Consequences of being a JW

by Regretful_J 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  sullengirl0108

  I read recently in a watchtower study that women are being encouraged by "the world" to educate themselves further and get good jobs. The watchtower mentioned how this is a bad way of thinking and it gets in the way of field service, marriage, raising children. I mean, it was aimed specifically at women. I was like, get the eff outta here. I am not raising my daughter to believe that women have a certain place. No way. I don't believe the only thing that women are good for is pioneering, wiving and mothering. And that getting an education and decent career gets in the way of your husband's headship. *shiver* just typing headship gives me the willies.

  But this is all part of the way I grew up. Watching my mom, a flipping smart woman, give away all her power to a religion that never seemed to cover it's own holes and she as smart as she is, just never saw it. It never made any sense to me. Maybe she did see it and ignored it for fear of her mortal soul.

  Who knows? I was not blessed with the gene of blissful ignorance. I can't ignore the holes. I also can't ignore the fact that the organization is molding young women to believe that field service and marriage are their only options in order to gain blessings from God.
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  LockedChaos

  All very true
  
  Born-in here
  Always carried guilt
  Never enough
  
  Only freedom was town library
  ....had to do homework....
  Actually it was the only way I could
  learn anything that wasn't WT related
  
  Read everything I could my hands on
  If I tried to have an intelligent
  conversation with JW "Friends" I
  would get that drooling, blank stare
  like I was an adult talking in a Charlie
  Brown cartoon. WaWaWaWaWa
  
  That only worked for a couple of years
  Then I had to use only the bound volumes
  of Watchtower & Awake for research.
  No encyclopedias at home
  
  Made for some interesting papers
  
  I just remembered
  I won a lot of awards in school
  ribbons, plaques, that sort of thing
  Parents never kept them
  All gone forever......Sad
• 

  WingCommander

  I was born and raised in this Cult as well....yep, I said Cult! It's taken me a few years to be able to admit that, but that is what it is....fits all the criteria!

  The entire position on women being submissive to men and being second-class citizens is taken WAY overboard by the Org. Jesus didn't treat women like 2nd class citizens, did He? Ah, no!! I can't believe they still print that point of view in this day and age, and that so many still think like this. What dinosaurs! 2008, and women are still treated like property? Disgusting.

  Education: I did very well in school, graduated top 10% of my class. I was encouraged to get good grades, but NEVER encouraged to go to college. It was always discouraged or blown off as, "costing too much", "unnecesary", armageddon is around the corner to it will be useless to have a degree, etc. What crap!!! I bucked my parents a little, and attended Penn State for an associates degree. Hey, my High School validictorian was a baptized JW in my congregation, and his mom was sending him to college for an engineering degree, so why couldn't I? Screw them.

  I have a good career now, NO THANKS to the JW's looney cult crap! My mom finally woke up in 2000 or so, and highly encouraged my college education. After all, she had a BS as well before becoming a JW. Oh, the irony of her being a JW woman with a BS in nursing, an R.N. She was always kind of looked down upno because of it.

  I can't believe we all swallowed this tripe for so long. So much of it is taken to the extreme and is not beneficial, but actually hurtful to us.

  - Wing Commander
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  jamiebowers

  Once you get a job and move, hopefully you can fade. As you are doing so, please read Steven Hasan's Combatting Cult Mind Control. You may be able to help some of your family out.
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  Regretful_J

  The one thing I don't like is how most JW's are unable to form a real opinion without consulting the publications. One of the other things that got to me was when young people got DF'ed and they had no support group and in many cases they started abusing drugs and alcohol. When this happens the ones in the congregation will say that this is evidence that they are the true religion because they weren't doing that while a JW. The actual reasons that those things occur is that the JW life is so rigid and strict that when you are out and you have freedom, you don't know what to do with it and sometimes you engage in risky behavior.... Now that I think of it, seeing that stuff as a kid may have been the beginning of when I started questioning the "relgion" (cult).
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  Sasha

  and some more would be all those "best friends" drop you like a bag of dirt, when you don't comply!!!!!
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  Quandry

  Yesterday? Who cares, it's gone.

  Well, if one is 19 how many yesterdays can there be? However, if one is 56 and was "in" more than thirty years, there is a great deal of grief and care over what's gone.

  Try working full time at a low-paying job and trying to go to night school at almost retirement age! And what prospects for an exciting career will there be for a college graduate who is sixty years old?
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  anewme

  Quandry, I hear you. I too am nearing 60 without a career, money, nothing. Thankyou old Witchtower!
  
  But hey, isnt it refreshing to read the comments from these sassy young ones who have such a healthy attitude? I LOVE IT!!!!
  
  Come on kids, help us geezers who wasted our lives to gather our courage and be glad everyday that at least we got out before WE DIED IN THERE!!!!!!
  
  
  
  
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  Quandry

  help us geezers who wasted our lives to gather our courage and be glad everyday that at least we got out before WE DIED IN THERE!!!!!! Anewme-Yep, I hear ya too!!!!

  At this point, I just don't want to die dumb. I enjoy learning. Always have, even though I may not be able to use an education, at least I WILL HAVE ONE!!!!
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  IreallydidwalkoutofaKH

  You know the irony for me is that I had a non-believing father who went along with my mom's takes. So for me it shows just how powerful using God as your basis for reason is. My dad never made us celebrate holidays, take advanced cources in High School or and the big one for me was this. Super Bowl XIX, Marino's only Super Bowl fell the weekend of our Circuit Assembly. I attended Saturday for my mom. Yet my dad made me go on Super Sunday and I told hiom "Do you know what it is like at the watchtower meeting on Sundayl? He went to 2 in his lifetime,so he could say yes. I said "multiply that by Saturday and Sunday. Let me watch the game"! But he just could not argue a religion based topic with his wife. Damn, that was the longest CA of my life!