i am compelled to ask, are we seeing a new effort in apologia by jehovah's witnesses?.
perhaps it is just the vain, 'last-ditch' efforts of a few to defend this sick, unloving cult.
efforts to disprove over 130 years of false promises.
I am convined that they will try to build a compound and motivate their followers to leave everything behind and because Armageddon is coming.
Where else can they go with so many fumbles? How long can they keep predicating Armageddon and people have been born, died, etc?
so through the internet it's possible to see what people are doing from childhood without actually interacting.
i really imagined the majority people i knew who were born into the religon about the same time i was would have left when they matured and hopefully developed some logic???.
so do they really believe everything they were taught as children or are they just stuck and don't know how to leave?
I can only think of two or three; everyone else never got baptised, got disfellowshipped, or just "quietly left" whether they were baptized or not. I just think it is hard to keep people following a religion with so many holes in it, especially if people get educated and are around various people that are not JWs.
the thread on pros of being a jw (not filled with many) led me to wonder if anyone has scientifically assessed the reading level of the average wt, awake, books.
i thought 5th grade but it is a guess.
software exists now to evaluate reading comprehension levels necessary to read documents.
I would definitely say about 3rd grade level.
The songs they sing would have to be at a 2nd grade level, they are some of the worst "songs" put to music out there. I definitely believe they are repeated for mind control purposes.
i found this site hoping to read topics submitted by jw's so i could learn more, but it just seems to be everyone else here except them.
just about every topic and member is just bashing jw's and their teachings.
this site should be renamed "jwbashertrolls.net".
This is a great thread. I'm glad I have a few days off from work - the weekend - to read this and favorite a few things.
troubled former witness calls legal department at the watchtower organization.............. dale beckman says, can the "society" be guilty of "alienation of affection?
" in my case, my family has been told it is proper to hate me and to do nothing to help me in any way - otherwise, they could be considered a sharer in my works of "unforgivable sin.
" they are told not to even greet me.
I have been thinking about writing a letter to this organization/publishing empire/cult entitled "How Jehovah Witnesses destroy families", but I wonder the best way to get the true message across. These people will just use this as affirmation, so I really want to send something to them and also to the media, to at least show from my personal experience how DANGEROUS this group is when anyone dares to leave and the majority of their family remains in.
- Family will cut you off up and including refusing to speak to you
- Spouses, children, parents will alienate contact and disrupt your relationship
All strictly because you make a choice of your own free will to reject their religious teachings.
I am positive there is a huge portion of the group that realize the fakery of this religion but don't want to lose contact with family and friends...
I would definitely go! I'm going to check it out.
i'm new, but i have been acquainted with your site before.
i'm a 40 year old female with a family knee deep in the jw religion.
i left when i was 18 and never looked back, but the majority of my family is still in.
Thanks for allowing me to vent. Again, the most important thing is that I don't allow my anger to fall into their hands. I have been acquainted with this site, as well as a few others, but I would always come and read and then want to stop thinking about the JWs at all. I have been out for 22 years. They really have no real part of my life. It is just with family members dying, my getting a divorce and trying to have some type of interaction they bring out those feelings of disgust over the entire cult religion.
But the truth is I want to be calm and give them no place to one up me. They are very very manipulative. I am just going to severly limit interaction with them, and move on with my life. I will create my own family; which I have in many ways, but sometimes after the death of a few and a divorce, you look around for those that raised you.
Again, thanks for all your kind words. I really appreciate it.
i'm new, but i have been acquainted with your site before.
i'm a 40 year old female with a family knee deep in the jw religion.
i left when i was 18 and never looked back, but the majority of my family is still in.
I really appreciate reading the posts of everyone. I will definitely PM a few people, if that's okay.
Truth is I am angry, and I don't want to be angry. I just know of so much hypocrisy it just boggles my mind. However, I feel like being angry or lashing out just validates this cult in a sick twisted way. I don't want to give them the upper hand even in my complete contempt.
This site is bookmarked and I will post in this thread and others. I am also trying to create an arsenal of facts just for my own reference regarding the UN, blood, 144,000, 1914, disfellowshipping, the founding members of the organization, etc
Everyone have a great evening!!
i'm new, but i have been acquainted with your site before.
i'm a 40 year old female with a family knee deep in the jw religion.
i left when i was 18 and never looked back, but the majority of my family is still in.
Everyone, thank you so much. It has been a very difficult time for me.
