After you left JWs how did you work out what you believe now

by awol 42 Replies latest jw friends

  • daystar
    daystar

    My take on it all is that it's all a big

    My opinion now is that belief is where the trouble lies. I am content holding theories about life. I understand that there is so very little that is ultimately certain. And I'm rather okay with that.

    I live for now, hoping, perhaps, that something good happens to me after I die, but living on the assumption that nothing but nonexistence awaits me there.

    I study things that interest me, I enjoy meeting people, making new friends, spending time with my son and loving my One. I find that it is enough.

    I understand what you're going through though. I was out for years before I found out about the generation change and the UN/NGO scandal. I was pretty floored. I mean, I didn't believe the JW paradigm any more by that time, but to realize that I was effectively in a cult!? It was unbelievable.

    Give it time. You'll be fine. Meet up with JWDers at the next apostafest in your area! Fantastic array of people!

  • plmkrzy
    plmkrzy

    Welcome avol. I stopped attending the meetings a few years ago completely. I am still working on what to believe. It could take years.

  • Ingenuous
    Ingenuous

    Howdy and Welcome!

    It's been a year and a month since I left. I went through stages of belief - disagreements with the Org which lead to my leaving, finding another group that would accommodate my beliefs and seemed to have new ones in harmony with my thinking, eventually disagreeing and searching/thinking some more.

    I plugged away at it hard, forcing myself to put into words what I believed and not stop challenging it until I was at a place of peace. It took being quiet long enough each day to learn to hear that little voice inside that was whispering, "But I don't like that/can't agree with that/feel there's some dishonesty here," etc.

    It takes time, focus, and the most painful honesty. It takes the work of building a new community and - literally - blazing new trails in our brains.

    It also takes learning to live with uncertainty - not begrudgingly, but peacefully. As JWs, we were used to having all the answers handed to us or a convenient shelf to put them on until it was the "right" time for "Jehovah" to publish a Watchtower with the answer in it. All we had to do was pop in a CD and BANG! there's every answer you could ever want to any question you could think of and quite a few that really weren't anyone else's business anyway.

    Figuring out what you believe means spending a lot of time saying, "I don't know." It means learning how to live in the tension between what you want to know and understand and the not-knowing, not-understanding, not-having-a-place-to-find-all-the-answers.

    I'm at a place now where - emotionally, spiritually - I can rest. I have found friends who are on the same quest and who support my search, even if what I find disagrees with their own discoveries.

    It's hard. It's frightening. There will be times when you want to go back to the dysfunction just for the comfort of the illusion of knowing - times when you want to throw out your reason and intelligence and just decide to believe again for the sweet relief of imagined security. And, our imaginations being what they are, what we imagine can feel so real - especially if we want it badly enough.

    The best answer for me was honesty, good friends, and time.

  • Forscher
    Forscher

    I am still a work in progress.

    Forscher

  • Borgia
    Borgia

    He Awol, Ever read Ecclesiastes? No, perhaps this would be a good time to do it. The gist of the matter: work eat drink and enjoy. Dead is dead. Alive is alive. The rest is vanity!SO ENJOY!

    It helped me to stop worrying about things we do not understand. Do you think the Sherlock Holmes of bible interpretation in Brooklyn have a clue? It just seems so. Just check their stories over time about Revelation.

    Fear, when regarded from a practical point of view, has great advantages for the political manipulator. Any dictator can tell you that. The question is: will you allow yourself to be moved by fear? or by joy? The moment you stop to be bothered about things that cannot be proven is the moment you start to be free.

    On a site note: Jonah story is of special interest. Jonah felt he made a fool of himself to announce destruction. please, note that his God mentioned animals to be the reason for not fulfulling his prophesies........Convenient is it not?

    Cheers

    Borgia

  • whyizit
    whyizit

    A couple of good books that might help you:

    Releasing The Bonds by Steve Hassan and Bad News Religion by Greg Albright. They are probably at the library or can be bought cheap at Ebay. Excellent reads!

  • Undecided
    Undecided

    Believe whatever you want to believe as long as it doesn't harm other people. No one can prove their religion by evidence, it's just in their head. If there was a god I would think he would let us know by now who he was. We don't even know his name, it's not Jehovah, as that is just a guess of what some Hebrew said was his name.

    About all we know is we are alive and can enjoy life if we are lucky. Enjoy your time left here if you can.

    Ken P.

  • Schism
    Schism

    I think many of us actually know how you feel. It's really nice to be able to come here and see many opinions as well. This board is GREAT!

