What Got YOU Out Of The Organization? (page 5)

minimus

I agree that believing the "24 elders" today have a direct pipeline to God is worse than dumb, considering how many mistakes "God" has made. When you read facts and history of "The Truth", you can't ignore the obvious!

sacolton

I began to do independent research on the history of the organization. I read something about Beth Sarim, Russel's pyramid, false prophecies and everything came crumbling down ...

SnakesInTheTower

I am with sunnygal on the 95 generation change. Since I had no real life outside the organization, I used to do a lot of "personal" study. Of course, this was before the Internet was really as powerful as it is now. I used to study secular and WT resources. Chronology was a favorite topic. Before the change was made official, I knew if something didn't change soon the organization was going to get caught with its pants down around its collective knees.

I once brought this up to someone (pre 95) and they asked if I was running ahead of the faithful slave. When it was finally considered at the WT study I think the implications of the doctrinal change went over about 90% of the publishers' heads. The older ones and those who paid close attention to the magazines when they first received them had already been talking about the change.

That was not enough to push me out. This had to be the "Truth." (You would have thought that an earlier incident in 1991 when I was JC for "being double-tongued" (aka "lying") when I was accused of lying by some jealous pioneer sisters would have pushed me out but I stuck it out).

I scrapped and scraped and was reappointed a MS, then an elder around 2002. What really got me thinking was attending MTS. We studied WT chronology there, the instructor discussed a personal conversation he had with a writer/researcher at his breakfast table about a certain greek word..... and shortly after the generation change was made..... I thought to myself during MTS..."what am I doing here?" And right there I started doing more research. Not long after I started lurking here and other JW sites.....

As an elder I had a hard time reconciling what I was telling the rank and file in the congregations was true when my own personal research was telling me just the opposite. But it was not any doctrinal issue that pushed me out. It wasn't the UN thing. It wasn't the pedophile thing (though that was pissing me off). It wasn't any chronology. All of that back story to answer the topic question:

It was the lack of love among the elders and their cronies that did it for me. Politics as usual.

You see, we weren't any different than the so-called "worldly" people that we so often condemned, both privately and rather boldly, and publicly but more subtly in the pages of The Watchtower. I always hated hypocrisy. I tried to be a decent elder and call BS when and where I seen it. This stand did not make me popular with my BOE. But by being an elder I was part of a problem that could not be fixed, not from within or from the outside. The arrangement and the organization was broken. If it was ever not broken I do not know.

On the last time that one of the elders (my nemesis, Brother Jackass) tried to get me removed I decided first to verbally resign, but then changed my mind and made him pull the trigger during the next CO visit. I could have successfully fought it (what with my MTS training and all), but I knew my time with the Organization was soon to end. I began plotting my exit...my fade.

Right after being deleted as an elder, I changed congos, changed circuits, changed states (but never physically moved away). I stopped field service Dec 06 with the previous congregation (though I turned in phantom reports through Aug 07). Started attending some meetings but slowly started dropping them. 8 months later, I attended my last meeting...sept 07.

The only thing left I guess is to get DF or to DA. I will only do that if forced into it. My JW mom would be affected. Once I finally move away from this region, my only connection to the witnesses will be sites like this one. More for the social aspect but also to maybe guide someone else away from the madness called Watchtower.

Snakes ()

minimus

Snakes, great post!

wobble

This is a BTTT and a thanks to Minimus for the thread,I think it is an important one,as it shows how many reasons there are to doubt and therefore leave the "Troof"

love

Wobble

p.s more personal stories ,even if similar to those posted,will show Lurkers where the problems lie! (they will also satiate a nosy old fart like me)

Mandette

I faded because of my incredible depression which after I stopped going to meetings became much easier to bear. Then the generations change made me go as Oompa puts it....WTF???????????? Then realizing(through help of my non JW friends) that salvation is a gift from God. We have no way to earn it(unlike what the WTS teaches). It all came together......then with my finding these sites, I knew I wasn't crazy. I'll NEVER go back.............

Mandette

mamochan13

It was when I got reinstated. They had put me through hell while DFd, treating me like a pariah and making me crawl and beg to be allowed back. Then one day they suddenly decided I was an acceptable associate again. I thought, "I'm exactly the same person I was yesterday. How can I be a bad person one day and a good person the next on the say-so of a couple of men?"

That began a gradual process of realization that something was very wrong with the beliefs I had been raised with. It still took several years to gradually leave. The loss of family and friends had already occurred during my DFing, so I think that lessened the trauma and made it easier.

I did not start to critically examine the belief system until I was well out and finally felt strong enough to challenge deeply-held beliefs I had been loyal to for so much of my life. That was another trauma, but it was an essential process to convince me that I had done the right thing for myself and my children.

donny

I was initially going to fade, but I got tired of being stalked by elders so I decided it was time to breal ties altogether.

Donny

evergreen

A/ The internet

B/ I read an article by a "brother" who had written to bethel in England and the US explaining why 607Bce is wrong. This gave me an appetiser to read more "truth" on the internet

C/ I completely by accident came across Crisis of Conscience in my local library. I will never forget that day for as long as I live. My heart was pounding knowing I had this book in my bag to read. I will never forget walking along the street on a hot summers day overcome with excitement at what I was about to read. Of course, the book did blow me away. Every page I turned, I would say to myself "unbeleivable, unbelievable" or "I knew it". I was shocked at what I read and from then on realised that it was just another man made organisation. An organisation I had been part of for some 12/13 years.

I am still a fader and have family who currently attend the meetings. But in time I am hoping they will see what I see. In fact I had the courage to tell my wife that no history book shows that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607bce and that this obviously affects the 1914 teaching. She said she was going to pursue it, but somehow I dont think she will. She was born into the faith and only attends for the sake of attending.

EG

Homerovah the Almighty

The apocalyptic Armageddon that we were pushed to sell to the public that was not the truth at all,

it was solely perpetrated on circulating their own published literature, which they were making profits from.

The exploitation and coercion of the organization and the overwhelming control and damage to peoples personal lives.

I wasn't going to be made a fool on someone elses ill-begotten God trip.

What Got YOU Out Of The Organization?

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