When I lost my virginity to a married regular pioneer brother who told me, after eleven months straight of riding the train into work together every morning, that he was in love with me and was miserable in his eight year marriage. That he was planning to get disfellowshipped for me and divorce his wife and be with the true love of his life: me. I was 21 at the time, inactive for nearly two years and a firm believer in evolution. Yet my years of indoctrination haunted me and affected me so deeply that, once the deed was done, I set out on a course of self destruction. Drugs to numb the pain of what I'd done. A revolving door of partners to try and "wipe out" the memory of losing my virginity before marriage. I was determined to punish myself severely for having sex before marriage. And with someone who was married. I still carry around that sadness for what I'd done. Last I heard, all these years later, is that the brother and his wife are still "happily" married and pioneering together and were interviewed on stage at a convention. Fortunately for the husband, I disappeared from his life after the deed, changed my number, changed my trains that I caught into work and finally responded to his myriad of emails begging to see me again because he was so "in love with me" telling him I could never see or talk to him again. I don't know how he continues to live his facade, but I know for me... it's something I've never truly forgiven myself for.
Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
JoinedPosts by Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
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24
The little things that made you feel guilty as a JW?
by HereIgo inwatching rated r movies?
maybe a little gambling in vegas?
when i was in high school i went to the mall with my friend at the time, who happened to be a female.
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The Resurrection narrative can make perfect sense if you consider it to be a lie.
by Island Man inthere are aspects to the resurrection story that seem unnecessary but make perfect sense if you consider them as patches to shore up the lie of jesus' resurrection.. (1) why did there have to be angels present at jesus' resurrection?
there is no other resurrection account in the bible that mentions the involvement of angels.. possible explanation: jesus' disciples really did steal jesus' body from the tomb.
two or three of them ambushed and knocked/drugged unconscious the guards on the scene before stealing the body.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
Jesus 2.0 (ie the unrecognizable dude) was the prophetic antitype for revised Watchtower literature millennia later. Ask Freddy Franz. Ya see? Even the gospels reveal that things would be vague, rewritten and unrecognizable in a 20th century religion.
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The god of love and his most loving son Jesus Christ
by Crazyguy inso their the very essence of love so we are taught so then why at luke 14:26 jesus says in order to be his follower you must hate your mother, father, wife, brothers and sisters.
then you must renounce everything you have.
wow just plain wow, and they call me crazy!
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
@EverApostate: "Kill those who stumble His worshipers"... anyone got a rope for the Governing Body?
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The god of love and his most loving son Jesus Christ
by Crazyguy inso their the very essence of love so we are taught so then why at luke 14:26 jesus says in order to be his follower you must hate your mother, father, wife, brothers and sisters.
then you must renounce everything you have.
wow just plain wow, and they call me crazy!
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
Yes, God loves even unborn babies and equates abortion to murder. But is happy to have live babies murdered for being born to the wrong parents. There's a reason why we don't run into any Amalekites these days.
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Why is the approval of family so important?
by jwfacts inone of the reasons people remain pimo is fear of losing family.
those that are disfellowshipped and shunned regularly comment about how devastated that they have lost the approval of their parents.. when i respond to emails from people saying how difficult it is being estranged or looked down on by their parents, i would like to say that over time they will come to terms with it, except i not sure that people ever do.
i cannot shake that feeling either.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
Thank you, jp1692. Once again, well put.
May I ask, do a lot of the ex-Witnesses you encounter seem to be genuine, sincere people with big hearts? Charismatic? Thoughtful? Hungry for knowledge? Sensitive? Humorous?
I have this sneaking suspicion that the ones who never make the cut as Witnesses are a mixture of all of the above - traits that could never flourish in the Witness community. Characteristics that betrayed the individual's sense of conformity to the stringent mold WT has everyone conform to. Forward-thinkers with compassion and a desire to genuinely learn more, such as Raymond Franz, were quickly rooted out and ostracized for being just so.
It almost appears to me that to be a Witness, one must be academically dishonest, disloyal to their natural instincts when it comes to love and mercy, unmotivated to do any research for themselves, easily offended by outside stimuli, judgmental toward others and callous to the plight of those in emotional turmoil around them.
I'm making a sweeping generalization here, but I would love to hear you weigh in on this based on your experience.
