No jokes about the homeless please. Some of us were there once. Over here they like to sit in front of banks ( no doubt hoping someone gives them a donation) or out in the middle of nowhere. They know that people coming out of the bank don't have time to stop and talk about the bible. There's a farmer's market that has loads of people coming and going and you never see the joho's set up their carts over there. Just a bunch of pharisees.
newsheep
JoinedPosts by newsheep
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One simple photo to sum up the heartless and hypocritical attitudes of many Jehovah's Witnesses
by nicolaou in.
this was taken in london yesterday by a twitter user still managing his fade so i can't be more specific than that.
disgusting.
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Legal Fundraiser to 'sue' individuals JW's (ie. elders) for defamation
by Nathan R. Koppe inremoved.
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newsheep
When Grace (Mouthy) was alive and on here she had someone try to ask her for money. She would give whatever she could give even though she had nothing. There should be no asking for money here as far as I am concerned. Some here are in a vulnerable state as it is.
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Again, thank you Amber Scorah
by newsheep inthis week alone this lovely person has been on bbc, late night comedy show, and now i read about her in toronto's globe and mail log inadchoices.
opinion.
i was raised a jehovah’s witness.
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newsheep
This week alone this lovely person has been on BBC, late night comedy show, and now I read about her in Toronto's Globe and MailOPINIONI was raised a Jehovah’s Witness. When I left the faith, my family and community shunned me
ILLUSTRATION BY KATHERINE LAM
Amber Scorah is a Canadian writer living in New York. She is the author of Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life.
My mother has no idea where I am, whether I am alive, or sick, or sad, or happy. My daughter has never met her aunt or her cousins. My best friends feel I have betrayed them – a Satan, of sorts. This is because I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. I was baptized into the faith at 14, and later, as an adult, did not believe it was “the Truth” anymore.
When I pleaded with my sister after I left the religion, vainly trying to help her see, through her indoctrination, that we could still be family – that I was no different than the sister she had always had, minus a few beliefs – she pointed out, curtly, “The position you are in is because you have put yourself there, not me.”
How could this be, when I was the one who was begging for the relationship?
It is because I have been shunned. I left, I was no longer able to believe and I am now “apostate.” Apostates in my religion are referred to with the following descriptors: mentally diseased, depraved, a dog that has returned to its own vomit, lower than a snake, poisoned, like gangrene that needs to be amputated.
In reality, I am the same person they loved, spent time with, enjoyed, argued with, laughed with – minus the belief. I have my mental faculties, I don’t sin much more than the odd curse word, I am a mom with a pretty regular life. Really, I am not much different than the person they knew before. When you leave a cult, you shed its belief system and, if anything, you are more yourself than ever. Maybe that’s the problem.
These are good people. These are people who love me. I know that they do. But if they saw me, they’d cross the street to avoid me. Nobel prize winner Steven Weinberg once said that “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.”
At the age of 30, I was still a believer and had moved to Shanghai to be a missionary, what we called a “pioneer,” because the world had not yet ended, as had been predicted by our leaders, and it was incumbent on me to preach, to save these people in a country where my religion was illegal, and therefore largely unknown.
It was in China, preaching underground, that I began to suspect I had been brainwashed. My indoctrination had happened slowly over a childhood interspersed with terrors of the violent end of the world I heard about at our meetings in the Kingdom Hall. I learned there that the world was evil, and that our religion was where you stayed safe. I heard this, year in and year out, from my parents, at three meetings a week, in a Bible study with a sister in the congregation and from the books they sent home with us – children’s Bible story books that had both pictures of children in paradise cuddling with a lion, and pictures of children dying at Armageddon, depending on which page you opened to.
In the fifties, a psychiatrist named Robert Jay Lifton began interviewing Chinese people who had fled their homeland after being subjected to indoctrination in Chinese universities. After extensive interviews over a year, Dr. Lifton identified the tactics the Chinese used to brainwash people. Years after I left the religion, I found the list. Each and every item on the list was something the Jehovah’s Witnesses used to keep people in.
Had I seen parallels between my own authoritarian organization and the one I was living under? I might have, subconsciously. After all, it was in China that I woke up. But when you are indoctrinated, it takes a lot to get to a place where you admit things to yourself. Because admitting you were wrong means realizing your whole life has been a waste. It means being thrown out into a world you don’t know how to live in.
