my wife and i were discussing a sure sign of a cult:.
when one knows more about the society / organization after leaving!.
lets face it, most of us here on this forum, and ex-witnesses in general know more facts about the history, background, practices, current procedures, scandals, etc than the average "still-in witness"!
Amen to that stuck ,
Never been so informed or so interested in what's going on in the org , don't know if it's because of my growing animosity towards the injustices or because I have many loved ones with the wool pulled over their eyes still , either way I am usually the source of the changes going on in the org for my parents who are still in ,even though my dad is df and trying his darnedest to get back in
although i consider myself completely "cured" from watchtower brainwashing, guilt tripping and propaganda, i realised today that there's not a day that goes by without me thinking of the cult we left.
i think of my former family and what i'd like to say to them, what i'd try to explain and how i'd say it without them switching the "ignore" button and running away.. today on my instagram account my little step-brother "liked" a picture i posted.
i didn't even know he was still on my friends list.
P.E
It sux ,
I have siblings which I care about deeply and even though we are not df they know about me waking up and ceasing to be a jw , they won't talk to me and unfriended us on social media as if my wife and I are a disease, we don't post anything apart from family pics of kids and just general normal stuff , so sad I won't have a relationship with my nephews and nieces
So I too can't help think about the cult that binds my family in that life wasting soup of lies , if they treated me better I wouldn't feel the animosity towards the religion
...Waiting for the wake up call
so this is an honest question that i have been thinking about for some time.. do regular jehovahś witnesses in other countries (other than the usa) take the governing body in new york seriously?.
i mean, i cant help but wonder about the publishers in japan, or south africa, or mexico, or new zealand, or even the uk, or spain, or italy...... or russia?.
not you and i (we know what you think of them), but the regular jwś...... do they take these american buffoons seriously?
I tell you from down under they a revered and their shit don't stink to the rank and file , I dunno if it has anything to do with how we are all americanized to a degree down here , music ,tv etc but the kiwis and aussies I know think the gb are who they say they are ....
just wanted to ask a question of those who were born in as i was.. how did you feel to have been "privileged to have been born into the only true faith - the truth"?.
did this make you feel confident, or proud - or perhaps arrogant?.
how did you reconcile the fact that 99% of the earth's population was not born "into the truth"?.
I distinctly remember looking around the beautiful area I live in thinking "this will be ours soon "
A stupid naive assumption of an indoctrinated 8 yr old
I do remember the entitlement felt as though u had the truth , u were someone special who was in "the know" of the real truth and therefore in line for the rewards promised , luckily this didn't go to my head so to speak and I still lived as a fairly normal kid ,kinda just living my life with that stuff in the back of my mind but it was always there ..
Very nervous and timid to approach my high school teacher to giver her the school brochure as I just wanted to blend in and dreaded doing it but was under duress from my parents ,
Worst thing ever was 1 sat morning for F.S the territory I dreaded most was assigned to my family and a girl I fancied lived there , we actually called on her house and omg I was so shamed then she followed us up the road with her friends on their bikes poking fun ... I was mortified as my dad could see this and as we were driving off beeped his loud horn and waved out the window ,
Turns out the girl liked me too but that's not the way to be introduced , forever shamed out ...
i was told this when i was an aspiring jw, aka unbaptized publisher.
the above explanation didn't make sense to me then and it never did make sense throughout my jw career.
over time, it appeared to me the real purpose of field service time reporting was to gauge one's spirituality and for the ceo *cough* co to make sure the elders were on top of things during his visit..
HERELGO..
I had an argument with my once best friend (now elder) that aux pioneering should not be announced and glorified. ..u know the announcement and the clapping. ..
I argued that although a pledge was made to do the hours ,they get the glory by way of announcementand clapping etc but if they fail to make hours what happens? Nothing , so ....
Isn't service to jah (jw.org) personal?
Isn't it the same thing for someone to pledge to go to 100% of the meetings that month ? Why don't they get announced and applauded?
He argued it was encouraging.., I said na if someone wants to do.x amount of hours it's between them and God not in need of quantification by public acknowledgement by the cong ... nek minit shunned lol
it's been about two months since i stopped attending meetings, came to the conclusion that the org is not the truth, and i'm currently dealing with some problems since leaving the org.
i want to discuss these problems and hopefully get helpful advice.. discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime's work, but it's worth the effort - fred rogers.
my current situation in this: i faded and hold off on writing a disassociation letter.
