by sandy 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I was baptized at 13 and I never felt a close personal relationship with God. My prayers were without emotion. I nver felt close to God. I only stayed in the Org. till I was 21 because I was afraid of what friends and faily would think.
I always told my close "Worldly JW" friends I know it's the truth and someday I'll be good and settle down and marry a brother. Deep down I never believed that. I don't know if God even exists at all.
What are your thoughts?
Sandy
I am 57 and was baptized at age 9. (crazy wasn't it?)
I know now that I worshiped the organziation. I had had it drummed into my head, my entire life, that this was "Jehovah's organization". I equated him with the org. When the organization died in my heart, (1995) so did my god.
I am slowly getting some faith back. In what, is the question.
'Faith'...is the self-brainwashing you need to keep doing in order to stay a dub...........Its an illusion. Some like the illusion.
ISP
I am slowly getting some faith back. In what, is the question.
Well put Mulan. We might even go farther and question what this thing we call faith is. If we define faith as belief in something, then obviously most of us here has lost that if we ever had it, since our thinking has changed. I would quote the movie Dogma where it says it's not a question of what we put faith in, just that we have faith. I tend to think of faith like love in this way: If you put faith in something, your idea of what the truth is or whatever, that's like someone who really loves someone or something. Big deal. If we're talking about a person that is just plain loving though, not just limited to any particular person or object, now that's someone we like to be around. In the same way if we're talking about a person that just has faith and are not limited by a belief system, I think such a person can be a real inspiration.
Hi Sandy:
I was also baptised at 13. I really did believe it was the "truth" - but then again, I had been raised as a JW and my parents never presented any other option.
I'm 37 now and have become a born again Christian. I believe that many JW's have good hearts and really do love God (like people in many different religions) - but they don't really know him - they only know the JW version of him.
For years I thought I had a bad heart because I didn't want to go to meetings, didn't like service, didn't like studying the WT - and I wanted my "wordly" friends.
Now - after shedding the JW version of God and finding out the real truth from the Bible I find that I enjoy studying the bible because I can study what applies to me - and I can ask whatever questions I want. It was never the bible that bored me - it was the reguritated bland "food" the "society" was feeding me. And as for service........well no wonder I didn't want to go - I couldn't stand the stuff myself yet alone "feed" it to some poor free person on the street?! Now that I know the real truth about God I LOVE to share my faith with others - I probably get more hours in now "informal witnessing" about Jesus than I ever did as a JW.
As for the "wordly" friends - they are the ones who stuck by me and are my friends to this day. So according to Jesus' parable of the good samaritan - they were true Neighbors and not the dubs.
Sandy - I think what you lacked was a love for the JW Organization.......which they equate to God himself. Now that you are free from that Org - do some research, not only on the history of the JW's but also some basic research on the doctrines and beliefs of Christianity - and get a different version of the Bible and read it. You might be suprised by what you find.
Sandy, the WT never "got" to me, so they never had a chance to mess with my faith. I can understand however, why people, who have found out that their faith was misplaced, chose to abandon it altogether. A good analogy is someone brokenhearted over a failed relationship declares, "I will never love again." But we do know that love can grow again, spring will come, and life goes on. I say this as I watch a blizzard whisk past my window. Do you live where it is warm and sunshiny right now? Can you remind me what it is like?
Here is a shameless plug, partly because I think it is one of the better things I ever wrote. I wrote it because I got tired of trolls tossing around "I got faith" like it is some kind of talisman or something. Lots of people have lots of faith outside any religion at all.
I now know my faith in the JW organization was not real. I did it because it was the religion my mother picked for us. I did it because I made friends. When I left the congregation down south and moved north, that's when it really hit me; the real reasons I stayed. It only took another three years for me to finally leave. No one has contacted me. None of my "friends" in the congreation here have ever tried to contact me. No love lost there.
Sandy,
This is a tough question, full of double answers that contradict each other and yet are paradoxically both true. I was a very "good" JW in that I followed the rules to the letter (up until the last 2 1/1 years at least) and studied my brains out. Yes, if you would have asked me if my faith in God was "real" a few years ago I would unquestionably affirmed in the posative. In that sense, it was genuine. At the same time, such a faith had limits put up by the organization and the local jurisdiction of the brothers I looked to for guidence. Perhaps it was because I studied the Bible with rabid intensity for a few years after high school (I usually at least spent two hours a day studying the Bible -- verse by verse-- with the aid of WT publications) that I recognized there were some inherent problems in the Society and the Bible itself. I don't think I was emotionally or mentally ready to undertake the even deeper study of my questions at the time, though. Such a study had to wait a few years (till I was in my mid-20's).
So did I have a "true" faith? Well, yes and no. There were times when I poured out my heart with tears before what I thought was God. Outwardly I was the "organization man" and followed all it's dictates; inwardly I knew there were problems and longed for a more mystical and scholarly approach to the Bible and God. It's too bad I was raised a JW; if I was brought up a liberal Protestant I might have been able to keep some type of faith in a non-literal Bible and get more involved in scholarly studies. Unfortunately, I've seen how conservative, cult-like, corporate Christianity is like -- and I want nothing to do with it.
Does God exist? Maybe. I doubt it's any traditional concept of God that the "revealed" religions talk about. Quite honestly, even though I appreciate the "spiritual" in life, I doubt that any all-powerful being exists.
I hope I answered the question.
Bradley
PS -- I know I have to send you another email...in time good Sandy ;-) .
How many dubs grieve horribly when a loved one dies. Many many years for some. I wondered if a person REALLY believed the end was close and their loved one would return.......why is the grieve so strong.
I have not lost a mate to judge that.....but I have seen dubs lose their mates as if they never expect to see them again. It always made me wonder how stongly they really believed in seeing them again.
I don't know if I really believed deep down inside the earth would be a paradise soon either.
Gumby
( in fairness I suppose this is true of all fundies too )
I have not lost a mate to judge that.....but I have seen dubs lose their mates as if they never expect to see them again. It always made me wonder how stongly they really believed in seeing them again.
I don't know if I really believed deep down inside the earth would be a paradise soon either.
( in fairness I suppose this is true of all fundies too )
I was never a JW. I am what people consider a fundy. Although you can say the above is true for many fundies, it is not true of me. We pray for people at church who are sick. Some of them have been 90 years old with a terminal disease yet we pray for healing. I don't understand that. I guess it may be politically incorrect to pray that God would take their soul peacefully into heaven or rest. My faith rests in the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Luke, a doctor and the best historian of the time testifies of this. So do many others. The more I read and think about God, the less I fear dying because I know his word is true.