I posted the open letter on Craigslist to vent. But I feel it was probably better to post it here.
My brother passed away just two months ago. He was baptised but left the religion years before, he however was never disfellowshipped or anything, he just slipped away. He had many issues with the religion, and suffered over the years. My brother was only a year older than me, I was absolutely devastated. In many ways, I still am, I just can't believe he is gone. I believe a lot of his medical issues were because of sadness and depression over the pressures, hypocrisy, and false doctrine we endured growing up. He was only 41.
A year before that, my cousin passed away. Same exact month. He died from complications from AIDS. My family shunned him because he was a homosexual. He was near death when they found him because HE HAD NO SUPPORT SYSTEM. They had turned their back on him because of his sexuality and he dealt with depression and sadness. Anyone that has experienced the depth of their shunning, and heartbreak of having to put together your life without any of your family and friends. My cousin was buried without any real funeral, no family that grew up with him to say goodbye. How in the world can this religion justify this? It incensed me on so many levels.
The Jehovah Witness religion breaks up families. If you choose to disagree with their doctrine they get so involved in your family and friends that it isn't just about a difference of religious belief, it is a separation from your family.
Please understand it is not like I am not aware of their beliefs, it is just that their flip flopping of doctrines, their "new light" changing on a regular basis really unnerves me. Against my better judgment I choose to involve myself with my father. He was my primary parent, my mother and step-father so beat down from the religion and mental illness, it is a wonder they are still here.
I really need support. I need to interact with people that can understand what it is like for me. My ex husband was not religious, which was great, but I worry about getting married again or having children (biological or adopted) and putting them through this. Should I just cut the JW family off completely or limit it to just phone calls and an occasional neutral visit? It is hard when you truly love them, but I just can't and won't let that cult dictate my life. I have had enough.
Again, I appreciate all your comments and well wishes. Thanks for reading!
i'm new, but i have been acquainted with your site before.
i'm a 40 year old female with a family knee deep in the jw religion.
i left when i was 18 and never looked back, but the majority of my family is still in.
Hi there. I'm new, but I have been acquainted with your site before. I'm a 40 year old female with a family knee deep in the JW religion. I left when I was 18 and never looked back, but the majority of my family is still in. I thought I had put this piece of my life behind me, but after a divorce and trying to maintain a somewhat civil relationship with some of the more moderate members of my family, I was informed yesterday that I can only have very limited contact. It just really let out some serious issues I have with this organization/cult. Seems there was some "new light" shed in a magazine that is severly limiting family member's interaction. Anyway here's my letter. Anyone that can shed support or help would be much appreciated:
I need to vent anonymously. At least for right now. I am sure I am not alone in my disgust and complete contempt for organized religion. Religion has broken my family apart. Deaths, depression, mental illness, huge families broken apart in discord. Welcome to the cult of the JW. And if you don't know what the JW stands for, then you are probably someone who never heard of them, but if you have, then somewhere you know where I am going with this because there are thousands that have experienced my pain. And no matter your religion, if you have ever decided to LEAVE or WANTED TO LEAVE a religion but you were afraid that your decision would cause you to lose your family, your friends, and your entire support system. This is for you.
For your JW people, I have NOTHING but sheer contempt, disgust, and at this point, I am just not taking it anymore. I can't. Too many people in my family have died, too many suffered from mental depression, too many attempted suicides, too many isolated family members because they choose to walk away from one of the largest cults in this world. From your apocalyptic beginnings prophesying the end of the world, to your flip flopping on everything from blood transfusions to 1914 to "anointed" to the 144,000 to when Armageddon would actually come, I have really had enough. I'm tired of the "new light" - your favorite little buzz word to compensate for the fact your group is making it up as the go along. And yes, life is so very fluid, I'm catching that this is your new way of indoctrinating your fold in your nonsense. But no more will you play step and fetch to the non-believers, particularly this one.
