my lost new posting topic made me think of this question:.
if the wts was more normal, how many would have stayed?.
was it in fact the teachings that made you leave?
Very thought provoking. I feel I came away from the dubs with a few things. One of them was a severe distrust of all religion. It started withe the JW teaching that they are the one and only. Then when I no longer believed in the WTS dicta, I was left with the sense that no orgranized religion is for me.
I would have left anyway. No organized religion can avoid the shortcomings of the people it is made up of.
i'm a 24yr old non-witness who has been dating a 23yr old witness.
we met through a mutual friend.
when i met him i thought he was sweet and kind and the kind of guy i could see myself with for the rest of my life.
PurpleV's comments caught my as I read thru the replies. One item in particular: All love is conditional with these people. They use it like a mallet to hit each other over the head. Don't doubt it! That is exactly what happened after you met his witch of a mother. She talked to him later and made it clear that she (his mother dammit!!) would no longer be able to talk to him if he married a non-witness. Instead of standing up to her, (yes he stood up to here while you were there, but he caved under her vicious manipulation) he is now putting the pressure on you.
At 23 he is too young to know what he is doing. He has been sheltered and kept from normal growth. Keep reading at this site, or the Silent Lambs, or Freeminds, and you may get a flavor of how he was raised. You won't believe their barbaric beliefs as regards wifely submission, child discipline, and anything else you consider important.
Lets fast forward to 5 years from now - you have two kids, have been going to meetings, stuff like that. Then something goes wrong. He has a quickie with some sister he was trying to comfort thru a hard time (happens every day). He or she gets guilty and the matter comes before the elders. Guess what, he'll say you weren't giving it up at home. Believe this, they will consider that a partially mitigating circumstance. And check this out, they'll ask him why he did not take "his due" by force if necessary. That's how he's been raised.
I'm telling yah, you have enough red flags - take the early warning and consider yourself lucky.
at first, sorry for my bad english.. i found this forum in bbc when i was looking for something about jws because this sect became a big problem in my life 3 or 4 months ago.. last 4 years, it began on elementary and now it continues on high school, i was in love with one girl, but i didn't know much about her, because she was entering group b and i was entering group a in the school.
i wanted to know more about her so i didn't tell it her and long time i hoped that will be a situation when i will speak with her.
but this wasn't happened.
A witness girl is just not worth the effort. You will never have a relatioship with her. The most you will get is a relationship with her and her religion. They will insinuate themselves into your most basic life. You won't be having a conversaiotn with her, you'll be having a conversation with someeone who will go back and check to see if her reactions/answers were in 'harmony with book-this, chapter-that.'
Imagine how marginalized you'll feel when she tells you how the children are to be disciplined. How would you feel when you are all enthusiastic about a birthday, and then find that there will be no party - unless you sneak one in somehow.
She will expect her children to become JWs. If she thinks it will help encourage them, she will isolate them completely from 'worldly kids'. She'll get in the way of your children interacting with other relatives (non-JW).
But to answer your question, how she treats resistant children can vary. First off, if she hooked up with you, she's breaking some pretty basic rules. But even among the most avid, the answer still varies. But I have seen mothers disown their children. I've seen mothers manipulate a situation just so they can try to get the grandchildren into the coven. But I have seen devout mothers acting normally too - save the occasional 'when are you coming back?' question.
titus;.
[10] a man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject;.
[11] knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.. subverted, subverting, subverts .
Not necessarily wrong, I think. It seems there are enough people on this planet that seem to need the structure, something to see, hear, and obey. Somewhere they can go for assurance and guidance. Neither is there any shortage of people that want to do the assuring, and guiding. But I think it is a weakness nonetheless. Just because many/most people want/need it, doesn't mean God requires it.
I don't know where I got this, but I don't think I thought of it myself. But I equate the human urge for organized religion to the Israelite demands for a king. We don't need it, but if we must, it is there. But it comes with the overhead, the good with the bad. The good: buildings we can enter, people we can hear and who can hear us. The bad: they are peoplethat like to make rules, get in petty squabbles, and have selctive judgement as to when, where and how to deal with other.
One more boring point: I swear I think the bible is a test in and of itself. If you want to believe that the bible is god-given, then I think it was given to see what a mess we can make of it. How closely we we would scruitinize the trees and lose the forest. Building huge organizations as the guardians of the good book is the evidence we failed the test.
...with my mom!
a) grab his left arm tightly while my mom grabs his right arm, with me saying, "over my dead body!"?.
b) not even care, since i would like one evening without hearing, "mine!
Absolutely Not. Don't you folks remember watching some poor 2-yr-old, up way past bedtime, or hungry, or some other 2-yr-oldster's malady, getting carried back to the bathrooms for a bit of un-spared, child-saving rod? I'ld bet your mother would love to show off just how she can exercise discipline for which you, the non-dub, doesn't understand the need.
There is nothing there for a 2-yr-old. Maybe it is benign, just a grandmother wanting to show off a grandchild. But now way in hell would I let a child that could not speak or stand up for himself in that hell hole.
An older child I would handle differently.
If your mother wants to spend time with the child so badly, let her skip a head-nodding indoctrination session for one night.
for those that have entirely left, what was it that first got you seriously thinking that this really wasn't the truth?
for those that may be in just mentally, you can answer too....
But you asked about what First started me out the door. I would have to say knowledge and confidence. there was no way I was going into my adulthood being directed by these clowns. They purposely left off their own reasoning abilities so they would have room for the hook, line, and sinker that they were being fed.
