Wo ho ho, where do I start with this one. I'm new here and it will take all my strength to not curse with vile profanities. There has never been any closure for about oh, maybe a billion injustices. I'm seething with contempt and disdain. There's not enough gigabytes on this computer to vent my rage. I guess that means yes but maybe it'll come out slowly. I've been screaming and bitching, hopping and jumping, tooting and farting for 2 decades now. All my logic, and passion has fallen on deaf ears including especially my elder father and my mother. It's a long story.
HAVE JWS RUINED YOUR LIFE??????
by chuckyy 43 Replies latest jw friends
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truthsearcher
I would like to add a word of encouragement to those of you who gave up college for slavery to the WT.
At 41, to my great joy and delight, I graduated with a degree in music . I was able to combine some Internet courses with a local college program. As an adult among the young 'uns, my work ethic and marks were much stronger. I also was able to use my education right away in teaching and performing. There is much to be said for the advantages of adult maturity and drive. My professor said that in his experience, mature students were able to more than compensate for time lost. Also, as an adult, my interests had changed somewhat, and so I pursued music instead of finishing the degree in English that I had originally started at age 18.
BTW, I did this with 4 children still at home. They were very supportive (as was my spouse) and helped to keep things running while I was busy. I won't lie: it was a long haul, there were significant financial and time sacrifices to be made, but it was a good role model for the kids. We did our homework together and encouraged each other to study hard! There are scholarships and grants available to adult students, so this is something to look into if you are interested.
Our life experiences shape who we are today. If we let them poison us, we will fester and ooze bitterness, disappointment and hatred. The ability to forgive is a cleansing process that frees us from the chains of the past, but I don't think this comes "naturally". I personally have found this freedom through a relationship with Jesus Christ--having been forgiven, I am able to forgive.
TS
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juni
I'm not ALLOWING them to ruin my life 'cause then they have won.
Did they negatively affect my familie's and my life in the way we raised our kids and the decisions we made? Yes. But it was our choice at the time to get involved. I feel bad for my kids cause they had no choice. I was the parent and should've put an end to the crap, but I truly believed it. And that still bothers me to this day that I allowed a man-made organization to run our life. But I can't go back and change things now. If I could, I would. For me that is very important. But there is no "back to the future"!
I choose to move on and live my life despite problems and be there for my kids when they want to talk about the past and how they are coping w/it and their decisions today. No one has a "perfect" life (well maybe Linda and Trev the 2 lovebirds) hee hee
I wish you well Chuckyy and the best for your daughter.
Juni
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The Prophet Pavariah
Yes, I would have to say that to a great extent they have. You see they caught me at the young and vulnerable age of 16 when I was preparing to go to college to establish a career and life for myself. But I fell, hook, line and sinker for the "truth" and against my father's wishes abandoned my pursuit of education in a "system that was about to pass away". I became a full time Pioneer and later entered Bethel service for two years but got caught up in a purge of suspected homosexuals at Bethel and was asked to leave since I had been a friend to several of those who were expelled and disfellowshipped.
After that I returned to a somewhat normal congregational life in my hometown, but I had left Bethel with $15 to my name and no education or career so I cleaned gas stations, worked as a room service waiter, worked in clothing stores, etc. to support myself. It was not easy getting by and it took me several years to secure a decent job at the local telephone company where I was able eventually to earn a half way decent wage, but never what I might have earned had I gone to college. So my entire life has been a financial struggle.
I continued in field service, but with reservations. Like so many others have stated on this site, I was amazed at the preferential treatment to some at Bethel while new boys were treated like slaves and without any compassion. I worked in the bindery and sewing departments for long hours in terrible heat during the summer trying to keep up with machines that were much faster than me. I would have wood splinters in my bleeding hands and rope burns and sweat pouring off my body for hours on end and go back to my room in pain at the end of the day. I begged them to let me go back to the Bethel Home and return to the cleaning assignment that I had before they put me in the factory, but they wouldn't hear it and said that I had a bad attitude and that Jehovah wanted me in the factory. There was just no compassion at all.
The WTS had always taught us to question everything. They taught us all about the pagan roots of all other religions and to question the basis of all other thoughts on religion and so I did. During my door to door ministry I spoke with many Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists and even a few Hindu teachers and gurus who seemed to me to have just as valid reasons for their faith as we did and I began to question the belief that there was only ONE TRUE RELIGION and one true religious authority in the form of the Bible. I began to question which came first? The chicken or the egg? In my research and reading the research of others far more knowledgeable than I, I found that most of the Old Testament writings were not committed to parchment until the Babylonian Captivity and are largely based upon pre-existing Egyptian, Babylonian, and Helenic myths and philosophy. Let's face it; we do not have the original Ten Commandments nor do we have any of the original scrolls of the books of Moses, yet we do have in existence the 4,000 year old Pyramid Texts inscribed on the walls of the pyramids and temples of Egypt and the cuneiform Code of Hammurabbi inscribed on tablets. Why is it that we have no early Old Testament texts earlier than the Babylonian Captivity unless they were never in existance prior to that? Many archeologists and historians believe that the Jews, while in captivity, simply created a history and a national identity for themselves by writing the Old Testament writings and that Moses never even existed.
Likewise, the WTS had always attacked the Catholic Church, Constantine and the Council of Nicea. And yet those were the same forces that established the Bible canon and decided which books would make up the Bible and which would not, excluding many fine works that might have been part of the Bible. So why does the WTS accept the Bible canon as established by a pagan emperor and his minions in the form of the Council of Nicea? The entire concept of a suffering and dying messiah who rises from the dead had no counterpart in the Old Testament, but did already exist in the Roman world in the form of the Cult of Mithra who also was born of a virgin, suffered and died and was resurrected, but centuries before the Christian story was formulated.
The WTS taught that creation was perfect and designed by a God who "sees the fall of a sparrow" and that it was only corrupted after the Fall of Adam, but in the light of science, that is simply not true. Paleontologists know from the fossil records that there have been at least five major world cataclysms in the earth's history due to seismic activity, ice ages and meteor strikes which killed off at least 90% of the animal species that once existed and these events took place prior to man's emergence on the scene. So how could creation have ever been perfect and purposefull and by design? Didn't God care about those life forms?
So the WTS taught me to think and to question. I suppose that I should be grateful for that. But as a result, I now have no faith whatsoever and can never believe in any religion or in a personal creator deity ever again. To me they are all the same; all myths created by men who could not bear living on an often hostile planet that deals out life and death at random. Man wanted some sense of control so he created a deity and religions that would give him some sense of control by being able to manipulate the deity into controlling the forces of nature that he was unable to control. Men also could not bear the thought of non-existence after their short life on earth so they created heaven and hell to continue their existence. They could also use the threat of hell to gain power over others by threatening to send them to eternal damnation if they were disobedient to religious authorities.
So Jehovah's Witnesses robbed me of the chance at a good career with financial security and they also robbed me of the mental security of any form of religion or spiritual path other than theirs
Bob Pavlick, Ex-Bethelite, Ex-Jehovah's Witness.