What's the commun denominator in every JW?

by JH 26 Replies latest jw friends

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  Goldminer

  How about denial.
• 

  bigmouth

  Fear and surprise,surprise and fear and a fanatical devotion to the Pope
• 

  seattleniceguy

  It is fear.
  People who join the Witnesses are people who fear uncertainty, above all. A complex world does not have simple answers. What happens after death? Is there a God? What is the purpose of life? People have been asking these questions for thousands of yours. There are no simple answers. Some people are unprepared to accept that. They are afraid of what life would be like without knowing the answers to every big unknown.
  Of course, once the student begins to get assimilated into the culture, all sorts of new fears are added and cultivated. Whereas before, the student only feared uncertainty, now they begin to fear the demons, not being good enough, dying at Armageddon, being shunned if they leave, being doctrinally incorrect, etc, etc, etc.
  SNG
• 

  jaffacake

  I believe there are three:

  • fear
  • hate
  • sincerity
• 

  serendipity

  I think a lot of JWs are also idealists and idealism is what turns a lot to ex-JWs because the JW world is NOT ideal (or idyllic).
• 

  atypical

  I think a lot of them want to escape from their present life. The thought of a world without their current problems, coupled with the fact that they are allowed to ignore their current life responsibilities as long as they go to meetings and turn in time, becomes like a drug.
• 

  THE SHOOTIST

  I believe all JWs think inside the box. Until you crawl outside the box and take a look around at the real world, you have no idea of how small and unrealistic your world really is. Anybody see the movie Nell? This is the true story of a young woman raised in backwoods of I think it was West Virginia. Anyway, when her mother died and she was discovered, Nell was totally unable to live in everyday society and she couldn't even speak understandably because her mother had a stroke that affected her speech. Nell learned twisted speech that was unintelligible to everyone else. A doctor finally picked up some clues and figured out what what Nell was trying to say. When the courts were trying to decide what to do with her, she had the doctor speak for her in court and I will never forget her words. She said, my world is small and I know small things. Her mother taught her to be scared of day, so Nell went out only at night so that she could not been seen by anyone. It took state help and about 7 years I believe to get her properly oriented for life as we know it. When I was a JW, I was raised in the box and stayed there for 49 years. My world was small and purposefully kept that way by the the WT society and I knew only small things that I taught in the congregation as an elder. Remember people used to be branded as heretics for saying the earth wasn't the center of the universe. Thinking inside the box is a bad way to live and a lot of the things taught in the JW box are about as reasonable as Nell being taught fear of the day-time. Fear works well inside the box and all garble we called the pure language seems to make sense.