Posts by man in black

17

dealing with a lack of spirituality

by man in black in

jw
friends

how do you deal with the thought of god after leaving the wts ?.

i left two years ago, and i have always had a certain amount or "need" for a spiritual side of my life.. growing up catholic was good, when my parents became jw's suddenly everything/religion that was not bound together with the.

wt society and their teachings was completley wrong.. so now that i have left, i have a hard time trying to understand different religions.

man in black

podobear : maybe I should have been more clear regarding my statement. When I started to leave the jw religion my wife started to study with the mormons. She got baptized one week after sending her letter of da to the cong.

So, the "needing religion" carrot is still being dangled in front of me night and day. The mormon way of dealing with this is much more of an erosion process than the witnesses.Their actions coupled with well placed comments are to me much more efficient than the witness way of witnessing.

So I understand your thoughts, and I am probably very close to your way of dealing with God by being true to myself, but to me it is a steep-short

learning curve. Thank you for your thoughts, I really do appreciate them

BrokenPromises: yes, I do quite a bit of things regarding nature, and I agree when I am around animals and the natural world in general I do feel

much closer to the creator than I ever did going to the kh, or church. I actually wrote a story that was published in a book regarding one of my experiences when I was young If you ever get a chance look up the book "Horses with a Mission" by Allen and Linda Anderson. My story is titled

Birthing Frostbite". read it and you will have a good idea of where I am coming from.

Thanks for your comment, ones like this help me to understand that other people feel the same way about dealing in nature !

ten years after : Yes you are correct, the wt teachings never really leave, we need to wipe the slate clean, and from what you say it takes time.

Looking around is like excersize, you need to keep it up if you want to see results !

Thank you for your thoughts

17

dealing with a lack of spirituality

by man in black in

jw
friends

how do you deal with the thought of god after leaving the wts ?.

i left two years ago, and i have always had a certain amount or "need" for a spiritual side of my life.. growing up catholic was good, when my parents became jw's suddenly everything/religion that was not bound together with the.

wt society and their teachings was completley wrong.. so now that i have left, i have a hard time trying to understand different religions.

man in black

How do you deal with the thought of God after leaving the wts ?

I left two years ago, and I have always had a certain amount or "need" for a spiritual side of my life.

Growing up Catholic was good, when my parents became jw's suddenly everything/religion that was not bound together with the

wt society and their teachings was completley wrong.

So now that I have left, I have a hard time trying to understand different religions. I may read about them, or attend a service but that

jw teaching is still crawling around in my sub conscience snuffing out any positive thoughts.

I'm not the type of person who can just ignore the spiritual,, yet thirty years of wt indoctination still affects me.

I was watching STNG last week and the episode's regarding the borg were on, great stuff,,, but this is very much the way wt teaching hangs on

and prevents forward momentum.

"resistance is futile" doesn't work for me in the spiritual or religious terminology.

Any suggestions on how you deal with this part of life would be most appreciated.

33

How do you handle the wickedness going on today?

by stillin9 in

we know in the jw realm, satan is believed to be the main cause of all the wickedness going on in our world today.

after taking a quick look at news headlines, and seeing the crap going on around us, i personally don't find that so hard to believe.

but i wanted to see how you guys handle the tragedies and wickedness going on around us?

man in black

I saw this video and thought about how he actually helped someone having problems and just his actions helped immensly.

Who knows what this girl was feeling, or dealing with.

Perhaps just trying to focus on helping others and seeing the end result of your effort would be a great influence in getting a handle on understanding how to personally deal with the evil in the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsSdLD_YodQ

30

Did you ever know any JW's/Pioneers who frequented popular nightspots and got drunk?

by James_Slash in

it used to make me sick at these hypocrites.. they would be at the meeting the next day or out in field service, obviously still intoxicated from the night before but putting a show on before the congregation.

i knew a couple of girls who would be regulary doing this over a weekend yet they would be pioneers all week, answering up at the meetings yet would be heading into popular nightspots and coming home at 4am drunk.

their dad was an elder (surprise, surprise).. i remember telling an elder about this once.

man in black

we would buy beer, pot, and a bottle of JD and go out drinking almost every weekend (PO kids, pioneers, and me).

Nobody in the hall ever knew, we were the absolute hypocritical religious people.

Funny how most of them are now df'ed, and divoriced.

1

Success story from Mr. Scott

by man in black in

jw
friends

.

my son sent this to me this afternoon, (we were discussing what being successful in a religious term meant).. after 30 years of being a jw, i couldn't even come up with a story 1/2 as emotional and honest - hearted as this.. .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vssdld_yodq.

man in black

My son sent this to me this afternoon, (we were discussing what being successful in a religious term meant).

