I was thinking the other day about a problem and you know how one thought leads to another and you go off at a tangent and arrive somewhere totally unrelated to what you where thinking about. Well I arrived at a time when I was walking home from work. I pass by (thankfully) a cemetary and I was looking at all the graves thinking (at the time I was a good dubby but not very active by-the-by)about the ressurection and how I hoped not to die and all the usual programmed stuff when out of the blue a thought, as though injected by some other-worldy means entered my head and said, clear as a bell "What if it's not true". I had a sort of mental panic, struggling like a drowing person to grasp at something solid. Why did I think that? where did it come from? Despite trying to rationalise my beliefs and re-affirm them and run through the programming - the two witnesses, Jehovah's name, his people being named, the trumpet blasts and all the other stuff it did not work. It was like the walls of Jericho tumbling down and as fast as I tried to re-build another breach would appear and all I could think of was "What if it's not true". Needless to say, the thought was correct but at the time it was unsettling. I doubt that I am alone in this kind of experience. Am I?
Out of the blue
by uriah 6 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
ESTEE
Uriah,
Does that mean you are seeing through the cracks in the jw teachings? Wonderful!
Sounds healthy to me.
ESTEE
-
juni
Hi uriah!
Have a question for you - What if what is not true? I don't quite understand.
Juni
-
solo
when I was a dopey dub I can honestly say I never had any such doubts, I had a good honest, brain washed upbringing which obviously worked very well
I was thinking the other day about a problem and you know how one thought leads to another and you go off at a tangent and arrive somewhere totally unrelated to what you where thinking about.
This made me laugh, this is what I did to pass the time during the meetings. Then I would think about my end thought and work my way backward through all the tangents to see if I could remember what triggered it all off. Hours of fun!
-
uriah
Hmmm, I need to explain myself better I think - sorry, was having a ramble. This was about 5 years ago. JUNI - The thought that "what if it was not true" is/was the whole JW concept, as I looked at all the graves and thought good dubbie thoughts, resurection, life eternal, never dying - I think it hit me that I might just die (other than by accident or illness).
-
OnTheWayOut
I actually started the "What if it's not true" thinking based on movies and television.
As an elder, I got good at editing talks. Even though a point seemed crucial, I could edit it out and find a way to
make the point without the one I had to cut. This would save time. I started really improving my talks and being
able to convince people with (JW) logic.I started to analyze the same thing with tv and movies. You can tell why the clue is "stumbled" upon- they need to
get on with the show, no time to carefully figure it out. You can tell when they are going to catch the bad guy or get
a confession in a tv show- when you look at the clock and they have 7 or 8 minutes left. When television got the
characters in a serious situation, with no way out, suddenly there was a way out. IT'S ALL IN THE WRITING.
You can get any situation turned around, solved, you can bring back the dead if you say it was a dream.If it's all in the writing, then how do you make your point in a public talk? Same way.
Is it possible that the WTS is doing that in the Watchtower? I could not believe I managed that thought.
It was so against the mind control that I was given. Are they just writing in such a way as to defend the
undefendable doctrine? Is it hopeless to prove that Jesus started ruling invisibly in 1914, but a good writer will do it anyway?
YES, it is possible. Is it possible that my doubts about THIS GENERATION are caused by good writers of the
"old light" conflicting with good writers of "new light" ? (To be honest, the new light writers were not as good.)
Maybe both writers were misleading me, keeping me distracted (just like movies and television) so that I stick around.
That's how it developed in my mind. -
Alpheta
Hi Uriah,
Yeah, that happened to me lots of times while I was studying, but I bought the b.s. about it being Satan trying to tempt me away from the Narrow Path. LOL, what an idiot I was! I recall mentioning it only once to Eva, one of my bible study teachers, and told her I was having "bad thoughts". She said "what kind of thoughts" and I said - "bad ones, real bad", and left it at that, because I couldn't tell this wonderful woman of whom I was in awe that I was thinking "this is b.s.". Should have listened to that inner voice.
Later, particularly during assemblies, I spent most of my time studiously writing in a notebook that I was very careful no one else could see - it was loaded with ALL of those "what if it's not true" thoughts related to whatever the particular speaker was saying at the time! Along with lists of "what I need to do when I get home" and "wish lists" about where I'd like to travel, what improvements I'd like to make around this place if only I had the time and money, and things like that.
I just spent a little while digging through my piles of stacked printed out emails and internet research (not JW related) to see if I could find any of my old notebooks - I found a couple, here's a good quote from the CA in Madison, WI on 7/5/02: "If your mind starts to wander (1) say a silent prayer asking for help to focus; ...(3) Take brief notes...". LOL!
Toward the end, my mind did nothing by "wander".