I don't like to admit it now, being the fact that I ended up being disfellowshipped twice myself, but when I was young and I heard that someone in the congregation had been disfellowshipped, I was so mad at them, it was on the verge of hate. When I was a kid I just couldn't understand how anyone could go against Jehovah's righteous law. Strange how they could go from a person I liked that day to a person that I hated that evening after the service meeting when I didn't even have a clue what their offense was. I never felt sorry for the individual at all. I guess karma came and bit me in the ass, because I eventually understood exactly what being disfellowshipped felt like. I don't imagine everyone was sad when they heard a disfellowshipping, I know plenty that said they were mad. Of couse most that say that were pretty young at the time.
Descender
JoinedPosts by Descender
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12
How Did You Feel When.......
by rocketman in.
.......it was announced to the congregation that someone was df'd or reproved?
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26
What Happened To All Your Friends???
by minimus into become a witness, you must leave everything behind and associate only with jw's.
did you think that you really were going to only associate with jehovah's witnesses and no one else???
---------- after you left or got df'd, did you regain your past "worldly" friendships or were they forever lost?
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Descender
I grew up as a witness and I basically had no friends outside the organization while growing up. After high school, I became a witness social bug and made many witness friends. As a witness I was always doing something with my friends, going canoing, wakeboarding on the lake, going to witness parties around the area, and I usually did something with my local witness friends every night of the week.
I had witness friends from all over the US because I travelled alot, and I always had people calling asking if I wanted to go out and do something and to book a date for a ski trip or a party. I thought it was great because I'd been a loner in High School where I didn't seem to fit in with anybody and then I had gotten out and become popular in the JW scheme of things.
Then I got disfellowshipped and it all ended. It was really hard to go from all those friends one week and always doing something every night to no friends at all. I had no worldly friends to fall back on so I tried hard to be a good witness and follow all the rules of being disfellowshipped and I was back within 6 months. My friends were all still there, but some of them had started having some doubts because of the way I'd been disfellowshipped. It was as if the elders were trying to make an example of me so others wouldn't follow my path.
A few of my better friends drifted out and like a good witness (ie. idiot) I didn't really talk to them much anymore. Those were the friends that had been the ones I hung out with every night. Things just weren't the same. There weren't any of those on the fence friends anymore, they were either signing up to pioneer or and reaching to be ministerial servants or they were fading away. It just wasn't as fun as it was before. I ended up getting disfellowshipped again and lived with a witness girl that had fallen out and got married to her. She was the only friend I had for years.
During my second stint of being disfellowshipped I read Franz' book "Crisis of Conscience" and that kickstarted my doubts. My wife said that we needed to come back and finally we did and we were both reinstated. Things had changed, all my old friends that were still dubs still ignored me as if I was df'd and people just didn't seem as friendly. The only thing we gained from being reinstated was being able to openly associate with our witness families. We felt no love from the witnesses any longer. When it was announced that I was reinstated the first time, people cried and hugged me and shook my hand in droves, I got letters and phone calls of congratulation. But the second time I was reinstated, I got maybe 2 handshakes and the majority didn't seem to notice that we weren't disfellowshipped any more.
Anyways, we both drifted out last year after the DC and haven't been back since. The only friends I have at the moment are my wife and my family. I do kind of miss having friends sometimes, but I think it's better having no friends than being a JW now that I know the Truth about the "truth".
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What Television Show Was Your All-Time Favorite?
by minimus ina couple of my favorites are taxi and now the soprano's.
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Descender
I haven't watched much TV over the past few years, been spending alot of time researching JW history and playing alot of an online game called Everquest, I'm an addict for that game. But I just recently started watching a new show called "Scrubs" that comes on Thursday nights. I have to say it is the funniest show I've seen in years, right there with my other favorite, "Frazier".
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JW's in the cinema
by berten inthere is this funny anecdote i remember from my jw days that i would like to tell:.
in the mid seventies there was a french movie released over here about .
the story of david & goliath,and some jw's of our congregation wanted to see it.. now this movie of which i forgot the title was nothing special but as is usual .
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Descender
While I was in my mid teens I went to see my first "R" rated movie, "The Last Boy Scout" with one of my witness friends. Right before the movie, we came out to get some drinks and popcorn and low and behold, there was an elder standing right beside the door as we came out. At first I thought it was a cardboard cut out for an upcoming movie, he was just standing there so still with his arms crossed. I shook his hand with a sinking feeling in my gut. He was there with his wife and kids, so he didn't make a scene of it there, but the next time I saw him at the meeting I got pulled into the back room. He said I'm going to give you the benifit of the doubt, I saw you go into an "R" rated movie the other night, maybe you were just saying hi to some poeple you knew? I said "maybe not" and left it at that. He talked to me about it a bit, but I was already on restrictions for having had a girlfriend at the age of 15, which didn't go over very well either, so I just got another tongue lashing.
My brother who is still a witness tells me that walking out of the theatre if they deem something questionable is the popular thing to do. He told me that some girls that he knew had recently walked out of "Anger Management" because it was hurting their conscience. I imagine it's kind of funny seeing some young witnesses just sitting on benches outside the theatre for a few hours waiting for their friends with consciences that weren't so puny.
Some of my relatives, who had read the Harry Potter books got called into the back room before the movie was about to come out and told directly that it would be best that they did not go see the movie for fear it would stumble some of the brothers. I took my brother to Lord of the Rings when it came out and I asked why his witness girlfriend couldn't come with him. He said that watching Lord of the Rings was frowned upon, so he didn't want alot of witnesses to know about him seeing it. Just a few of the things that added to the final straw that broke the camel's back for me.
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Anyone been wiretapped, burglarized, otherwise spied on by elders/wbts?
by avishai ini want to know what criminal extent they have gone to to "get" you.
i know of them spying, shadowing, etc.
to get their way.
