Bugger, AZ, it falls on my brother's convention weekend too. I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that they decided to have this particular WT studied during convention season though, right?
Pootler
JoinedPosts by Pootler
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Pootler
My brother's first response when I told him about the noo-lite (tm), : "What that? That's old stuff that is!"
Mind you, he did stop replying to e-mails when i disingenuously asked him how they got from the actual scripture to this codswallop. Scaredy cat. Now he'll have to make up all those hours he spent debating me by actually going on on the min.
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Standing up for myself, a lonely stand
by troubled mind ini have learned in my life that i am the only one i can trust to stand up for myself .. many times i wished others would have 'had my back', like when i was seven and my favorite teacher committed wrongful contact with my class....we didn't know the term pedofile back then , and children were not taken serious when they made complaints about teachers .
i wished my mom had been more protective and saved me from some ugly situations .
i knew at 10 yrs of age that wasn't going to be the case .
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Pootler
Finding your authentic self, liking that self, learning to make your own decisions, living in the now, and growing a backbone are things that I think most ex-JWs struggle with. It might seem im possible now, but you can achieve all those things and move on to be a happier person outside the Watchtower
I've been out for about 20 years now, and yet here I am, on this forum, showing that the borg is still part of who I am. But there are so many other parts to me now, and I like all of them, even the borg parts. Getting to this point took therapy, drugs, hard work, time, strength, and self-love. And I had to learn the last two on the job. :-) My mantra was clichéd but so true: don't let the bastards grind you down. :-)
This board is probably the best place on the internet for recovering JWs. I don't think anyone will mind if you have a good old moan here, and I'm pretty sure someone will always reply. You'll want to get a lot of things out. DO it. Here, in therapy, wherever you can. Then one day you'll wake up and see that you are free. {{{hugs}}}
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Letter to my non-jw mother, and an intro of sorts.
by Pootler ina bit of background: i thought that i was an ex-ex-jw until the latest new light.
i left in my mid teens without being baptised, and my mum left later.
my step-dad and borther stayed in, and are still in.
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Pootler
The good news is that things are better for her now. A couple of years ago they split up and she was alone. After going completely bananas in the first 6 months, she realised that she could cope just fine without him. They got back together after a year, though on her terms. Things are so much better between them that I actually feel okay going home now, which I couldn't do for many years. She still says she's going to leave him every time I call, but I've been hearing that for 30 years. :-/ She gets stronger and more confident all the time though: last week she said that she could see now, finally, that she does not need him. Progress. :-)
She's reading Dawkins and Hitchens now and realised recently that evolution is real and Armageddon might not be coming any time soon. This latest generation definition will do her good. :-)
Is her husband a bad man? I think he's reformed to a certain extent - there's certainly no more physical abuse. There's still emotional and psychological abuse, but it's much less than it used to be. He has apologised to me TWICE for taking my childhood away from me. I'm inclined to forgive him. Sometimes I can even like him, because he's on his absolute best behaviour when I visit. But I can't forget. I just try to demonstrate the christian virtues he thinks I can't have. That doesn't make me a sap. it makes me a bigger, better person than he is and as a bonus, I get to feel smug and superior. ;-)
The first thing I looked up on my first time on the internet (way back in 1996!) was the Watchtower. There was so very little info then, but what I found blew my mind. I think I was awake 24 hours straight, reading everything. I hadn't checked in a few years, and I was amazed to see the abundance and depth of info on the WBTS online now. And I was very chuffed to find this board. It has lovely people on it, with a low nutjob quotient. And the nutjobs there are here are endlessly entertaining. ;-)
It's great to finally have found a place full of people who understand what it's like to have had your brain hijacked by the Watchtower. So thank you for the warm welcome!
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Letter to my non-jw mother, and an intro of sorts.
by Pootler ina bit of background: i thought that i was an ex-ex-jw until the latest new light.
i left in my mid teens without being baptised, and my mum left later.
my step-dad and borther stayed in, and are still in.
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Pootler
A bit of background: I thought that I was an ex-ex-JW until the latest new light. I left in my mid teens without being baptised, and my mum left later. My step-dad and borther stayed in, and are still in. My mum married my stepdad when I was 5 or 6, and I went from having a very relaxed hippyish sort of upbringing to one that was uber strict. So strict that I wasn't even allowed to watch Blue Peter (which is like telling your kid they can't watch Mr Rogers), wasn't allowed many friends, and the ones I did have were so scrutinized that they found it difficult to visit. I learned to lie as a way to survive, desperate to have some semblence of a normal teenage life. I was very well behaved though, at home and school.
