by slimboyfat 63 Replies latest jw friends
I mean people like Little Toe, Leolaia and Narkissos who provide the most intelligent dicsussions on the forum - they never chose the Witnesses, but were dragged up in it. Do you think maybe they can't help but look down on the rest of us who were stupid enough to actually choose to become Witnesses?
Being one of the named people in your post, I can give you a definitive answer.
No.
Slimboyfat,
What I like about this board is how most of the posters are non-judgemental. Take me for instance. Mostly grew up in a divided home, didn't really feel a genuine religious impulse either way (dub or RC). It was all just they say vs they say. But as I approached 20 yrs of age, I really wanted to give spirituality an earnest try and got baptized. I already knew a fair amount about the errors and flip flops in WT doctrine, but I put them aside in my mind (fudged a little on some of the questions they asked)thinking that it didn't matter. What counted was my trying to forge my own personal relationship with God. For a bit, I spent more time with other witnesses who were "happy and spiritually refreshed" and did more studying. I was only fooling myself. No one here, that I know of, has treated me as lesser because of it. One or two have even objectively brought to my attention the general lack of sincerity within the jws, when I was down about my past and present hypocrisy (being mentally out but attending now and again for appearances).
I want to thank everyone here who have unknowingly given me a precious gift, that I rarely ever got. Acceptance and respect - even when I have an idiotic view or an opposing position.
How's about this for an idiotic view: Since I saw your avatar I'm wondering when they're gonna do re-runs of Captain Caveman!
How's about this for an idiotic view: Since I saw your avatar I'm wondering when they're gonna do re-runs of Captain Caveman
PMSL
We should start a support group LT, I thought something similar too, I loved captain caveman!
DB74
captain CAAAAAAAVEEEEEEEEMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!! haha
I think that raised-in-da-troof ex-JW's who look down on converts like myself are IMO inexperienced and immature. It's an attitude of, 'JWism is just this ugly little spot of humanity that is wholly unique and all people on the outside are so great and normal, so how could you have ever joined?'
If that is a person's attitude, I think they need to try harder to understand that a) growing up in a non-JW home can really suck too (yes Virginia there are horribly dysfunctional families that aren't JW's); and b) The JW package as it is pitched to persons who don't have intimate experience with the day-to-day reality of JW life sounds very appealing and ideal: A radical personality transformation! A surrender of one's personal ego into a collective (and therefore, seemingly more legitimate and purposeful) one! Participation in a preaching work of unprecedented scale, to be followed by a dramatic apocalypse where JW's will be spared and will go on to live forever in a peaceful new world! To a depressed, lonely, and confused person these are powerfully attractive notions. Converting to JWism is not a matter of intelligence, it's a matter of emotional vulnerability.
Actually the idea of looking down on any one segment of exJWs is a little immature.
As time goes on you come to realise that there's a huge amount of variety of people, and the JW experience often becomes one of the few common denominators.
I guess we all mature at our own rates, though, and that is also something not to look down on.
You know I believe those who are raised in the witnesses have a unique perspective. As one who bought into the darn religion I'd have to say I was young, ignorant, and willing to follow someone who talked like they knew more than me. An idiot is how I feel most the time about that. I ignored all the warnings because I thought I knew so much. So perhaps those who were raised in it and view it now from outside shake their heads and say what the heck were you thinking. I have to agree with them.
Frankly those of us who blindly bought into the paradise under God's rule were willing to remain ignorant for a very long time and that is our responsibility. That is what happens when we give our ability to reason away and depend on others to do it for us.
I can't say I've felt anyone has talked down to us though, don't know what your talking about.
When I contrast my experience with those who came into the JWs in adulthood, it is to make the point that I didn't get to make an informed choice in the matter. I didn't have an opportunity to "make sure of all things" at age 7, to decide for myself whether it was really "the truth". My mind was too immature to make choices about such things. Instead the religion was presented as the unquestionable "truth" with the authority of adult "elders". It wasn't until my teens when I started to think for myself and figure things out. I began to research things out to discern whether what I had been taught for many years was really "the truth". When I concluded that it wasn't, I left. But I have to say that when I researched "the truth", it felt like it was a sin. What I was doing would have been considered "apostasy"...it definitely was not encouraged. I was once brought before the elders who wanted to know if I was "trying to disprove the truth". Yet I was just trying to do what people who study are encouraged to do. The funny thing is that the Society suggests in its literature that youths can do this:
***
g90 4/8 pp. 16-17 Am I Ready to Get Baptized? ***Terry says that she believed the Bible’s truths. Yet she confesses: "I had never satisfied myself by asking my own questions and then answering them. Recently, I began to do this." The result of such a program of Bible study? "My faith is increasing, and I now find I’m able to talk to people with real conviction. I tell all Witness youths not to be afraid to ask themselves if this is the truth. Find out! Research, study. ‘Make sure of all things.’ Then you’ll be able to dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to Jehovah."—1 Thessalonians 5:21.
Yet I know from my experience that such research can only have approval if there was already one foregone conclusion in mind...that it is the truth.
