The Great Taboo Discussion---Suicides among former Jehovah's Witnesses

by The wanderer 84 Replies latest jw friends

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  love2Bworldly

  I urge people out there who are suffering from depression to please get help, because people who know you--including on this board would miss you!

  I have suffered from depression since I was a small child, and am now in my forties--I have found that if I stay on my anti-depressant I feel like a normal person emotionally; when I don't take any medication, it feels like anytime I am under stress about anything--that I am overwhelmed and can't cope, and am going to have a nervous breakdown. Life is full of ups and downs, and people who suffer from depression have a much more difficult time coping with stress.

  I had no idea that suicide was this common among JWs but it doesn't surprise me. It's a religion that basically teaches you are dirt and can never be good enough.
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  Anitar

  Crazyblonde: Thanks for your response, I'm glad to know she's not the only one. Thanks to every one else, it must be painful to relate these stories. I have one more thing to say that I think is rather important, although it has nothing really to do with suicide.

  At the exact moment I was writing my last post, I was home alone doing my homework and getting ready to go to class. Suddenly I heard a knock on the door, and heard the doorknob jiggling as if someone thought this was their apartment. I went to the window to see who it was and didn't recgonize them. I thought they would go away after a few minutes.

  As I was walking away, I heard a key in the lock and saw the door start to open. With no time to react to this invasion, I dashed into my room and into the closet and grabbed my brother's shotgun that I had never touched before. There was no time to wonder who the hell had a key to my apartment. I quickly loaded the gun and threw my door open, ready to blow them out the window.

  Want to guess who it was? It was my mom's Jehovah's Witness friend who she apparently goes out in service with. She was an elder's wife about mid 40's. Today my mom had forgotton her bible at home and she gave this woman a key to our apartment and told her to get it without any hesitation at all. But you can bet she screamed blue murder when she saw me weilding a shotgun, and since I hadn't taken a shower yet, I still had my green anti-acne face mask on.

  So I called my dear mother on her cell and asked her why she didn't call me to bring her bible outside to her, instead of giving a complete stranger a key and permission to enter my apartment without any notive whatsoever. She said it didn't occur to her.

  So now that I've had a few hours to calm down, I'd like to assure everyone that no one was hurt and I never, EVER resort to violence to resolve a problem. This was just an instinct reaction, and I've never done it before. How was I supposed to know this woman was a friend of my mom? Who did she think she was entering my apartment? But having said that, and looking back on it, I think the woman's reaction was quite hilarious.

  So I say to the JW lurkers of the board, is this really an organization you want to belong too? And to those contemplating suicide, do you really want to kill yourself over these arrogant fools? The world is a big place with many wonderful people in it. Do yourself a favor, get out of this cult once and for all, and make a life for yourself that you can truly call your own.

  Anitar
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  DesertRat

  This is one song which has carried me through the difficult moments when I myself didn't want to go on. I always took the reference to 'He' to mean God (understandable as the vocalist became a born-again Christian around the time of the song's release), but think that the inspiring & hopeful message gives meaning regardless of what one chooses to believe..

  HOLD ON (Kansas, 1979)

  Look in the mirror and tell me

  Just what you see.

  What have the years of your life

  Taught you to be?

  Innocence dying in so many ways,

  Things that you dream of are lost,

  Lost in the haze

  CHORUS: Hold on, Baby, hold on..

  'Cause it's closer than you think

  And you're standing on the brink

  Hold on, Baby, hold on..

  'Cause there's something on the way,

  Your tomorrow's not the same as today..

  Don't you recall what you felt

  When you weren't alone?

  Someone who stood by your side,

  A face you have known?

  Where do you run when it's too much to bear?

  Who do you turn to in need

  When nobody's there?

  CHORUS

  Outside your door He is waiting,

  Waiting for you..

  Sooner or later you know

  He's got to get through

  No hesitation and no holding back,

  Let it all go and you'll know

  You're on the right track..

  CHORUS

  Peace to all,

  Desert Rat
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  mcsemike

  Re: Nathan's quote of the WT material:

  Jehovah paid the price? I thought Jesus did. Is this from their article word for word? Just curious if they changed things.

  Also: Jehovah is within his "rights" to extend mercy to suicides? How NICE of the WT to GIVE GOD the RIGHT to do things. What damn arrogance!! Next Bethel will be drawing up lists of who is going to be in the new system and who is not.

  Can anyone say "Schindler's List"?

  end of line.
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  bigmouth

  "... don't forget that NOTHING YOU DO IS EVER ENOUGH."--babayaga.
  
  This is one of the realisations I kept with me as I went in and out of psych. wards.
  I have a propensity for perfectionism and the structure of the org. is such that this striving to do more sets me up to never do anything well enough.
  