That was the beginning.
for those that have entirely left, what was it that first got you seriously thinking that this really wasn't the truth?
for those that may be in just mentally, you can answer too....
I was pretty typical. I grew up listening to those clowns and had to thru more than a few inquisitions. I credit my dad with ensuring that I got to college (he was not a dub). I think the end was when my best friend found it necessary to report a private conversation we had. Like most best friends in their late teeens, we talked about all kinds of stuff, all the time. Anyway, my best friend, Vinnie, can't get his arms around my opinions on evolution and the longevity of man's existance on earth- being that it was now based on evidence, fact, and my own actual opinion. He just had to see if the elders could help.
Curiously, at least two of the three elders (I forget who the third one was) had college degrees. To this day, I can't bellieve the 16th century mindset of those idiots. Nope, 'this is how we interpret the bible, so that is what God means, and to disagree with us is to disagree with God.' I was to adopt their beliefs and that was that.
That was the end for me.
Epilogue (and I was suppoesd tio sit and be judged by these clowns?):
Brother Elder Jim P.: Had several sons, beautiful and devoted wife, and a college degree, was eventually caught taking his secretary on a business trip and sharing a room
Brother Elder Carl D.: He was the biggest know-it-all I ever met. This married elder was hired to install a bathroom by a JW family. While he was at it, he and the wife/mother of the house fell in love and left their own families.
i have a son who is in th 4th grade.
he is a "bigger boy"......his father is 6'2" and i am 5'10".
james is very tall for his age and is also slightly overweight.
Just about all boys go thru this at some point. But sometimes it goes beyond reason.
If there is one thing I could pull back from my youth was a period when just about all the boys in a class started picking on one boy in particular. To this day I don't know how he got thru eigth grade with us riding him so mercilessly. We became close friends in high school and that is when I learned what he did to stop it. His uncle, a body builder by hobby, grabbed him for the summer and took him to the gym. He lifted weights daily and took some form of martial arts training (I don't remember which art). When we all showed up for high school, one of the boys tried to start it up again. All it took was a firm grab by the shirt, a strong warning, and that was that - never to happen again. One thing is for sure, a bully does not want to take a chance on having to back up their bullying words and actions - thats why they are bullies, they want the weak.
How does that translate to a 4th-grader? Sounds a little early for free weights, but an earlier post suggested Tae Kwon Do. Anything that will get his physical strength and confidence up. But unless you absolutely must - stay out of direct interference. He will have to do this - and if you think it is rough now, just wait until he has to deal with boys that know he needs mommy to handle his fights.
i've been lurking about, checking out some of the evidence against the wtbs.
i am currently inactive but still an approved/baptized member.
i have seen all the 1914/607bce evidence; the blood transfusion quandry evidence; the current child abuse problem evidence and several other things that are damning to the wt doctrines.
You're already there - congratulations.
I would absolutley recomend the Franz and the Jonsson books. But I'll tell you what, when you read those, you may find yourself with a bit of a mental block, fearing that you are consorting with apostates. I found this particularly interesting: read some non-witness (and I don't mean anti-witness) bible commentary. Pick some of Paul's letters and sit and try to get ahold of why he was writing this letter. What was his overall import. It won't take long before you feel the difference from the JW jigsaw approach of a scripture snippet here as a lesser fullfillment of this part of a verse there. You're whole approach to the bible will change. You'll start to get a sense of mesasge to you from Christ and you'll shed the dictatorship of the WTBTS.
Somebody say amen ...
i have a friend who is studying with the jw's right now.
he's a very open minded guy and has been interested in hearing what i have to say on the matter.
he has seen the dateline show (i taped it for him) - and i've shown him some info about the history.
Dawn, I think your friend is already in the right direction. It won't be too difficult for you to stay with biblical doctrine. You have a great opportunity in that you can ask him to to insist that the Witnesses stick strictly to scripture. He will be unable to get them to limit their teaching to the bible alone. If he insists on just the bible, then he won't be able to go to any meetings, and he will drive the Witness he is dealing with absolutely nuts.
Yes, my favorite, because it is so localized is the 144000. They won't be able to even try to support it without going to other media - WT, and secular history. But press really hard, it is the basis of their two-class system. Be sure to have him get an explanation of how the recognized living remnant has only shrunk from about 10,000 to about 8,000 currently in the past thrity years - in spite of the fact that even in the early seventies, they were the elderly last-of-their generation. That number was sealed.
But on to new stuff. A brutally tough one for them is to support 1914 as the year Christ began his reign in heaven. Try that one without using non-scriptural resources. And don't let them back off from its relevance, or claim it is old history. It is the basis of their organization. It leads to God's selection of the JWs as their communication channel for the preaching work to the rest of the world. It is their base year used to start the generation that will not pass away before Armageddon. It is therefore their basis for the urgency and separation that defines them as a cult.
Have him insist that they start by supporting their own scriptural translation. Have him insist that they support the hundreds of uses of the name 'Jehovah' in the Greek scriptures when there is no such basis in the historical documents. Even when the early christians quoted Hebrew texts, the earliest writers did not carry forward the divine name, either as a Hebrew tetragrammedon or a Greek translation thereof. They will have an answer, claiming a first- and second-century satanic consipracy. And they will have some translations from the 1600's back to Hebrew to use as a support. But that is all bunk. This is important because is shows that they are misdirected in that they de-emphasize Christ as the mediator. That is how they left the door open to claim themselves to be the Faithful and Discreet Slave and act as the mediator on earth.
