by Aussie Oz 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Thankyou all.
I sometimes wish i had left after finding out that things just were not right and not because i fell apart. On the whole my entire experience with them was pretty good and that seems to make it harder to sort through.
anyway, it is what it is and i am sure i will get there!
oz HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!
Happy new year oz. I left a few years back and I was in it for 20 years of my life. Family is still very active, considering their is pioneers and bethelites among them. My experience with the WT was positive, basically because of the social aspect of it. The love I received was great, and talking about the bible was always inspirtational. I beleive it was a positive experience because we all beleived in God, and we were all a big family in that because we beleived in the same thing. For me the Witnesses are still my family and I do trust many of them. They are all I knew. I don't beleive in how much control the WT society has over it's members though and that's what causes the division. I don't agree with that. And that's why I left. Also, I don't think theirs enough emphasis on Jesus Christ. We need to go through him to contact God. Not to mention the many doctrinal changes over the years, which leads me to beleive they are not too sure on what to think. But yet their willing to shun their friends and family over the unstable beleif system. I think it's very dangerous. I do hope the best for many of them, they are good people. They are just lead to beleive the wrong kind of information. And many of them can't leave the organization because it's basically like a cult. "You can always sign out, but you can never leave". It's true to a certain extent, but it's ultimately up to you to change your viewpoints and beleif system. Like someone previously mentioned in this threat, " you gotta do it your way". I hope the best for you and your family, if you ever wish to talk to someone you can contact me. Take care
:First up i must say, doctrine is of little interest to me.
If you don't care about their doctrine, why do you even bother with the religion? I mean isn't doctrine what distinguishes one religion from another? Isn't that what religions slaughter each other over?
Farkel
I get what you are saying and I hope you find your answers.
As for me, I became 100 % convinced quite easily. They insist they have "the truth." All I had to do was put enough holes in that to prove to myself that it wasn't "the truth." They so easily tripped themselves up in that test.
WTS failed so much when I examined it, that I would automatically take the opposite side of what they said on anything whatsoever until I proved to myself that they were correct.
Aussie, doctrine IS so important. If you are not interested in it, then drop out now and take your kids with you, and lead a free life without religion.
If you come to the conclusion that the whole thing is a man made fabrication you have other decisions to make. Are you ever going to trust religion again, or are you going to start making your own rules on living? Do you want to teach your children to think for themselves or listen and live by other people's ideas? Are you going to leave JW's totally or or make a pretense for family? If you do fake it, how are you going to protect your kids from indoctrination?
Nugget and I are in the same process. I have no doubt that we have been living in a lie all our lives, but where do we go from here?
The best of luck mate, and a VERY happy new year to you.
I'm not a JW, nor have I ever been one, but I notice that people are dropping out of the religion in great numbers. To use a modern political term, the church is not sustainable; however, don't just quit with nowhere else to go, and don't lose faith in Christianity. If the Lord has a church on Earth, you can find it with a little work. Just relieving one's self of religion can make for an unfulfilling life if one has lost all faith. The proplem with the Witnesses is that they've bet a huge lump sum on something in which they have no promise. They have no heavenly assurances as to their legitimacy, the correctness of their doctrines or their authority. They are right about one thing, and that is that the world is becoming increasingly wicked and polarized. It's not a good time to dump all your faith and become a part of what the world is. If you have children, they still need a path and a direction. To not give them direction means that they might get the idea that everything they see on TV is okay. In my view, that would be a shame.
Aussie oz
Sometimes it`s a long process disengaging oneself from this religion,I was a convert at 19 and it took many years to eventually break free from the controlling influence of the religion.If you have been brought up in it then it`s that much harder.(I was in for 33 yrs )
Download Don Camerons book from lulu $ 7;00??" Captives of a concept"
read Kerry lauderbach`thesis on rort of mispresentation on the blood issue
I was disgusted with their misrepresentation of quotes from worldly people on the subjects of "Evolution" Carl Sagan
and higher education by educators who were completely taken out of context to validate the wathtower point of veiw
So how many other quotes were misrepresented ???? to" prove" their point
smiddy
Convinced as i 99% am that the Wt society is all we have concluded, I feel i owe to myself and my children to be 100% convinced before actively trying to extract them.
