snare&racket

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Posts by snare&racket

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  52

  It is so obviously a lie......now

  by snare&racket in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  once the spell is broken, one you take a deep fresh breath outisde of the watchtower camp, the amazingly obvious realisation becomes clear.... of course this is a lie, of course this is ridiculous!

  you find you have memories of really believing the claims and promises, but it seems like another life, another experience.

  it seems so incredibly false once you leave and it is very difficult to belive you even once accepted it!

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  snare&racket

  cheers sparrow, I must look that up, seriously thanks x
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  52

  My Child Has Asked Me to Divorce Husband

  by HeyThere in

  1. social
  2. family

  i guess i am just venting.

  its a mess.

  i just dont even know where to start with this crap.

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  snare&racket

  Straight up.....

  The Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult, it is a dangerous one too.

  Ask anyome here if they would like their childhood again with the option of not being a JW and see how many people would give limbs and life years away to have their youth back.

  Give your child a chance.... if it is not a healthy enviroment get them out. It is a lie and a misconception to 'stick it out for the kids.' Two happy seperated parents is 100x better than two unhappy parents. Trust me!

  Snare x

  P.s. I would never usually be so direct on such a personal and real issue. I guarantee everyone here pines for the years they lost to WT daily, you have the means to prevent that, it is so,so,so easy to leave....so, so easy. Just simply do it xxx It is the best gift you can give them.

  Then get them working damn hard in school, find out what they want to be and help them get there! You won't regret it in 20 years time.
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  24

  My Story

  by objectivetruth in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i'm 30 years old, and i was raised in the organization, my parents and grandparents are witnesses.. i grew up in a small town, and due to boredom or adhd or rebellion, i never took 2 minutes to look into the religion.. i always went to meetings and field service.

  my parents were regular, but never "super-witnesses" so it was always the thing we did (meetings and service) not much more and nothing less.. the congregation, that i grew up in was for the most part friendly and enjoyable.. small towns, are very unique and they cannot be compared to larger city congregations.. i honk that they are a living and breathing organism, depending on the coordinators personality, so goes the personality of the congregation.

  thi king back, most of the people in the town that i grew up were good people, just simple hard working & honest people... i really long for the innocence, of the time when this was the truth, and there were no worries.. driving to the conventions at 3 am with my dad and another brother, them slicing meat, me sneaking around the halls of the college, getting into all kinds of things.. conventions were a really special time for me... when i was young me and my friends would run around, messing around, pulling pranks on people, getting into forbidden areas.. running in the hall ways.

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  snare&racket

  Dude, I feel sorry for you.

  I remember these feelings too. There is no nice way of going about discussing it, only that I am glad I have faced the reality of it all. I hope you don't mind me discussing it with you.

  I also grew up in a small village, in a rural region. The Organisation was perfect to me. The religion was a safe haven and all the members were righteous. Yes they were human and made mistakes, but it was still special. This is how I felt at about 12 years old.

  Let's cut to 21 years of age where I realise that most JW's have sex before marriage, I really mean most! I remember a party where someone asked 'who has had sex?' and I was the only one to say no. I was astounded by the pioneers and young JW's around me, all up to all sorts. Also, most got drunk, went clubbing and oral sex was standard. I soon relaxed a little and enjoyed the dance/club scene. I ignored the stories of elders son's having sex in car parks, elders kids smoking, taking drugs etc, the secret elders kids private reproofs, like confession in a catholic church. One guy comes to mind this day, I am sure his squeeky clean wife knows nothing of the life he lived, nobody in his hall did either. I never liked him much. He talked JW doctrine and scripture like a pro, then spent weekends doing things that would make Sodom blush. Whenever something came out, he just talked to his elder dad and got a "private wrist slap."

  (It isn't the behaviour I now condemn, he was a young normal lad! It was the hyocrisy and the different rules for elders kids).