  The WTB&TS has such a high results expectation of its slaves that the feelings of self worth plummet to the point where we give up or realise that we are so unworthy of life we may as well end it now.
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  tijkmo

  Thus, Jehovah, having paid “a ransom in exchange for many,”

  this is not a 'new' thought..at least not to me...therefore not in the past 40 years..

  the idea is that jesus was the ransom...and jehovah paid it...the jw thinking is that jehovah paid the greater price and felt the greater pain..in much the same way as it is actually more painful for a parent or spouse to watch their child/loved one suffer than it is for the one suffering
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  vanillamocha

  I attempted several times - half-heartedly. Since teen years, trying to "measure up" was always so hard. I remember being very depressed over being told that my mom was going to heaven and would not be with me in the "Paradise" (she was anointed) and my father was going to be killed because he was an unbeliever. From that, I married an alcoholic wife-beater (or should I say ministerial servant and regular pioneer?). All the times I pleaded for help from the elders, it just got worse and worse. Finally, we were living in an abandoned house with a new baby and my husband's 6 year old son with no food. I was called into the back room by the elder who drove the Cadillac, because I had been seen standing in line at the food bank hosted in the Catholic Church. That time, I was beat so bad at home that night, that I put the babies in the car and went looking for a truck to run us over. Somehow, it didnt work though. I lived for several more years with this abuse, as I was told "be a good wife and he won't have to complain about you." At the end, I was disfellowshipped in 5 minutes flat. So, I got to start my life over with no support from "friends" - stripped of everything. That was another cause for serious depression - attending the KH in an appropriate attitude of shame... Then one day I found the tract someone had given me in door to door and ventured into a Christian church. WOW.... Depression has left for the most part and it feels so good to be free and loved.
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  mcsemike

  Thanks for the info on the ransom. I thought I remembered back when I was a book study conductor (over 20 years ago) having a book that said that Jesus paid the ransom and the ransom was "his perfect life as a human". I don't care either way, I was just curious if I had found one more contradiction to put on my list.

  By the way, are the people from Sodom and Gomorrah being resurrected or not? What's the flavor of the month on this one? Thanks.
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  bavman

  I'm not sure how Taboo this subject is but anyway. I remember several witness suicides and attempts. I had an ex-witness cousin who succeeded. Of course, who could forget our good buddy "Puternut" who use to post on these boards...may he RIP!
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  Old Goat

  When I was a young man, I saw Watchtower teachings as life-based. Yes, The Watchtower focused on the nearness of divine judgment, but it also focused on the need to bring the message of life to as many as possible.

  About 1957 and at least by 1959 there was a shift in focus. Behavior issues were raised, and one's relationship to the Watchtower organization became the focus. There was a shift away from responsibility to Jehovah and Christ to subservience to the seven old men in Brooklyn who then made up what we now call The Governing Body. (In practice it was the two old men, Knorr and Franz. The others didn't really have a decision making voice. They were merely faithful functionaries.)

  This shift took two forms.

  The first was an intensification of the wild speculation for which The Watchtower has always been noted. An example was F. W. Franz's article on the Cities of Refuge wherein he found prophetic fulfillments for things only mentioned by Josephus. Josephus was inspired? One can find a prophetic parallel in a secular history? Interesting. The stupidity over 1975 was of this phylum and genus.

  The second was a strong tendency to turn personal preference into Bible law. There is the very strange fluctuation on private sexual practices between married people that has no real basis in anything the Bible actually says. Moses is blunt. If God doesn't like something, he plainly says so through the Mosaic law, and while it isn't biding on Christians, it is an expression of the divine view. Most of what The Watchtower has said about these matters cannot be found in the Mosaic Law or anywhere else but in the imagination of a few dirty-minded old men.

  This Pharisaical approach to life has made elders and the service department the arbiters of right and wrong. They have put themselves in God's place. Remember the fluctuations over the definition of "pornea"? That hurt people.

  The ultimate effect is to make The Watchtower a death-centered cult. The focus is on the wrong things. It's not on obedience to Jehovah and Christ, but on subservience to a the opinions of a few men who are Biblically and historically illiterate and who find their opinions on moral matters more significant than the Bible. They have no qualms about promulgating detail laws where none are found in the Bible. This is a sin. God will judge it.

  If one shifts focus off of obedience to God and onto obedience to the Watchtower "voice," one will lose hope. One's focus shifts from the life that God gives to an impossible to please clique of old men who's voice may parallel the Bible, but which deviates into speculation and personal opinion. The Watchtower cult becomes a death cult for those who substitute subservience to Watchtower opinion for a personal relationship to God . Doing so leaves one with no hope.

  For now I continue to believe it is possible to associate with The Watchtower and do God's will. But one cannot associate with it and remain faithful to Jehovah if they substitute the opinions of a few perverted minds for the plain word of God. Do not go where the Bible doesn't take you. If it isn't in The Book, no amount of sophistry will put it there. Don't make yourself accountable to stupid men. You're accountable to God only.