    I have recently (I'm talking, last month) decided that being a JW is completely out of the question for me. And though I've come to terms with that (easily might I add), I am not ready to jump into the arms of another organization. Before I found this board, I had made the decision to float through life, learn new things, and to be open to suggestions while being weary of any particular group.

    I have been a JW all of my life, and recently I've found it extraordinarily easy to accept that we might only have this one life to live, and nothing more, so we have to live it the way we want to. My suggestion to you is to make a resolve to not cling to the Bible and grope for another religion that's easier for you to grasp. Instead, be open to another though process. (Like a deprogramming of Christianity)

    This is just my example, I'm not saying it's right, but think about it:

    We have evidence of human life having been on this earth way longer than the Bible says there was human life. Carbon dating isn't as screwed up as the society would like us to believe. Did you know that the Christian church immediately dismissed dinosaur bones to be tools of Satan to trick us? Just because the Bible didn't mention them! LOL

    I personally feel that humans have only elevated themselves above animals, and with religion in the picture, we have assumed that we play a vital role in the issue of "universal soveriegnty" (spell that the right way, lol). But there is a very good chance that we are no more entitled to an afterlife than any other creature around us. There's no proof of a god, and there's no proof of no god either. There is, however, many topics that seriously question the accuracy of the Bible.

    To me, we have invented god, religion, and the afterlife as a means of being able to cope with death. There's plenty of greed motives as well when religion is involved, as many have learned the hard way.

    I'm not saying I believe everything just popped up from some soup, but I do believe that everything on earth is most likely a huge science project for aliens. And just like a terrarium of bugs, the different life forms on earth could just be prospering and reproducing. In fact, this really wouldn't even contradict the Bible as far as I'm concerned, because Jehovah may very well exist as an alien who has decided to have a hobby. Of course, I'd like to believe that they have just forgotten the whole project and will just observe from a distance. Naturally, it sounds like a dumb and crazy thing to believe, but it feels more real and more tangible to me than ANYTHING taught through religion.

    Now, I am not saying I am right, but it works for me. Of course, as with anything, there's uncertainties involved, but it isn't like I have to blindfold myself to accept some doctrine and bow down to anything in order to have this belief. Now, what you have to do is endure some "I don't know" time, and let your mind wander outside of the Christian box, so to speak, and consider that something much less fluffy and frilly to be the reason we exist.

    Like the possibility that there's no such thing as the right religion and that we may just live and die like animals do. It feels good to me, because an eternity with any religion would have me wishing I was non-existant, lol. I personally wouldn't want it any other way. There's massive evidence that chimps have the same complex emotions as we do. Is it fair that we get eternity and they get nada? I wouldn't want to worship a god who thinks so, because he would be a jerk for making a creature SO SIMILAR to us, even in the way they feel and communicate, and then give us center stage.

    Think about this. Say that humans were here for a long LONG time, then religion is invented. People are creative, and come up with good stories and some crazy ideas. Also, throw in a half-ass explanation of spirits, who were here WAY before humans were, existing merely in another realm. Suddenly, people read and believe the book, and accept the ecplanation of life and spirits and death, so they go with the book. hmmm :)

  • sass_my_frass
    sass_my_frass

    I think that anybody who ever convinces themselves that 'this is it, I have all the answers' is completely deluded; as we've learned through being JWs. It's difficult though, after a lot of that, to move to a new point where The Answers don't seem to exist. Life is big and nobody will ever know it all. I'm not looking for a belief system that makes sense and makes me happy, I'm just happy knowing that life goes on whether you believe in something or not.

  • BabaYaga
    BabaYaga

    First of all, WELCOME, AWOL!!! Funny I just described myself as being AWOL from the dubs in an earlier post today.

    Secondly, maybe your tears are tears of relief and joy. On the other hand, I really, REALLY know exactly how it feels to find out that the rule book you were clinging to for all those years is a total lie.

    Relax. It will come in time. Yes, you may have left a decade ago, but you just now realized that you were absolutely RIGHT to do so! You ROCK!!!! Pat yourself on the back... give yourself some much deserved and greatly overdue CREDIT. You are a strong and reasoning one.

    As for the belief system, it was unbelievably hard for me, personally, not to know what I believed anymore. I used to think, "Well, I don't think I'm going to heaven or hell, I don't think I'm just outta here until some resurrection, I don't believe in reincarnation because we'd be farther along if we learned and remembered as we went along, and I'm DAMNED sure we're more than fertilizer... so... what's left?"

    Turns out there was something left for me... but it's my take on things that makes me feel wonderful. You will find yours.

    Personally, I believe in the Matrix. Red pill or blue? (hahahaha as an analogy I'm only partially kidding.)

Share this

Google+
Pinterest
Reddit