Welcome to a New Poster & Former Bethelite!

Seeker4

Post 1 of 1
since 22-Aug-07

(The post below was in response to the thread "Have JWs ruined your life." I thought it was excellent and deserved it's own thread, so I brought it here. It is signed at the end. S4)

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.

Seeker4

It was in response to a post started in Nov 06,and by a poster named The Prophet Pavariah.

PP: Was this the purge of gay Bethelites in the 1970s where about 60 brothers were sent packing? I remember hearing about it.

What are you doing now?

S4

Welcome to a New Poster & Former Bethelite!

Seeker4

Seeker4

moshe

Stealth453

ex-nj-jw

ex-nj-jw

free2think

Dragonlady76

iamfreenow

BizzyBee

Share this