Most of us have heard of the five stages of grief. There are also stages of shunning, because it, too, is a death of sorts. I am dead to the people who used to know me, although some people find it easier to forget about someone they love than others. And although all of us who were raised in this religion know what the end result of this has to be – after all, others have dropped by the wayside before – some find it easier to discard me than others. Shunning is a messy, bitter process.
After my apostasy, some friends proclaimed their ostracization. In the case of one of my closest friends, it was her husband who called me, his voice tight with anger, haughty with the unacknowledged pleasure of speaking to someone who was now low, telling me his wife would no longer see me. I was surprised it was he who called, not my friend, but in our religion the men often did the speaking for the women. Plus, she was always the kind one.
One or two of the people I loved, people I had grown up with and spent much of my life with, broke the rules and talked to me, for a while. But after some time, that became untenable, both for them and for me.
The truth with this kind of shunning is that at its core is indoctrination. It’s very hard to be yourself around someone who is indoctrinated, especially when you have muscle memory for that particular flavour of belief. You know what is taboo to discuss, or be, or think, so you must police who you are, even though you’re no longer in the religion that requires it.
One couple became more attracted to me after my apostasy became clear, and secretly invited me to their home for dinners (a terrible thing for them to do, as even eating with a person like me was a sin) in the hopes of saving me yet. I learned, over our forbidden shared food, that they, too, had had doubts about the religion, at some point along the way, but had pushed them aside.
“Stay in,” they said. “You can still go to the elders and repent. Being in the truth is still the best way of living, and even if it’s not all true, surely it’s closer to true than anything else.”
They had been reduced to hedging their bets. And no wonder, since leaving was unbearable in many ways. We lost our identities, our history, our families. And beyond that, we who had been raised in this belief system did not recognize that we were more than what we believed. Without the belief, there was only oblivion. And now, my apostasy was like a door opened, and they were bargaining with me, because my leaving threatened the life they thought they had made their peace with.
And finally, one day, they, too, stopped calling, because for me, pretending was impossible. The only means of staying in would be to hide the fact that I didn’t believe in it any more.
Most of the rest of the people in my life just disappeared, overnight. A few spoke badly of me, trying to obliterate me, the person I was, the purpose of which was to make me into the Satan they were taught I was, to justify their hatred.
This hatred, of course, was called love by those who taught us. Over and over, we learned in our Watchtower magazines and at our meetings, this process of shunning people was in fact an act of love. Surely, if we were kind to those who sinned, or no longer believed, the sinner would never wake up and see the wrongs of their ways, would never repent and return to the group. And thus, when we shunned, our minds told us we were performing an act of love, even if our hearts knew different. We were trained to ignore internal dilemmas such as this.
What kind of shunner would I have been? I know what kind, because I, too, used to shun. I shunned people who committed sins, and whose names were announced from the meeting platform as “disfellowshipped.” I shunned a man named Dale, who was disfellowshipped for being gay and was later found hanging from a noose in the forests of a university campus nearby, an area that was part of our preaching territory, the place we drove around all day, trying to save lives. He didn’t hang himself at home, because no one would have found him there – no one was allowed to go to his house. In our religion’s no man’s land, he ceased to exist.
I felt bad when this happened, but our community needed us to hold up the scaffolding of this world we were a part of, as our parents before us had, and our grandparents before that, and we had a responsibility to pretend that Dale hanging himself in the woods near the University of British Columbia was something sad but acceptable. After the meeting at which his death was announced, much like his disfellowshipping had been months before, we all went for coffee and talked about Dale, then we went home and numbed our feelings, to forget about him, and live with ourselves.
ILLUSTRATION BY KATHERINE LAM
Now I am on the other side, the shunned.
Interestingly, my mother, who shuns me, is not even an active Jehovah’s Witness herself any more. But she, too, does not speak to me. When shunning is taught to you as a means of dealing with conflict, it becomes an easy out.
Because shunning really is a way to protect yourself. It’s mandated by my old religion for that very reason: so that the gangrene does not spread. We shun because it’s too painful to not. It’s easier to cut someone out than it is to feel challenged by their unbelief. To feel judged by their rejection of your life course. To face the fact that there is a divide between you and someone you love that is too great to conquer. To face the humiliation that you may be wrong. To discover that your whole life was wasted on something that isn’t true.
Ironically, like my mother, I, too, have a lost child, except that my child was lost through death. The loss of a child is intergenerational: my son will never have children, descendants. I will never have grandchildren from him in my life. The loss of my mother’s child – me – is the same, in a way. I do not have a mother. My daughter does not have a grandmother. Her great-grandmother does not want to meet her, nor see me one last time before she dies.
