Cedars does mention theocratic warfare at the end of the video but I think it should be given more weight. It allows them to do or say anything and justify it with a straight face. It makes the concept of being honest completely meaningless if they can use that excuse whenever they feel like. So screwed up!
Eiben Scrood
JoinedPosts by Eiben Scrood
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18
Rick Fenton, please stop lying!
by Watchtower-Free inmakes a good point.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x8i192fbuq&list=uuz1w0ll081jjiycjb298pow.
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Do You Ever Think That You "Loved" Jehovah God?
by minimus ini really wonder about that.
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just like they say in prayers, that they "love" the governing body---do they really??
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Eiben Scrood
I found it very hard to love a god that was constantly threatening me and filling me with guilt. There are definitely things that could make me feel love such as sending his Son and creation but the prism the Watchtower put God through made it very difficult.
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My Experience in the Watchtower (Part Four)
by Eiben Scrood ini'm back with the fourth part of my life experience.
it was a much shorter gap since i posted the previous installment.
the part will mean little if the previous ones haven't been read.
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Eiben Scrood
I'm back with the fourth part of my life experience. It was a much shorter gap since I posted the previous installment. The part will mean little if the previous ones haven't been read. Here are the first three:
Here is part four. I suspect there will be at least one more to write. Thanks for the previous comments and interest. These are only fully understood by those who have gone through it.
That crisis would be divorce. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been too surprised. After a separation of several months, my wife returned in April 2004. I was happy to have her back but I could tell her heart wasn’t in it. I wasn’t in a good place either. Trust had been shattered. I no longer felt we could move forward with selling the house. It was my inheritance and I wasn’t ready to make any moves.
We both made mistakes in the intervening months. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the email I received at work in the middle of the day in December 2005 in which she said she wanted a divorce. I had to immediately leave work. We talked but her mind was made up. I was gutted but, honestly, it was nowhere near the pain and bewilderment I felt two years earlier when she initially announced her dissatisfaction. I guess even if only in my subconscious, I realized this day was coming.
To regress a bit, as I mentioned earlier, I had come to a decision to leave the Watchtower organization while on vacation in California. This was in August 2004. Our attendance at church activities dropped off from that point. I alone continued to go some as I didn’t want to cause too much attention if possible. My hair was still relatively short at this point since I had had it cut very short in January 2004 when I came crawling back to the religion. Still, it was getting noticeably un-Witness like. The Watchtower imposes very strict grooming regulations on males and I was starting to stand out. I had absolutely no intentions on cutting it.
I narrowly avoided getting officially thrown out of the religion (disfellowshipped) in March 2005 for violating a rule. I had to meet with some elders but they decided to give me another chance. I had already determined that whether they threw me out or not, nothing would be changing as far as my participation in church activities and hair length. I think the last time I attended a regular meeting was in September 2005 so I had been completely inactive for three months when the bombshell of divorce got presented in December. So, this was a test. Would I go running back as I had when my parents died and when I had the initial problems with my wife? No, and it barely even crossed my mind.
Much more had been growing than just my hair which, by the end of December 2005, had been growing for almost two years. I am someone with a longhair identity. I don’t feel right with short hair and I never have. To finally be breaking free of the rules that kept me from expressing this about myself was a profound experience. It was like cracking open a chrysalis and emerging as a transformed being. I had previously unknown confidence. I looked in the mirror and saw the real me staring back. I came to fully appreciate that this wasn’t going to change and that to ever take steps backwards would be a colossal mistake.
For someone who has been free to form their own opinions and beliefs about the world, it’s hard to even describe the state I was in. In some ways, I felt like a child, discovering the world and making real choices about what they like and what they believe in. Instead of following a carefully scripted existence, my life was now a blank slate. Some who leave go through a period that almost mimics adolescence, filled with experimentation and even risky behavior. I did some of this. Nothing too crazy but I did sate my curiosity about a few things. I got burned some but also enlightened and wouldn’t trade my experiences. I lived. I grew. The horrible stagnation of being stuck was finally over.
So, after the initial shock of realizing that divorce was in my future, I prepared as best as I could. I visited a friend in Colorado for a week shortly after getting the news and this was very beneficial. I was able to take a step out of the situation and steel myself for the unpleasant process. My wife had moved out by the time I got back. The house definitely felt empty but again, not as empty as it felt during the separation. I began doing some modest redecorating and gradually began to view it as my apartment. We went to court in March and it was finalized in July 2006. The actual divorcing process wasn’t easy but it could have been a lot worse. We both made compromises.