All of us suffer when you change your doctrine on how to deal with non-believers or disfellowshipped people or disassociated members. We have to wait for your "new light" or "new information" and see if we can see or even be around our family members. Family members that we love, that we have taken care of or taken care of us and all because of a simple ideological difference in belief, we have to allow your hypocritical, inconsistent theology to break apart our families. The JW religion breaks families apart. It is a lying hypocritical cult. Anyone that has dared to think for themselves, ask questions, or even consider that the Governing Body might be incorrect on anything is KICK OUT! That is a cult. Any group that tries to separate people from education and any association outside of their way of thinking is a cult. They suppress free thought, they want to control a person's freedom to interact and associate with anyone they prefer. They use a title over common sense. And I can tell you from first hand experience that people of the JW religion are pedophiles, rapists, murders, adulterers, engage in incest, bestiality, and not even HALF of that is ever reported or persecuted. It is a sexist religion that more times than not persecute and blames women even when they have been victims of attacks. How many pedophiles have been reinstated in the congregation and went onto molest and rape young people? How many rapists have gotten away with rapping their wives, other sisters in the congregation with the FEMALE being disfellowshipped? Oh yeah, I am ripped the top off this thing. I know way too much. How many presiding elders have gotten away with incest and severe beatings in their own family? And how many family members have died because of the refusal of blood transfusions only to have the great JW CHANGE THEIR DOCTRINE after huge criticism.
What about 1914? What about the anointed? What about the prediction of Armageddon? Never have I seen a group so fundamentally happy over the suffering of other people and crisis in the world. These people celebrate death. And I really believe before it is all over these JWs are going to build a compound and tell all their followers to leave their life behind and wait for the Hellfire to come. Time is ticking away and their foundation of the "end of the world" is starting to crumble. What about that generation that will never pass? Most have died. Have you changed 1914 again? I mean, more people are waking up to the ridiculous nonsense of this group, but I must give it to them, they know how to keep people even the doubters tightly in their midst:
1) They engage you by promising a life outside of the hard life you live, where everyone loves you, where you have a promise of friends and companions that will always be there. They love to focus on minorities and those from broken homes and abject poverty. And how can one forget "everlasting life". Ah yes, I get to live forever with only JWs.
2) Once they bring you in, one by one the "leaders" of the group highly pressure you to count off contact with "the world". *Another indicator of a cult, separate lingo that acts as a way to indoctrinate its members. You will hear words like "the world", "sister/brother", "worldly", "demons", "demonized", and the ever popular "Armageddon". These words and phrases are meant to guilt you, control you, suppress your thought, and condition your mind.
3) Next it will repeatedly get you to convert your family members. One by one, if they all fall for it, your entire support system is now the JW. Your entire group of family and friends are JWs. And when it is all good life is just one great JW party. But don't let anything go wrong or someone question anything you do say or wear. Or heaven forbid a scandal happen not of your own doing or you come across information about one of the step-ford members that causes you to question it all. Trust me, when you realize that that elder's wife is actually a practicing witch or that Bethelite or lifelong pioneer was actually sleeping with someone else's 14 year old son or daughter, the cloud that you have been under will move away.
4) Then after sitting after meeting for years on end, you start to realize they all kind of sound the same, except they KEEP CHANGING doctrines. They keep having "new light", they keep coming up with new and highly grandiose revelations until you truly are on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next. Trust me, the compound is coming. They are running out of ideas, the world is still here, economy has been crashing since the beginning of time, WARS has happened all over the earth since time began, and civilizations has been destroyed time and time again, Armageddon has come and gone a few times over, and in some places Armageddon is an everyday occurrence. They are going to have to step it up or risk a great "falling off".
5) If you ever decide you don't want to play by their rules they will start a campaign to break you down in every way they can, and sorry for you if you entire family has drank the JW kool aid, because if they kick you out, you will be out there on your own by yourself, stuck. Homosexual? Bye bye, unless you can "hide it" or have weekly conferences with the ministers. Trust me, this goes all the way to the top. And for me, I never had a choice, I was born in this cult. My entire family on both sides were heavily indoctrinated in this before I was ever a twinkle in my parent's eyes. It was not until I was 18 years of age that I walked away from this and in that time I had witnessed everything from beatings, rapes, adultery, mental breakdowns, incest, drug abuse, theft, pedophiles let loose on congregations, and everyone hiding behind the Watchtower and Awake and a political Governing Body to tell you how to think, what to feel, and how to behave.
If you are like me, you will see organized religion for what it is. And I say here and now, the lid has been taken off. I will not stop showing this religion for the corrupt cult that it is, too many people have lost their family, too many people have suffered, have lost friends, lost people they loved through death or separation, watched otherwise healthy loving people break down in ways that no person should have to endure. Any why? Because they choose to REJECT A RELIGION! Does it make sense?
I will stop now. I could literally write for days. Maybe I will write again. It's not over. It is just beginning. If any one out there knows what I am feeling, what I am going through, feel free to reach out