My stepdad isn't a bad man. He'd had a wild youth, partying with members of a very famous UK rock band, and his mother gave in to his every whim. He's not super intelligent either, and he overcompensates for feelings of inadequacy by being a dick. So the Watchtower is the perfect religion for someone like him. He gladly took on his role as head of the house, and that included being able to rape and beat my mother on occasion. My mother went to the elders bruised and bleeding and crying so many times I wondered why she even bothered any more. She was told to be a better wife, and he got the odd weak slap on the wrist now and again. It was only when he started turning in fewer hours on his report card that they took his privileges away from him. She's been in the nut house plenty of times, had high blood pressure, on and off anti-depressants. I've bene on anti-depressants most of my life (off now) attempted suicide, and finally, after lots of therapy, broke free and became happy within myself.
We lived in a street with JWs on all sides and the KH literally just round the corner. Most of them stopped talking to me when I left. I went to Uni (FAR AWAY!) then moved abroad. I was able to leave unbaptised because my dad, in a rare fit of gumption, promised he would apply for custody of me if they made me go to any more meetings against my will. My mother left the JWs, unbaptised, in the early 90's after about 15 years, with the generation change and 1975 being the main reason. That generation doictrine and 1975 have stuck in her craw for 30 years. She was told to shut up by many a fine elder when she brought these points up. Now she lives in a large house which she shares with my stepdad, my brother, his wife, and their son - all JW.. It would drive me batshit insane. I have no idea how she got away with not getting baptised.
We can't really talk about JW issues unless I make a rare trip back to the UK, because someone is always listening in. But she has a fairly secret e-mail address I can contact her on. She can't visit apostate websites or watch apostate videos.. can you imagine? Being stuck in this little JW enclave when you aren't one, with no way to talk to other people who think it's a crock of shit?
Now I really want to see the good in people. I like to see all sides of the story. Which is hard when it comes to something like the watchtower because everything that's written about it tends to be so polemical and biased. But I've been trying to read the refutations of some of the main criticisms. Until the other day, lying awake at stupid o'clock in the morning, I had an epiphany and I found myself writing to my mum. And this is what came out. I don't know why I never saw this simple fact before now. I'm putitng it down to the fact that after all these years, my brain still has chunks of the borg embeded in it. I thought some of you might be interested in raeding my e-mail to her. (Identifying details redacted, obviously.)
Dear Mum
Ever since I found out about this new light, I've been immersing myself in Watchtower history. Reading the apostates, but wherever I can stomach it, reading the apologists too. In all the years I've known about 1975, there was something missing from the two sides.
The official stance is that SOME witnesses got over enthusiastic, and SOME witnesses speculated that the world would end in 1975. Since the Society never outright come out and say The Big A is coming in 1975 in a way that anyone can make them admit to (though I would LOVE to see some of the official talk outlines from the preceding years, because I bet they were more explicit than the texts the rank and file ever got to see) then apostates can blame the WBTS all they like, and the JWs can carry on denying it.
But it hit me today. The WBTS was writing suggestive texts about 1975 all through the mid to late sixties. All those stories about ones giving selling up and spending the last days pioneering. Headlines like "Why are you looking forward to 1975? Clearly the Watchtower knew the level of excitement there was among the witnesses. If they could SEE that SOME witnesses were getting over enthusiastic, and SOME witnesses were speculating that the world would end in 1975, if they KNEW that the witnesses would take heed of whatever 'encouragement' and 'advice' (or direct orders in other words) they printed....then... WHY ON EARTH DID THEY NOT PRINT A WARNING ABOUT THE ENTHUSIASM AND EXCITEMENT THEY WERE SEEING AMONG THEIR MEMBERS? Why did they not print articles about not knowing they time of the end, disparaging members for possibly bringing ridicule to the organisation? They harp on so much about not not bringing dishonor to they org, and yet they saw this brewing YEARS BEFORE 1975 and printed not a single word telling JWs to calm down. They had it in their power to stop the speculation and excitement and they didn't.
They didn't stop it. They wanted people to believe it. Then they lied about it. And then they told their brainwashed members that it was their own fault.
Forget the Mexico/Malawi debacle, and the blood transfusions and organ transplants, and the pedophile cover-ups, and the Miracle Wheat. I've read official and apolgists refutations of all these things, wanting to see all sides of the argument. But this did it for me. I've spent the last year trying to work out if they Watchtower society is as evil as the apostates say it is. They lied about this, and I'm sure now that they cannot be trusted to tell the truth about any of the other things they ave tried to cover up.
