That is very interesting, Blondie. So the word really could have been disassociated, especially if the elders of my congregation didn't get the memo from the previous year. The one part of the story I have been adamant about is that I was told I was disassociated. I would not have mistaken that word, though doubtless my family and that congregation would have shunned me even if I was simply identified as 'marked'.
Suraj Khan
JoinedPosts by Suraj Khan
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22
Update on "DA'd/DF'd"...
by Suraj Khan insince many of you were kind enough to give your responses, or at least share in my confusion, i wanted to take some time to share things that went down in the last few days in my family.. to recap, i was born-in but thankfully the hogwash never took.
i was actively dodging meetings by age 13 by faking illness, usually missing 20 to 25 days of school per year.
i left my family to attend college and was told by a family member that an announcement was made in my local congregation the following year that i was disassociated.
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22
Update on "DA'd/DF'd"...
by Suraj Khan insince many of you were kind enough to give your responses, or at least share in my confusion, i wanted to take some time to share things that went down in the last few days in my family.. to recap, i was born-in but thankfully the hogwash never took.
i was actively dodging meetings by age 13 by faking illness, usually missing 20 to 25 days of school per year.
i left my family to attend college and was told by a family member that an announcement was made in my local congregation the following year that i was disassociated.
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Suraj Khan
As are my teenage daughters, FingersCrossed! I am thrilled that, as I have shared details of this experience with them, their eyes pop out with amazement and disbelief. My wife has been, as always, supportive and loving through the entire ordeal. I am a very, very lucky man.
What gives me pause is that so many others feel trapped and helpless. So many take the hurt of being abandoned and destroy themselves as they have been destroyed by their Witness family and the organization as a whole. If you are reading this, and you are on the fence about fading or disassociating, consider the havoc wreaked by this practice alone and compare Matthew 7:15-20.
We were all born with free will. Is it not human to have doubts and struggle with God and the angels, as Jacob did? Is it not noble to admit that one cannot know everything of the divine?
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Update on "DA'd/DF'd"...
by Suraj Khan insince many of you were kind enough to give your responses, or at least share in my confusion, i wanted to take some time to share things that went down in the last few days in my family.. to recap, i was born-in but thankfully the hogwash never took.
i was actively dodging meetings by age 13 by faking illness, usually missing 20 to 25 days of school per year.
i left my family to attend college and was told by a family member that an announcement was made in my local congregation the following year that i was disassociated.
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Suraj Khan
Since many of you were kind enough to give your responses, or at least share in my confusion, I wanted to take some time to share things that went down in the last few days in my family.
To recap, I was born-in but thankfully the hogwash never took. I was actively dodging meetings by age 13 by faking illness, usually missing 20 to 25 days of school per year. I left my family to attend college and was told by a family member that an announcement was made in my local congregation the following year that I was disassociated. I was never called by an elder and never given a reason why the announcement was made. Many of you pointed out in my original thread that I could not have been technically disassociated as I was an unbaptized publisher. In any event, I was cut off from that point on - about 25 years ago - without a word from the congregation. Except for my father's death and funeral, I was not approached by any Witness family members until last year on Facebook (which was a complete but welcome shock).
We'd gotten along well enough just talking about sports and kids, ignoring the giant elephant in the room, until I lost it this past Sunday upon seeing the screenshot of the WT study article concerning treating disfellowshipped persons. In outrage, I posted it on Facebook loudly condemning the shunning practice as un-Christian, and further noted my belief that the Witness organization has blood on its hands by advocating this practice.
Members of my family were horrified by my violent, public reaction, but it shook out some answers.
My younger brother called two nights ago and did his best to explain the situation for me. He said he'd conferred with my older brother - the one who broke the news to me 25 years ago - and confirmed that I was not disassociated or disfellowshipped. When pressed, he couldn't tell me what term the congregation actually used. He then volunteered that the reason for the announcement was because I had written a political piece for my college paper.
Ah.