It was during that winter that I received some unwelcome calls from elders – first by telephone – and then actual visits. A close friend of mine had gotten disfellowshipped for apostasy, the most egregious offense in Witness eyes of all. It got back to the elders eventually that I hadn’t stopped associating with him as I was supposed to do. They wanted answers. I stopped answering the phone and responded to one of the messages that I was going through a divorce and in absolutely no position to discuss anything. One day they stopped over to the house unannounced. I happened to be doing yard burning so it was a convenient reason not to talk much.
It was miraculous that they let me be. I think a few factors contributed. I wasn’t kidding about not being able to deal with it while going through a divorce. These elders knew my background of depression and the ordeals I had been through. I don’t think they wanted to chance pushing me over the edge. I also think that one elder in particular exercised some human compassion and decided to just let me go without receiving official sanction. This mattered to me, especially at that time, because I had family still in the religion and while I knew that they’d have little to do with me just because I was no longer attending, I knew they’d definitely have *nothing* to do with me if I was disfellowshipped.
When I walked out of that court room in March 2006 was when I really began thinking about my path ahead. I was 34, single, with an undefined belief system. I was now single in more ways than one as that former decent circle of Witness friends was gone and I knew that at least real life contact with my remaining family would be probably non-existent. It was frightening in some ways but also exciting as I thought about that clean slate. I had a scuba diving trip to Bonaire long planned for April so I had that to look forward to. It was taken with my local dive shop so I knew some of those attending. It was nice being around non-judgmental people who weren’t basing my worth on my performance in meeting a certain religion’s rules.
I hadn’t thought about dating for so long but it soon became apparent to me that it was something I wanted to do. As an introvert, I don’t mind being alone and can find considerable enjoyment in many activities without having others around. But being single is not a state I would choose as I deeply value having that close bond to another. I felt that this was an important step forward and would help me move on. So, with some hesitation, I joined my first online dating site. It wasn’t long before a woman four years older than me made contact and we agreed to meet. There was some physical chemistry but not much beyond that and we only went on two dates. She just stopped replying and I never found out what really happened. I was in a vulnerable emotional state and let it affect me far more than I should have. I hadn’t come to fully appreciate that the world of online dating is often made up of serial daters who go through lots of candidates. It was good for me though. I put myself out there. I was allowing opportunities for my future to develop.
I decided to back off from the dating site for a while even though I had signed up for a six month membership. While on that Colorado trip back in January, I had made plans to with my friend to visit Europe in August so that trip began to consume my thoughts. I had always enjoyed traveling and it was a great way to grow and open new horizons. My friend and I first visited England and then flew over to Germany where we met a friend that I became acquainted with online. He showed us much of the country and we crossed over into France a bit too. It was a fun trip, my third one of the year.
I had been back about a month when out of the blue a woman contacted me from the dating site. I had been putting no effort into it but she seemed interesting so I agreed to meet. We went on a few dates but nothing came of it. It was around this time, however, that I met a woman at an online community I was part of. We had gotten to know each other a bit and then she sent me a message which led to us quickly developing a friendship which in turn became something more. There were a number of factors such as age difference, location and circumstances that made me very hesitant to get involved. In fact, several times I “ended” it but we had a very strong friendship and it just kept gaining momentum. We agreed to meet with her coming to stay at my house for an initial visit of over two weeks. This began an intense one year relationship that was filled with highs and lows.
I came into it with lots of baggage. I was still really in just the beginning stages of processing the fact that I had left my religion. The divorce and its aftermath had made it less prominent in my mind for a while. When you spend your whole life expecting to never die, to just pass through God’s war of Armageddon into a paradise earth and then live forever, it can take time to begin to think differently. The teaching of a resurrection also enters into it as it was always my hope to see my parents again in that paradise earth. This woman had what I’d call New Age beliefs. She grew up Catholic but left that and had her own horror stories of guilt and fear of hellfire. It was interesting to talk with her. She had great insight almost to an empathic level and knew me very well. We had some amazing conversations as she helped me see how people outside a high control group think and act. She helped me see how deep my wiring truly was.
