hello to all, so i did want to talk about this topic because i think it is very important to me.
i have a grandfather who faded several decades ago.
he occasionally attends an assembly and the memorial but no longer attends meetings or goes on field service.
With Fading you get the best of both worlds if you want it and the satisfaction of knowing that you are controlling the situation and are befuddling their little power plays .
With Disassocating, you get to have your say and go down in a blaze of glory which would probably feel good, be more impressive and dramatic but I'm not a big fan of "burning bridges" unnecessarily. It's good to have options in life and be able to pick and choose your next move rather than have them cut off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wktxjuyiat4.
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Back in the 70's a friend of mine's Mom was "of the Annointed" and as insensitive teenage boys will do, we used to ask him if his Mom's favorite song was " Stairway to Heaven".
We'd alternate between that and Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heavens Door" LOL !
He took it pretty well but he was also the guy I've mentioned here before that used to give his Theocratic Ministry School talks "high" on Mescaline.
the governing body of jehovah's witnesses, known for its aggressive worldwide proselytizing efforts, stunned many of its 12-million members by declaring war this week on a los angeles denim and designer jeans organization that goes by the name “true religion.”.
“as members of jehovah's one true religious faith we have no business of associating with any organization that claims to be jehovah's true religion!” a letter from the gb states.
it was dated july 20.. in its opening salvo, the seven-member gb directed believers to not “shop at, buy, nor even wear” true religion's products.
i'm sure i am not the only one to have heard this come out of the mouths of my loved ones.
it's a very painful thing to hear, especially when it comes from the people like your own parents/family.
even after i've been told that, they would say "we'll just continue life without you.
"You're going to die at Armageddon"
Would you be one of Jehovah's Witnesses if there were no such thing as everlasting life? Because it sounds as if you don't actually "love" Jehovah....it's more about your fear of him killing you and what you're going to get from him and you're trying to put all of that, over on me as well.
i'm sure i am not the only one to have heard this come out of the mouths of my loved ones.
it's a very painful thing to hear, especially when it comes from the people like your own parents/family.
even after i've been told that, they would say "we'll just continue life without you.
JW: "We'll you're going to die at Armageddon."
Me: "Yep...Little old ladies, babies and me will receive the same punishment as violent rapists, mass murders, arsonists, bank robbers and child molesters. Adolph Hitler and Ted Bundy might be resurrected but not me....I'll be tossed into the lake of fire because after 40 years of service, I stopped selling Watchtowers.
But Just suppose there is such a thing as "the new system" and you do see me walking down the street one fine day. Are you going to be pissed off that a heathen like me made it or will you be happy to see me, and humbly welcome me with open arms and apologize for having condemned me to death?
we all know the rate of suicide is high among jw's.
my question is this- was there some subliminal messages that encourage this.
i was a born in and my entire life i would have these thoughts that could come out of nowhere,"kill yourself.
I think that JW children have an underlying sense/fear that they can never live up to (or don't want to live up to) the standards they've been taught that God requires for them to be spared the impending destruction that is always looming over their heads.
Telling children that the world is going to end in destruction is a form of child abuse, because they are black and white thinkers and don't have the psychological coping skills to cope with the idea of world destruction. Some children may conclude that the only way for them to avoid the future doom, is to die now. Over time, this underlying conclusion may become a habitual and automatic thought that runs through their subconscious minds during times of high stress.
There are therapies designed to help individuals retrain or gain control over their subconscious thoughts and identify them as they happen. These thoughts may eventually go away entirely but sometimes they come back during stressful times in ones life. Having the ability to identify them as they occur and replace them with positive thoughts, is key.
hey everyone.
i don't post here often, but i lurk pretty much everyday.
i just created the following infographic based on the recent yearbook stats.
Wow....the numbers are very telling but of course JW's will put the decrease in number, down to the fact that the preaching work is nearing the end and only "sheep like ones" in developing nations are remaining. However, to say that is also to say that it is a foregone conclusion on their part, that young ones and newborn children in western lands, won't ever accept "the truth".
(I've reposted the Graphic in a smaller form because for some, the original version may have been too large to see.)
i suppose after lurking around for a few weeks i thought i might share my own personal story, as i think it would probably be a very freeing experience for me right now.
to start off, at 23 years old i'm actually a third-generation jw, my grandparents were baptized (my grandfather is actually an elder) when my mother was only a toddler, she was raised as a witness, then of course, married a witness and thus myself and my two brothers were born-in's.
growing up my mother was always very careful about what she taught me, all the good things for sure, about how we would live in a paradise earth and i could pet all the animals that i wanted and not worry about growing old, and she'd ask me who in the bible i'd love to see and talk with - my grandparents however, were a different story and the cause of i think, most of my childhood trauma.. they really drilled home the fact that we were the only people who were going to be saved, we were the only people that were going to survive and that everyone else was going to die horribly - that i shouldn't try to make that many friends in school because they would never be "real" friends unless they were fellow jw's and they would die anyway.
Welcome...
I was a fellow Watchtower kid with PTSD until I got informed about the religion. A lifetime of anxiety disappeared in a matter of weeks once I knew the whole story.
One of the things I always wondered about as a kid was the flood and the dinosaurs and why God had to kill most all of the animals on the earth just to get rid of the comparatively few humans that populated the earth at the time.
I also wondered why he used angels to kill off the Egyptian first born babies but kept having the Israelites form an army to kill off the Canaanites and other battles. Why not use a few angels to do the Job?
Anyway, once you've come to fully understand the JW region and it's history and understand how cults and cult like religions use F.O.G. (fear obligation guilt) to control you, you'll be well on your way toward freeing yourself of the needless anxiety you've suffered and the anxious thinking you've had ingrained into you since childhood.
another reason to stop social isolation..
I think if a person was a lifelong JW and found him or herself in the position of being shunned, they could very well succumb to the kind of loneliness and isolation that could trigger depression and depending upon their age, even send them into early onset dementia.
Life long JW's often don't have the skills or courage to go out and make new friends. On top of that, they may actually still believe that worldly people are all evil and the world is going to end any minute. They may believe they deserve to be punished and often their self worth is at a low ebb just when they need it the most.
if the end is oh-so-very-near why the exhortation rammed home during the convention to "don't give up.
if humankind is poised right on the knife edge of the end, the sense of urgency in the organization would be breathtakingly palpable.
urgency?
To say "Don't Give Up" is to say that people are indeed giving up, and it's happening to the extent that we have to build an entire assembly theme around it.
