been reading this site for awhile now.
i have had a long and often tragic life as a jw.
my story is so long because i'm pretty old :) i feel sad i've been locked in fear and guilt for my entire life.
He kept saying 'there's something wrong with it'
Oh I remember that so well. We researched everything from iodine deficiency to inbreeding. 😏 Then found Crisis of Conscience in the library and realised it wasn't a local problem just in our crazy congregation. We were pioneers too, my husband an elder so I know about burnout. Take care of yourselves.
been reading this site for awhile now.
i have had a long and often tragic life as a jw.
my story is so long because i'm pretty old :) i feel sad i've been locked in fear and guilt for my entire life.
So glad you found your way here Pheobe. Glad you're enjoying reading whatever you want and that your husband is mentally free too.
this post may be disturbing and i apologize, but i'm just trying to find out if this is a practice the jw teaches.
i was taken advantage of by a guy claiming to be a jw preacher.
he took me to his house supposedly so i could give his daughter piano lessons, and then he basically forced himself on me while telling me he was in love with me and wanted to marry me.
Hello Sequoia, I'm sorry you went through this terrible experience. No JWs are not taught to do this but they are a cult that dangerously represses its members sexuality so that rape and child abuse is rife. Please don't get involved with them.
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/197364/ex-jw-uk?page=19&size=20
There you go midnight. I'm in Leicestershire. Good to see you're still here.
a month ago i decided to register in this board.
i had decided to step down pioneering but was frightened about the consequences.
i had finished my university degree some months before (despite disaproval from brothers in my congregation) and i had to choose: continue pioneering and working in jobs with no future or starting a career, working full-time.. i was thinking to postpone the decisiton but... i was fed up with preaching.
Congratulations on your degree and your new job. Very well done. If you want to stop being a MS use the depression as the reason. Don't exhaust yourself trying to work full time and work for that religion. When you get even more ill they won't help you, they'll just step over your body and call you spiritually sick. Take care of you.
i have often seen many categorise the organisation in different ways.
some say cult, some say high control religion.
cult or high control religion?.
It's what they do to people's minds that tells you it's a cult Unshacklethechains. My gentle sister who grew up loving animals and not hurting a fly leaving her sister and niece in grief to suffer alone.
So many stories on here of JWs rejecting their siblings, parents, their own children. You can't tell me this religion isn't a cult when it screws people's minds up so they are cruel and unable to show natural feelings anymore.
"traumatic as the initial transition may be, it can lead to the development of a truly personal relationship with these two greatest friends [the father and the son] .
.. "whatever sense of 'belonging' that membership in some religious system may create, it can never compare with the power and beauty and strengthening benefit of the intimate personal relationship the scripture presents .
from reading joseph campbell i've come to understand that there are functions to religion or mythology.
When evidence for reality hits you between the eyes you have the choice to accept it or reject it and go on believing fantasy, these are the only choices.
in conversation with an old jw friend today, it struck me that most jws have replaced their personal conscience with a collective one.. instead of training their own mental powers to distinguish right from wrong, as the bible encourages, they are content to shift personal accountability away from themselves and onto the impersonal org.
whatever behaviour may prompt an ordinary person to have serious misgivings ( such as ignoring glaring misapplication of scripture or rejecting basic human decency in favour of unchristian shunning ) they prefer to have those decisions made for them.. history teaches us, however, that there is no absolution for people who behave unethically or cruelly by allowing the excuse of 'obeying orders' to override what their inner voice should scream is inherently wrong..
In conversation with an old JW friend today, it struck me that most JWs have replaced their personal conscience with a collective one.
This is so true and when you study history you realise that JWs have set their consciences back about five hundred years. In medieval times people used to have a collective conscience. They would hand relatives over to inquisitions to be tortured or drive women who helped cure people with herbs out of their villages - or burn them alive. When I studied the medieval period I got the distinct impression people thought in group minds almost like bees or ants. I guess it was driven by the stark need for sheer survival.
So yes we have a religion that wants to take away people's consciences and put them back to medieval thinking. Primary example is they do hand their loved ones over to be tortured in JCs. Then when the 'clergy' say now treat them as if they're dead they blindly obey.
"traumatic as the initial transition may be, it can lead to the development of a truly personal relationship with these two greatest friends [the father and the son] .
.. "whatever sense of 'belonging' that membership in some religious system may create, it can never compare with the power and beauty and strengthening benefit of the intimate personal relationship the scripture presents .
from reading joseph campbell i've come to understand that there are functions to religion or mythology.
Like I said I learned from studying Campbell that the path of Atheism and agnosticism means figuring life out on your own.
Yeah I love it, you should try it! Thinking is my main hobby! Then go online or read other's ideas in books and see how your thoughts compare. Very stimulating. You know the best thing? Authors won't shun me if I disagree with them, some will even let me email them!
Like no extra boost to certain insights, like rocky road.
No I listen to a lot of insights from others then I make up my own mind. I'm allowed to do that you see, I'm over eighteen.
now that im not longer a jw this verse puzzles me.
being born and raised a witness, this verse confirmed to me that jesus was talking about a paradise on earth.
but now that everything the witnesses taught is 99.99% incorrect can somone explain what he was getting at here?
Look at the context, Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven -Matt 5:3. Blessed are those persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven - Matt 5:10. Strongly suggests inheriting the earth as a possession as kings.
Having said that, who wrote it, who translated it, who decided this bit should go in the Bible canon and not be assigned as apocryphal, which verses in between were discarded etc etc.