I am learning that in "normal" life one is not usually 100% convinced of ANYTHING. There are always going to be doubts floating around about anything you do and this is ok as long as you don't dismiss them and thoroughly analyze them. I think this has been one of the hardest things for me to really accept. We are indoctrinated to believe that we SHOULD be 100% certain of everything or else something is wrong with us and I think this is one of the driving factors in why JWs tend to struggle with depression so much.
First up i must say, doctrine is of little interest to me. What gets me is the provable wrong-doing, the hypocrasy, cover-ups, double standards, you know what i mean i think.
I am not going to argue with this because I know that I myself felt the same way in the beginning. I really believed in the doctrine but it disturbed me that the source of the doctrine had its hands so dirtied. I was also really scared of finding out the doctrine was wrong (which goes right back to having to know everything is right rather than having doubts like I mentioned earlier) so I chose to stay away from challenging it. As I became more comfortable with the idea that the WBTS was fallible, I also became more comfortable with the idea that the doctrines may be fallible as well and also more comfortable with the idea of challenging those doctrines. That's when my interest in doctrine picked up. So don't be surprised if later on down the road you find yourself digging more in to the doctrinal side of things. It's completely ok and understandable that you don't want to deal with them right now.
therein lies the daunting road. I grew up in the 'truth', so i never got to make sure of all things before getting baptised. I find it daunting indeed to have to wade through so much argument and counter argument. What is true, what is a malicious lie, what has been blown out of proportion, and by whom. There is just so much from both sides that i almost dont know where to start.
I was born in too, and I think it may be a lot harder for those of us born in the org to challenge the beliefs that we were not only raised with but actually have lived in action our entire lives. It is indeed a daunting task, especially when you feel like you don't really have a good grasp on all the doctrine to begin with and feel guilty because you don't (something that's reserved for us "born ins" - "You are so fortunate you grew up knowing what the truth is!"). This is actually not all that unusual - most JWs don't have a full grasp on the doctrine. Oddly enough I gained a better grasp on the doctrine through backtracking - reading some material that pointed out fallacies in the doctrine and then reading over the Society's material to see if those fallacies still held. Some of the most confusing parts of the doctrine are the most fallible, and that very fallibility is exactly WHY they are so hard for JWs to understand. They don't make any sense to begin with!
The important thing is to just take your time. You don't have to have all the answers over night. Read a little here and a little there. Research your findings so you see and know for yourself that they are in fact true. Just take it one concept at a time and things will start falling in to place all on their own as to where you should look next. Take it as you would any large task - break it in to small pieces. Have you ever shied away from the door to door work because there were too many people out there for you to reach? Chances are you just thought of the ones you would reach that particular day and took it day by day. This is pretty much the same thing.
As for your children, I highly encourage you to give them some space even if you are not ready to separate from the organization yourself. That doesn't mean you should encourage them to take a "worldly" path but it does mean you should allow them the space to make their own decisions about which path to undertake. My argument is this: you know for yourself what damage it does to grow up in the organization not knowing anything so that later you wonder if you made the right choice by staying in even though you never had the chance to examine things for yourself. Now you're baptized and faced with possible shunning for "going back to the world" even though you never had the chance to be in the world and really make the decision on your own to become a JW to begin with. Do you want your children to be faced with the same thing when they get older, or would you prefer them to spend some time in the world (if they so choose) and later on realize that they really believe in the teachings of the WBTS and make an educated decision about their own baptisms rather than just following what they have only ever known? Someone at the door has the decision of whether or not to shut the door in your face, but a JW raised child often does not have that choice given to them. Religious beliefs become rules of life rather than optional beliefs... it's not "you shouldn't believe in Christmas" as it is with someone at the door but "you're not allowed to believe in Christmas". Can you imagine how many "worldly" people would be turned towards ANY truth if it was presented in such a fashion to them as it so often is to JW youth?
I pray that you are able find peace within yourself, where ever that peace may be found.
First up i must say, doctrine is of little interest to me.
Hmmm... I have to say that doctrine is the all important 'be all and end all' of my interest in this religion , or any other. I could put up with ignorant people within the movement, I could have carried on with all the meetings and field service and all the stuff I had on my plate as an elder IF the doctrines were right.
If God were really using that Organization to preach truth, I would accept it, warts and all.. But I can see now that the doctrines are false, asinine and not Godly. So I stopped.
But we are all different . Good luck in your search Aussie Oz
First you must decide , if you believe in Theism and is the Bible the inerrant word on that process? Most people never bother to start at the beginning. Good luck.
