if you once were fully pimi and truly believed jw doctrine to the core like i once did, when you come to the reality that it is not the truth at all it can be extremely devastating.. i think only other ex jws could ever understand.
i wasted my entire life i thought the real life was yet to come to wasted the best years knocking on doors.
now i’m so angry.. i can understand why so many top themselves when they realise it was all lies..
I was never truly happy until I ceased to believe. The adjustment period was hard, and as the Thread Title says, nobody understands if they have not left a lifetime of Indoctrination.
I found that researching, properly Fact Checking, and using Critical Thinking Skills enabled me to eradicate any vestige of Indoctrination.
There then followed a lot of time spent coming to terms with my mortality and other things, but I ended up a very, truly, Happy Humanist Atheist.
it feels like the change in reporting of hours becomes a fundamentally bigger deal every day.
the weight and importance placed on quantity was enormous, and now it's just gone.
even tho most witnesses really didn't keep "accurate" records so to speak hehehe.... this could very well be a precursor to even bigger doctrinal changes, like 1914. damn, would would happen then?.
" Other things they can change but not this, if they were wrong about 1914 they everything else with fall apart."
Exactly, the Doctrine is the very Foundation of the religion, take that away, and their "building" really is "built upon sand".
They will continue shackled to the 1914 utter nonsense, but will rarely mention the actual year, and will just present what they have always said as surrounding that year as a "given".
They are on dodgy ground indeed, more young people these days are less likely to accept at face value a "given".
it feels like the change in reporting of hours becomes a fundamentally bigger deal every day.
the weight and importance placed on quantity was enormous, and now it's just gone.
even tho most witnesses really didn't keep "accurate" records so to speak hehehe.... this could very well be a precursor to even bigger doctrinal changes, like 1914. damn, would would happen then?.
If they drop 1914, then there was no 1918/19 choosing of an FDS by Jesus, which means the G.B of today have no authority.
No 1914 = no "Choosing" = Today's G.B. are self-appointed Charlatans.
were the works of homer, aeschylus, sophocles, etc.
acting blasphemously when creating their works of fiction because they included the gods in the stories?
when homer placed dialog into athena's mouth, was he wrong to use his creativity to make her come alive for an audience?
were the works of homer, aeschylus, sophocles, etc.
acting blasphemously when creating their works of fiction because they included the gods in the stories?
when homer placed dialog into athena's mouth, was he wrong to use his creativity to make her come alive for an audience?
I think those Greek Thinkers were ahead of their time, the ones looking for a less "material" view of gods. Prior to them, and ever after, the Anthropomorphising of gods went on.
The gods and goddesses who came to Israel via Canaan and ultimately Sumer, were VERY human in their actions, having huge Banquets, Drinking Parties, and of course having copious sexual encounters and unions, the god El being particularly randy with two goddesses at one time !
Christians today cannot manage, no matter how they try, not to anthropomorphise their god at least in some way, but the N.T does , "Revelation" talking of god's "Hand" etc.
I think the gods are far more appealing as characters when we envisage them as supernatural beings, but being very human in so many ways, even YHWH is a much more sympathetic character when we think of him being in Love, albeit with Israel, or being saddened, or enjoying a good meal of sacrificed meat and so on.
Therefore I can see the difficulty that those who advocate for a more mystical version of god, we puny humans cannot stop thinking of our gods, and depicting them in Art, as very human in most ways.
when i was a kid, living in quakertown pa, i tried to play with the kids in the neighborhood.
it was a new and small neighborhood with just a handful of kids, but they were all in my generation.
one day the boy across the street comes up to me and two girls from down the street and tells us he just got a ouija board and we should all play.
" It's just so weird, sometimes, to see how bizarre our thoughts and behaviors are in hindsight."
It certainly is ! as I look back at the person I was as a believing J.W.
Just the other day I did this, and it kind of shocked me that I DID actually believe a lot of the nonsense, never all of it, but it was like looking at someone else, a stranger, and a weird deluded Believer.
a lot of ink has been spilled on the topic of the cross.
the wt felt it had uncovered some deep conspiracy when they found a number of words were used to describe how jesus was understood to have been killed.
there was an extensive thread many years ago that in short strongly supports the conclusion that at least some nt writers envisioned a cross, while others had a tree in mind.
Thanks PP for the Thread, and particularly your post above, that is a very clearly and well expressed summation of what happened.
We of course cannot know what was in the minds of the Gospel Writers, but I think your analogy of the "Left Behind" Books is a good one, and really fits what I imagine the Writer of "Mark" did, he wrote a Novel, then "Luke" and "Matthew" added to it, perhaps in their minds their Works being more the writing of a Gospel.
did you ever go to the haysbridge assembly hall in surrey?.
post your experiences.
the assembly hall i believe used to be a reformed school for boys and was completely renovated and dedicated in 1985.. it was the only assembly hall i knew of that sold souvenir pens, book marks and notepads.. .
" Can somebody approve that it's sold or at least, that it's not in use anymore?"
If it has been sold, what do they use instead ? That Hall served a wide catchment area !
i been reading quite a few experiences on reddit lately, and their seems to be a common theme coming up….
…dialed-up-to-eleven shunning of xjws by their witness relatives.. it reminds me of back in the day, listening to some of the over-the-top vitriol displayed by hard-core loyalists when the topic of evolution or apostates came up….
…i was gobsmacked when i finally realized these guys weren’t offended and indignant because they thought it was lies….
That is so sad Ron.W, minds not just closed, but welded shut. That is a condition that is unlikely to change as long as they live.
I guess even if there was a complete collapse of the org. and it was no more, (not going to happen), they would still say "But they did have the truth",
The Mind Control goes so very deep with many, probably with the majority who are still in.
The Mind Control has indeed been well embedded, and has been subtle enough in recent times to bring about the effect that Vidiot outlined in his O.P, a view of things that goes beyond all Reason.
That is a true observation of what the J.W idea of the Kingdom will be. I even said as much to an Elder when I was an active J.W, that their vision would be Hell on Earth, and he agreed with me !