All sorts of Witness taboos began falling as she introduced me to various things. The newness of it all was very exciting. Still, my inner demons haunted me and I went through periods of deep depression. The loss of the hope my religion offered is not given up without some grief. I also truly fell in love with her but knew almost from the beginning that it would never last long term. It was a truth that we both avoided facing for a long time. Oh, we made plans and had hopes but circumstances and realities made things impossible. I don’t regret the relationship for a second but wish that things could have been easier on both of us. I grew so much during that time. The bonds of Watchtower thinking were loosed to an unprecedented degree. I was coming to understand so much more about who I am and what I was looking for out of life. The end of that relationship would hit me very hard but in the crucible of that angst, the stage would be set for a whole new experience. A very positive one!
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13
First year without Memorial
by sp74bb inmy first year after more than 20 years.... it seems strange.
happy fellings but at the same times feeling some loniness.. is your first one as well?.
veterans: how do you feel after some many years?.
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Eiben Scrood
My first one missed was in 2011 and it is a jolt, at least it was for me. This year makes my fourth one missed and I don't think much about it anymore.
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Anyone going to the memorial this year?
by Pyramid God ini was invited by my parents, and even though i have nothing but contempt for this religion, things have been good in our relationship so i was considering going just to appease them.
anyone else?.
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Eiben Scrood
My last one was in 2010. I used to enjoy going partly to give some kind of acknowledgement of what Jesus did but also to see how everyone looks and catch up a bit with former friends. I was generally treated well.
The reason 2010 was my last one was two-fold. Primarily, the overlapping generations change so disgusted me that I couldn't stomach ever entering a Kingdom Hall again. Secondly, I wasn't treated particularly well that last time I went - icy glares and general unfriendliness. I'm done and better for it.
I had planned to never step into a KH again but did so last August due to the death of a former friend who had passed away at only 35 years old. I wanted to pay my respects. Short of attending a funeral for a similar situation, I don't see ever entering one again.
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My Experience in the Watchtower (Part Three)
by Eiben Scrood init's been a long time but some may remember that i wrote part one of my life story a couple of years ago.
i followed that up with part two a few months later.
i have found that i have to be in a certain mindset to write about these things and only now have i been able to continue with the third part.
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Eiben Scrood
It's been a long time but some may remember that I wrote part one of my life story a couple of years ago. I followed that up with part two a few months later. I have found that I have to be in a certain mindset to write about these things and only now have I been able to continue with the third part. I will probably have only one more to follow. Again, this third segment will mean little without reading the first two before it.
Part Three:
Young marriages are almost universal in the Watchtower religion. What choice does one really have? Even the Bible accepts this as the inevitable decision most people will make even though the “gift” of singleness is the preferred option. There is a natural curiosity about sex that, especially when combined with normal desires, is pretty much all-consuming. Factor in too that many young people live their lives mired in guilt because of just being normal and marriage seems like a way out in more ways than one. It would provide a sanctioned outlet for such urges and would remove the guilt and sin connected with being single and a Jehovah’s Witness thus opening the way for an approved standing both before God and in the organization.
So, like most of my peers, I looked to get married. I had had my first kiss at the age of 19 on a clandestine trip to a neighboring state. Nothing came of that or the couple other brief relationships I had in the next few years. I was in no position financially to provide for a wife anyway. But, as mentioned, I now had a real job so I had more confidence that I could actually make this work if I could find a suitable mate. Therein lies a problem. Not only do most Witnesses start married life very young and with little relationship experience, they also select their significant other from a very small pool.
Even for the socially gregarious, finding a potential marriage mate is hard work involving networking and being bold. This was before the internet became big and for the more socially awkward like myself, the only females readily available to get to know were in the local congregation at first and perhaps a few more in the neighboring ones. I was useless at trying to strike up a conversation at a convention with a total stranger though I did try occasionally.
I did have a decent circle of friends at the time including some that were pretty social. I got invited to get-togethers and various outings. I ended up meeting the woman who would become my wife at a beach where Witnesses gathered. I was 25 and she was 18 at the time. That was in August and we were engaged in November and married the following April.