Pieces of the puzzle suddenly started fitting. I was, indeed, the commentary and opinion editor for the college paper, which had a closed circulation of 7,000. I had brought a few copies on my last family visit in 1989. I realized, at that moment, that my older brother had taken the newspaper and shown the elders of the congregation what I'd written.
I leaned back and exhaled as I realized the sickening truth: I was cut off from my family, without a word of explanation, because of an innocuous article I'd written at the age of 19. Because my brother turned me in.
It seems like a scene right out of George Orwell's "1984".
My younger brother continued, saying that 'mistakes were made' and that 'it would be different now'. Precisely how would it be different? The WT article instructing followers to shun came from last Sunday's Watchtower. When he tried to counter by saying that disfellowshipping is reserved for grave offenses, I countered that many people have been disfellowshipped merely for expressing doubts that the Governing Body is the faithful and discreet slave. And too many of those have felt so abandoned by family and friends that they have felt they had no other choice but to hurt themselves or take their own lives.
He had no answer for that. Because there is none. It is an unforgivable, un-Christian practice and I suppose I should be on my knees thanking God that events unfolded as they did to open my eyes and ears early on to the hypocrisy and lies this organization teaches.
I also wanted to take a moment and thank you all for reading and caring to comment. You have all helped me immensely in the last few days, whether you were aware of that or not. Thank you so very much.
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DA'd vs. DF'd
by Suraj Khan insunday's wt study really opened some old wounds in my family.
by age 13 i was faking illnesses just to get out of thursday and sunday meetings.
i stopped attending altogether at age 17 and headed to college, never really looking back.
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Suraj Khan
I understand the distinction. As far as being told I was DA'd, to this day I am not sure whether this was an error on the elders' part or on the part of the family member who conveyed the information to me. There had been (and apparently, according to an email I just received from my little sister, still are) whisperings of my doings in college: I suppose they imagined all sorts of things I might be doing there. In reality, I never smoked or drank, and I was not promiscuous. I did get married (unfortunately) right out of college to a worldly girl, but the DA conversation happened three years before I graduated, perhaps even before that relationship even began. I recall no effort being made to see how I was doing or even to invite me to a meeting - not that I would have attended anyway. No attempt was made by an elder to make a shepherding call or confirm what was being whispered, but I understand that the elders in my absence would have enjoyed broad latitude to cut me off without such enquiries.
In the same conversation in which I was told I was DA'd, I was told the elders had investigated my meeting attendance to the Kingdom Hall that served my college town. They would have reported, correctly, that I never set foot there.
The whole affair still confuses me. Thankfully, it left me with a loathing for the organization and its kangaroo court practices which has never abated even after decades. This has served me well in the ensuing years.
Edit: I live in the United States.
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18
DA'd vs. DF'd
by Suraj Khan insunday's wt study really opened some old wounds in my family.
by age 13 i was faking illnesses just to get out of thursday and sunday meetings.
i stopped attending altogether at age 17 and headed to college, never really looking back.
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Suraj Khan
It was related to me that a DA announcement was made in the year after I started college. I agree that the cause probably stemmed from the sole fact that I dared to attend college. It was also fairly well known that I'd been willfully dodging meetings for almost all my teenage years, which meets the "deliberately avoiding Jehovah's worship" test above.
Whether or not it was fair to do so by the elder, who was an officious prick, is probably irrelevant. I've not known many Witness elders to follow protocol to the letter if they feel their flock is endangered by a person with dangerous thoughts.
I agree that I should probably let the matter rest going forward and try to maintain the fragile relationships being built. I realize that calling the org out on their egregious literature is probably the wrong way of going about that, though. I guess I couldn't help myself.
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18
DA'd vs. DF'd
by Suraj Khan insunday's wt study really opened some old wounds in my family.
by age 13 i was faking illnesses just to get out of thursday and sunday meetings.
i stopped attending altogether at age 17 and headed to college, never really looking back.
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Suraj Khan
DISASSOCIATION
" The person who disassociates himself by repudiating the faith and deliberately abandoning Jehovah's worship is viewed in the same way as the one who is disfellowshipped."_____Organized to do Jehovah's Will book page 155
We have a winner. Thank you, wasblind.
