i have been inactive for about 3-4 years they want to meet with me(sure took them a long time) i'm not to sure what angle to go with.
i definitively do not believe in the borg.
any more but not too sure about the bible( still searching ).
For me, personally, I see the best way of taking the power back is by short-circuiting their rules - the rule that says there needs to be a meeting...and the rule that says they have the authority to call you to it.
When they tell you they want to have a meeting tell them you see no reason for the meeting as they have no authority in the matter.
i am hoping someone here can offer some wisdom on how i can deal with my guilt.
when i was disfellowshipped a few years ago i acted like a maniac afterwards.
i did and said things to my then girlfriend and other witnesses that i truly regret.
I am failing at college, teaching and almost everything I try. I was good at being a witness once upon a time and happy once too. I need that happiness back.
Yeah, well, the grass is always greener over the septic tank. Just because you're remembering your time as a JW with some sort of rosy glow and forgetting how miserable you were at the last (which made you leave in the first place) doesn't mean going from the frying pan back into the fire is an improvement.
This is gonna sound harsh. So you failed at college and teaching (how are you teaching if you failed at college?). So do lots of people who were never JWs. Life is hard, nobody said it wasn't. People screw up. People fail sometimes even when they don't screw up. Plenty of people who have never even heard of JWs have hard lives, and no family. Everything you're going thru now is not going to be made easier just by returning to a screwed up religion and conditional relationships.
Trust me. EVERYBODY wants to just give up and 'ditch it' at one or more points in their lives. In fact, that's what leads plenty of people to become JWs in the first place. But that doesn't solve anything...it just gives you a whole crapload more to deal with (expectations, people's attitude about someone who was DF'd, superiority, meeting attendance, field service, pressure, pressure, pressure). You're not dealing with the pressures of real life well and you want to *add* the pressures of being a JW and that's going to be an improvement? How, exactly, does that work?
The only answer is to just live your life and do the best you can and deal with what gets dealt to you. If you're not happy now you're not going to be happy desperately trying to pretend that being a JW is a good thing and you really like it.
i am enjoying john mayer's "heavier things".....my boys keep me up to date!.
we had so many exceptional artist for those of us growing up in the 70's,...i am curious as to what you enjoy now?what are some of the latest artists you enjoy?.
any younger posters feel free to clue us in as to your favorites!.
Well, *at the moment* I'm watching CMT's Cross Country with John Anderson and Big & Rich. Which is awesome. But I love everything from Southern Rock to folk to bluegrass to Cajun to country to 70's Rock to Classical. Jagged Little Pill is a great album. I like about any well-done music. What kind mostly depends on my mood at the moment. I have the most eclectic taste in music of anyone I know.
He's probably still asking about what to do about being in love with a JW girl (and him being interested in joining). I suppose he's unhappy that more of the responses he's gotten here haven't been that positive. Sorry, dude, but you asked our opinion and we can't help it if experience has taught us it's a huge mistake. Making multiple threads on the same topic when the answers aren't good isn't really gonna change the responses.
i have been pondering a dilema.
it is one which has repeated itself many times over the years.
my parents have been helping me, and being very nice to me in the last couple of years.
Do what others have suggested. Dress business casual, show up just for his talk and leave right after, etc. But I'd also suggest making it clear to them beforehand that this is what you're doing and that they are not to construe your attendance as a hopeful sign (they will anyway). That way, after you go and they start pressuring you to come back even more (which they will) or that you will go to any of his future talks, you can just say, "No. I told you before I went that I wasn't coming back. I told you I was only going as a kind guesture. You've been kind to me this past year and I didn't want to hurt your feelings or be rude. I still don't, that's why I don't want to discuss this any further." Then don't.
My parents were never JWs but they belong to one of those fundamentalist megachurches (their pastor is on TV) and are always trying to get me and my brother to go with them. We won't but then neither of them have parts on the program so there's no "come see *me*" thing going on.
hi--3 times this weekend 2 elders came to my door asking for me by name (my kids answered the door).
apparently my jw sister notified the elders about the letter she received from me several months ago and gave them my new address.
my letter was very clear about how i felt about the watchtower society and i have not stepped foot in a kingdom hall in about 15 years, and the last 8 years of that was sporadic at best.. why should i talk to people i did not invite to my home, when i know they are coming to condemn me?
If you're worried about getting emotional or overreacting, just memorize a nice speech to give them before you calmly shut the door in their faces.
