please feel free to explain the control mechanisms of the watchtower society.
thank you!.
Read 1984 by George Orwell, and there it is. Big Brother is watching you at all times, and everyone else works for him as a spy.
You do not have the basic human rights to:
hi y'all, this is mrs. flipper.
please share your experiences with this, or possible consequences of being outed.. this recent controversy and resulting arguments all stem from people being outed - possibly losing friends and family because most jw's will blindly follow the watchtower's rules to shun them.. among people i know and experiences read here, the grief and loss caused by this is terrible, and maybe now is a good time to put up some experiences here, and put the focus on the worst villians of all - wt policymakers..
My ex-husband won't speak to his (and my) daughter. She was never baptized, she did nothing to harm anyone, so there's no "reason." He lives in another state. He told her friend that my daughter wouldn't speak to him. LIE!
hi all.. i'm a newbie from paris, france.
so please forgive my english grammar, it might be some times...improper.
27, got baptised at 16 (for a girl...i never had).
Bienvenue!
i am suppose to become an unbaptized publisher in a few days.
however ive changed my mind.
i finished my bible study and progressing in the org.
Welcome! You are so doing the right thing to jump ship while you still have your life in front of you. You do not owe anyone any explanation for anything you do. If you have strong feelings about any aspect of what you wish to do, I recommend Dr. Wayne Dyer's first book, Your Erroneous Zones. I read it just before I got free, and it helped me immensely in dealing with negative emotions.
So now you're free to be educated, spend your weekends enjoying life, and looking forward to the future.
Best wishes.
i have been reading threads on here for months, having not been to a meeting in about 3 years, and spending the year prior to that avoiding them.
considering i am gay and now live with my boyfriend, i think we can consider me officially drifted, or fallen away, or whatever semantic nonsense the wts uses for specifying the manner of our waking up.
anyway, i thought it about time i said hello and hopefully make some new friends with whom i can talk about things.
Welcome, frog. I live in the U.S., the entertainment capital of the world, Las Vegas, Nevada. It's a far cry from where I grew up.
Thanks to me (?!), my cousin (now deceased) who was gay became a JW. He was DF'd for homosexual behavior. He told me that the elders asked him to describe every detail of the sex he had. He was disgusted with them. Obviously, most of them have no life of their own and get their jollies hearing about those who do.
A few years after he was DF'd and moved to the other end of the U.S., I needed desperately, for my mental health, to get away from my JW elder husband. My gay cousin offered to help me in whatever way possible. So I moved 'way out west, and he took me in.
I am not from a family of JW's. Just a few of us got involved because my dad's boss was a JW, and he was a very nice man, i.e., probably not a typical JW in certain ways.
this thought just came to me.
i look around in my community and churches of christendom are at least 100 if not 150 years old and they are still in use.
so what is so wrong with the building program of the regional building committee, that the kingdom halls rarely last past 50 years and are replaced?
As jgnat says, many churches are so beautiful, it would cause a near riot to suggest tearing them down. Churches are maintained and beautified with beautiful stained glass windows, needlepoint cushions to kneel on at the altar, beautiful linens, wooden pews, beautiful flooring, and other amenities such as fellowship halls and Sunday school rooms. People get attached to these things.
As Blondie said, churches adapt to changing times as well, although not fast enough (IMHO). They are not insecure and do not need to try to impress anyone. The JW's are all about making an impression and getting attention in the weirdest ways - i.e., not by great charity, but by "great" blind sheep doing as they're told in unison.
does anyone know if this strategy will work to avoid being disfellowshipped?
if one moves their card from one hall to another before a "wrongdoing" becomes public - and then refuses to meet with the elders at the new hall - will they simply be able to fade away without being disfellowshipped.
i had heard that if you refuse to meet with the elders, they generally will not df you - in order to avoid possible legal issues.
If you move, keep your cards, and don't give them to the elders at the new KH. I moved to the other end of the U.S., so I was not bothered at all.
i apologise for not replying to pm's from the past couple of days ... pain and dealing with it has made me a 'bad' correspondent ..... .
tomorrow, sunday, i'm gonna check my msgs and get back to you .. i'm sorry!.
with much love,.
It causes more than physical discomfort to be in pain. It has a psychological impact, too. Take good care of yourself and don't worry about anyone else. They'll understand.
who is willing to figure it out for us?
thanks!.
There has been a downward trend since 1997. Probably a lot of the baptisms since then are children of born-ins. 1997 is when I started using the internet, so I think it may mean something.
i'm about 4 months into my fade- things were going ok at first.
if i didn't get ready to go to the meeting or fs, neither did my family.
recently, hubby has become more sensitive and now will take the family whether i go or not.
You might talk to them about what they "learned" at the meetings, not because you're interested in the BS but because you will feel involved in what they're doing. Plan some fun activities with the kids on non-meeting days and evenings. Talk to a counselor about books for kids their age that might teach them critical thinking skills. Be sure thay know that you love them and what you're doing is not a reflection on them and has nothing to do with your feelings for them.
It sounds like they're old enough to reason things out, so just drop some thoughtful comments into the conversation from time to time.
Stand your ground. Things take time. Your best asset right now is patience.
