My best suggestion would be to try and find a qualified therapist, it sounds like you may have a form of clinical depression if guilt is a constant motivator in your life. It would most like be genetic, caused by childhood events, or a severe trauma in adulthood. Why the JW religion may not have necessarily caused it, I'm sure it didn't help.
Saethydd
JoinedPosts by Saethydd
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12
Guilt as Motivator
by LifesNotOver ini've just come across this idea: i've been feeling guilty about not contributing more to this forum, given all the help i've received here.
i feel guilty that i haven't had it as bad as so many of you.
i feel guilty that i didn't have any jw family/friends that shunned me when i left.
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Making life and death/life altering decisions based on commands from someone you're not sure exists
by jambon1 instraight from the off, i will say that i'm 100% atheist.
i have no faith.
however, it occurred to me while thinking back over my involvement with the jw religion and especially when i take into account personal and family situations where people have made life altering choices due to being jw's, just how crazy it really is.
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Saethydd
Speaking as someone who has tried to debate this subject with people I concur with @sir82's assessment.
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5
Divine Punishment???
by Saethydd ini was recently at a sunday watchtower, reading one of the novels i have on my ipad to help me get through the dreadfully boring event.
every once in awhile though i'll glance at the article just in case anyone is peeking at my screen, and in the article, i noticed these paragraphs.. 3. how did exile in babylon differ from the slavery the israelites had experienced in egypt?.
3 what the prophets had foretold came to pass.
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Saethydd
@Diogenesister
Yeah, I remember having read that account and thinking how it seemed an incredibly cruel thing to kill people for looking upon or touching the Ark. (Which seems like ought to have been considered a "graven image" in the first place, but anyway...)
You've also reminded of another befuddling case of an unjust execution carried out by God. I don't remember the specific book it's from but it's an account about a prophet who is told not to eat anything in a land he is going into to prophesy. Anyway, some other guy who lives in that land comes up to the prophet and tell him that an angel told him to tell the prophet that God decided he could come and eat a meal with this man. (Kind of like God changed his command to Abraham about killing Isaac.) But as it turns out that man was lying. In any case, God kills that prophet even though he was deceived, but no punishment was recorded for the man who willfully deceived him.
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How much money people usually donate to WT ?
by Bardamu ini grew up in the org and never got baptised, however i was wondering recently about how much money my family and old friends are wasting in all that.
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i remember of course never talking in amounts, that it was important to give from what you can not what you have etc but i admit i have no clue how much the average witness gives (say in % of their income).. i'm sure it varies greatly, i'd love to hear what you guys have to say..
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Saethydd
It seems like my parents usually donate somewhere between $75.00-$125.00 a month.
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5
Divine Punishment???
by Saethydd ini was recently at a sunday watchtower, reading one of the novels i have on my ipad to help me get through the dreadfully boring event.
every once in awhile though i'll glance at the article just in case anyone is peeking at my screen, and in the article, i noticed these paragraphs.. 3. how did exile in babylon differ from the slavery the israelites had experienced in egypt?.
3 what the prophets had foretold came to pass.
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Saethydd
I was recently at a Sunday Watchtower, reading one of the novels I have on my iPad to help me get through the dreadfully boring event. Every once in awhile though I'll glance at the article just in case anyone is peeking at my screen, and in the article, I noticed these paragraphs.
3. How did exile in Babylon differ from the slavery the Israelites had experienced in Egypt?
3 What the prophets had foretold came to pass. Through Jeremiah, Jehovah advised the future exiles to accept their new situation and make the most of it. He said: “Build houses [in Babylon] and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their fruit. And seek the peace of the city to which I have exiled you, and pray in its behalf to Jehovah, for in its peace you will have peace.” (Jer. 29:5, 7) Those who submitted to the will of God lived a relatively normal life in Babylon. Their captors allowed them to administer their own affairs to some extent. The exiles even had freedom to move about the country. Babylon was a center of trade and commerce in the ancient world, and documents that have been unearthed indicate that many Jews learned the art of buying and selling there, while others became skilled craftsmen. Some Jews even became prosperous. Exile in Babylon was nothing like the slavery in Egypt that the Israelites had experienced centuries before.—Read Exodus 2:23-25.
4. Besides rebellious Israelites, who were affected by captivity in Babylon, and what limitations were placed on their ability to worship God acceptably?
4 Although the material needs of the exiled Jews were being met, what of their spiritual needs? Jehovah’s temple with its altar had been destroyed, and the priesthood was no longer functioning in an organized manner. Among the exiles were faithful servants of God who had done nothing deserving of punishment, but they had to suffer along with the rest of the nation. Nevertheless, they did what they could to observe God’s Law. For example, in Babylon, Daniel and three of his companions—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—abstained from foods that were forbidden to Jews. And we know that Daniel maintained regular communication with God in prayer. (Dan. 1:8; 6:10) Still, under a pagan administration, it was impossible for a God-fearing Jew to do everything the Law required.
