by minimus 43 Replies latest jw friends
My decision to step-out cames from Steve Hassan and Ray Franz books.
But the residual Watchtower mindset has been removed only after I decided to retart study and enrolled at University.
By studing disciplines within an academic approach was fundamental to me for evidence all the inconsintecy, contradictory, paradoxical,unreliable of "teocracy".
I have written before about my not believing 1914 being the first issue that made me begin to move out of the cult, it is simply not in the Bible.
The "mindset" is a difficult thing, another way of expressing mindset is "Groupthink" which equals mental inertia, as Dear Nugget says above, we trusted them to do all the checking for us, so we looked at nothing too deeply ourselves.
I was gullible when I left too, I thought everything posted on here was true, I thought that people who had left the WT would be scrupulous about truth, that is not so for all posters, past, and sadly some present.
The mindset, the WT way of thinking just fell away from me when I learned about Critical Thinking, and about Argumentation and Logical Fallacies etc.
I was able to turn these skills on myself and destroy any vestige of WT thinking, this was helped along by the feeling that "If the WT says it, it is probably wrong". I was surprised at how quickly WT thinking left me.
I suppose the last bit to go was occasionally thinking of a scripture the way the WT does, all out of context and twisted exegesis, before pulling myself up sharp and saying to myself , "do not read those words through WT spectacles !"
I feel much more adult and sure of myself now, the Bulls**t Detector is at Max.Strength, be it a politician or a religionist or anyone else, I can immediately see the problems with what is being spouted.
Did I ever think like a full 100% believing JW ? I don't think so, do I ever think like a JW now?
I do hope not.
I did not agree with how the Borg viewed women. Basically, we were to be seen and not heard and I felt that I no longer wanted to be apart of a religion that did not view me as important. Oh, yes, we are the majority and we do most of the preaching work and provide unpaid labor to cook, clean, etc when the Borg needs us to. I will no longer waste my time and talent. Most of the "brothers" that I have dealt with are not college educated and do not have my life experiences. I don't have confidence in "men" who don't know what life's all about. In the real world, it does not matter how many hours of service or placement of magazines that you devote. As a woman, I have just as many qualifications/experiences that most male witnesses do. I know for a fact that I can speak intelligently than I hear from most speakers from the podium. But because I have breasts and a monthly cycle, I don't qualify. Also, the flip flopping of the issues also helped my interest wane. There are so many more, but these get me riled up.
for me it was all little steps during a longer peroid of time.
While growing up as JW, I never got inot serious trouble, but on the other hand , I never was fond of service, but I agreed, that it is important. What i never undertsood was reporting, didnt seem right anyway.
Later on, after learning aout 75, I was always disturbed, not that 75 happened as wrong prediction (false expectations excuse) but the fact, that the society long time never admitted their mistake, and blamed it on rank and file.
despite my little concerns I advanced to MS and later to an elder.
I considered myself always more liberal, and the point, that made me long time not really question the borg, was that sometimes the literatur seemed to be more balanced and open minded (in the 90`s mostly) than many elders in my old hall.
Just one example: even as teenager I never agreed and undertsood the no-beard rule we had in the hall, however, searching our litertur I enver found a clear prohibition of wearing a beard.
For a while, things in literatur seemed to move to a more liberal approach. i remember the Awake about pinatas, were it stated, that origin of customs alone does not matter, if today it is not connected to pagan things anymore.
I liked books like ´Daniel and revelation, because at least they offered something interesting without meddling into personal affairs of Christians.
But this course changed (at least my impression)
A few years ago, articles were published, with rules and regulations again (what is uncleannes, toasting is unchristian, gods love book etc). Also the blood doctrine sounded strange, the diffreence between fractions and components.
The tone at assemblies, as well as in some WT study articles seemed to become more condescending.
This all led to an uncomfortable feeling, partly with guilt and fear.
This i turn led to questions, which in turn led to research (particularly about blood), were I ended up at ajwrb.org, a webside I initially thought is from the HLC.
What I read there opened my eyes tremendously, next came jwn, and what was so surprising, not only beliefs I had doubts before, crumbled, but also many other things, i was sure of, were refuted with often much more convincing logic, than the WTs ever employed.
