In all honesty, it was partly because the brothers were wondering why I wasn't baptized yet. But a lot of the reason for me, privately, was that I was hoping I would get more holy spirit to help me be a better Witness. I didn't want to keep leading a double life, so I basically "doubled down" -- I figured that dedicating myself to God would show him I was serious about trying to serve him and thus he would help me get over my bad habit. I was disappointed to find out that the grass was not greener on the other side. God still wouldn't answer my prayers no matter how much I cried out to him. Now I realize it was much ado about nothing. If God exists, he likely couldn't care less about the things that I was told displeased him.
Apognophos
JoinedPosts by Apognophos
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53
Why Did You Get Baptised
by God_Delusion inhi guys,.
so then, why did you get dunked?
were you pressured into it too, or did you do it because you honestly thought it was the right thing to do?.
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my worst fears were realized
by magotan inim on my phone, so im really limited.
i came out to my family about my doubts and my sexuality.
shit hit the fan.
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Apognophos
It depends how you feel about your family relationship. Anything you say to the elders will of course be conveyed to your family, so if you push too hard against the religion, it may make it harder for your mother to continue talking to you. I think it's better to play the victim here (in terms of just saying that you have to live this way and you're sorry you can't meet their standards). That way your mother will continue to feel that you haven't "gone apostate"; that you're really just a "victim" of being born the way you are and therefore unable to fit in as a Witness.
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Watchtower fail Two older sisters find dating site on line
by solomon intwo of the older sisters in our hall both widows were looking on line for the jw.org site and were talking at the hall about how they have a jw singles.
meetup site on the jw.org web site.
they obviously were on the wrong site but didn't know the difference.
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Apognophos
If they did that, they'd lose their ability to keep the congregations in line. Don't COs sometimes end up replacing whole elder bodies? The Society doesn't want congregations breaking away and forming splinter groups.
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Are homosexuals born that way? The March 15 Watchtower seems to say so.
by matt2414 in15 one brother who was raised in a christian household wrote that for as long as he could remember, he struggled with homosexual tendencies.
he said: i always felt awkward.
it seemed that i didnt fit in anywhere.
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Apognophos
Hmm, I'm probably not as old, er, old-school as you :-) But it still doesn't seem that progressive to me. The Society has long said that gay feelings are not a sin, only acting on them is. That's about as helpful as saying that sexual feelings are not a sin but masturbation is. You're still screwed if that's your inclination.
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Watchtower fail Two older sisters find dating site on line
by solomon intwo of the older sisters in our hall both widows were looking on line for the jw.org site and were talking at the hall about how they have a jw singles.
meetup site on the jw.org web site.
they obviously were on the wrong site but didn't know the difference.
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Apognophos
Hilarious. One possible down side to this is if the Society takes it upon themselves to have Service Meeting parts about "How the Internet works" so they can tell the friends the difference between typing "jw" in Google and typing a URL in the address bar, as well as to explain that not all sites with "jw" in their name are run by the Society. They might be run by the !
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Are homosexuals born that way? The March 15 Watchtower seems to say so.
by matt2414 in15 one brother who was raised in a christian household wrote that for as long as he could remember, he struggled with homosexual tendencies.
he said: i always felt awkward.
it seemed that i didnt fit in anywhere.
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Apognophos
I agree with Open mind -- the Watchtower isn't necessarily being progressive here; even if they acknowledge that homosexuality is innate, they can simply make the comparison to other in-born "sinful" tendencies that people have.
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The Bible and Masturbation...4000 years of inspired input and no scriptures about it ?
by smiddy inmy philosophy when i was a teenager :"those who admit to it are stupid ,those who deny it are liars" that was my response to peers who posed such a subject when i was a teen .now, being a mature aged person i think this subject could do with a bit more enlightened content.. i am a male so i can`t speak for the females ,who, i hope will give their input on this topic for discussion.and i mean it as a serious discussion.. males experience erections from the time they are babies and the natural thing to do is to hold it , and before you know it fondling it gives you releif.. society doesnt help by making you feel guilty and like shit as a dirty person.why in the world do babes ,young children ,young boys get erections before they even know what it`s function is for.
if a god designed sex for procreation then surely this wouldnt become an issue until they reached the age of puberty ,not when a male is still a baby.. and getting back to my op nowhere in the bible does it talk about masturbation which surely has been going on since adam was a boy/man.. i`m sorry, but to deny that you would have to be a complete idiot ,imbecile ,fool ,or just brain dead.. so for 4000 years of inspired scriptures from god ,nothing is said about a condition that effects every man from his birth to his death .. makes you wonder doesn`t it ?.
smiddy.
