by freeflyingfaerie 43 Replies latest jw friends
I finally had had enough, and was sitting at work one day.
I was disgusted with the lack of love, the authoritarian ways of the organization, and the lack of empathy for child abuse victims.
I googled JW's and child abuse and found Barbara Anderson's site and then Silent Lambs. That day, I knew I had grown up in a myth.
The rest is history - once you blow the lid off of Pandora's Box, the dominos fall very quickly!
I honestly never believed it was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Growing up in the 70s and seeing the 1975 debacle firsthand, I always knew they were fallible. Seeing the clowns who got appointed as elders just because they dragged their family out in service every weekend (and that was their ONLY qualification) reinforced the knowledge that they were NOT appointed by holy spirit.
But growing up among the flaws I still accepted the religion as the truth and the only truth. Cult mind control.
I think a big thing in allowing me to finally leave is that I never let the Borg take my self-esteem because I never based my self-esteem on how well I conformed to Borg requirements.
So like many, I was in but not fully indoctrinated. If I had to pinpoint one event that really pushed things and accellerated my exit and determination to never submit to Borg rule it was this:
I was a MS. A relatively new MS but I grew up in the truth and had been baptized longer than several elders on the local body. I hadn't just fallen off the turnip wagon. So when the elders made a decision that affected me and my family (I can't go into details at the moment, sorry) I had the fortitude to complain about it. I didn't complain around the congregation in the usual Dub-gossipy manner; I went to an elder directly and told him how I felt, calmly and with scriptures to support my point.
Next week I was brought into a meeting with a couple elders, who I presumed were going to address the issues I had raised. Wrong.
They were there to talk to me about my pride and presumption in questioning a decision by the body of elders. (I think it really pissed them off that I used scriptures against them.) Humility is fine and good and so I accepted the counsel and promised to work on it. But the thing that stuck with me was how they misapplied the "seven stars" in Christ's hand from Revelation chapter 1. Here's how they twisted it:
Because the stars are angels of the congregations, that means they are the elders, and because the elders are held in Christ's right hand, that means he is directing the elder bodies in the congregations, and because he is directing the elder bodies in the congregations their decisions are Christ's decisions and should never be challenged.
This ridiculous interpretation completely disregards the context of the following chapters where JESUS IS CHEWING OUT THE ELDERS IN THE CONGREGATIONS for NOT DOING WHAT HE WANTS THEM TO DO!
I don't view myself as proud but I DO have enough NORMAL self-esteem to not submit to such complete and utter BS.
That was the beginning of the end for me mentally. I no longer obeyed any of their prohibitions on outside research. I found Robert King's stuff on the Internet and read his book (which actually makes some sort of sense if you still think in Dub-ese), participated in his message board for awhile, and finally came here.
(Note: a lot of details and other stuff is left out, obviously. I hope to tell my entire story someday.)
I think there was always some part of me who knew something was just not right. I wanted to do everything I was told and more I tied to do everything right the more I was hated because no one wanted to do it. I wanted to pioneer, I really wanted to bring people into the "truth". I truly felt it meant their lives. I wanted to go to Bethel, I really, really wanted to go to Bethel. I felt that was the best way to service Jehovah. It was better then pioneering which I totally hated. But I was put down at Bethel all the time by my overseer.
It was not until we had a man who is a baby rapist move into my hall and the elders would not do a thing to stop him from going door to door and not only that the elders got mad at me, for even telling them he had raped babies. Then I realized we had two other baby rapist in the hall.
I could not hide for the fact that this was just a cult anymore. Now I am where I am now. My husband is still a die hard and I am going through hell trying to understand how I could have been so stupid.
There was never that moment.
It was like what happens when you are a child. Time passes and you are busy living life. You look into a mirror one day and the child is gone.
An adult looks back at you from the mirror.
The child....where did he go?
The Truth...where did it go?
Goosebumps, Terry. You gave me goosebumps.
Hey LitS, what does your husband say about the THREE baby rapists in your congragation?
I love the story.
The minute that the elders in my JC case against my abusive step-father told me that it was my word against his and we can't do anything about it. I should go to the authorities and rip them a new one...
I never fully "believed" it was the truth even though I was born-in and raised in the org. Hence the reason I was df'd a couple times and publicly reproved. Spent most of my adult life (last 15 years) under some type of "restrictions" from the org.... lol wow... I never actually wrote that out, now reading over it is like sticking your head in freezing cold water...
For me there was no one big "wow" moment. It was a gradual thing punctuated along the way by a series of events. Much like Terry's experience, there came a day when I came to the realization that I had outgrown the religion.
It all starts, IMO, when you begin to answer those nagging questions that all dubs have (but are trained to squelch). When you start to sit with your thoughts and follow them out to their logical conclusion it becomes clear there is a reasonable and valid alternate point of view. When you allow yourself to look at it from another angle, the whole thing suddenly looks very different. It's that classic paradigm shift people talk about.
It's like the illustration someone used in a talk once; he held up an apple and asked what we saw, then answered his own rhetorical question, describing a delicious apple. Then he turned it around and showed the back side of the fruit which had been hidden by the palm of his hand. He had taken a large bite out of it and allowed it to sit for a day or two and turn brown. When he held up that side, it was no longer appetizing.
His point: things look different once you examine all sides. He used it to illustrate how the world could look shiny and appealing but still be rotting away inside. What he didn't say is that the same thing could apply to any organization - including the one we are most familiar with.
In the end, once the toothpaste is out of the tube, there was no putting it back. That's where I found myself, There was no other choice but to move forward, into the light.
Not any one moment in particular. Some I recall as a bigger brick in the wall being removed but as a born-in, the roots went fairly deep.