Issa ... congratulations on waking up , also great that yr parents haven't totally flipped out , yes the talk to the elders response is their magic fix that all jw are trained to run to with these problems however you know there are no answers they will give to the truths you have discovered..
When first fading ,my experience sounds similar to yrs , people trying to contact me etc, elders wI'll try to meet with you to fix u and get you back , the best bit of advice that worked for me which I gleamed from here is ...the only power or authority they have over you is what you allow them to have , I never met with elders ,2 rang me on a conference call and 2 turned up on my doorstep (my wife answered the door I was out ) and they eventually got the message that I wasn't coming back , I did relay some of my.concerns on the phone , arc ,Beth sarim ,shunning, overlapping generation so they knew the road I was on
In time they left me alone but have since had marking talks about association with us to the cong ,
Expect the worst , every persons experience is a little different but for fast faders I think u will be shunned by most ,it's awful and cruel to be treated like some piece of dirt for just finding out facts about the org but it's the price we pay
Good luck
just for fun, some thoughts about the paradise teaching:.
will all the carnivores be transformed anatomically?
if a lion is transformed into a herbivore would it still be a lion?
Totally frustrated by the term " it won't matter we'll have forever to do it or get there "
24 hrs in a day , think back to frontier living , life was hard yakka working to survive the coming winter etc so the stupid fantasy that jw have that this world as we know it with infrastructure and produce will still exist but they will be on 1 giant holiday is so primitive in its conception
As sir82 said
Raw materials for building ? Communication services? Air travel ? Waste treatment, food production? Duh the utopia every jw dreams of is exactly that. .. a dream
warning - vent ahead....... so, my father (still very much in jw but who has at least had the decency to still keep in contact with me and hubby and to show interest in why we aren't attending and respect where we are at) is in intensive care at a local hospital and is intubated and sedated with some serious health issues.
i'm next of kin so i get all the phone calls from the hospital.. so, the rest of the "family" has cut me off because we are inactive and because the ever-active jw gossip grapevine has rumoured with a sibilant slithy hissy voice: "apossstassssy" is the cause of our inactivity.. whatever.. but now i've had to contact said "family" with the news about my father and what is going on....... so, dad's sisters answer my calls and manage to act and conduct themselves with a degree of decorum.. my sister on the other hand - well, she doesn't deign to answer my calls and texts for most of the day.
i push the issue tonight and insist on speaking to her when my brother-in-law answers the call.
I seriously believe I'd be treated better if I robbed a bank at gunpoint than disagreeing with the gb, the apostate label has got to be the equivalent of white walkers in the jw world
probably you noticed that my avatar is a photo of steve harris, bassist of iron maiden.
i have quite a few years that i started to listen this kind of music, even when i was in the jwland.
although it was a "no-no" in the borders of jwland, i knew a lot of brothers and sisters that listened and loved this kind of music.
I love and play heavy music ,not really heavy in my opinion but for most old school jw it's the Devils music , being in a band attracted unwanted criticism from elders who frowned on our style and was told to just give it up and concentrate on serving jehovah after all you can play all the music u want in the new system!
F off
Rock on
Maiden, metallica ,gnr, all cool old skool metal , ....breaking benjamin, tool,dream theater ,seether... so many
If u like 8 string guitars check out heavy metal ninjas they are awesome (instrumental)
born ins are in a unique position in that we never knew any other way of life.
no birthdays, christmas and overly superstitious family just seemed normal.
when my parents talked about their pre-jw life it seemed like they were talking about completely different people (actually, that's true, the cult had taken their real selves).. so i'd be interested in hearing how your parents were indoctrinated.. my dad.
My dad emigrated from UK at 18 ,first stop Australia, lonely , vunerable young man in a strange country , WA LA becomes a jw and gets into pioneering
he never convinces his parents to follow jw after they emigrated also , end up in nz where my mother grew up in an abusive household that were kinda jw , her parents get baptized pre 1975 and are all strict and zealous then 75 comes and goes and they smell a rat so they slowly fade but mum meets dad and she's 19 and wants to marry this pioneer and parents say no (in those days u need consent for marriage until 21)
So they are so horny and desperate so they take them to court ( issues there with taking a brother to court) elders meetings galore and the judge rules in their favor and the rest is history
My dear old dad is still so stupidly brainwashed, only trusts info from jw.org but my mum is not the zealous elders wife she once was ,I think realizing the fact they will die in this system