  There was so much if it going on, it wasn't as if you could report it, besides by this age I relaised the whole 'reporting' people was also b.s. I knew of elders wives having affairs...through half the hall gossiping. I remember going to the elder because nobody else would and realising that nobody really believed in this system, nobody really lived by the JW rules. Everyone knew this elders wife was messing around and didn't say a word. I did, I felt sorry for him. I was told I had done the right thing by elders who I knew had known and said nothing. It was confusing until...I realised nobody really follows the doctrines. They just keep quiet about it.

  Even the elders were not what I thought. They were mostly all egomaniacs who drank too much and were unpleasant with their family. They gave their mates the best jobs at the assemblies, they gossiped about people that weren't 'hip'...but were nice to their faces. I remember elders having affairs with several sisters in my area, it wasn't rare. There is an elder im my old hall that whilst an elder, messed around his wife's sister and still has obviously not 'confessed' to it as he remains an elder. I long ago shrugged my shoulders of all their behaviour.

  I remember being on a district assembly interview item and I had my version of what happened.....and then there was the DO And CO's version of what I had experienced. It was all so dishonest, coerced and manufactured. They even told me how to dress on the day to get noticed.

  This is when I realised that it was likely that most maybe werent like me in the JW's. It then hit me,..maybe they didn't even really believe the doctrines! I started to think about this more and saw evidence of it everywhere.

  I went to bethel when I was 18 and was shocked to see how human it was, how cold and distant it was. It was just so mechanical.By the time I started questioning the bible and Watchtower teachings, I was very far from the 12 year old boy in a small village.

  Everything you have described feeling and experiencing, is commonplace and normal when leaving a belief system. But it is important to realise it was all a lie and you will never find that magical kingdom you once believed in because it didn't even exist then! We were kids, life was awesome, that is why we remember it so well. But.... At the same time I was first being told about a paradise, Ray Franz an ex governing body member, was being outcast for daring to question what was obviously untrue. He was DF'd and thrown away for asking the obvious, for penning his thoughts on Watchtower scandal, hypocrisy and ego in the governing body! Paedophilia, bethel homosexuality (nothing wrong with it, but hypocritical) and secret mansions, and miracle wheat and pyramidology and ......... all before the years we felt the organisation was perfect.....

  It never was.

  Then I learned of stocks and shares owned in military companies, in companies selling tobacco....Of the paedophile cover up's.... Of the UN NGO cover up. The list goes on and on...

  I would love to talk with you more, I can't sleep hence I am here, but I do need to go to work in a few hours so I have to go try rest.

  But you need to realise sex is not wrong, marriage is an ancient pagan tradition, the bible condones genocide, racism, slavery and infanticide.... chill out if you have some shellfish or enjoy a beautiful woman (or man), the HONEST truth is, we are all the same buddy!

  The governing body masturbate! The governing body swear, they fart, they wipe their ass with their hands and they snore in their sleep. They all have sexual urges and act on them.

  The JW LIFE is a life NOBODY HAS or CAN EVER live up to. That is why they all pretend to! Just nobody admits that they are all pretending. It is such a farce!

  What is worse, the likes of me and you (and I believe many on this forum) were even unique in the JW's. We actually believed it. We actually trued to live it! We actually expected elders to have good advice.....

  But come on....2 window cleaners and a painter and decorator didnt have the magic answer to our problem and we are suprised by that?

  Of course they don't have the answers!

  I have the feeling you still haven't let go of the belief system. You sound smart, I am sure you know the faults and issues, but I detect a hunger for a perfect world, with a paradise earth that you just don't want to let go of.........That is why they promised it to us!

  It isn't even in the bible..... find ONE verse that even says 'paradise earth'.....

  I think you will feel better if you finally meet this issue head on. Get your bible out. Get your history books out, Get the science books out.

  Figure out what is true and what isn't and start from there!

  snare x

  p.s. human behaviour does not dictate whether a religion is true or not by the way.... but it certainly smashes down the illusion of it being special.
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  38

  Relationship with Jehovah?

  by Batman89 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  when you were a devout jw.

  did you feel that you had an actual "relationship" with jehovah/god just from praying to him and reading the wt or bible?.

  or that this was actually even possible deep down?.