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DA'd vs. DF'd
by Suraj Khan insunday's wt study really opened some old wounds in my family.
by age 13 i was faking illnesses just to get out of thursday and sunday meetings.
i stopped attending altogether at age 17 and headed to college, never really looking back.
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Suraj Khan
I do want answers because the Witness org has a lot to answer for.
Two, and possibly three, of my younger sisters were sexually abused by my father and older brother. I was lucky: I was only physically and emotionally abused. I ran not just out of distaste for the dogma: I ran out of self-preservation. I still carry deep guilt over abandoning my younger sisters to abuse I didn't fully understand until much later. The many stories about pedophilia and the Witnesses hit very close to home for me.
So, although I've gotten my life outwardly together - I have a beautiful, supportive wife in the outside world and two teenage daughters blissfully innocent of the horrors I experienced and saw growing up - I bleed freely when I see emotional triggers like this. My wife tries to understand, but she can't. And somehow I'm glad that she can't.
The more I read here - I'm fairly new - the more outrage I feel at all of this. And I should feel outrage. And I don't know what to do with it.
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18
DA'd vs. DF'd
by Suraj Khan insunday's wt study really opened some old wounds in my family.
by age 13 i was faking illnesses just to get out of thursday and sunday meetings.
i stopped attending altogether at age 17 and headed to college, never really looking back.
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Suraj Khan
Sunday's WT study really opened some old wounds in my family. Or, rather, I did. Ugh.
I was born-in but never took. By age 13 I was faking illnesses just to get out of Thursday and Sunday meetings. I stopped attending altogether at age 17 and headed to college, never really looking back. Though I never voluntarily disassociated myself*, I heard a DA announcement was made the year after I left. My family was basically glad to see me go and, apart from attending my father's funeral in 2002 (where I was taken aside and reminded by the elder who announced my DA not to have anything else to do with my family), I didn't see a family member or another Witness for the last 20 years.
Last year, my younger brother and sister - still JW's, and married to the same - contacted me on Facebook out of the blue. I was confused by this, but of course welcomed them. Over the last few months, we've avoided talking about religion and used Facebook every once in a while to chat about sports and kids.
So, flash forward to yesterday. The screenshots of the WT article made me hurt. I did a bad, bad thing and posted it, saying how seeing those passages destroyed me. I mentioned that I could never embrace a faith that celebrated tearing apart families. I said I found the article repugnant, unloving and in its truest sense, un-Christian.
Little brother says, simply, that I wasn't DF'd, implying that it's OK to email me or chat with me because I was never baptized.
So why have I been shunned for the last 25 years?
I guess I need to use my phone-a-friend here and ask you folks: what's going on here? Can someone help me understand how to put all of these events together from a Witness point of view? I confess I didn't pay that much attention while I was running like hell for the door all those years ago.
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* "I faded before it went mainstream."
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For anyone unsure as to whether JW's are a cult..please read...
by lostinnj83 inif the informaiton i am posting is redundant or has been posted, please forgive me.. i know we are all at different stages of this journey.
for me i am still "in" but working towards being out and leaving.
any one in this position or who has been here knows how diffucult of a time this can be.
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Suraj Khan
And it's not even the CRAZIEST one. Can't the GB do anything right?
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Since You Were In A Cult Do You Consider Yourself Still Dysfunctional?
by minimus inyes, i said "still"..
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Suraj Khan
Even though I left the faith de facto many years ago, relationships and trust for me have been especially difficult for me. Having had my own thoughts and feelings denigrated or held valueless for so long as a child, it is difficult to assert my own feelings or have a healthy self-worth even today. I also fell into the trap of needing to belong to someone after my family shunned me. It took a failed early marriage to cure me of that sentiment.
After starting in field service at five years of age and seeing one hostile reaction after another, I still have problems approaching people. I do not do well among strangers. Being judged crushes me.
So, in short: Absolutely.