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Why is the approval of family so important?
by jwfacts inone of the reasons people remain pimo is fear of losing family.
those that are disfellowshipped and shunned regularly comment about how devastated that they have lost the approval of their parents.. when i respond to emails from people saying how difficult it is being estranged or looked down on by their parents, i would like to say that over time they will come to terms with it, except i not sure that people ever do.
i cannot shake that feeling either.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
@pbrow That is some quantum sh*t right there. Damn! I actually cried two days ago to my father and asked how he could have brought me up as a Witness. Having been born in the 1930s and a Witness since the 50s - and an elder since the 60s - he was alive well into the "Great Apostasy" with Raymond Franz. Surely he had avenues to explore for himself what the truth about the truth was? And yet he turned a blind eye. I swore to him up and down that because of the knowledge I now have about the WTBTS, I simply do not have the RIGHT to indoctrinate my toddler into this group. That would be disingenuous and utterly cruel to tamper with my child's mental faculties in this way. -
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Why is the approval of family so important?
by jwfacts inone of the reasons people remain pimo is fear of losing family.
those that are disfellowshipped and shunned regularly comment about how devastated that they have lost the approval of their parents.. when i respond to emails from people saying how difficult it is being estranged or looked down on by their parents, i would like to say that over time they will come to terms with it, except i not sure that people ever do.
i cannot shake that feeling either.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
What does PIMO stand for? I keep seeing it pop up on discussion threads... Prisoner In My Opinion? I can't work it out.
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Why is the approval of family so important?
by jwfacts inone of the reasons people remain pimo is fear of losing family.
those that are disfellowshipped and shunned regularly comment about how devastated that they have lost the approval of their parents.. when i respond to emails from people saying how difficult it is being estranged or looked down on by their parents, i would like to say that over time they will come to terms with it, except i not sure that people ever do.
i cannot shake that feeling either.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
@jwfacts: "...have not lost our humanity." Nor our minds. WT currently has my parents' brains in a large mason jar under the bathroom sink at Warwick.
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Why is the approval of family so important?
by jwfacts inone of the reasons people remain pimo is fear of losing family.
those that are disfellowshipped and shunned regularly comment about how devastated that they have lost the approval of their parents.. when i respond to emails from people saying how difficult it is being estranged or looked down on by their parents, i would like to say that over time they will come to terms with it, except i not sure that people ever do.
i cannot shake that feeling either.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
I'm 26 years old with a child of my own, yet I deeply crave acceptance from my parents. It's my downfall. I guess we could look at our own offspring. Could they seamlessly shrug our love off when they're older and still be considered healthy, well-rounded individuals? Contrast it with the folks who shrug off OUR love for no longer wanting to be a Witness. Do THEY appear to be well-rounded people?
Craving the love and approval of our parents seems natural to me when I think of it like this: when a stranger walks past me on the street and screams some random profanity at me, I shrug it off and keep walking. Why? Because they don't know me. They don't know who I am and what I stand for. Their opinion is therefore obsolete. But when the people who gave you life, who know exactly who you are and have had a lifetime to make an informed decision of you then REJECT you, deeming you unworthy of love, let alone contact... well. That really smarts.
Perhaps from a Darwinian perspective, we could examine things in this way: being rejected by the very ones who propagated their genes to give birth to you could result in death. This may resonate more strongly with younger Witnesses whose parents shun them. But for older Witnesses who still yearn for their parents to accept and love them, we could think about how natural selection works. Standing out and not going along with the crowd is usually what kills you in more primitive species. It's going along with the crowd of your kind that heightens your chance for survival in the animal kingdom. As ex-Witnesses, we're standing out from the crowd we knew and accepted as our only "sort" growing up. Perhaps we're hard-wired by biology to experience this apprehension to being rejected (and subsequently standing out) because it signals a very real threat to our survival.
I'm purely extrapolating here, but there might be some science to it!
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Complete this sentence with only one word: THE TIME REMAINING IS...
by steve2 inthe time remaining is... elastic.. .
stash: /intesoft-inc.appspot.com/post/f0315d7a1cdf4d6498064881689ea032.html
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
@freddo: "Overlapping" FKN LOOOOLLLLLLLLL. This made my day.