what was your "back burner?"

stillin

When I was studying in the truth book I laid aside quite a few questions, feeling that I was learning something important, and that those "nagging questions" would be answered in due course. Most of those questions have gone unanswered because I was led along, like a stupid pig with a ring in his nose, by other pseudo-questions of, really, non-importance. I've had problems with conforming, if that is the word, with "correct speak" in the organization, and it has been apparant to most of the people I've known over the years. In my indoctrination, I allowed unanswered issues to go by as though they didn't count, any more than my measley life counted for anything, compared to the universal issue of God's sovereignty.

I really don't want to offer a "for example" issue. I'm wondering what you had in the back of your mind that suggested to you that you might be being led down a false path.

skeeter1

In 1975, I was a kid. I was so scared of what was going to happen. I took everything very literally. My parents said that the world was going to end in 1975. It didn't. My parents didn't lie about Santa, but they lied about this....

In the 1980s....the whole dating of 1914 bothered me and Christ coming to Heavenly power. It seemed too complicated; and if Jehovah was for the average man...then He should have an easier way to tell his People about the reign of Christ and the dating of 1914. I mean, was Jehovah there for the average man too, or just the "gifted" men who could convolute the hell out of some dates? I remembered 1975, and didn't believe all the dire predictions that the Generation of 1914 wasn't going to pass away.

Then, that the whole world was BAD, college was BAD, and Jehovah's Oranizaton was GREAT. I didn't see the world as bad or JWs as great. All had good and bad. I wasn't buying into the whole black and white thinking. The Watch Tower had been wrong before, I saw really bad people as JWs, and good people in the world. I was developing an appreciation for science, and was beginning to see the Watch Tower as a seller of snake oil and the Governing Body as being a bunch of boys who kept screaming, "The wolf is coming" in order to stir up the masses for their own gratification and money.

So, I stopped being a publisher and attending meetings in the mid-1980s.

I had a great life outside the Turth.

I took up the Internet searching Jehovah in about 2001/2, and found some research on the problems & flip flops with the Generation teaching. I was floored that they no longer taught the Generation of 1914. I laughed at a relative when they said, "Oh, New Light Skeeter." I rolled my eyes and laughed some more.

Then, 2004, I looked again at the relgion, blood, and read some more....then everything came crashing down. CULT.

Skeeter

tenyearsafter

I never understood why birthdays were evil and anniversaries were good...why it was such a big deal that Jesus died on a stake versus a cross...just exactly how the WTS could be so sure they were the chosen ones after 1900 years had passed.

I guess I had alot of back burner issues!!

TY

mummatron

Dinosaurs, the flood, 607 BC, 1914, head coverings for women, aborted & miscarried babies at the resurrection (how does that one work if the mother didn't make it?), demons, the vastness of the universe - I had lots of niggly things gnawing away at my subconscious.

Ultimately, it was a few contradictions in the Bible, the issue of how the WTBTS view GLBT individuals, hypocrisy and a lack of love in my local congregation (the only love they had was a love of idle gossip) that clinched it for me.

TDaze

What did it for me was the argument of "We're right because God says so, and you can know God says so because we're right."

Then I studied up on evolution and dropped everything else like a sack of potatoes.

stillin

I appreciate all of those...I think my big one was Thanksgiving. Here in the states it's nothing but a traditional get-together-with-the-family day. My wife was "born-in" and my "worldly" family was tolerant about religion, but I really couldn't reconcile when it came to Thanksgiving. It was a no-brainer for my wife, but I never could get a handle on the "issue." I might as well have slapped my Mom in the face by not joining together with her and my "fleshly" brothers and sisters for the occasion. Sad...

I thought it would eventually make sense to me but it never has. My wife has all kinds of bad things to say about a really nice family tradition...Thanksgiving

Scully

In my indoctrination, I allowed unanswered issues to go by as though they didn't count,

That, my friend, is part and parcel of the indoctrination process. Recruiters are taught to waffle about on those kinds of questions, or promise that "we'll get to that in a couple of weeks' time" and re-route you back to the study material.

Studying books by rote the way the WTS does it is a subtle way of ignoring a person's nagging doubts, while still drawing them deeper into the belief system, and getting them to invest more and more time and suspended judgment at the same time.

It isn't your fault - it was all part of the design of the recruitment process.

designs

In the 60s Evolution was the big challenge to us in School. The Society's (Fred's ) view of the creative days being 7000 years each was like stepping on thin ice. Not the like the Literalists and their six literal 24 hour periods and unlike the expanding views of the universe pushing the time further and further back into billions of years, we were stuck with Fred's Theory.

doofdaddy

Ice core drilling and dating which became an exact science.

jwfacts

I could never understand how God answered prayers. How was it that non-JWs thought their prayers were answered if they weren't worshiping God? How was it that a JW prayed for a safe trip to a meeting but died in a car accident?

what was your "back burner?"

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