I wonder, sometimes: Does my mother’s loss of her child feel to her different than mine? My child, unlike my mother’s, is dead. Unlike my son, I am alive. I would give, quite honestly, anything to be able to hold him even once again. I don’t have a choice.
Do the brainwashed have any more of a choice? I’m not sure.
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Subliminal Messaging
by truthlover123 infor over 20 years subliminal pictures showed up in most books, wt, and awakes- eighties, nineties and into 2000's.... demons, gods, you name it-- .
question: is anyone seeing anything like this in todays publications?
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newsheep
All I see is a wienie roast on the left side of the picture above
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Brand New Shoes
by APieceOfShitNamedTate ini'm debuting these at the meeting sunday.
all the other brothers will be jealous of me, and all of the sisters will want to date me with a view to marriage.
don't try to talk me out of it.
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newsheep
I'm with Stan on this one. You will probably stumble yourself and then they'll have to call the tow(toe) truck. I won't believe you will do this so post some pics please of you in the hall wearing these. Have fun!
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Amber Scorah is on the Daily Show tonight.
by I quit! injust wanted to let everyone know that ex-jw amber scorch is on the daily show on comedy central tonight.
it should very good.
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newsheep
We got into our truck and turned on BBC and they were interviewing Amber there as well. So happy when I hear people fighting back in the media. FU Watchtower!!!! -
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Religious offshoots / breakaway groups from Jehovah`s Witnesses around the world.?
by smiddy3 ini believe there are some breakaway groups in different parts of the world ,however i think they are small sects and fall under the radar so to speak.
either jw`s or ibsa ?.
does anybody here know of any and have any information about them ?
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newsheep
Friends of ours wanted us to see what they were involved with so we went. We found there were ex jws, ex adventists and ex penticostals in this group. They all come together but bring a little of their old beliefs with them. Only thing in common is they now all keep the law. They call themselves messianic hebrew roots but when asked what the name of their religion is they say they are torah keepers. I don't ask too many questions because I feel I am upsetting them sometimes when we discuss their new faith. They are such sweet people and so I don't dare rock the boat since they got df'd from the jws like we did and I just want to keep the friendship we once had since we have no family or kids.
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New York Times article by ex-JW Missionary Amber Scorah
by Room 215 inamber recently published a book about her ex-jw experiences in china.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/opinion/sunday/life-after-death.html?action=click&module=opinion&pgtype=homepage.
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newsheep
From my understanding when I was at bethel it was only brothers that could go to China due to it being under ban. The brother we knew was also not married and in his fifties.
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What’s So Good About Not Being A Jehovah’s Witness At This Point In Your Life?
by minimus infor me it’s freedom!
you are not bound by an organization’s man made rules and whims.
you don’t have to account to mere men for approval.
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newsheep
No more guilt and fear from imperfect men. Able to love all my animals whether domestic or in the wild. Able to read what ever I want since I'm the one that pays my internet and cable bills. The big one is being able to have my own free will and not constantly be told no no no your not allowed. How can god judge someone if their freewill has been taken away from them? To be able to make decisions for myself and not have to answer to a group of imperfect idiots who have major drinking problems (I for sure don't) and be able to help anyone in need and not just jw's who are trained to be bums and help only those of their same religion. To not be a burden on the welfare system while some are collecting it while out door to door getting paid. Minimus you touched a nerve with this question for sure but hope lurkers are reading this.
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Did your congregation ever throw special parties exclusively for Pioneers?
by Tenacious ini'm trying to remember if these parties were a direct instruction from hq or if this was something on a local level.. i remember i attended at least 2 of these parties and we also would bring them gifts.
i saw them no different than a bday party (elevating someone to idolatry level).. if anyone else remembers these parties please let me know.
if there's a letter out there somewhere from hq that would be even better.
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newsheep
In our case it was two huge pool parties (tons of booze and dinner) in the summer and a huge dinner in the fall. First couple of years the dinner would be at a restaurant buffet style then after that it was in homes. Hated those dinners. At least when they were in restaurants you could finish your meal and leave. In the homes is where the elders would get the publishers to dress in black and white and be our waiters/waitresses. It was right after that the next day we said we weren't pioneering anymore. Disgusting to say the least and embarrassed to have been a part of it.
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