Final Straw???

by Tina 25 Replies latest jw friends

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  msil

  The memorial and the bad logic around religion in general.

  Ranchette, as far as vasectomies go.....since they flip-flop on it just cut 1 of the sacks......then lean to the other side!!! Isn't that their advice?
• 

  Tina

  Thanks to all who contributed! regards,T

  'Boycott Shampoo! Demand the real Poo!
• 

  hillary_step

  Tina,

  An interesting question.

  I cannot really define a final straw, like many others gradualism was key with me. I will though relate a tale that often that haunts me in the early hours, an unforgettable straw we might refer to it as. It happened some years ago.

  A JW with emotional problems was DF for smoking. He had a history of occasional lapses and though he tried so very hard, he struggled to make sense of almost everything in his life and would occasionally acquiesce to the comfort of tobacco. He clung to the 'Truth' with a vehemence, it was his only grip on anything approaching reliability. I was exempted from his Committee as I had caused difficulty in an earlier Committee ( two years previously ) over the same issue with the same person, refusing to allow a disfellowshipping to take place.

  He was DF and killed himself five days later. I helped fish his stinking body out of the river.

  It was not so much this suicide that drove a blade into my heart, though this I admit shook me greatly. It was the attitude of his faithful JW wife, a mother of two beautiful young children, now without their father. I met with her a day or so later to offer my help and commiseration’s, I could barely speak, made mute by my grief and shame, and yet was surprised at the her perky demeanor. I was shocked to experience a steely resolve in her that accepted and agreed that her husband had ‘deserved to be DF’, and if the consequences were the river, ‘so be it’. She stated that ‘Gods will was more important than her own upset’.

  I re-iterate that her husband had been a difficult man to live with, but her ability to elevate the WTS judicial edifice into a position in her life when it stole her natural tears was truly an awakening. I do not blame her, she became what she was taught, a person who viewed human feelings as a betrayal of all that was good and fine in life.

  As to this death, I lay its dripping body across the shiny shoes, polished of course by others, of the Governing Body, of what was then the WTBTS.

  Thank you Tina - HS
• 

  SixofNine

  Wow, it's been almost exactly a year since I "got it".

  Burdened already by a mountain of "straws", in my weakened state, I considered the reasonings of Ray Franz, and also a man who used to post here by the name of "Friend" on the blood issue (actually Friends stuff first, he used to post on witnet). When I finally "got it": that one can view the bible's comments on blood 180 degrees opposite of the WTS (thereby saving lives and at the same time having a more charitable view of God), I knew I was not a Jehovah's Witness anymore.

  After that, I looked at EVERYTHING with a criticle eye. Not much of what I believed my entire life held up to reasonable scrutiny.

  Oh well. It turns out you'll be just fine even if you find out your life was based on a crock.

  Did I say fine? Hell, it's better than fine, it's GREAT.
• 

  tdogg

  My final straw was going to a CC when I was struggling in my late teens. The other kids my age were either insincere fakers or too holy, mostly the former. I dont know if I have ever felt more alone in my life at that moment and there I was at the place I should have been so encouraged, but I wasnt. I walked out of that place in the middle of the day, left my family there without saying a word. I had my own car and I drove myself that day. It felt so good to just get the hell out of there. Though there was that deep down guilt feeling, I realized that I did not belong in the organization any longer.
• 

  Farkel

  : But a blessing in disguise that I am so thankful for now!

  Ah, but Andi, it is YOU who is the blessing for all of us to enjoy.

  Farkel

  "When in doubt, duck!"
• 

  Teirce

  I wanted to keep kith and kin, I wanted to not rock the boat. But I had married into an urban cong, where all they physically possessed was the ministry. There was nowhere for me to hide, there was nothing for me to find common ground with, all they had was faith and door to door, etc. Plus, I was a new cracker in a dark hall, so they assumed I was FAITHFUL or something. Tried slapping me with damn MShood, after I had carefully got out of it in my previous hall. Well they couldn't slap the title on me, so they tried slapping me with 5 parts/demos in one month on the MS/SM. Either they were too dense to realize I wanted to lay low, or they smelled something and wanted to smoke me out. They smoked me out and I left.

  The meeting with the elders went like this. "Do you know what so-and-so scripture says?" (I quote it verbatim without blinking an eye.) (I reminded them that I searched for viable truth under every rock, in every nook and cranny, and that's the hell why I spent five years piominservanting with regular Bethelneedgreater trips. There's nothing they could point to I hadn't looked at already.)

  My best friend Mike, who also conceptually, integrally knew it wasn't real, or the truth, or A truth, or even reasonable, ok, not even fucking conscionable, made clear to me that he was dedicated to continuing his life in the org, with his beautiful wife and excellent family. He was a true man of mind over matter. I'm sure in some other universe, he never got married and he and I got out of the org together.
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  HappyHeathen

  In February of 1975, while the WT was preaching that the end of "this system of things" was emminently due in October 1975, they were also in dire need of a way to explain why so many individuals in other parts of world (ie., Asia) would die without ever having heard "the truth." I don't know if this was ever published in the WT, but at an assembly in February the brother who gave the main talk told us that Jehovah would destroy those people because they were beyond hope since they were so steeped in false religion. In short, it didn't matter if JW's preached to them or not. I finally had to accept what I had not dared to suspect -- the GB are nothing more than a group of sociopaths without an ounce of human compassion.
• 

  metatron

  Only one final straw?

  1) I found out my daughter was molested and the elders knew
  about it, lied, and covered it up.

  2) The Bulgarian thing convinced me the leadership lies
  to save themselves - and betrays the friends.

  3) The Mexico/Malawi thing made me sick

  metatron
• 

  zev

  add to that the u.n. thing and i'm all done!

  -Zev
  -August 8th, 2001 - The day the lambs ROARED