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  snare&racket

  I have helped a few friends and family leave. The hardest was someone who was happy to accept that the JW doctrines were wrong and that the organisation had gone wayward (after about 3 years of discussions) as many JW's feel this anyway.

  The hardest issue was that they felt they had a relationship with this person called Jehovah and it meant more to them than anything.

  Here is how I tackled it after much thought.

  First I tackled the name itself, I showed them how it was formed from the sentence YHWH and the vowels feom adonai. I showed them that the scholars had realiaed this and taken it out of the KJ bible and this is a huge wake up call in itself. With JW's putting so much emphasis in the name, to easily show the name is wrong does much, not just for the beliefs in the religion but in the friendship they have with this imaginary father figure.

  The most potent discussions came next where we spent months talking about who her god was. It began with me saying she had been sold another lie, that the god she imagined, the bearded man who looked down and cared about her was not in the bible. It was an imagined character that religions use to satisfy all our natural desires, for such a fatherly person to exist. Not only that, but he isn't even in the bible!

  I asked her to find me the sweet friendly, fatherly god in the bible she imagined. For every one of the handful of ambigous nice verses.....ask for bread and he will give it.....there were literally hundreds of horrid ones. He will give you bread if you ask for it (even though he never does) but the same guy also commanded the bellies of pregant women to be sliced open. He will look agter the lillies, but he drowned millions of his own children in a rage of anger. He talks of forgiveness but established a legal framework for slavery and kidnap and sexist, sexual enslavement. He talks of being a father then asks a man to kill his only son on an altar to him. He talks of protecting his children but then allows satan to kill Job's kids, he uses a bear to kill several children for calling a bald man 'baldy', he commands the murder of children in several opposing nations, he commits every child to sufdering, disease and death over an apple and every JW prays for the day he kills billions of old, young, infant, women and men.

  The silly analogies of from Watchtower of an exterminator who must exterminate the bugs to protect the house, suddenly seem sickening, not logical,

  Everybody likes to imagine their father is a hero, but the god of the bible is a maniac. A horrid and evil dictator. The bible itself is the best cure for christian belief.

  I remember being in bethel, working a mindless job on a machine at the end of the printing press. I remember spending a lot of time praying and I felt that was a time I was close to my god. In reality it was a time where I was close to my real self. I opened up about my fears, my wants, my needs and my doubts. It felt good.... I soon left bethel and not long after the JW's. When I look back at that time, I know that god didn't speak to me, he didn't show a sign, he didn't respond in any way....just as if he wasn't there or listening. But I was listening!

  That time in my life is a sad one, though I enjoyed it at the time. I realised I would not be a JW FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE AND i didnt know how, when or with what consequences it would come about. I remember feeling like I had never been closer to my god, ironic as it has led to a path of research, effort, self examnation and eventually atheism.

  It is interesting that the false perception of a being led me to be honest with myself.....talking to him about the things I dared not think about or dwell on, just as we had been instructed.

  I do love the irony.....
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  52

  It is so obviously a lie......now

  by snare&racket in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  once the spell is broken, one you take a deep fresh breath outisde of the watchtower camp, the amazingly obvious realisation becomes clear.... of course this is a lie, of course this is ridiculous!

  you find you have memories of really believing the claims and promises, but it seems like another life, another experience.

  it seems so incredibly false once you leave and it is very difficult to belive you even once accepted it!

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  snare&racket

  p.s. Sorry, I wrote this tired....
• 
  52

  It is so obviously a lie......now

  by snare&racket in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  once the spell is broken, one you take a deep fresh breath outisde of the watchtower camp, the amazingly obvious realisation becomes clear.... of course this is a lie, of course this is ridiculous!

  you find you have memories of really believing the claims and promises, but it seems like another life, another experience.

  it seems so incredibly false once you leave and it is very difficult to belive you even once accepted it!