This isn’t to say there wasn’t genuine love between us. We had that and decent chemistry too but the odds were stacked against us. I felt a certain desperation because I was not happy single and it seemed the only way out of the guilt was to get married. It seemed this current relationship might be my only chance to not only get married but also achieve eternal life through good behavior. Major issues between us were ignored. Everything was rushed and it wasn’t long after the wedding date that problems started surfacing.
Those problems, however, weren’t strictly tied to the relationship. I had begun to have serious doubts about the religion that had only grown since the generation change fiasco of November 1995. Faith had been important to me and to have the cracks forming in the very foundation of one’s belief system rattled and shook me. I became very disillusioned despite my initial efforts after getting married to assume the role of the Christian head of the household. My wife had never been that deep of a thinker about the religion but as I shared my feelings with her, I could see her zeal dissipate as well. She originally hoped to pioneer and that was quickly shelved.
I began to self-medicate, relying on alcohol to sleep and chase away temporarily the never-ending stream of questions in my mind. This, of course, further added to the problems in the marriage. It wasn’t always like this. We had our share of good times too but it wouldn’t be long before a new complication arose that would drive us very far apart.
My parents had battled cancer ever since my childhood. They both ended up relapsing, my mother for the fifth time and my father for the third time, less than two years after I got married. We were living in the apartment above them so there was no real escaping the pall cast over the premises. As their only child, I was responsible to help as much as I could. All the while my questions and angst over the religion only intensified and would accelerate even further as I discovered information on the internet. This potent combination of factors strained my marriage to the point that it never recovered.
At first I felt like I was holding Satan’s hand as I looked at various sites that were critical of the Watchtower. Interestingly, much of what I read was stuff that I had already thought of and questioned on my own. What was new was having access to the one chapter of Crisis of Conscience that was online at the time, “1975 – The Appropriate Time for God to Act”. That now familiar feeling of the ground moving out from under my feet that I had experienced with the generation change was there again. I was absolutely blown away by having the curtain pulled back and discovering some of the machinations behind organizational procedure. Some time went by but I decided I had to read the rest of the book. I was able to get it at a library a few towns over and secretly read it. I was appalled.
All the while, my parents steadily declined in health. It became all-consuming and for a time my research into the religion took a back seat. I have to say that both my parents’ congregation and my own at the time showed extraordinary love and support to us. I went into a holding pattern of sorts, pretty much going through the motions of being a Witness but also reaching for some kind of a hope at such a difficult time.
My parents died less than six months apart, roughly two years after getting sick. I went numb and was in sort of a state of shock. I was desperate for a sense of stability in my life and decided I would try to push aside all my doubts and give the religion another go. I wrote a long letter of confession to my local elders outlining some transgressions. I even mentioned that I had read the infamous Crisis of Conscience. My elders were compassionate and could see that the letter was written in good faith. I did try, I really did. But when something has been shattered, it’s hard to put back together. So it was with my attempts to believe in things that no longer made sense to me. Unfortunately, this was also ultimately true with my marriage. We had been driven so far apart. My wife felt resentful that she was being put through this trial at such a young age and she felt isolated from me as I dealt with grief and loss.
I think for a while she really did try too with the marriage but by this time she also had been doing a lot of thinking. She had grown disenchanted with the religion for reasons different than mine. She had begun to resent the young marriage and passing up an education. She began to no longer see a future for us. I don’t know at what point she really contemplated ending it. We were taking steps that at least appeared on the outside to be leading to a future together. We spent the next year after my parents’ deaths fixing up the house to be sold. We began looking to buy a new house together. Everything changed, however, 16 months after my mother’s death when my wife had me read a letter in which she questioned everything about our relationship and the religion.
We had begun to have sporadic meeting attendance for several months prior to this so the religion part didn’t come as that big of a surprise for me. The relationship part though did catch me totally off-guard. After all, we had been taking these steps to have a future together. I certainly knew things weren’t great between us but I chalked that up to the horrendous ordeal that we had both been through. I hoped that we could start new and that fading from the religion could be part of that process.
That day, now over ten years ago, will forever be etched into my memory. I hit rock bottom. I was still dealing with the grief over my parents’ deaths and the sense of loss over fading from the religion. To now contemplate losing my wife too, almost put me over the edge. I was desperate. Where could I turn? I hadn’t yet developed many real life friends outside of the religion though I did have quite a few online friends. In times of crisis, people often fall back on their faith, or what’s left of it. So, as I did after my parents had died, I once again came crawling back. This honestly had not been in my mind. It was only the feeling of being totally alone that sent me reaching for help in the only place I could think to find it.