Bear with me please as I try to follow this string of events. God creates the nation of Israel, the nation of Israel doesn't worship God according to rules he set up, God punishes the Israelites by removing them from an environment that allows them to follow all those rules he set up, but other than that they have their needs cared for.
So basically this punishment didn't adversely impact the people who were not worshiping Jehovah whole-souled, in fact, if the statements made in these paragraphs are accurate it was ONLY the people who continued to try and worship Jehovah that faced any large difficulty. Which means that God was, in essence, administering a form of punishment that primarily had a negative effect on his faithful servants.
Isn't that simply absurd? It would be like if one of your kids acted up, so you decided to punish them by taking a toy away from their sibling.
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Do you think I should get something for my wife for her birthday?
by schnell inmy wife is still nominally in, but only because it "makes me (her) happy".
there is nothing academic about her beliefs and when i try, she interprets me as negative.. but then she cusses like a sailor and watches certain movies with me.
her birthday is coming up and it's also right around valentine's day.
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Saethydd
Not to change the subject, but I recently gave someone a birthday present for the first time in my life. I gave my history instructor an apple on his birthday, by no means an extravagant gift, but he really seemed to appreciate that I remembered. It felt good. -
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Conditional Love
by Saethydd ini've noticed several posts recently claiming that jw friends and family members give out conditional love.
well, i'm not so sure that is entirely accurate, in fact, i would say they tend to be very steadfast in their love.
the issue is this, they have been taught a poor form of love.
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Saethydd
Everybody has a different situation, and perhaps I would view things differently had I been shunned for decades, but I would rather not get so wrapped up in my own pain that I start assuming motives that paint the people around me as cruel and vindictive. After all is that not what the WTBTS says about apostates? That they are wicked people who just want to drag you down with them.
I don't want to make that same mistake about the people I'll most probably have to leave behind. Where possible I like to believe the best about people until proven wrong, and all I'm trying to do here is offer another point of view.
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Conditional Love
by Saethydd ini've noticed several posts recently claiming that jw friends and family members give out conditional love.
well, i'm not so sure that is entirely accurate, in fact, i would say they tend to be very steadfast in their love.
the issue is this, they have been taught a poor form of love.
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Saethydd
This may sound weird at first but even true love causes you to act differently under different conditions, but that doesn't make the love itself conditional.
Another simpler example came to me, you wouldn't normally shove your friend with all your might, but you would if a car was about to hit them. Why? Because it would spare them a worse fate. It's just that in the case of JWs they have been convinced that by taking the actions they do they may spare us a worse fate.
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Conditional Love
by Saethydd ini've noticed several posts recently claiming that jw friends and family members give out conditional love.
well, i'm not so sure that is entirely accurate, in fact, i would say they tend to be very steadfast in their love.
the issue is this, they have been taught a poor form of love.
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Saethydd
I don't think I expressed myself as well as I meant to, I wasn't meaning to make an argument of semantics, but rather show the difference in points of view. For example:
Let's a say you have a set of parents that never let their child play outside, now at first glance that might seem cruel. What if a doctor told them that if their child plays outside he will very likely die? Then they have a good reason, or at least they think they do. But what if that doctor turns out to be a quack, and their child will actually be no worse off if he goes outside? Then the parents aren't cruel they just failed to get a second opinion. (Which I would call lazy, but that does not equate to cruel.)
And you also have to keep in mind that this "doctor" is an old friend of the family who has been taking care of their medical needs for decades, meaning that they are going to automatically try to ignore anything negative about him, and may even fear that getting a second opinion would offend him.
From their point of view they are expressing love, but as is often the case they lack the full picture, and if the child did go outside despite their rules, they may even punish him, but that doesn't mean they don't love the child. Just that have been tricked into this situation in which they administer a punishment that doesn't actually help anyone.
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Conditional Love
by Saethydd ini've noticed several posts recently claiming that jw friends and family members give out conditional love.
well, i'm not so sure that is entirely accurate, in fact, i would say they tend to be very steadfast in their love.
the issue is this, they have been taught a poor form of love.
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Saethydd
I've noticed several posts recently claiming that JW friends and family members give out conditional love. Well, I'm not so sure that is entirely accurate, in fact, I would say they tend to be very steadfast in their love. The issue is this, they have been taught a poor form of love. They have been taught that by shunning us they are showing us love, as twisted as that may seem. They consider it loving to press everyone into a certain mold that will ensure their survival.
This is all perfectly understandable when you remember that their highest example of love, is the God of the Bible. A God who claims to love mankind but at the same time will quickly deal out punishment for any tiny transgression, and sometimes even going so far as to take it out on people who are completely innocent. (The people of Isreal dying for David's census taking.) Their God doesn't show the sort of love that allows him to accept us for our failures, rather he has to make us all "perfect," or kill us. He offers no middle ground. So is it really any surprise that they try to do the same thing by any means necessary? So no, it's not that their love is conditional, they just don't know how to really love and accept someone, they haven't been taught to.