Posts by Saethydd

42

Hello Everyone, Another JW Has Left!

by SuperGirl in

just want to introduce myself and let you know that this site is working and is a big help to lots of jws with doubts.

i've been lurking for about a year, the first couple of times i was frightened and literally shaking visiting an apostate site but it's the only place i can come to for sanity.

the religion has become a nut house.

Saethydd

Congratulations on taking that step, I know how hard it can be to take charge of your life when it involves many people you care about turning their backs on you. I hope you and your son can have long happy lives away from the toxic environment created by the Watchtower.

43

Did Ray Franz Help You To Get Out of “The Truth”?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i sneakily read his books at work.

it was written in such a way that no one could accuse him of being another bitter old apostate.. once it registered in my brain, especially after reading the second book, i knew i had to get out!.

Saethydd

Learning of his story sparked my interest to examine the organization more closely but unfortunately I was never able to find an affordable copy of his book

16

Holiday Plans

by Kathy1978 in

anyone doing anything interesting/fun for the holidays this year?

we got some presents for our kids and a tree.

other than that, just chillin.

Saethydd

I'm glad my parents never made me go out in service on Christmas, we would usually go out with some friends to see a movie in theaters and eat at Waffle House. Now that I'm out, my girlfriend and I are just planning to visit her family Christmas Eve and stay home together on Christmas morning.

5

I Got My Best Friend Back

by Saethydd in

yesterday morning i woke up to an incredibly unexpected text message on my phone.

my best friend from before i was disfellowshipped had sent me a really long message.

he apologized for the way things had been and told me how much he missed me, and then he told he respected my decision, that he understood and didn't harbor any bad feelings against me for it, that all he wants is for me to be happy.. i responded to his message and told him that if he wanted me to explain my reasons i would, but that we needn't discuss them if he would rather not.

Saethydd

Yesterday morning I woke up to an incredibly unexpected text message on my phone. My best friend from before I was disfellowshipped had sent me a really long message. He apologized for the way things had been and told me how much he missed me, and then he told he respected my decision, that he understood and didn't harbor any bad feelings against me for it, that all he wants is for me to be happy.

I responded to his message and told him that if he wanted me to explain my reasons I would, but that we needn't discuss them if he would rather not. I just told him that my door was always open to him and that I would always be there for him if he needed me. Then he asked if he could call. We spent two hours on the phone before I had to leave for my class that morning, it had been two years since we spoke so we had a lot to discuss, but in another way, it felt as if we had just spoken the day before. We talked about all the things we had been through in the last year. He told me that it was better that I didn't go back to the religion if I didn't really believe it and he respected me more for holding true to my integrity and not coming back just because I missed people. He told me how proud he was of me for going to college and trying to work to make the world a better place, and he saw the merit of my doing this an agnostic simply because I think its the right thing to do, not because I'm looking forward to some supposed reward. He realized that his friendship with someone needed to be based on more than just sharing religious beliefs with someone. He realized that withholding your friendship from someone to "motivate them to return to Jehovah" wasn't right and didn't produce good results. He wants to have a relationship with me again and keep in touch even though I'm not a Jehovah's Witness anymore and have no intention of becoming one ever again.

I found myself a true friend who has given me unconditional love and support. It took awhile for it happen because he had everything he was taught from the time he was a kid and the advice of his parents working against it, but he got there. I've basically been smiling for the past two days because I finally got my best friend back and I never thought it would happen. He's still a Jehovah's Witness, and he's not really telling anyone except his fiance, which I understand, he still has a lot to lose, but this is so much better than what I had before.

29

Do you remember when you realised it was all bulls£&t

by moley in

i remember when my faith left me.

i used to enjoy meetings and used to participate but then all of a sudden i was finding myself bored shitless at meetings.

i was taken off the theocratic ministry school for not attending when i was due to give a talk and not long after did something naughty and got disfellowshiped.

Saethydd

I was born into the religion and for years I went through the motions of meeting attendance, field service, baptism, and "studying" the Watchtower so that I could later paraphrase what I highlighted at the meetings, but I never really put in the deep study required to "make the Truth my own," or "prove the Truth" to myself. When I finally did examine the arguments of the Watchtower and the "evidence" they used to support their arguments I slowly realized they were full of shit. After that, I just sat in the back at the meeting and read up on logic, secular humanism, (to build a decent framework to replace what I had been taught all my life) and Harry Potter (for entertainment) until I was finally able to move out of my parent's house.

36

Do you celebrate Christmas?

by LovingLifeNow in

jw
friends

do you celebrate and how long have you been out?

.

3 years for me and yes i do..

Saethydd

Last year was my first time celebrating Christmas and my best friend made it really special for me, this year that same person has become my girlfriend and I'm looking forward to the holiday even more. Neither of us is religious but we still enjoy all the beautiful decorations and festivities.

34

For those who are athest, or non-christian, how did you come to this decision?

by Tameria2001 in

i'm not asking this question to cause an argument or accuse, but i am honestly just wondering?

for those of you who are now atheist or non-christian, how did you come to this decision?

i hadn't given this much thought until about a year ago.

Saethydd

After I got disfellowshipped the elders told me that they felt I sinned because God wasn’t real enough to me. So I gathered up many books and set out to “make Jehovah real to me.” I decided to start by confronting the little nagging doubts I had in the back of my mind about creation.