I ended up getting my hair cut which had gotten quite long at this point. I went back to the Kingdom Hall and explained what had happened. I would attend meetings without my wife and tried to integrate myself back into the “theocratic routine”. About a month after her initial confrontation with me, my wife moved out. The situation had become intolerable as she was treating me very shabbily. She did agree to go to couples’ counseling and eventually agreed to move back after being separated for several months.
I took up scuba diving to get my mind off my problems. This was a very good outlet for me. It so happened that a Witness friend in my congregation also dove, so it was a support in that way too. Still, after the initial shock had begun to wear off, the old questions began reappearing and I became less and less whole-hearted in the religious activities. I began to meet “worldly” people through my newfound interest in the world of scuba diving.
The whole episode with my wife really only delayed the inevitable. Meeting attendance again started to be sporadic. I remember the specific moment that I came to a decision. My wife and I were traveling in California and it just came to me. I knew at that moment that no matter what, my life in the Watchtower was going to come to an end. Even if future crises developed, I wouldn’t be turning back to it. I planned to continue with the fading, hoping to pass relatively unnoticed out of the organization. As it turned out, there would be another crisis and my life would forever change.
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Purged songs of the Watchtower
by LogCon inmy memory of singing the kingdom songs go back to when i was a child in the 1950's.
they still hold a place in my memory and my heart.
how can something that is so much a part of your childhood not stay embedded in your heart.?.
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Eiben Scrood
Was there ever an official or semi-official reason given for all these changes? I found that list fascinating and am really curious as to why some were removed and others kept.
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Purged songs of the Watchtower
by LogCon inmy memory of singing the kingdom songs go back to when i was a child in the 1950's.
they still hold a place in my memory and my heart.
how can something that is so much a part of your childhood not stay embedded in your heart.?.
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Eiben Scrood
I think they've been forced to can a lot of songs because of changing teachings. Lyrics can only be rewritten so much.
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40
ARE YOU AN ANGRY and BITTER APOSTATE?
by Hummingbird001 ini have noticed that there are different reactions to learning the "truth about the truth".
some become quite bitter and angry and become very activist.
others seem to just move on quite easily.. .
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Eiben Scrood
This is interesting as I was going to start a thread on a similar topic. Just how do you let go? I know those little boxes people post on facebook about the path to happiness almost always contain a step about giving up anger and forgiving.
I think for people who still have family in it and former friends whom they still care about on some level, it’s very hard to totally close the door on your past. At least I have found it hard to do so. I’m also honestly baffled at how people can continue in this with all the new teachings especially the overlapping generations absurdity. I mean, it’s totally ridiculous – laughable – and yet so few seem to care. This makes me angry. Angry that this group can continue to get away with putting on airs while peddling this nonsense.
I’m also angry that there will forever be a part of me who thinks the world is about to end. It stresses me and makes me anxious. I just can’t seem to get rid of this feeling. Some of my earliest memories are of my father pointing to church steeples and telling me they were about to be destroyed. I’m thoroughly programmed in this regard. Many other aspects I have been able to jettison but the fear of a cataclysmic death remains.
I almost think that for me to achieve any sense of peace, I’ll need to accept that I’ll always have some residual anger and try to come to some form of acceptance over that.
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The murmuring phase is the beginning of an ex-JWs progression towards fading.
by Stand for Pure Worship ini suppose part of the fascination i have with this board is, the exotic nature of those making up the member population.
i say exotic because, as you yourselves will agree with, folks such as yourselves don't hang around the christian congregation for long upon making the decision that truth is not for you.
(rom 1:25) this "fading" thing spoken of here likely plays a role into why christians such as me find the average ex-jw to be a bit fascinating.
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Eiben Scrood
I feel sorry for the little guy (girl?). Methinks he doth protest too much. I see a desperate attempt to justify his continued allegiance to an organization that he knows is an arrogant fraud. Steps, buddy, steps. We all had to take them. It's not easy. I wanted to live forever and play with cobras as much as the next brother but when you're left with nothing but false promises and a wasted life, eventually you've got to move on. We'll be waiting for you...