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Descender
One of my friends who hadn't gone to the meetings in 6 months was staying at her boyfriend's house one night and the elders got word of it from her mother and staked out the house all night long - she was 20 years old at the time. When she walked out of the house at 7:00am in the morning to head to work, there they were - 2 elders in their car drinking some coffee. They called her over to the car and said they were going to have to have a meeting with her. She quickly dis-associated herself.
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Witness memory
by Descender inhave any of you had a similar occurrence when you were a witness as this?
i was 18 years old and had taken a trip with my witness buddies to new york.
one of them had been drafted into bethel and we decided to go along to tour the place and visit new york and patterson.
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Descender
Well, that particular x-friend of mine is now a ministerial servant in the congregation I was in back then. I was disfellowshipped twice and everytime I saw him in public, he looked at me like I was dirt under his feet. At one point he thought he saw my in-laws walk into the same resturaunt that he'd seen my wife and I walk into. My wife and I were both disfellowshipped at the time and my in-laws were witnesses. He never saw us together mind you, but his conscience hurt him so bad that he had to run to his car and call an elder in the congregation and say that he'd seen us together, which he hadn't.
Anyway, I'm now reinstated once again and he was one of the main reasons, along with the non-loving climate and false doctrines I found out about, that I've faded from the JW religion. I saw him, his wife, and his sister at a movie awhile back when my wife and I were still attending meetings, and they sat right beside us because those were the only seats available and they didn't say a word to us, just gave us some really dirty looks, and we weren't df'd anymore at that time. Just kind of got on my nerves. This being the same friend that hung out with all of us back then, openly went to R-rated movies, rented X-rated movies and watched them with a group of JW girls, went to clubs, I even hung out with him and smoked some pot back in my bad rebellious JW years. I'm a better person now than I ever was back in those days when he was happy to be my friend. Some things don't make sense.
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Witness memory
by Descender inhave any of you had a similar occurrence when you were a witness as this?
i was 18 years old and had taken a trip with my witness buddies to new york.
one of them had been drafted into bethel and we decided to go along to tour the place and visit new york and patterson.
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Descender
Have any of you had a similar occurrence when you were a witness as this? I was 18 years old and had taken a trip with my witness buddies to New York. One of them had been drafted into Bethel and we decided to go along to tour the place and visit New York and Patterson. I was a good witness boy back then and I thought that all witnesses thought pretty much the same thing. I had grown up believing the earth had been here for billions of years and that dinosaurs were real creatures that one time roamed the earth. That’s what my mother had taught me.
Anyway, us witness boys decided to tour New York City and one of the places we went is the museum of natural history. I was busy reading one of the displays for one of the dinosaurs when I heard one of my witness friends beside me laughing. I asked him what was so funny, and he said: "this is ridiculous, they actually think this thing existed 30 million years ago." And I said, "well, how old do you think it is?" He said, " IF this thing actually did exist, then it can’t be any older than 6,000 years old because the earth wasn’t around before that, and it’s most likely just a conspiracy that scientist put together, they just make this stuff up." Hmmm, I’d never heard that before, but I didn’t argue with him, although I thought it was one of the stupidest comments I’d ever heard. Is this a witness teaching that I didn’t ever hear about through my 20 or so years being associated with the witnesses, or did he just come up with this on his own?
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Disfellowshipped
by Descender injust wondering, how many of you were a glutton for punishment and kept on going back and getting re-instated after succesive disfellowshippings?
i was disfellwshipped twice, the first time i was re-instated six months after and then six months later i was df'd again, then i came back in 4 years later and then a year later i faded away.
that's where i stand at the moment.
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Descender
Just wondering, how many of you were a glutton for punishment and kept on going back and getting re-instated after succesive disfellowshippings? I was disfellwshipped twice, the first time I was re-instated six months after and then six months later I was df'd again, then I came back in 4 years later and then a year later I faded away. That's where I stand at the moment. Personally, I only know of 2 others that were df'd twice, only one of them came back in twice though
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Question I haven't seen yet
by Descender inthis is my first post, i've been reading the board for a few months now and i must say it's rather addicting.
anyway, back to the topic of my post.
i was wondering how many, if any of you went out with a bang, like on a sunday morning meeting while you were giving a talk, or maybe while you were giving a #2 or #4 talk on the ministry school.
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Descender
By the way, anyone know why I can't see this thread under the friends forum, I had to go to members and then look up my name and then look under my posting history to see if I had any replies, is this normal? or am I doing something wrong.
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Question I haven't seen yet
by Descender inthis is my first post, i've been reading the board for a few months now and i must say it's rather addicting.
anyway, back to the topic of my post.
i was wondering how many, if any of you went out with a bang, like on a sunday morning meeting while you were giving a talk, or maybe while you were giving a #2 or #4 talk on the ministry school.
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Descender
This is my first post, I've been reading the board for a few months now and I must say it's rather addicting. I will tell more about myself in the future in another post if anyone wants to know, but I do kind of worry about giving out to much information for fear that someone who knows me will see it and then I'll get that call from the elders. I'm currently faded from the JW's, I was well known in my particular area and my story was well known as well. I've been disfellowshipped twice, re-instated twice, and now I've faded out and haven't attended a meeting since last year's district convention.
Anyway, back to the topic of my post. I was wondering how many, if any of you went out with a bang, like on a Sunday morning meeting while you were giving a talk, or maybe while you were giving a #2 or #4 talk on the ministry school. I thought it would be great if someone just got up in front and gave a run down of the history of the society that witnesses don't know about. I always like the experiences here, so I thought I'd start my own thread. Nice to be here, and thanks for the good read while I'm at work.