by metatron 25 Replies latest jw friends
I understand your point about pickets at assemblies but this is a little different. I can recall the loud
apostates yelling in front of Bethel, too. However, what seems to be happening is that ex-Witnesses
are emerging in such numbers that Joe Publisher stands a good chance of personally knowing
somebody that quit the organization in disgust. It's getting 'close to home'.
metatron
Met, you're right. There are more that leave KNOWING simply, that this isn't the Truth. Period. They don't leave and feel bad, either. They're just out! And happy to move on.
I believe we're at the start of a tipping point. The internet is changing everything. I don't see how anyone today from 15 years old and up will not go to the internet to check out Jehovah's Witnesses and hence are only a few clicks away from peeking behind the curtain and having everything unravel before them.
The last person in our congregation before us to leave openly because they no longer believed that only the Society had the 'truth', was 13 years ago. I may be wrong but I don't think it'll be another 13 years before someone else leaves our cong for the same thing.
If more of you currently living a 'double life' made a stand, more people would follow you.
Again, IMHO, its like when you're on a course and no-one wants to put their hand up and ask a question for fear of looking stupid (insert your personal fear of choice...) but you do and then loads of people come up and say that they were thinking the same thing but were nervous to put their hand up and ask. There must be an awful lot of people questioning secretly right now or is this wishful thinking on my part?
Minimus, you bring up a good point. Maybe they are losing their ability to 'demonize' those who leave
by claiming that they are losers and sinners! More and more people leave who aren't 'wildly immoral'
or on drugs. Many people who leave are very happy in doing so - and are making a success of their
lives. This is different from the past, as I 'knew' it.
metatron
sweet pea: I believe we're at the start of a tipping point...loads of people come up and say that they were thinking the same thing but were nervous to put their hand up and ask.
I don't think this is wishful thinking.
I think the Governing Body only wishes your best guess wasn't 100% accurate. Their most recent shift (September KM) will drive out the men and women who gave the most meaningful, most educational talks, the ones who were not mindless zombified parrots. They are actively trimming out or at least marginalizing and quieting the very best they had to offer, the ones for whose sake the flock forgives the rest as mere imperfections in an otherwise good organization.
That organization is already dead as it lumbers toward its own quiet place to curl up and gasp its last breath. It just doesn't know it is dead, yet. And still the hunters gather around to plunge more poisonous barbs deeply into it; we can tell that the slayer of our families and devourer of our lives is nearly spent, we are anxious to see it stilled.
Respectfully,
AuldSoul
When I left in 83, I knew it was a lie. I had no doubts. I did the math with 1975. A perfect god would not make mistakes.
It's still difficult when you see the reality of the matter, and those around you are oblivious to it. Sometimes you wonder where do they get the brain dead pills at?
For all their crowing about how ``scriptural" their DFing policy is, it never occurs to anyone that in fact it bears no resemblance to any scriptural example, in several ways in diametric contrast with the example cited by Paul in Corinthians: there, Paul mentions no name, but describes in detail the nature of the offense, ``in order that they may be ashamed," i.e. as an object lesson in what will not be tolerated in the Christian community of believers.
Also, the rebuke is said to have been agreed upon by ``the majority" of the congregation in a public venue, NOT by a star-chamber committee in closed session.
The WT on the other hand, reads off the name, but leaves it to the congregation's imagination -- or the local rumor mill -- to fill in the blanks; nop object lesson here. This cynical policy, of course is dictated not by the Bible but rather by the Society's Legal Department so as to evade any possible legal liability.
So a DFd person's friends or even relatives have no rights to any explanation as to why relationships which go back years or even decades, must be severed -- immediatley and utterly, under threat of disciplinary action to themselves. Nice
ROOM 215, I REALLY wish you'd post more often.
Right, Awakened07.
Many disfellowshipped for "moral" reasons continue to believe WT dogma.
Some visit here as apologists.
That's the case with my sister. She was df'd for living a double life, but still believes da troof and will attend every last meeting so she can be back amongst the living once more. The irony of the whole situation is that I can comment and talk to people, but I think the WT doctrine is bullshit. I insulted the top two elders in my congregation by indentifying JW-ism as mind control, yet, I'm still amongst the living! Soon I will cancel my re-indoctrination sessions with my grampa, and then the whole confrontation will swing around again.
After a while of living in a rational head-space it becomes hard to fathom that some people still truly believe in the Witness nonsense, but some people still do truly believe in the Witness nonsense. Some of them are terror struck by apostates and anything critical of the Watchtower, and a lot of them will continue that way for their entire lives.
I don't think there will be a mass exodus, and I don't think I'll see an implosion of that religion in my lifetime. And I'm not really caring too much either these days.
GBL
