JW Kids Leave the Organization: Facts

by Maximus 141 Replies latest jw friends

  • sf
    sf

    Maximus,

    Perhaps you inadverently overlooked my post to you. Please scroll up.

    Thank you, sKally

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step

    Apologies Max,

    You said :

    Not sure what you mean about saving them work. At least one GB member read my letters, because Ray cites them in his book, tactfully omitting my name so as to prevent cries of heresy even though the Society ASKED me to write honestly.
    Actually Max, now I reread it I am not sure myself. I misread your note, I mistakenly thought you were talking about the summation of the figures given, I should learn to read, stop, then go! No doubts at all that the bells are ringing in Noddyland. The tragedy is the pain, humiliation and despair contained in these figures. Heart-breaking in the extreme.

    PathofThorns,

    As Max will attest these figures are collected by the CO's from the Congregation files and the Tuesday PM meeting he has with the PO's, they are quite accurate.

    Best to you both -- HS

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step

    Teejay,

    You said:

    I like the way you think, hillary_step
    All I can say to that is, God help you!

    My best regards - HS

  • Maximus
    Maximus

    sKally,

    It's all the stuff about repentance, turning around. (Acts 3:19; Isaiah 55:6, 7) "They need to 'reprove' him in the Biblical sense." Greek word means give convincing evidence. Show "enough evidence to convince the child of the sinfulness of his course." (Translation: moralize and risk driving him into deep denial.) "Help him appreciate the need to hate what is bad, and love what is good." (Amos 5:15). "He may come back to his 'proper senses out from the snare of the Devil.'"

    "No one should 'make request' [in prayer] concerning blatant sin that is clearly being practiced unrepentantly by any individual once associated with the Christian congregation." (1 John 5:16, 17; other scrips) Then prayer that if God FINDS A BASIS for pardoning the child's error, that His will be done.

    If bapized child is DF, congregation must quit mixing in company with him,
    which may eventually help him to come to his senses and return to God's protective fold.

    Then what to do with weak in faith but not DF: Take an active interest in such a youth. (Now there's some really pointed advice for you.)

    "What can help heal the ailing child is, not social gatherings with no spiritual direction, but association that helps him to cultivate a taste for spiritual things." See Awake! June 22, 1972--presumably the most current specific.

    Hope that didn't spoil your dinner, sKal, it sure ruirnt mine.

    Max

  • peaceloveharmony
    peaceloveharmony

    Hillary_Step,

    My experience is that very few younger people leave for idealogical reasons, that is the territory of the medium-long termers, but they leave simply because they are bored senseless by the endless roundabout of sterile meetings, hosted by a group of tired pastel shaded men, who if the truth were known would rather be out sailing and screaming into the wind; or because they want to live before they die. Many leave never to return after the 'reproof' or DF proclamation at the meetings, some do try to live double lives

    what you decribe here is MY own experience. yet you say it so much better than i can. i left at 17, never to return. i was one of the first in my age group to leave (my father gave me a choice, football game with "worldly" friends and DA myself, or stay home and act like a good jw. i think i made the right choice.) so now i'm sitting here thinking about the "friends" i grew up with. out of ten of us, four are no longer attending meetings at all, three are leading "double-lives" and three are good jws. of the four of us that left, two left as teens and the other two left in early twenties.

    i feel very sad for the kids that can never break free, that live double lives. horrible that through the wts teachings, many young people grow up to be dishonest and hypocrites. so very sad indeed, what could have been?

    the wts and the gb disgust me. how can they willfully and knowingly continue to mess up the lives of thousands of children?

    maximus, thank you for posting this information

    love
    harmony

    Most people think, Great God will come from the skies, Take away everything And make everybody feel high. But if you know what life is worth, You will look for yours on earth: And now you see the light, You stand up for your rights.~~Bob Marley

  • Marvin Shilmer
    Marvin Shilmer

    Hi, HS!

    My 99.9% statistic stems from local experience and what I hear various traveling overseers talk about.

    In our congregation there is not a single youth over the past decade that has completely avoided pressures to act different than they learn from WTS literature. This is what I meant. This includes everything from, pretending to "go in service" (movies instead), to studying playboy instead of The Watchtower, to driving under the influence, to fornication, to suicide.

    The best example we could muster right now would be a young man getting ready to go to Bethel who only a few years ago was… well you know, with an old copy of… against the wall… Our PO almost had a fist… I meant a fit. When his parents made him confess, there turned out to be more to the story than any solo action.

    As for how the figures Maximus asserted are found out, as you say, the WTS has COs doing all sorts of surveys, all the time. This is just one of them.

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step

    Marvin,

    You said:

    In our congregation there is not a single youth over the past decade that has completely avoided pressures to act different than they learn from WTS literature. This is what I meant.
    Yes, I see where you are coming from and given that definition of a 'double-life' I would certainly concur with your view.

    Very best wishes -- HS

  • Prisca
    Prisca

    Max,

    Thanks for producing yet another first-class post.

    I can well relate to this topic, having been raised as a JW by JW parents. My father was an elder, and so my sibling and I were raised to be examples to other JW kids in our cong.

    We were part of the 12% who never strayed - never did drugs, nor mucked around with the opposite sex, not even smoked a cigarette. I know we are part of the minority, and am saddened that I lost so many friends as I was growing up.

    Most of the kids I knew left at some point, usually between the ages of 15 to 18. Some got reprimanded for double lives, others just left, never to return. A few did come back, but after some time out in the non-JW world.

    I left because of various reasons, and had the Society been more caring in it's approach regarding problems in the congregations, I may have been able to believe that God's spirit was somehow still operating within the Society.

    I feel that the WTS should wake up to itself and listen to the average publisher.

    The meetings are too boring boys, young people are leaving in droves and you guys are not doing enough to look after them. DON'T YOU CARE? Probably not, if your pathetic efforts like this latest article reveal.

    I am disgusted with the lack of care the Society has for young ones in its congregations. I have experienced this first hand, and it worries me that future generations will be exposed to this all over again. At least my children, if I have any, will never have to experience this. I guarrantee that!

  • buffalosrfree
    buffalosrfree

    I was mulling this thread over and remembering when my son lived at home. He never took to the Jdubs, didn't like what was going on, and said it was in a nutshell boring, not the fact of serving God, but the endless mind numbing meetings that had all the motivation of a sleeping pill. He said that the Elders couldn't care less about the young ones in the congregation and if something was fun it would soon be forbidden or at least counsel not to be participating in that activity anymore. The DC and Assemblies were anything but fun. He and a couple of friends of his, who definitely lead double lives couldn't care less about the society, the hall or the bros and sisters. He believed it was for those too old to leave and for the truly walking dead. Never any activities organized around the needs of the younger ones by the elder body, when children see this they know that these couldn't really care less about them. Buff

  • TMS
    TMS

    My third judicial committee experience as a naive Bible Study Servant c.1962 involved a newly baptized 12 yr old who had stolen a hot wheel type toy from K-Mart. To all of the questions(What prompted you to steal? Do you realize the reproach on Jehovah and his organization? Will you ever do this again?) he had only two words: "I dunno."
    After deliberation we put him on probation for a year. This boy is now nearing 50 and long gone.

    The worshippers of Molech have nothing on Jehovah's Witnesses of the 20th and now 21st century. We have tossed so many children into the fire it is unreal. At the very instant in their young lives when the "desires incidental to youth" are at work, we brand them as unrepentant, incorrigible sinners, worthy of death.

    TMS

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