Btw MrMonroe thank you for posting this great find!
Too bad this couldn't be posted in every Religious Section in every newspaper!
c
The role of the Home Bible Study arrangement in JW brainwashing
by MrMonroe 34 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
mrsjones5
Thanks for the link Mad Sweeney
-
dgp
Mad Sweeney, thanks for the link.
Mr. Monroe and everyone, as a worldly I just may add one small but important thing, at least to those of us who were on the receiving side of the so called Bible study.
It's a rare person these days who doesn't think that the witnesses have a little too crazy ideas. So, when you accept a Bible study, or when you tear down the wall of suspicion with a witness. you trust that person. You sort of feel that perhaps others are crazy but the one who is with you certainly is not, so you're willing to receive the indoctrination. And, because they ask you to think outside your box, you're willing to entertain ideas that until then would have sounded too weird.
Because the person was friendly and attentive, perhaps you thought that he or she really cared. I bet that many a person has continued to take the indoctrination sessions out of feeling so bad for disappointing the person giving the sessions.
Even more perverse is the person who comes back after a while, manifests the terrible disappointment at your discontinuing the indoctrination, hints that the good friendship and good relationship might just resume if only you accepted to check "the facts", and drops another set of magazines or books for you to read. Oh, and one for a family member, too. You sort of think that, what the heck, you might as well read the magazines, and it doesn't harm to give the book to the relative. After all, it's not right to keep a present that is meant to be given to someone else, is it?
If you don't become a witness, then you're left with a feeling of betrayal. You trusted the witness, and he or she used your weaknesses to manipulate you. I am sure it doesn't hurt nearly as much as things other people have told countless times here, but it does hurt. And this feeling isn't even conscious. You know something is wrong, but cannot really say what.
Thank you guys, for this post, because it has really helped. In my case, I loved the person in question. To bits.
-
jookbeard
I'd never even heard of this book, and must be one of the very few I've not seen or read, will check it out.
-
Band on the Run
I knew Witnesses were a cult but never understood the actual process before now. It seems that as soon as a nice, friendly person unwittingly agrees to this power dynamic, they are already assimilated without Picard to the rescue.
-
palmtree67
dgp,
I read all your posts, but his one almost made me cry.
In my case, I loved the person in question. To bits.
I suddenly realized how all my ``Bible sudents`` felt after I abandoned them.........Thank you for that insight.
Palm
-
Murray Smith
Nice one Mr M . . . that's put some bones in the soup. You won't be suprised of course, if we confess very similar experiences from a similar time.
I recall quite a number of very late nights in my case (while the women fell asleep on the couch), thrashing out the creation/evolution debate . . . once till 2.00am in the morning! I would begrudgingly concede a point or two only to reinforce my then current thinking through several visits to the library during the week. . . by the time next study arrived, I had taken all my concessions from the previous week back again and away we went again . . . round 2. I know that even my wife became irritated at my "hijacking the discussion" every week.
I had largely forgotten those days until now and set to wondering how I eventually got past it.
The fact is . . . I didn't! My conductor eventually did the deed of introducing the "truth" book adding that such topics would be covered in depth as we went through the book . . . but they never were!
Looking back, I think I just became so swamped with everything else after the "obstacle had been removed" that it just lost relevance.
Since leaving WT the old beliefs are still there . . . buried under a pile of dust sure . . . but I don't believe I forsook them entirely.
Was my mind being "controlled" . . . with the light of your post shone upon matters, I would have to say yes.
-
PublishingCult
Great stuff. bookmarked
-
MrMonroe
It's pretty weird, isn't it? I was doing quite a bit of smokin' around the time the Dubs first called on my door in 1984, and every week between their visits I'd think of all these questions while I was sitting in a cloud of smoke. I'd write them down so I wouldn't forget them. And after several weeks of this, the JW said those by-now legendary words to me, "Well, Mr Monroe, we could go on like this forever. But look, here's this book, You Can Live Forever In Paradise on Earth, that actually covers all those questions you've asked. And more! We could go on forever like this. But It would be more productive if we just started going through the book chapter by chapter."
Which of course I did.
In later years, sitting in front of a warm fire in Christchurch, I did a home bible study with the husband of a Witness, who had -- out of an admirable sense of loyalty to his wife -- relented and agreed to "study" as well just to see if it worked with him. (Maybe that's a bit like someone reluctantly agreeing to a homosexual encounter just to see if they're really gay). I remember going over the "time, times and half a time" dogma and him asking, "Why do you say "times" means two times? How do you know it's not three or four?" And me saying, "Weeelll, it just is. It must be because it fits in with all the other chronology!" Talk about bending the evidence to support the conclusion you're seeking. And he refused to buy it.
-
Murray Smith
He definitely wasn't gay . . . . makes ME kinda squirm in my chair though . . .???