After 30 years of being a jw, I couldn't even come up with a story 1/2 as emotional and honest - hearted as this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsSdLD_YodQ

28

Find refreshment in spiritual things - this weeks tower.

by Cook My Socks UK in

i just thought that i would share an observation regarding par 3 of this weeks wt study.

the paragraph says in part " jehovah's witnesses find genuine refreshment through up building christian fellowship".. .

i am wondering if any readers / posters on this forum that still do or used to attend meetings have any thoughts on this.

man in black

I agree with you 100%.

It seemed that when I would get ready for meetings my spirit would literally start to fall.

During the meeting, my head felt like it was suspended in a giant bowl of jello.

Then afterwards, I was relieved that the meeting was over, but the aftereffects of the comments, teachings, would knock the wind out of my sails for the day.

23

Two ladies knocked on my door

by dgp in

well, it just happened.

two polite elderly ladies knocked on my door to share the good news of the kingdom with me.. i was pondering whether i should speak against the organization, but immediately knew it just would not work.

i thought i should say a polite but firm no.

man in black

your personal morality overshadowed the way you really feel about this religion.

I think you made the right decision

22

Witnesses and aging

by man in black in

jw
friends

last night my dad called, (he has become more jw - like since my mom died two years ago).

we talked about normal things, relatives, weather, etc.

until an opportunity rose up and he started with the.

man in black

Last night my Dad called, (he has become more jw - like since my Mom died two years ago)

We talked about normal things, relatives, weather, etc. until an opportunity rose up and he started with the

"well you know that the world is going to end soon" routine so familiar to anyone associated with the witnesses.

From that point the whole conversation went south:

"the world will no doubt end sometime within Obama's administration"

Your retirement funds, why are you concerned? Money will be worth nothing when the big A arrives, which is very very soon.

Any other religion besides jw's will be destroyed soon, don't get involved with any of that stuff .

When I mentioned that I have been fiddling around with canning things from the garden he chimed in,

"well, when armaggedon arrives, people are going to search you out to get the things (meaning food) that you are saving. Let God take care

of your needs.

I felt like I had been hit in the head with a hammer after that call.

I figure that he must be feeling somewhat insecure because the witnesses told him for 30 years that the end was coming, millions now living will never die/ false religion will soon be gone.

30 years later,,,,, none of these things have happened. There has got to be an incredible amount of strange thoughts running thru his head. And perhaps by laying it on hot and heavy that will somehow make him and anyone who gets crushed by the jw reasoning "see the light".

I feel that arguing is a hollow thing, he doesn't need to be told that jw's are wrong. So my current mindset is to allow him to spout off with his

religious thoughts and drop an unsuspecting non confrontational - logic bomb once in a while.

Nothing is positive or encouraging, doom gloom doom, the paradise earth is the ONLY thing to look forward to

Has anyone else noticed this of persons who have been witnesses for decades, and suddenly they realize that none of the prophecies have come true and they really don't know what to believe / do, so they go gung ho into the witness mentality ?

12

JW Monopoly board game LOL

by James_Slash in

http://www.ministrygallery.com/english/games.htm.

i had to laugh when i saw this.

its called house2house.

man in black

Reasoning from the Scriptures. (You will need this item to play the game. Due to copyright issues, we made references to answers in the Reasoning book).

So they actually enforce the copyright issue with their "true believers "

14

Did you wish the elders took you under there wing.

by Pitchess Co-Gen in

jw
friends

i wanted to be an one of the brothers the elders took under there wing,but i had to much baggage ( reproved 3 times and currently d.f ).

yes i've seen elders take m.s'es and turn them into elders.

i had a friend who was an m.s an elder took him and now he's an elder.

man in black

What an interesting post this is !

I once believed that the elder body was put in place to protect the congregation from damaging influences.

When my wife and I decided to leave the jw religion, my wife presented our PO with a nice portrait-sized picture of the following

lighthouse scene :

http://www.jean-guichard.com/

Here is a larger version with more detail:

http://www.jean-guichard.com/boutique/images/original/phototheque/00012.jpg

If you look closely, there is a man in the lighthouse door, and he is protected from the sea by the building.

Our explaination to the po was that we once believed that jehovah ordained men to protect us from the "world" illustrated by the sea.

(Personally I tried to reach out several years, but never was quite able to reach the brass ring, elders could have cared less about my efforts back then, there were too many young, upcoming guys who were more that able to brown-nose their way to the top.)

But back to the story, for the past several years the elder body really could have cared less about our "spirituality", appearance was the real buzzword back then.

hence we gradually started to slide down the slippery slope and started to believe that our faith in the elders, and this religion was not true.

What a fitting end to over 30 years as a jw this picture presented (or failed) !

protection ? security? spiritual growth? our elder body had no idea what this really meant before we made the decision to leave.