Not having a paradise earth in the future makes me sad

Scarred for life

Bonafide:

I think you're going through a grieving period as you come to the full realization that what you have looked forward to all your life is not going to happen. It is perfectly normal what you are feeling right now and you are doing the right thing in coming to this board and expressing your feelings.

I suppose I believed in the paradise earth when I was a child. I really don't remember. But I do know that when I left my feelings were that I wanted a few years of a "normal" life among "normal" people even if I died in Armageddon in 1975. I honestly, honestly felt that way. I just wanted nothing to do with the JWs anymore.

Bonafide, I've just come to realize from reading your posts that you are not married and have dedicated your whole life to the WTBTS. You have worked tirelessly for them and you sound like a great guy. You are not old, Bonafide. You are young. You can begin a new life. You can make friends outside of the KH. You can go to school. You can move to another town. You really,really can.

It will take time. In the meantime , you've got us. We are your friends and we love you. I want only happiness for you.

As we come out of the cult, we have to realize that happiness is for NOW. We don't live anymore for the hope of happiness after Armageddon. Grab life now and make the most of it.

TD

The JW idea of paradise is nice, but it's all one big unrealistic, impractical, poorly thought out fantasy.

Take the simplest of manufactured objects Look at a pencil. Could you make one? A pencil is rubber, sheet metal, wood, paint and a graphite/clay composite core. Think of the technology that is required to make and/or process each of those materials. Even something as simple as a pencil is 'sitting' on top of a huge pyramid of technology

Sure it's possible to build one of the cozy little gabled, lap-sided houses you see in JW pictures of paradise using only hand tools. It would be fun. But who makes the hand tools? Think of the technology it takes to make a high quailty hand saw.

Tools are required to make tools. Tools are required to make the tools that make tools. Tools are required to make the tools that made the tools that make the tools. It's an constant progression clear back to the days of clubs and flint knives. Human society has developed around this realilty. The result are civilizations based upon a division of labor where the vast majority of people live in cities and work for othes. --The very thing the JW's seem to detest.

Take this away and you don't have cozy gabled lap-sided houses with shutters and dormers. You have mud huts with thatched rooftops

bavman

Bonafide,

Just because you no longer believe the JW's have the truth doesn't mean you necessarily have to give up your belief on life on a paradise earth. JW's aren't the only ones who hold this belief. N.T. Wright (who happens to be Catholic) and others hold this belief. I agree the JW's idea of paradise really wouldn't be much of a paradise at all but really who's to say if Wright and others aren't correct about the earth? No one really knows for sure what the ultimate truth is. So, be o.k. with what you believe. Especially if you find it emotionally or spiritually fullfilling in some way.

bluecanary

Tuesday wrote: "But you would've wasted your life when you could've done better things with it. I said this regarding my current charity work, if I had spent 10 hours a month my entire childhood giving to charity like I did preaching, who knows what I could've done. Even if it was just consoling a nursing home patient in her final days who didn't have anyone else."

Just to play devil's advocate, we did do this as JWs to some extent. I remember going on a regular study with my Mother to an elderly woman in poor health. She was so sweet and we didn't have enough time with her to progress far, but she enjoyed our visits. I think her children appreciated the time we came and spent with her. I wouldn't be surprised if she held on to both ideas of heaven and earth as possible rewards for herself in her final months.

When I left the JWs I volunteered for a while, reading at a nursing home. I think the residents appreciated hearing "To Kill a Mockingbird" as much as they would have liked a Bible book. But I stopped because I didn't feel it was the best use of my time (and I didn't enjoy it; I always hated witnessing, too) But at least in that sense, witnessing can be a beneficial activity on an individual level.

Scully

What the WTS wants is for us to Keep Our Eyes On The Prize™. The hope of Living Forever In Paradise On Earth™, considering the WTS's position on secular education and career building, is all most JWs have to look forward to. Many live a hand-to-mouth existence, barely getting by with the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, while they make personal sacrifices and devote the balance of their time to Pursuing Kingdom Interests™. There's not much to enjoy in the here-and-now, and the WTS has engineered things this way to keep people hungry for the hope of a better future.

The WTS wants JWs to die without living, while at the same time offering them the hope that Millions Now Living Will Never Die™. If that's not a cruel bait-and-switch con job, then I don't know what it is.

Paradise On Earth™ is nothing more than a big fat mirage. It is a tool that enslaves JWs into focusing on a future that is not real, never will be real, and ignore the possibilities, dare I say it, the HOPE, that they could have were they to enjoy living in the present.

VoidEater

And now what? What do we have to look forward to? Those of us that spent our youth pioneering, making sacrifices for the Kingdom, waiting and waiting for Armageddon so we could have our huge family and live forever, no more death.

Um, now you get to engage with the world on a more useful, realistic level and make this a better place for us all, including you, to live.

And now I know that one day I will be in a nursing home somewhere, yes in diapers, yes forgetting who everyone is, yes losing my mind. Or if I am fortunate, I will die in my sleep before that. But it's not likely.

Maybe...maybe not. That's part of the freedom you now have: you can't predict where you will be at the end, and that lets you be a participant in your future.

What about you? Similar thoughts?

If you mean, thoughts of peace and freedom, then yes. If you mean something else, nope. Except I still want my tiger.

jookbeard

I never really thought too much about the prospect of playing with tamed wild animals, I found the prospect of living perfectly in a Paradise Earth rather boring, you may laugh but I always wanted and dreamed of having an intergalactic burger bar

leavingwt

If I was not a Witness, I would not believe in anything else.

Yes, most active JWs would say the same thing. I felt similarly, when I was IN.

However, as an Ex, I can assure you that this feeling will pass, if and when you leave.

sir82

The JW idea of paradise is nice, but it's all one big unrealistic, impractical, poorly thought out fantasy.

TD,

Where is your faith, brother? Jehovah will provide!

If necessary, he will create pencils out of thin air until our perfect minds, using the other 99% of their capacity , develop transmogrifier machines to create pencils and other stuff out of thin air.

This will all be in those "new scrolls", ya know.

aligot ripounsous

face life as it is

Nark,

you know Maurice Chevalier's song :"si vous n'aimez pas ça..." ?

Not having a paradise earth in the future makes me sad - What about you?