just this week after being separated a little over two months....and funny cause i just got a pm from a newbie about what it is like to leave all...including your wife or husband....anyway, i spent the day with my wife and we talked about it...it is so sad....even though we are very different in natures...i again concluded there is enough in common to be happy and grow old and avoid the very high costs to both of a divorce....except we just cant figure out how to have totally separate friends and social lives....that is kinda big and may still be the deal breaker....soooooo frustrating and infuriating..........oompa.
here was my reply to the newbie pm:.
leaving was terribly hard as my wife is a wonderful and attractive person...my 22 year old son is also a good dub...and my parents are not real old yet and he is a hardcore elder.
This is between you and your wife whether you want to be together.
It shouldn't be entirely 2 seperate social groups after all I don't imagine any of your friends would practice shunning and I am sure your conversations are not limited to apostacy. By being with your wife you are limiting JW contact and really it is whether she feels she can live with that.
Focus on what you can do together. There is no harm in trying and seeing if it works espeacially if you both still love each other.
http://www.jw.org/index.html?option=qryqcsvrgznt.
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this link is for the private study editions of the watchtower magazine that is only distributed to the publishers .
Do I have to? couldn't I just miss the meeting instead? Thanks for the link you never know I may need it if only to read alongside Blondies comments.
Thank you for taking time to track down the link.
this is a direct continuation od part iv.................................... you can imagine the reaction of the people who saw me storm out of the hall but what happened in the elders meeting after i left was even funnier.
mike told me that there was stunned silence for about a minute.
slimeball said well take that as his stepping down!.
I can confirm that they lied. Slimeballs daughter was soon back on the school and doing demos. I would have asked if cantleave wasn't chosen because of perceived bias then why was brother lapdog involved as he was clearly biased the other way?
The trouble is once they start on a campaign against a person they constantly gripe and criticise until you are exhausted. This is a form of bullying that would be unacceptable in any other setting. Every time a CO visit came along we would be critcised as a family by specific members of the BOE. No encouragement no help just the constant drip drip drip. It was all because my husband spoke out at Elders meetings and wouldn't let the CBOE run the show as he wanted. He was also unfortunate that Bro Lapdog wanted his job and was in the forefront of the critcism.
These incidents were so similar to what I had experienced with bullying at work I couldn't believe a theocratic body would use these tactics. It was only after the storming out that I learnt anything about what was going on in the hall. I had been a dutiful elders wife. I didn't question or eaves drop so knew nothing about what my husband was involved in. I knew he was unhappy and after every elders meeting I would ask the question : "are you still an elder?" He usually said yes, this time he said "No I've resigned." By the time we got home he said, "I may have made a mistake."
When he told me what was going on I was floored. He asked me to witness the call to Slimeball and filled me in on some of the background so if slimeball says my husband lied he was wrong.
Following this incident my husband seemed to be coming to bed later and later and obviously had something on his mind. I know now he was hanging out with you guys at the time I thought I must be the most unholy, unattractive elders wife on the planet. It was kind of a relief when he told me he was having doubts. I was brought up with an unbelieving parent so this was territory I was comfortable with.
It took time but I'm right there with him. Paradise being shepherded by men like slimeball could never be God's plan. if it is then god is seriously lacking in judgement.
i am a 28 year-old male, and yes i am from africa, south africa to be precise.. i was brought up in the 'truth', got baptised at 17 in 1998. df'd at 22 in 2003 for fornication.. reinstated at a different cong.
in 2007 for the sake of my relationship with my family, especially mom.. after my reinstatement i was active in fs as well as attending meetings even though i could'nt comment.
a few months down the line i found out about this forum while searching the net, i continued going to meetings and fs but as time went by i started feeling like it was'nt really that important to me.
I see your dilema. What are your plans post wedding?
richard dawkins, author of "the god delusion" as quoted in the guardian newspaper today page 18 :.
"the god of the old testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust , unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.".
my reply to professor dawkins :.
The God of the old testament is a fable created by the people of the old testament. It says more about them than it does about him.
let's think about the subtle effects of the watchtower's newfound appeals for money.
traditionally, the society avoids doing anything that might expose the reality of how much of a facade the whole thing is.
they fear incidents that undermine their carefully crafted image of invunerability - and, indeed, the reality is much different.. beyond deceiving the witlesses in general, there is another reason for care because they must deceive themselves.
They already have in hand the stock excuse. In their mind they are simplifying freeing up brothers and sisters to devote more time in the ministry.In reality they are thinning the herd, throwing people out with nothing and abandoning many who have given years of faithful service. Those right at the top must know that God isn't working through them.
They will rationalise that God asked for donations to fund the temple so these appeals are reasonable.
i have long held theory that the society can easily cease it's printing operations and increase it's profit margins.
follow this scenario.... as we all know, the printed word and accompanying illustrations in the wt and awake can be converted to pdf format (pdf is a format that can be locked so that the recipient cannot change the contents) upon the completion of each individual magazine.
it would therefore be very easy for the society to email or to put up on a server the wt and awake for retrieval by the presiding overseer of each congregation.
I think yoy are right the society has missed a trick here. They have already simplified the mid week meeting providing most of the material on one document. It would certainly simplify things if rather than taking a songbook, ministry school book, gods love book, reasoning book, etc we could have all the requirements for each meeting on a pdf file for printout before the meeting. Think it would stop people leafing through the books when they should be listening. If printed material was limited to those without internet access then the volume of printing would be reduced dramatically. In some locales there could be a documant servant responsible for downloading material for those without computers.
It's genius. Lets hope they don't cotton on.
one of my daughters has been dating a guy for about two years now.
they are starting to talk about marriage, but ran into a "snag" involving his family from his previous marriage, which may disolve the whole relationship.
i won't go into details about that.
Only you are in full possession of the facts so only you know what is appropriate in this case. I would ask your non JW daughter how she would feel if you continued your friendship.
i am a 28 year-old male, and yes i am from africa, south africa to be precise.. i was brought up in the 'truth', got baptised at 17 in 1998. df'd at 22 in 2003 for fornication.. reinstated at a different cong.
in 2007 for the sake of my relationship with my family, especially mom.. after my reinstatement i was active in fs as well as attending meetings even though i could'nt comment.
a few months down the line i found out about this forum while searching the net, i continued going to meetings and fs but as time went by i started feeling like it was'nt really that important to me.
Does your future wife know about your views? It seems like a recipe for disaster to marry in knowing you have doubts. It's your life but if I was your fiance I would like to know what I was letting myself in for.
1975 for deniers.
most of today's jws were not members in 1975 or in the 9 years prior to 1975, so they were not eyewitnesses to what really went on during that period.
i was a pioneer in that period, and i was an eyewitness to what went on.. those jws who are still active today and who were around in that period will typically say it was the "brothers" who "ran ahead of jehovah" and "read more into" the 1975 prediction than what was actually stated.
I was 10 in 1975 and still remember the fear for the whole year in case the end came. I had a Dad and Grandparents who were not in the organisation and I thought they were all going to die. If a child could pick up the vibe for the year and believe it to be true then I have no reason to doubt that the adults in my life had told me this was what was going to happen.
I don't remember anyone telling me to wait and see.
Later you doubt yourself it is refreshing to find out that I wasn't a 10 year old rushing ahead of received teaching.
