by minimus 24 Replies latest jw friends
I never fully realized it until I was just about out. I adopted the attitude that “if Mother says so, Mother knows best!”
It took me a long time to conclude they were actually a CULT. I would say they were “cult like” but wouldn’t accept that they controlled me .
I felt controlled towards the end. Maybe because by then I was older than most of the elders and MSs and had run my own home and business but being female was supposed to be obedient to males still living with their Mummy. A 21 year old telling me what fabrics my girl's skirts could or could not to be made of peed me right off.
I had been out of full time work 6 months and was surviving on 2 part time jobs and money was getting tight. A job came up but it meant working every Sunday til 2pm. I took the job and was told by another "child," I was compromising my faith by not waiting for a job that didn't mean working on Sundays.
So glad I'm out
Until I had kids, i didn't feel controlled. I was able to get by without being in line with all the teachings. All I had to do was lie and that didn't bother my conscience. My logic was : Don't expect the truth while threatening me.
Then I had kids, and I was expected to teach them what the GB teaches, not what I personally believed. If I didn't, they could eventually grow up, rat me out to the elders and shun me on the basis of apostasy (I've seen it happen). That's when I realized that to stay a JW, I had to give that control over to the GB and lie to my kids as well. I could not; not to my own family. So I left. That was the end of it.
Now that I look back, they had a huge control over me over the years. I never was fully in control of my own life. Even now, they still control some part of it through my relatives (ex: I can't put up Christmas lights on my house). The difference is that now, it is not unhealthy.
I think most Witnesses cheerfully remain brain dead. The less they have to think the better they think they feel.
I have always danced to a different drummer as they say. So as much as they liked to control me , I did do things my own way. I did not break rules or do anything naughty mind you. But they for one put so many obstacles in my way so I could not be a regular pioneer from day one. I the rebel , thought no they will not control mein something which is a good work. So gathered my weapons and did overkill on all the qualifies you to be one and some more so that their hands would be tied to object from me becoming appointed as a regular pioneer. ( seems so silly now and futile). Ultimately they had to, with unhappy faces appoint me.I was used so much by the BOE of other congregations , at all assemblies and Bethel since then that my BOE had to acknowledge I was doing so well in the field. I looked good in their report cards so why not?
Lots of other ways I made them bend my way and not control me .Actually I controlled them when it came to me.Lol.
Should have awakened then?......
My family were passive aggressive about it. They refused to buy into 1975 and had several scriptural reasons, but they did not make it public and did not try to convert others to their viewpoint.
I personnaly would say that I felt like led around by the nose
At the end I certainly did. For years I felt it was a religion of “NO”. Everything thing that was popular or fun from cell phones to the smurfs, was either a distraction or satanic. Hold on cell phones are now “keeping up with jehovahs chariot”.
Close to the end of my association with the JWS I felt that there was devious lying and corruption instigated by literature publishers who were trying to put people under their control, exploiting people fears, ignorance and insecurities.
