For those who became JW's as adults. (page 2)

gumby

The congregation "elders", as well as the Bible study conductor were creaming their high crotched polyester pants back then.

LMAO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dismembered......you stoner hippy bastard....you went and let peer pressure such you in eh? Hell, you woulda thought you woulda been turned off just by the uglyass yardsale clothes the brothers wore and woulda turned you off fer gawd sake!

I always wondered why an ex-church goer would swallow all the anti-christendom talk coming from the witnesses. When I went to church, I saw love, fellowship, a family like people, good works, a happy people, etc. Then one becomes a witness and hears how there is "no love in christendom, they are all hypocrits, they don't really love jehovah, they are all pagan, they are not like jehovahs people"..etc, etc etc...... I wondered HOW a person could believe this in spite of what they themselves experienced in christendom. They become dubs and they see hypocracy, lying, backbiting, gossiping, and the things they also saw in christendom but maybe even to a stronger degree.

So......what keeps them as dubs in view of all this and why do they believe it?

Me, I was raised a witness and have always thought it to be harder to leave than one who converted later in life and had been through the religious arena......but maybe I'm wrong.

Gumby

target

My Little nephew had just died and I was looking for answers in the Bible and not finding them. The nice lady at the door said she could help.

She sucked me in like a jet engine.

A friend of mine then started studying with her also. She ended up believing she was annointed. She is still in. Medicated like the rest of them.

Target

lowden

Karen96 said "They seemed to have all the answers".....

Very simple statement but i would say it's pretty much one of the main reasons why most of us joined.

Their reasonings are put across by people who seem to be totally and utterly convinced that what they are saying is the only truth on the face of the earth.

I was also 18 at the time and although technically an adult, i was very naive and green.

Here's another thing. When you first start going to the KH, people do seem genuinely loving and kind. Sometimes overpoweringly so.

But then.....you slowly begin to realise that it ain't all 'sweetness and light'.

I also think that Karl Marx was very insightful about why people are religious.

Peace

Lowden

Finally-Free

A friend of mine then started studying with her also. She ended up believing she was annointed. She is still in. Medicated like the rest of them.

Now that really made me laugh.

W

juni

Karen96 said "They seemed to have all the answers".....

I agree w/Karen's statement. We had stopped going to the Methodist church because of them always asking for money, etc. They never got into the Bible. So these 2 things attracted us to start a study.

People were very friendly and took you right in and there was no asking for money like it is now.

The hook was set. The rest is history.

Juni

luna2

I always wondered why an ex-church goer would swallow all the anti-christendom talk coming from the witnesses. When I went to church, I saw love, fellowship, a family like people, good works, a happy people, etc.

I attended a Presbyterian church from about the age of 5 til I was 20. It happened to be a very large church with a lot of members who were prominant in local business and politics...along with us just regular folks. It always seemed much more focused on social functions than Bible study. In the adult Sunday school that was held after the 40 min. service, they covered issues of popular interest, ie...non-fiction books, the counter-culture in America, discrimination and the NAACP (the paster had ties to Jesse Jackson...how, I'll never know), the hippy movement, etc. At any rate, it was long on yakkity-yak and ice cream socials and short on Bible study or even any interest in spiritual things. And, like Juni said, they were always asking for money.

I'd also been exposed to the military's brand of spirituality, which really puzzled me. Always seemed odd to ask God to take sides in human conflicts by "blessing" one side or the other....and then everybody goes out and tries to blow the other away.

By the time the dubs strolled up to my door, mainstream religion was looking pretty ratty-tatty. The dubbies talked a real good game, I was emotionally exhausted, my marriage was ending, I had just moved to a new town, had no friends to talk to, and I wanted easy peasy answers that would explain how this bullshit life was supposed to work. They had 'em. I was a stupid-head and bought right into it with only token resistance. Aaaah, it was so good to know everything and be Jehootie's special friend...for a little while.

mariposa

Were we Gullible? Weak? Lonely? Plain Stupid?

Yes, Yes, Yes, and Probably Yes!

I had just gone through the worst year of my life, at the tender age of 21. My bf left cause I was pregnant, and then I miscarried. I had lost my apt. and had to move back in with mom which was like death to me then. I was smoking weed like nobody's business, then had an extremely bad trip on acid. I didn't have a good job (stock room at some store in the mall where I made it an art form to steal things). I had NO IDEA what I wanted to do with my life and thought it was pretty much over. SInce I had nowhere else to turn, I auctually made the phone call to go back to studying.

I wish now I could've gone back to those days and made a different call. I still get angry about it sometimes, I dont know if I'll ever get over being a dub totally. But man, I wish I could!

katiekitten

Yaar suckers!

I was born into it. I have an excuse.

Speaking for my parents tho, who came in just after I had been born, they were at the lowest point in their lives, hitch hiked to Australia with no money and had to stop there to have me, living in a tiny flat with my dad selling encyclopaedias for a living, mum only had one dress, and had to wear her nightie all day when she washed it etc etc no family or friends around, mum was deeply depressed and dad was a mummys boy who had left home looking for adventure and ended up as a husband and dad at 19.

The Witnesses got them when they were desperate. I think its a common story. Its no coincidence that religion prospers in third world countries and with the under educated.

lowden

Its no coincidence that religion prospers in third world countries and with the under educated.

Indeed!!

The common thread here is that people got hooked in when they were weak and very vulnerable (though not all) and were then indoctrinated at a low point in their lives, when the mind was already like an untidy bedroom.

The JWs brought order and purpose, albeit misguided.

I was smoking dope and doing all the stuff that goes with it at the time i got involved too.

Fertile ground.

Peace

Lowden

purplesofa

I was in a low point in my life as well. A very abusive marriage, 4 kids, young, gulliable.

I absorbed it all like a dried out sponge. I especially liked that I was shown in the bible that you could divorce for adultry as in the Catholic relilgion(what I was) did not really go for that.

purps

For those who became JW's as adults.

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