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Apognophos
It's interesting that some people have pointed to the Bible account of Onan as a statement against masturbation, whereas it obviously refers to his practicing "withdrawal" to avoid impregnating his wife -- but the Witnesses, to my knowledge, have never used that account as a basis for their anti-masturbation stance. This leaves them with nothing concrete in the Bible to point to, so they can only make assertions that masturbation can be a gateway to more sinful thoughts/actions.
To be fair, most people today probably use porn as a masturbatory aid, and this can lead to more sexual thoughts because you are taking in lots of visual stimulation, and seeing things that you might otherwise not even have known existed! And the pleasure of viewing porn, like any pleasure, can be addictive. Whether masturbating leads to viewing porn, I don't know, but I think that for a young Witness, it's within the realm of possibility. He reasons with himself, "Well, I'm already sinning by touching it regularly, I might as well look at this arousing material while I'm sinning since I can't get any worse."
But if you look at the simple reality that it's nearly impossible not to have these urges, and that sooner or later one will give in to them... Witness youths are being set up for a world of hurt. I suppose the youths, like Heartofaboy's nephew, who don't take this teaching seriously, are the lucky ones. But as someone who was trying to earnestly be a good Witness and follow everything he was taught, this issue nearly made me kill myself. I can't forgive a two-faced teaching like this being imposed on naive kids like myself who didn't know that the people who wrote it probably did the 'dirty deed' too! I honestly thought that I was the only person I knew with this problem. I'm actually somewhat surprised that I'm even alive to talk about this. Thank God I moved past the guilt a long time ago.
P.S.: Like smiddy, I am genuinely curious to hear from some women on this (it doesn't need to be personal information, you can tell us what your female friends have told you). Was this a big problem for young sisters growing up? It's always seemed to me that it was more of a problem for guys... probably because the erections we experience lead to curiosity, and one thing leads to another.
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What is your strangest "supernatural" JW story?
by donny ini had just became a witness and a guy i worked with, who was also a jw, told me a story that actually made me laugh and i think it upset him a bit.
the storys were almost always in the third person.
it went as follows.. this brothers wife and him were sitting at the kingdom hall on the end seats of the row next to the back of the room.
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Apognophos
It saddens me to read these stories and think that to one degree or another these were the kind of superstitious people that I associated with, and I had some superstitions of my own! How was I ever not skeptical about all this?
On another note, someone really needs to obtain a copy of that old outline that talked about ectoplasm. I'm serious.
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A bit of a rant... the selfishness of older generations
by cedars ini was talking to mrs cedars earlier about one of the things that really frustrates me about our situation as "faders" - namely the fact that we are looked down on by our respective parents, not to mention other older generations of our family.
it strikes me that the incessant attempts to drag us back into unquestioned loyalty to the organization is actually extremely selfish, even though (in their minds) they have only our best interests at heart.. i think of it this way.
they made a decision when they were younger to follow in the footsteps of their own parents' faith - without doing objective research into the beliefs or history of the organization.
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Apognophos
I can't disagree with you, but one difference between your analogy and the reality is that they don't know they're doing this! It's an unconscious refusal to admit they could be wrong which leads them to insist that we validate their choice by making the same choice.
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Deluded Cult Speak By Jehovah's Witnesses
by BlindersOff1 inplease give any examples you've heard of jws verbalizing cognitive dissonance , delusional reasoning .
in other words crazy jw logic .like.
one jw mother recently told her son " even if you did have proof it wasn't the truth, i wouldn't want to read it".
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Apognophos
"We are the happiest people on Earth"
The amazing thing is that they actually believe that despite all the evidence, well I suppose that isn't amazing, they ignore all the evidence about everything they believe, but they only need to look around their own small circle of JW's to see it isn't true.
Yes, but JWs are conditioned to believe that everyone in the world is even worse off than they are! How the converts can believe this, I don't know. As a born-in with no "worldly" knowledge, it was easy for me to swallow this silly belief for a long time.