by new boy 41 Replies latest jw experiences
We had an elder in our hall who had his kidneys fail and I just assumed I was going to a funeral real quick. I didn't think kidney dialysis was premitted. ( the act of removing the blood from the body and cleaning it and injecting it back.).
Yet we are not allowed to store our own blood for surgery .
When we moved congregations because we thought it was all a local problem and the letter came through not recommending my husband to continue being an elder. The only thing they could think of to put in the letter was some brothers and sisters say he's not always very friendly. It's true we were both really depressed because we knew something was very wrong with 'The Truth', but how is being depressed a sin?
So when members of the new congregation saw he wasn't appointed because they took his book study group away they assumed he had committed a sin and started shunning us right inside the KH.
We were desolated because people were so cruel and we hadn't done anything. I remember saying to an elder in the previous congregation that I'd given up hoping for people to show me any love I just wanted people to leave me alone and stop saying hurtful things as I had clinical depression. Now it was all starting again.
I think that was probably our turning point. No internet back then but we went to the library and looked for answers in the religious section not having a clue what we were looking for. Just like people go online now out of desperation and find this forum or JWfacts we found Crisis of Conscience. We would never have looked at nonJW religious books but we had been pushed beyond endurance.
There was a lead up to the one defining moment. About three or four years before I left I was discussing with one of my closest JW friends and we agreed that there was no proper evidence for anything which the org taught. All of it was asserted without evidence!
Later I spoke to a local and elderly bro who by his age was one who naturally took the emblems at the memorial. In fact he had been a secretary for Rutherford in the late 1920s but by now (late 1980s) was regarded as an eccentric oddity. A single man who gave his life to the org and could have done with some help but JW charity hardly came his way. Nevertheless I informed him of my doubts and he, obviously taking his own counsel which was skeptical of the Watchtower, suggested, confidentially that I take my own.
I had started to read philosophy; Pascal, Nietzsche and the deist Kierkegaard. I had as a pioneer never believed in a literal devil and reading Kierkegaard on Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac was the defining moment. Early one sunny afternoon standing by the window in my office at home, I realised that God too was a fabrication of the human imagination.
If a voice from God told me to sacrifice my son I would not and could not do it. God is a psychopath and the bible is full of psychopaths! It’s a work of deranged and totally human thinking. Goodbye God and the Bible!
I went to the meeting and
squirmed in my seat as I saw the brothers haplessly parroting the praises of the GB and "God’s
organisation", so blind, so indoctrinated, unthinking, misled. I could endure it no longer and had to leave
during the meeting... perhaps no one noticed but for me it was an immensely liberating
gesture to leave and to know that I would never attend again. I had been a Watchtower zombie and now I was to become myself, what
freedom and hope there was!
Once you understand why the JW org is so very wrong; you can
never return.
There were several important moments for me. One of the biggest, despite me not leaving for quite awhile after it, was when the 1995 study article about the generation came out and it rocked my world about needing to have a career and a retirement plan because I was probably going to die "in this system of things." But it wasn't just the article. I was deeply put off by this abrupt change and talked to an older elder about it. His simple answer to my questions about this humongous change was "Eh, the society changes things once in a while."
That was the beginning of the end for me. It totally changed my outlook and my way of being an elder. Again, I started planning for living to old age, but I also learned to tell others to do the same and not to tell the elders every last thing they are doing wrong, but to just "fix it" on their own if they wanted to stay out of trouble. And I started to question things freely, at least to myself and eventually did the research that freed me after a few more important moments in my life.
What a brilliant original post.........it has really made me reflect on pivotal moments in my life.
walking out of a certain Kingdom Hall and knowing I never had to go back , the joy and freedom after attending there for over 35 years, The truth about the truth had set me free !!
Watching a Circuit Overseer act like a narcissistic fool on the stage. i was having my doubts but that one finished me off. That was it for me. I finally pulled the curtain back and saw that the great and powerfull oz was just a little old man.
If I bumped into that CO today, I would thank him.
It was 2004 when I went up to work at the headquarters in Brooklyn for two weeks. I could not understand at the time why they had all those buildings with just people living in them taking care of them. The buildings were not being used for anything except to house people. When I got home this experience nag me for along time. That was the first big thing that started me thinking. It took five more years for me to finally wake up fully but that was the first major step for me. Still Totally ADD.
Great post dude, just great!
As far as the Jdubs are concerned:
After being kicked out of my Mom's house in the senior year of high school, I moved in (literally walked 10+miles in the snow and took a nap in a parking lot) with a Jdub couple in their late 60's I had know for some several years and was studying with for several months (they would come get me and bring me to meetings because my Mom wouldn't drive me anywhere or let me get my liscence).
Whilst moving in and having a dinner cooked for me every night was amazing (hadn't had my parents cook me meals since I was 12) and going to meetings and studying was nice and all, everything quickly went sour.
While nobody in the Kingdom Hall would give me the time of day, I really started wondering if this was the truth. The family that I was living with and studying with said even their own kids that were as old as my parents out of the house hated me for no reason that was made aware of to me.
(Defining moment incoming) One day when the couple had to go to a funeral and I had to go to the Sunday meeting by myself, I walked in and nobody looked at me or said hello. I sat down by myself and raised my hand several times to answer questions and wasn't called on. After the meeting I walked out as if I was never there.
Soon thereafter (as in the following week) all kinds of crazy rumors were circling about me apparently; of course never being told what they were, just being informed that they were circling by the couple I was staying with.
Then, after going to the convention about a month later, I was blatantly ignored and frowned upon by my entire congregation. I soon began to think otherwise of the congregation and brought up my points with the couple. We then had a serious discussion and decided it was better for me to leave and go live with my grandparents several hundred miles away (since I had by then graduated high school).
The whole thing was pretty nuts and I studied with another congregation near my grandparents house and I guess word spread around the congregation after having spoken to the family I lived with and I soon left. Only to make a recent appearance at a KH near where I live now. Made it a month and was kicked out because I had depression about all of this.
That's my story anyways, I hope someone found it interesting to read haha.
1. I read a lot of the nonsense published by Russell and Rutherford.
2. I realized that many of the WT's Bible interpretations are totally fanciful.
3. I grew old in this system of things.
I guess walking into a Kingdom Hall when I was a young adult was a defining moment for me. Who knows what path my life would have taken if I had not?
My regret is time I cannot get back. Oh, well. I quit smoking at least.
I met a lot of decent people there over the years. While many would certainly not talk to me if they knew how I feel about the religion, I don't actually "hate" any particular person there. However, I do certainly hate the ideology and the hypocrisy that turns decent people into robots....Anyway, I'm out now.
Another defining moment was when I retired recently and was grateful I ignored Witness garbage and held onto my career!!!....I cringe when I think of the damage if I had listened to their foolish talk!
The best defining moment is when I realized that it does not matter what anybody thinks of me, but what I think about myself. But, this may have more to do with age than just leaving a dysfunctional religion.
