Did you actually "believe" as a JW or was it Emperors New Clothes to you?

by LovesDubs 10 Replies latest jw friends

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  LovesDubs

  I decided post JWs that I was walking the walk and talking the talk but deep down...wasnt buying it. I really wasnt. But I couldnt say anything to anybody because that was part of what was expected of us. I studied the crap out of my WT for Sundays. I commented and always had insightful things to add. I always went to meetings. Was on the school. Did it all. But way down in my heart...where it had to stay hidden. I never "envisioned myself in Paradise". I never saw us as "the only true Christians". I didnt believe that God would destroy everybody who wasnt a JW at armageddon. I didnt believe in the Watchtower God.

  I was told by the Elders at my last "shepherding call" that those who left Jehovah now, because the end was so close, wouldnt have time to get back in before the door to the ark closed. He said Jehovah is RAISING his standards removing the weeds and the chaff and it will become increasingly more difficult to return even if one wanted to....and he looked RIGHT at me when he said that in my own home. I wanted to say "The only thing left of me in this organization is a shadow. My heart, my mind, my soul....have been gone for 12 of the 13 years since I was baptized. And until just now...you couldnt have given a good god damn that I was unhappy."

  How many have their butts in the seats and their souls outside the door I wonder.
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  fullofdoubtnow

  I almost totally believed it all for most of the time I was a jw. It was only in the last year, when I started doubting, that I even considered it might not be the truth. Just gullible, I suppose.
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  under_believer

  I was raised in, but was also very well read for a young person. I never believed all of it 100%... there were demonstrable untruths and mistakes being made. However I comforted myself with the thought that they were "closest to the truth" of any religion, and therefore still the correct place to be.
  I got this phrase from a very close old friend of mine; his cousin (my wife) now says the same thing a lot herself. The thing is, that's not JW orthodoxy or anything like it; you're not supposed to say things like that. It's THE TRUTH as far as the Society and faithful Witnesses are concerned. Truth is a binary state for them--either it's the truth, or it's false.
  People who say that (I hope) are nascent "apostates."
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  blondie

  I do think that most JWs truly believe in the beginning but as reality butts up against the illusion, people start to see that it isn't what it is advertised to be. Usually by that time though they are deep enough into the organization that it is hard to leave.
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  happy1975

  I too was raised as a Witness and I believed it 100%. I was sure that I was going to die at A once I stopped attending due to severe depression and anxiety ( I took all of the "you're not doing enough's" to heart and just about lost it). Thank god I found this place - the day I arrived here is when my healing began.

  -Happy
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  nicolaou

  I was also a 'true believer' and for most of my life was proud of it too. I was the sort of sad nerd that really used to belt out the "We're Jehovah's Witnesses" song at conventions.

  God! I'm sharing again.
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  the dreamer dreaming

  well there is the paradox... .faith tells you that you see the emporer's new clothes with the eyes of faith not your actual eyes...

  only the faithful SAW the invisible presence of Jesus in 1914, only the faithful SEE the invisible God, etc.

  so no, I did not see, but did not expect to either...but I was always on the watch for just about anything that would confirm this

  as more than just a hope that seemed to be false...something tangible, some magic, something to validate the faith...

  but HAPPY ARE THOSE WHO BELIEVE WITHOUT SEEING
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  greendawn

  Before long I realised they were not the true organisation because they lacked brotherly love between themselves and then I made my move by becoming inactive. The idea was that there was no point in bringing anyone in this org which could well create many serious problems in their lives.
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  Seeker4

  I believed much of it, but I think for a long time I very much held back from believing that the GB was led by holy spirit, or that everything that was published came from Jehovah himself.
  I was baptized at 11, and I think that by the time I was 20 or so, I had begun to hold a much more realistic view of the WTS and its teachings.
  I never really worried about the Big A, and I didn't really see myself all that much in the new system. I certainly didn't see the Big A as being right around the corner. In fact in the early 1970s I remember shocking some brothers I was working with by saying it wouldn't surprise me to go another 20 years before the Great Tribulation.
  
  I held a lot of those doubts inside until the 1914 generation change in the mid-1990s. Then it all unraveled for me.
  S4
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  Nowman

  I too was raised in the org. Never knew anything else. When I was 15 is when I started to realize something wasn't sitting well with me. Many terrible things started to happen within the congregation(s) I went to in a short period of time. I started to notice people "snapping" all of a sudden. Maybe it was because I was old enough to understand, regardless I left 3 years later. For comfort, while I was regular pioneering, I would dream of my escape, I would dream of all that I would do, and it was a light at the end of the tunnel. My thoughts would tell me to stop thinking this way, its Satan doing this, but why did I feel so happy looking forward/dreaming about leading a normal life.

  Nikki