Something very short and sweet about how you no longer consider them having any authority over you or even a right to have an opinion about your current life and your choices, that they are nothing more than strangers who belong to a controlling and abusive religion which you left years ago, and you have no wish to have any more contact with them than you have had in the last 15 years, which is none. And that you have no more time to waste on them and this matter than it's taken you to say this, and if they persist in trying to contact you or members of your family in any way you will take legal action. Then shut the door and walk away.
Don't let them talk, and 30 seconds tops should do it.
If you want to be really thorough send a letter to that effect to their congregation and Brooklyn.
for those that became jws but weren't born in the cult, do you feel that before baptism the dubs withheld from you information that should have been revealed, things that if you were aware of you wouldn't become a jw in the first place, such as the heartless dfing policy.
perhaps focusing on the promise of paradise earth and eternal life makes us forget to search out possible negative issues and that's part of their trickery.
You mean like the fact that all their claims about being a 'clean' organization where wrongdoing was brought into the open and not tolerated were lies? How their claims to be different and better in rooting out misbehavior and outright evil than other religions were total crap? Their claims that those who knew of such wrongdoing were not abused and threatened into silence and browbeaten for "gossiping" were vile lies?
Yeah, I'd say they concealed that crucial bit of information, and continued to claim that "black was white" after I saw evidence to the contrary for years (still do, far as I know).
let's say you won a very large sum of money, say 10 million us dollars.
it would no doubt change your life but how would it affect your relationship?
are you in a relationship which has its financial advantages, or maybe do you cringe at the thought of semi ruination in the wake of a divorce?
our objective view of what is materially required for happiness is distorted. after all, it's happiness that we should be after, right?
I'm not talking about material requirements for happiness at all. In fact, I wasn't talking about happiness at all. I was talking about financial survival. Happiness doesn't enter into it.
*Happiness* isn't even a consideration when you're talking about you and your children having a roof over your heads in an area where it's fairly safe to go out the door without being attacked, robbed, killed or raped. Or the ability to go to a doctor when you are sick or otherwise in great need of medical care. Or the ability to see a dentist instead of having to superglue the pieces of your tooth back together or try to ignore the pain of a cavity.
All grand talk about materialism and consumerism aside, it takes money in this world and day and age to have even a modest standard of living that is not misery. Money to afford transportation to get to a job (even the bus isn't free). Money for basic shelter, food and medical care.
People who think that there are programs easily available for people who find themselves in desperate situations have almost universally never been in a desperate situation themselves. If they had, they would know it is not nearly that easily available.
let's say you won a very large sum of money, say 10 million us dollars.
it would no doubt change your life but how would it affect your relationship?
are you in a relationship which has its financial advantages, or maybe do you cringe at the thought of semi ruination in the wake of a divorce?
My interpretation of your question is not about how money "corrupts, shapes or enables us"...it's about how poverty affects our choices. Or, more appropriately, how poverty means you often have limited or no choices about things that greatly affect your life.
If you are staying together even though one or both of you is very unhappy, because you both make so little that you must pool your income in order to literally keep from being homeless, then I would hardly say that an influx of $10mil would corrupt anything.
Many women stay with cheating or otherwise abusive husbands because they fear desperate poverty (including loss of health insurance, which is rarely offered to lower income workers anymore) for themselves or, more often, their children (women and children's incomes almost universally plummet after divorce).
"Money doesn't buy happiness" is only one half of the equation. The other half is that poverty is likely to prevent choices that would be in our best interest for happiness and mental health.
People who focus on the "money as corrupting" angle have rarely felt the fear and desperation that comes with real poverty.
i wonder.
a very typcal witness may see the obvious negatives that jws know they have.
they might acknowledge that there's often a lack of love, that the elders can be demanding, that "new light" can change long cherished beliefs in an instant.......but still they cling on and resist any sort of intellectual discussion as to why the witnesses are off soooooo many times.....what gives??
I think its impossible to reach a devout JW on your own. They have to either 1) have serious doctrinal doubts that they have either developed on their own or have maybe read on the internet by themselves or 2) they have to experience the dark side of the borg either getting screwed by the elders or having a bad personal experience of some kind.
You took the words right out of my mouth. Until they have a *personal* reason to start seeing the holes in the bOrg armor, they're going to pretend they don't exist.
People can make themselves believe anything they want to believe bad enough. If they can ignore whatever doesn't fit with their fantasy, they can keep it up. but until something happens that they, personally, can't ignore, no amount of debate is going to change their mind. They will literally *refuse* to believe something they don't want to be true.
This is just as true of anything else in human life. That's why political discussions are pointless. Once someone decides who to believe, that's it, until they change their minds.
