few years and a lot of tears to open my eyes.. over the past few years twisty spoke to me about the various things he didn't agree with but it just went over my head.
a few months ago we were lying in bed and he brought up his concerns again, and i'm not sure what was different this time but i understood and agreed with the points he was making.
Welcome to the board, I was in a similar situation and unsure how to approach my mother in the end I told her that I was concerned about some of the things I was reading and that I felt that the society seemed to have lost it's way.
If you wish to maintain relationships it is very hard to do so if you are critical of the society in any way. Take your time before doing anything that may jeopardise your family relationships. You will know when you are ready for each step.
http://jehovahsjudgment.co.uk/watchtower-un-ngo/translatable.html.
there will be more to come folks, when i'm allowed to start another topic.
cheers.. to respond to the posting below (since i can't reply right now), it's because they weren't aware of the change until then..
When a witness #i would not visit a church or cathedral or visit the UN building or anywhere linked with organisations that the society condemned. This begs the question if my bible trained conscience had a problem with these practices why theirs did not?
It is not why they left resigned NGO status that is significant but why they were ever members at all.
i have only been on this site for few hours so i'm just learning how things work.
thank's zid for the advice of starting a new thread.
my sister is scary21.
Welcome to the board. By still attending meetings with the children she is limiting their choices. Meetings are indoctrination and prolonged exposure means that they will be on the treadmill to baptism before they realise it. In order to make an informed choice then they need to look at it objectively from the outside.
once again in a wt study article entitled " imitate jesus' example of watchfulness " the wt society tries to control jw members through fear mongering, confusing them by inconsistent and contradictory wording, and emphasizing devotion to wt society " sacred service " over devotion to family and friends.. we all know the wt society has always said that " nobody knows the day and hour " of the alleged armageddon - yet out of the same mouth the wt society claims to know the " day " of the end close enough to have duped people with 1975 and put fear into jw's that the " end " is " imminent" .
notice these quotes from paragraph 4 in this article.
it states, " in brief, jesus wants us to remain watchful because of what we know and what we do not know.
I feel for those still in and trying to make sense of this nonsense. They state that Jesus is the example they try to imitate and yet there actions are far removed from his teachings. They say how important family was to Jesus that he was caring and loving and then they say that family is not that important. Don't get jobs that make you miss meetings because listening to poorly prepared talks for 2 hours is more important than feeding your family and keeping a roof over your head.
It seems as if they are placing themselves in every family corrupting the blood relationships devaluing family concerns as interfering. If a family member is telling you to slow down there is generally a good reason for it. In a normal world your family are the people you rely on and care for. By devaluing the opinions and importance of family then they are positioned as an obstacle with the idea that they can be cast off if they do not agree with your religious point of view.
i'm an atheist but i've recently been curious enough to sit quietly on the hard wooden pews of a local and very simple english village church - it was sweet, humble and surprisingly calming.. now, how exactly is this monstrosity supposed to motivate anyone?!.
what does it tell us about the mentality of the religions leaders?
does this look like a place of worship?
I always felt that kingdom halls were mean spirited buildings with no windows or decoration. Brothers and sisters mustn't be distracted from what they are studying. Old churches are beautiful with people using their talents to honour god and help people reach out to the Devine. In cathedrals there is a sense of majesty and awe that no kingdom hall or assembly hall can capture. Even if you have no belief in god the building can be appreciated and the religion understood. Witnesses talk about idolatry but their buildings are a form of inverted snobbery their faith is so weak that anything can stumble them any decoration or embellishment will lead them astray.
Nick your kingdom hall had all the warmth of a broom cupboard.
it has been two years since my family stopped attending and being "active".
my daughter is in her 30's settled and teaching with a masters degree she got post her separation and divorce four years ago from a witness, she is remaried and happy.
we just celebrated our first xmas since joining jw in the early 80's.. my wife now has increasing bouts of extreme anger (that border on violence) directed primarily at me for wasting twenty years of her life and causing my daughter to have periodic problems with flashbacks and anxiety.
I agree with the advice to get counselling. Your wife is struggling to come to terms with the time lost to the organisation and is projecting some of her guilt and rage onto you. After all she had choices too and left you to make them. She may feel some guilt over your daughter's bad first marriage as a mother you do want more than anything for your children to be happy.
Councelling will help you both get some perspective so you can enjoy your freedom rather than living in regret.
the watchtower endlessly prates on about pagan traditions in popular holidays - while the bible itself is loaded with subtle pagan religious ideas - such as wicked spirits being cast "into tartarus" (a pagan greek place in which the rebels against zeus got imprisoned) or "sacred secret" - a term the apostle paul likes that was adopted from pagan 'mystery' religions.. then we can throw in the reference to being divinely 'called christians' in acts - which uses a pagan term that refers to demonic oracles of the day.. of course, the watchtower has no objection to accumulating millions of pieces of paper that feature occult symbols (any dollar bill!).
in recent years, for good measure, they have added birthdays and thanksgiving to the official banned list, despite the sketchiest justification for doing so.
if birthdays are wrong simply because they figure in two negative accounts, then it makes much more sense to ban dogs as pets because of all the negativity in the bible about them!.
My understanding was that these celebrations were originally banned to make the religion newsworthy and increase publicity at a time when the religion was starting to aim for greater growth. These banns meant the organisation would be spoken about and differentiated from the mainstream being seen as more holy than other religions that do celebrate these holidays.
Of course by not taking part in these traditions it also has the added consequence of seperating and isolating the witness from those that do. So for the society it was a win win.
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i have to give this talk in a few weeks.
any ideas.
im the most educated person in the hall.
Only the watchtower education process can teach you how to follow the GB with unquestioning loyalty. Other education strives to turn you into an independent thinker able to reason and put talents to use in the world it cannot shape you into Witness since being a witness is a closed community that feeds and supports only itself. As a witness you cannot reason or think you must allow yourself to be told by others what to do and say so a secular education is useless and uneccessary.
This is how it is superior.
here is my advice to jehovah's witnesses everywhere.. .
it is okay to treat each day as if it were your last if it makes you more grateful, humble and kind.. but, if it becomes your excuse for neglecting your life, your sense of charity, your education and your humanity---then, shut the hell up about end times and make a new beginning.. start with here and now....today....improving this world any way you can.
stop thinking of everybody else as some kind of "enemy" that deserves to die if they don't read your magazine.. the sooner you comprehend that your truth is just another opinion the better off you'll be.. oh, and try loving people who don't think the same way you do.. start with those brothers and sisters you've been turning your back on.
Trust your inner voice if something doesn't feel right why are you doing it?
here is the link.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/brooklyn-man-leaps-15-stories-death-article-1.998012.
coffee .
Just so sad. I feel for the family trying to make sense of all this.