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  snare&racket

  This is a perfect example..... I am astounded I/we didn't question earlier the conflicts, the immorality, the lack of evidence and the obvious cult tones of such doctrines and imagery. How can so many people tell their children that this is normal? Moral? Good? True?

  
• 
  52

  It is so obviously a lie......now

  by snare&racket in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  once the spell is broken, one you take a deep fresh breath outisde of the watchtower camp, the amazingly obvious realisation becomes clear.... of course this is a lie, of course this is ridiculous!

  you find you have memories of really believing the claims and promises, but it seems like another life, another experience.

  it seems so incredibly false once you leave and it is very difficult to belive you even once accepted it!

  1. 
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  3. 
• 

  snare&racket

  Once the spell is broken, one you take a deep fresh breath outisde of the Watchtower camp, the amazingly obvious realisation becomes clear...

  Of course this is a lie, of course this is ridiculous! You find you have memories of REALLY believing the claims and promises, but it seems like another life, another experience. It seems so incredibly false once you leave and it is very difficult to belive you even once accepted it! Then ther is the crazy promises from men you have never met, and you/we/I expected it all to come true.

  1) The Product

  Recognising this peculiar spell that was put over us is important. When I see current JW's they are clearly wrapped up in layers of indoctrination, breathing on WATCHTOWER air, their minds have never yet enjoyed unadultarated fresh air, otherwise known as reality. The life they see is observed through a lens, with several filters. They know the filters and lens are there, they know it isn't wise....but it feels safe. We all did it. My friends wife told me recently she did not want to hear/learn/see anything that would question her faith. This is a bizarre concept to me now, but I remember feeling exactly the same.

  But what were we protecting? What were we so scared of? What exactly was the reward for being a JW, that was so amazing, we had to protect it at all logical and reasonable costs? ......thats how good a cult can be.....there was nothing even enjoyable about being a JW member,but we wanted to protect it to the point that we would cut off family and friends!

  When I think of what I valued as a JW, ethey were norhing to do with actually being a JW..it was the people in it and the unfulfilled promises that had value. This is a big realization, promises have no value until they come true. The watchtower offered NO evidence at all of everlasting life and a paradise, amazingly there were not even any bible verses saying it...but we swallowed it all up because....WE WANTED IT TO BE TRUE. As for people, outside of JW land, people, friends and family are just as awesome and valuable.

  I appreciate this manipulation of perspective best describes those who have grown up a JW, but in reality once you are a JW for a couple of years, the WT lifestyle and constant indoctrination, hypnotises the newer members soon enough.

  2) The Sales Pitch

  That feeling of not quite having access to your full capacity, is a lasting memory of being a JW. The same feeling comes over me when I am being sold something. A sales pitch! Your brain is bamboozled with amazing promises and imagiery, fantastic customer references, the promise feels nice, looks nice, smells nice and you convince yourself there is no logical reason not to own this product! In fact you need it!

  Then you leave the shop......BOOM...... you don't need this plastic piece of crap, oh and of course it doesn't bring you happiness...it's just a phone!

  Now imagine a sales pitch that never ends.....that lasts decades....

  I really don't think the psychology, salesmanship and command over thought is that different in Watchtower, it is just a never ending salespitch. It is tiring, mentally draining and leads to constant pining for the promises given, if only you just keep on working, keep on giving to the society. Once on this treadmill, it is very hard to get off. Once you have given half a decade of your life to it, why quit now...after alll

  3) how stupid would it be to quit with NOW after so long and with the reward soooooo close!

  Imagine quitting just before it came! This threat is a HUGE element to keeping members in. It is repeated in Watchtower literature constantly! How dumb were those that returned to Jerusalem after tiring of waiting! This questionable event, is burnt in the mind of most JW's...30 years wait then they returned..and died! How stupid! Are you stupid?.....

