were you made to feel guilty if you missed a meeting / service ?

by man in black 24 Replies latest jw experiences

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  man in black

  Going along with the last thread ( great subject matter)

  I'm sort of hitching along here.

  We had a bookstudy at our home for several years, every week we were prepared, and we handled service arraingements every Saturday morning, even with two young children.

  One Saturday morning, ( in the middle of winter) one son had a bad cold, and our furnace konked out around 8:15 am.

  I was running around trying to get ready for service, calling a repair man, and help my wife get ready for service.

  The group comes in at 9:00, and I'm on the phone talking to the repair man who wants to come out between 10-2.

  So I'm not going out this morning, and I'm staying home with my sick son, wife and son #2 are going out in service.

  Conductor comes downstairs and looks at the furnace ( he is a school teacher, no mechanical experience at all, check out my earlier thread video under Friends, page 5827 titled "elder makes a video,,,, this is the same guy ) and gives me the classic guilt trip because I'm not going out in service for at least an hour this morning.

  I remember thinking just who is this guy, trying to MAKE me feel bad because my family is #1, service is not my focus today.

  After all of these years, I cannot help but think of this comment now :

  "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent", E. Roosevelt

  Being made to feel guilty because of not putting meetings or service 1st seemed to be a speciality of the elders, and particularly this one from my old hall.

  Is this a common aspect everywhere, or is it an aspect of control that only specific elders are cocky enough to continually work on ?
• 

  WTWizard

  In fact, they specialize in doing just this. You miss a day of field circus, they want to know why you let such a little thing as a house fire, being very sick, or your car got into an accident and was destroyed stop you from such a life-saving work. They do this at a$$emblies every time they showcase someone that had a bad car wreck and still made it to the boasting session, whose house burned to the ground yet still got 235 hours of field circus that month, or that auxiliary pio-sneered and got their time in despite catching tuberculosis. Then the local hounders pick up on that, shaming you into letting a petty excuse like a bad cold or busted water pipe stop you from going to a boasting session or out in field circus.

  In reality, there are plenty of things that are higher priority than a stupid boasting session or wasting time in field circus. If you are expecting major work done on your home and they show up just before you were going out in field circus, that has priority. Otherwise, the job might not get done or they might snake or steal things (and this goes with witless contractors as much as worldly ones). If you experience a sudden problem that creates a safety or security problem, or that wastes water or electricity, you need to get that fixed instead of going to the boasting session (such as calling the plumber or fixing that busted faucet yourself before field circus). If they are so "green", then why would they waste tons of hot water just so they can get another 2 or 3 hours of time-waste in?

  Or, perhaps they are afraid that someone will realize what a waste the whole thing is. They get a busted water faucet, or a contractor shows up, or their car is in the shop, or whatever. They miss a boasting session, and while getting the mess tended to, they actually accomplish something worthwhile. It takes only 15 minutes or so to fix that faucet, yet they miss the boasting session and actually find that they can live without it. So, before long, they find other things to stop them from attending boasting sessions. The house gets fixed up, and by now they realize what a waste field circus and boasting sessions have been. They attend another one, and find out that they can no longer live with the stagnation imposed by the religion. So, to stop this, they need to place extreme shame and guilt on anyone for missing even a single boasting session while their faucet is gushing hot water (or their house sits there, burned to the ground).
• 

  IsaacJ22

  I got a lot of this back in the day. Even when I was going to meetings regularly, there was a family that would come to the grocery store where I was working. They'd rant on and on about my attendance right in the middle of my checkout line! The truth was that I had been going to meetings, but they just hadn't seen me there. It was a big congregation, nearly double the size of most, so that sort of thing happened a lot. They simply didn't believe me. Or maybe they didn't want to believe me.

  Like, what the hell, man?

  Another guy did the same thing when I was a teenager because I had just gotten baptized. He was nearly 30, but unbaptized, and offended that I was missing 2 Sundays a month to keep my job! Even though he missed more meetings than he attended. I pointed this out to him, and he agreed this was true. Yet, he told me, he wasn't baptized. And I was. So I had an obligation...in his eyes at least...that I wasn't living up to.

  I had the same reaction to this one. By the time I had quit the KH, he wasn't even attending meetings anyway.

  I could tell you lots of stories like these. My parents weren't Witnesses and opposed my going to meetings. So everyone thought they were entitled to be my parents in their stead. Can you say, "fun?" I couldn't.

  There were lots of morons like these at my KH. Some of them honestly seemed to get off on it. I think it made them feel superior while also allowing them to nitpick someone to death. People tend to do this more in controlled environments like the KH. They get nitpicked by authority figures like the elders, so they find someone else lower in rank that they can pick on in turn.

  The more casual indifference you show to this kind of behavior, the less of it you'll see. If you take it badly, you'll inflate their egos and encourage them. If you have a "so what" attitude and shrug at them, it will deflate their egos and make them feel foolish and nitpicky. Which is what they're being.
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  clearpoison
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  clearpoison

  Ok new try, IE9 compatibility setting must be switched of for some functions but be put on for some others. Life is big learning curve.

  There was one brother, not about field service but about meetings. "I haven't seen you lately, nice to see you", with funny facial expression. I tried to explain that it has been busy at work and I have been traveling. He offers counseling, "you should really consider your relation to work, maybe you should look something else, your work is disturbing your theocratic life". Yes, for me this was easy excuse that usually stopped the discussion, obviously travelling makes it difficult to attend meeting, but mainly it was my motivational side that stopped me.

  CP
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  NomadSoul

  I had no choice, if my parents went I had to go. But the few times I didn't have to go... even when I thought of myself as spiritual, I was happy to stay home and watch TV.
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  breakfast of champions

  When wasn't I made to feel guilty? is the real question.

  The elders when I grew up were absolutely masterful at using guilt to persuade you one way or another.

  I rarely feel guilty now because:

  1) I don't speak or act in any way that would cause me to feel guilty because of something I said or did.

  2) I reject all inappropriate guilt.
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  designs

  Worse than a Nun wrapping you on the knuckles with a Ruler.....
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  fade_away

  There was a circuit overseer that everyone rolled out the red carpet and bowed down to, and he came to visit and noticed I had not once tried a pioneering "career". I had spent nearly 2 years looking for a job and I had finally recently found a permanent full time position, so I told him I started working and that pioneering doesn't fit into my schedule. Then he asked "Have you considered asking your boss for a partime position?" I laughed because that idea was so ridiculous! Two years of job hunting and now that I have one he expects me to throw it away? "God will provide" my ass, pioneering would've made it impossible for me to find this job! Besides, I was 25 and about to get married and move far away from my parents I had been living with up until then. I wasn't about to throw away my marriage and my job to stay home living with mommy and daddy until I'm 40.

  But he gave me a look of disapproval to make me feel bad. Never have I been so right and yet made to feel like I was so wrong before.
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  jwfacts

  After I realised it was a cult I kept going for family and an unsuccessful attempt at fading. I still used to feel guilty if I missed a meeting, even though I knew it was not the truth and found the meetings extremely irritating. Realising how illogical it was to feel that way was very eye-opening in coming to terms with how powerful the indoctrination is.

  As a side note, I think that is why disfellowshipping is so counter-productive. If a disfellowshipped person spends a period of time not going to meetings, they get over the guilt of irregular attendance, and are far more likely to come to a realisation about the true nature of the religion.