I don't know how you cope living among so many people brainwashed to believe the evil rubbish that this religion spews. I'm glad I escaped without being baptised. It's astonishing to me now that I managed to not be baptised. Not that it matters though because I'm pretty sure that they have me marked as a bad association for questioning the new light. (By the way, have you unfriended me from the business facebook account, or has my stepdad done that because I'm an evil apostate?) It's a wonder to me every day when I check facebook and see that my brother hasn't unfriended me. And you know what, I'm SEETHING that I have to watch what I say around him for fear of being shunned.
I'm not sure why this has me so riled up except that this is the first time I've seen them do the bait and switch with my own eyes. It galls me that my brother will sit in next Sunday's meeting along with all the other witlesses and let this new doctrine change go straight over his heads and nod along without realising that he is being lied to three times a week. (I think next Sunday is when they do the watchtwer study that the new light is mentioned in.) I wanted to believe that there was something, anything, that would redeem the watchtower and make it worth him having wasted his life on it. I think after all these years, my brain still works in a JW way because they seemed so above reproach, because my brother always had such good answers to my questions about the things I found on apostate sites. Maybe now I can fix that.
It must be so frustrating to you to be stuck there, among it all, with no chance to talk about how crazy it is. Next time I come home I'm going to show you how to get to all the juicy apostate sites that I've found without anyone knowing about it. It will do you the world of good to meet other people who left but still have family inside. And to read all the things that confirm what you know anyway. You were right all those years ago about 1975 and the generation teaching. You were right.
Love
Pootler
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DVD "JW's Faith In Action, part 1 Out of Darkness" Omits! Omits! Omits!
by Wasanelder Once ini've been watching the new dvd and it is a bull fest about russell.
i haven't even gotten half way and they already excluded one very important bit of information.
you'll recall that russell "lost" his faith and "turning away from church creeds and searching for truth, russell examined some leading oriental religions, only to find these unsatisfying".
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Pootler
Oh now I have to have the link. I don't know if I'll be able to bear watching it, but I'll have a good go. :-)
Not sure if my address is in my profile, so try: scent of cut grass at gmail dot com. Would someone be so kind? :-)
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The Happiest People on Earth -- A quick video
by Elsewhere inall jw's are taught that they are the happiest people on earth.. turns out that the people of north korea are also taught that they are the happiest people on earth.. .
click link to watch: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8701959.stm.
the similarities are uncanny.
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Pootler
I've always been fascinated, or even obsessed by dystopias, the real ones like North Korea and Stalinist Russia, and the fictional ones like 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale. I'm pretty certain it comes from a steady diet of WT illustration and and rules and doublethink.
Funnily enough it only very recently occurred to me that the Watchtower paradise would be a dystopia too, if it were real. Can you imagine?
Anyone who was ever female and JW should read The Handmaid's Tale by the way. You'll appreciate it more than most readers ever could.:-)
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Apostates Mourn Ray Franz (1922 - 2010)
by Bangalore inapostates mourn ray franz (1922 - 2010}.. http://pastorrussell.blogspot.com/2010/06/apostates-mourn-ray-franz-1922-2010.html.
bangalore.
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Pootler
"These people love the man and seem to read his books more then they read the Bible . It appears that dysfunctional codependents' will cling to anything if it makes them feel good."
*sigh* All this face palming is RUINING my nose.
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Are you an active Jw or an ex-jw?
by XPeterX inactive unbaptised publisher here.you?
(though i already know the answer for some people).
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Pootler
Inactive, never baptised. (Phew!) In it from the age of 4 or so, faded out at about 14 or 15, while mum, stepdad and little brother were still in. Mum has now left, stepdad and brother still very much IN, which means lots of walking on eggshells and keeping my big atheist gob shut when I visit. ;-)
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Is water baptism required to get your sins forgive by the JW society?
by evangelist 1 ini know many catholics and other religion say and make water baptism a requiremenet to get saved and get your sins forgiven, but how does the society see water baptism?.
do they also baptized in three name or just only in jehovah name when baptizing a jw?.
is only the elders allowed to get baptized or anybody can get wet?.
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Pootler
More recent exiters might know more, but as far as I know, JW baptism is not at all about forgiving sins. It's about dedicating your life to being a JW. Since Jesus was without sin when he was baptised, and the JWs want to emulate his baptism as much as possible, no mention is made of sin. It's nt really a very spiritual experience from what I've heard.
Anyone who is deemed ready - i.e. has had a bible study for 6 months or more, or is old enough, say 10 or 11 years old and up - is strongly encouraged to be baptised. So not just elders.
And you get baptised in the name of Jehovah, Jesus Christ and God's spirit directed organization. Not in the name of the holy spirit, but in the name of The Watchtower Society.
Once you've been baptised you are considered to be a Jehovah's Witness, with all the responsibilities and restrictions that brings. But as a bonus, it is your passport to Paradise after Armageddon. ;-)