Can you think of anything that is postive about being A JW?

by jam 46 Replies latest jw experiences

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  mummatron

  Ah, Quendi you beat me to it mentioning the TMS.

  Thanks to my TMS training I was able to win my secondary school debate club assignment "France performing nuclear testing: FOR" and received the highest Viva Voce grade (80%) of my entire degree cohort.
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  Hortensia

  I'm grateful I learned to not care what other people think and to stand up for my beliefs as a child. Interesting how they teach you to be a conformist in the congregation and a non-conformist in the world. The non-conformist part is the only thing that stuck with me, which was not their intent.
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  SweetBabyCheezits

  TheSilence: Growing up as a witness I learned that it was okay to stand up against the norm and be ridiculed for it if you were standing up for yourself and your beliefs and that something might even be gained from it. I may not believe the things I was taught to believe as a child, but that lesson has served me well in my life.

  Great answer! (Also Hortensia) I very much don't want my kids to be conformists. My daughter went from a facing classmates as child of JWs to facing classmates as a child of non-theists. I want her to be okay with being different.

  • The value of living a simple life. I still believe in that, but not because I want to serve my god more fully. Having less stress (which sometimes means having less material stuff), no debt, and realizing I don't need to 'keep up with the joneses' brings me more happiness. Insurance and 401k are still good.

  • I learned it's not always a good idea to follow a tradition simply because it's a tradition. That backfired on the WT, though, as I decided the same was true of my family's religion and started asking a lot of whys.

  OP, can we include things we gained during our exit?

  • "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." Not sure if Randy Pausch deserves credit for that but I heard it from his last lecture. In this case, I've learned a great deal that I never would've even considered had I not needed to break free from a cult. From this experience, I developed better critical thinking skills that have been helpful in other areas of life as well.

  • "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger." I think many of us grow and develop in ways we aren't even aware during our exodus. If couples get out together, perhaps their bond is strengthened. Same for whole families. Survivors of traumatic events tend to develop bonds, don't they? (I'm speculating a bit but I was thinking I'd read that somewhere.)

  • [Other cliche and motivational message]
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  FreeAtLast1914

  Surviving and escaping a cult grants the advantage of seeing religions for what they are, rather than what we wish they were. Once you've lived under a dictatorship that exerts enormous control of your every move, freedom is something that you will never let go of.
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  TheSilence

  Thanks, SBC. :)

  Jackie
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  Etude

  I felt they promoted honesty, you know, about paying taxes and obeying the laws, etc. At least, I always kept that in mind when I dealt with government. Lately, especially in bad economic times, I find people will do whatever they need to do to make it. While only one or two people (Witness sisters) would visit my mom after she became ill, one of them basically let it slip that she was working "under the table" for wages and that her sister from Honduras (a Witness) also worked "under the table" because she only had a visitor's visa to the U.S. I think those two are probably very nice people even thought they fail to recognize the ethical dichotomy. So much for honesty.
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  mouthy

  I stopped smoking because of them,,,, I have spoken on TV,Churches, they taught me to speak.

  But thy also taught me not to trust anyone...Even if they smile sweetly,helpanyone( as I did)
  I cleaned folks house for free just so they would study,,,,
  I also found out I can sspeak my own mind... and I do
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  Satanus

  Growing up w the sense of structure probably made my life better than it might have been. They encouraged reading/studying/researching, up to a point. That eventually helped me get free of them.

  S
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  ziddina

  Nope.
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  whathappened

  I agree 100% with BluesBrother's consice and presice answer: "Some positives, from being part of a group .....but nothing that could not have been obtained elsewhere without the cost of total dedication to their crackpot theology...I also say that Magwich's excellent testimony was the exception rather than the rule"