  It reminds me of an acquaintance with an apparent gambling habit. This person has spent hours on fruit machines in our company at uni, ignoring the people he is out socialising with, for the delights of flashing lights and ....HOPE. He poured his money into one machine one night that I was with him. He kept staring at the machine, the idea of winning the money and getting what he deserved was consuming him. He kept saying he couldn't let someone else use the machine and win his money, he had to return to the machine, several times an hour. We left the pub and all said goodbye. This guy was depressed and his mind was fixated on that machine, as we all went our seperate ways, I noticed he went back into the pub. He was physically in need of that win. The human instinct of weighing up the energy we have put into a task and the likelyhood of reward is exploited to the full. It is a calculation most living things make.

  Giving much into something with no return is an awful feeling......the cure is to keep chasing, to live in denial, to pretend we have won already...in a way...("well at least it was a good way to live")... or we take the pain and frustratioon the chin and start investing in something that has reward.

  The next day my gambling 'pal' said he couldn't stop thinking about someone else coming along and winning his money after all the money and playing he had put into that machine.

  4) The Cost

  This element of human psychology is used in cults for sure. Cults with an element of time, threat and a promise of survival. It plays on all our human instincts. Survival, family, group protection. It has been shown that gamblers get addicted not to winning, but the biggest high comes from almost winning. The threat of walking away from the million dollar pay off, keeps them going back.

  It doesn't take much to see how this fits well to the world of Watchtower. Add this potent pull to the cost of leaving the Watchtower fruit machine, not just the money you have already put into it, i.e. your life so far, but also all of your family and friends.

  5) The Reward

  This whole system works to put a spell over people. We all went to meetings, three times a week. We talked of the promises, we saw pictures of what we hoped to win painted in thousands of pictures, like a cheap fruit machine displaying images of coins and banknotes, fancy cars etc. But with Watchtower, it got darker, we became immune to seeing pictures of genocide and global destruction and even looked at the pictures longingly, praying for the day they came, so we could have our cabin and acres. The previous owners long dead at god's hand for swearing, drinking and having sex.

  There is the day you leave the Watchtower, then there is the day you look back dismayed at what you once agreed to, said yes to, believed in, taught your kids, told your friends... The potent power of that spell becomes clear when you look at old articles, old literature and you are stunned that a younger you accepted it without question. It is confusing, it is frightenng and it is even a little bit funny.

  But mostly it is just.....OBVIOUSLY A LIE......
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  43

  How Many Had Chronic fatigue syndrome?

  by OnTheWayOut in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  chronic fatigue syndrome refers to severe, continued tiredness that is not relieved by rest and is not directly caused by other medical conditions.. did you have many congregation members, particularly pioneers, that said they had " chronic fatigue syndrome" ?.

  that's their "get-out-of-jail-free card.

  " they were free to cancel anything at anytime and it was their legitimate reason for not doing anything that didn't involve field recruiting.

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  snare&racket

  Most young people left bethel with 'burnout'. The uk bethel even had a doctor who specialised in ME. I think the contributing factors of so many presentations in the JW's are self explanatory.

  Factors that are thought to contribute to some people developing CFS/ME include:

  • Inherited genetic susceptibility (it is more common in some families).
  • Viral infections such as glandular fever.
  • Exhaustion and mental stress.
  • Depression.
  • A traumatic event such as bereavement, divorce or redundancy.

  The following factors are thought to make CFS/ME worse:

  • Recurring infections with viral or bacterial germs.
  • Not being active enough, or even being too active.
  • Stress.
  • Poor diet.
  • Being socially isolated and/or feeling frustrated and depressed.
  • Environmental pollution.
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  609

  What is spirit, exactly?

  by Viviane in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i've always wondered that.

  recently i asked that question on another thread and didn't really get ananswer.

  cofty made an excellent point that we often hear what it isn't, but that really isn't useful.. so, what is it?

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  snare&racket

  woo
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  19

  Dinosaurs.

  by bobert in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  as a jw i always believed that dinosaurs at one point existed.

  my whole family did, almost all the jws i knew did.

  one time i was out for dinner, and one of the people with us was convinced that they never existed.

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  snare&racket

  They have never been able to explain this.....