Welcome, Jotace... he posted on a resurrected thread which got re-buried pretty quickly! Here are his posts with questions:
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So, two years after, i’m resurrecting this topic. He’s now 9 years old, and, I believe, a landmark in this forum.
But, first of all, let me introduce myself: Jotace, (a nickname, that means, in my native language exactly what ‘JayCi’ means to you guys: another way of spelling JC, witch are my initials, and only by coincidence, the same ones of Jesus Crist).
I’m Portuguese, and writing to you from Portugal. 42 years old, born and raised among JW, and religiously emancipated at the age of 16, when I finally got the guts to give my mother the disappointment of her lifetime. So, I’m out of JW for about 25 years, now. In fact, I was never baptized. I am now an agnostic.
My mother, (72 years old, now) still remains a JW. She forgot how to live in any other way. For all these 25 years I became uninterested about what was going on with JWs, but recently I started asking myself some questions about some of the major issues of her faith, that I still recall from my childhood and adolescence. The major one was the ‘generation of 1914’ dogma. Suddenly, I realized that 95 years have passed over, and … there is no ‘1914 generation’ anymore. They are dead (with a few exceptions).
So, one of these days I asked my mother about this, and… she told the ‘new light’ mambo-jambo, that things are different now, that God sent new enlightenments to the ‘special ones’, and so, the ‘generation’ dogma isn’t understood today like it was before. I couldn’t help to smile. A sad smile… my mother is a simple woman, low education, no general culture, and … blinded by at least 40 years of illusions in her faith. There’s no point in arguing with her about this. She’s is now in ‘full brainwash’ mode. She just stopped thinking. Just believes and does everything the Organization tells.
We talked a little more about the ‘blood’ issues, and I became astonished and angry when she told me that a JW can’t even get a transfusion from his own blood, stored previously! Jesus Christ, with did you let them be so stubborn and unreasonable ?
So in the last days I started looking on the internet for news about the JW organization. I wanted to know what was going on in last 20 years, and how they manage to survive when everything is falling apart in their doctrine. From Youtube to Google, and there to the ‘FreeMinds’ site, I finally arrived here.
I started reading some topics, the ones that had the more appealing titles to my interest, e among others, found this particular one. What I’ve read here, brought me back to my childhood, and all the psychological pressures I had to put up with, in school, with friends, with girls, etc. It was hard, specially because I’ve never really believed in any of the teachings I received, and hated going door-to-door. It’s was a real embarassment, to me. Then, at the age of 14 I started getting pressured for baptism, and that was the turning point. I managed to delay the process until 16 years old, and finally, I GOT FREE , and my mother got… devastated.
I didn’t knew that existed such a non-radical wing of the JWs, until I found this forum. The concept of a ‘neutral’ JW blows my mind, because I don’t believe that to be possible. Either you are in, and fulfil all of the conditions, terms and rules to be a JW, or you are out, because you can´t be a JW and question the dogmas, and be curious, and critical, about the Organization.
I always felt (and I know of one case in particular) that a few young friends of mine, raised among JW, were living a lie, incapable of releasing themselves from the chains of this religion, because of the consequences (losing family and friends, and ultimately being all alone). Some of them got married too soon (blame it on the hormones pressure, and the JWs sexual repression) with the first JW guy or girl that smiled at them for more than 5 seconds, and found themselves trapped for life in an unhappy marriage, and following a path that they didn’t choose, that they were pushed into by family, friends, and all the members of the organization. And, with 40 years old, they still live the same lie. Sad destiny…
From the readings I made here (and since it’s impossible to read everything, or the most part, because there are 9 years of topics), some questions popped up in my mind, and I would like some of the olders members to answer them, please. Would you? Thanks, in advance:
- Is this a forum specially oriented for JW, or for ex-JW ?
- Wasn’t it supposed to be closed last year, when is creator wrote a post saying that he was dropping the forum, ‘cause he was digusted with the consequences? What happened since then? Some else took over?
- Since, for the majority of the JW, the Organization (or the Governing Body) is a black box, and there’s no point in asking some member what goes on inside it, and who they are, and how are they elected, etc (the answer is “it’s better not know to much, for your own protection”), how come some members of the forum know so much about it, specially about recent changes, news, polemics, etc ? Are these informations reliable? I’ve read some people discussing internal issues of the Watchtower Society in such a deep way, that it seems that they are insiders, or at least have a kind of ‘spy’ contacts inside, that leak information! This seems very strange to me, since I’ve always had the idea that the Watchtower Society was more secret than the Masonry.
Looking forward to your kind answers. Thank you!
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Thanks for the ‘wellcome’ and the fast reply.
I’m trying to catch up with the relevant news and happenings in the Watchtower in the last 2 decades. I’ve read some references involving the UN, and about Tax paying, and about a sex scandal, but it’s not easy to absorb all of that in such a short period of time. Besides that, sometimes I can’t understand totally what’s been written about that (my English is only regular).
I see that some people here have great long term knowledge about these issues. Can I propose a little challenge? Could some of you, specially the ones with good background on this subject, tell me, in a few lines, what should I know about the Watchtower universe, as if I just had woke up from a 20 year sleep? Thanks!