For perhaps the first time in my life I actually delved deep into the theory of evolution and considered the writings of many experts and came to the conclusion that the literature the Watchtower had given me on the subject was wildly misleading. At this point I was very confused and didn’t know which sources to believe so I decided to learn about logic itself and discovered what logical fallacies are, I realized that JW arguments are almost entirely appeals to authority, and that primary authority is supposedly the Bible, so I decided to research that. As I researched the origins of the Bible I realized that it’s authorship wasn’t as clear cut as I had been lead to believe. Some books had been written at completely different times than I had been told, many events where at best uncorroborated by any other sources and at worst directly contradicted my multiple independent lines of evidence. Not to mention the many books that were arbitrarily declared “apocryphal” by different groups of men and different points in history. I determined the Bible was not a reliable source nor a good authority to base any argument on so the Watchtower and any other religion based on the Bible had no true basis for their belief system. As of now I haven’t found any religion that does have a sound logical basis for its particular set of beliefs so I am an atheist.

16

You're in the Army Now: Jehovah's Witnesses No Longer Exempt From Finnish Draft

by Tahoe in

jw
friends

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201809211068220658-finland-jehovah-witnesses-army/.

the finnish government has ruled that the current law allowing jehovah's witnesses to avoid military service, in place for several decades, is discriminatory and contradicts the constitution.. .

in the future, finnish jehovah's witnesses* will be obliged to either serve in the nation's military or perform civil service on the same terms as everyone else, the government ruled, submitting a corresponding proposal to parliament, national broadcaster yle reported.. according to the 1987 law, jehovah's witnesses were not only freed from the military draft, they were freed of any obligation to perform community service as a pacifist alternative, a common option among other young people in finland.

Saethydd

I think someone should show the Finnish courts the video of a Governing Body member saying that Jehovah’s Witnesses are not pacifists and don’t necessarily reject violence as a rule. (After all, how could they do that at still worship the violent god of the Bible?)

10

Id like to share a story

by scruffmcbuff in

as i spend more time here, things id forgotten come back, mostly bad and some i plan to share eventually.. but this one is happy, one of a sunday talk by a new elder from nigeria in our hall.

i remember the intro word for word.

id like to share it with you.. "brothers, sisters, newly interested ones.

Saethydd

Now that I swear on a daily basis this story seems even more ridiculous. Getting so worked up over a harmless word like “shit” while at the same time allowing people to hear graphic descriptions of violence from the Bible or see them in a Bible drama is incredibly silly and contradictory.

16

Need some advice (am I a bad person)

by Jayk in

a little back story.

i met this women she was a coworker friend mine (found out she used to be a jw also).

one night after we got to drinking, things almost heated up.. she came on to me (she leaned in and tried to kiss me) i turned her down because i knew she had a bf.

Saethydd

It’s hard to say. Has she come on to other people before when she’s drunk or was it just you? Is she satisfied and happy in her current relationship or is she only staying in it because she would feel guilty, (or he would make her feel guilty) if she tried to leave? In my experience, if someone who is in a relationship tries to kiss someone who isn’t their partner, then there are issues that need to be addressed, and at least one member of that relationship is going to be unhappy long term if those issues are not discussed.

I don’t think you’re a bad person for suggesting she not tell her boyfriend, however well-intentioned though, I don’t believe it was in her best interest. If her relationship is going to work and be happy long term it must have honest and open communication. Despite what some people believe, preserving a romantic relationship (even a longstanding one) at any cost, isn’t always the right move. In my opinion, if you have to lie to someone to preserve a personal relationship, then it’s time for that relationship to come to an end. Either the other person can accept and care about the real you or they can’t, and if they can’t accept you for who you really are then why are you wasting your time?

Not all relationships will last until our lives come to an end, more often than not those unsuitable relationships slowly fade away as each person slowly changes, and making a relationship work successfully through these slow changes on both sides requires a lot of honest communication and understanding. However, there are also cases where the changes come rapidly and the relationships can die violently. One example of that can be seen when a JW comes to an epiphany about their beliefs and needs to leave the religion, a large number of their relationships can evaporate over a short period of time.

Romantic relationships can be especially bad about outliving their suitability, especially after they get to a certain point. This is because in a romantic relationship people can get tied together by so much more than the relationship itself. They might live together, have joint bank accounts, share a cell phone plan, buy a house together, have kids, etc. The more ties like that there are, the harder it is to get out of a relationship that is no longer suitable, and it’s even possible to end up with all of those things in a relationship that was never a good fit in the first place.

Romantic relationships are very hard to get right, especially at a young age. My theory is that this is related to the tendency to be dishonest during the early stages of courtship. Now I don’t mean overt lies when I say use the word “dishonest” here, rather I’m referring more to the tendency people have to repress who they really are in an attempt to present someone they believe would be more appealing to their partner. Sometimes this sort of repression can go on for years, all the while they stay in the relationship and build those extra-relational ties I mentioned, not because they are happy and allowed to fully express them self, but rather because they are simply afraid of being alone.

Sorry, I know that’s probably longer than what you’re looking for, I’ve just thought about this topic a lot.