by minimus 42 Replies latest jw friends
I've been out since I was 23 that's four decades ago. But I havn't changed other then to mellow. I am still considerate of others and fair minded, married to the same great lady who used to pioneer with me, gratefull not to have raised our son and now grandchildren in the tooth. I am a regular prince of a person!
Why no real change? I've come to appreciate just how much I didn't belive when I was a JW.
Not much,
just that I can speak up now when the male species acts like an ass in my presence.
@MAGWITCH - LOL!!!! You said it!!!! lol!!!
I started a week before my 18th birthday. I left when I was about 24. Afterward, I mostly reverted back to my old personality, though gradually over several years. (No, I didn't return to being a 17 year old, BTW.) Atheism took almost a decade to fully sink in.
I wanted to be a writer before I became a JW. Funny, but learning about the editorial process helped me to value things like skepticism and objectivity, which I had only applied to my life in limited ways. Afterward, when I began to dig through the literature and began reading the views of atheists, they became two of my primary values.
Not coincidentally, they are quite useful in determining when others are telling lies, half truths, or personal truths. Or in realizing that your being brainwashed, converted, or being mistreated by others emotionally. It would be much more difficult to pull me into something like that again, which is a positive in my view.
Being a JW did help me to become an atheist, though not in the way most people tend to assume. Since I value this about myself, I wouldn't necessarily want to undo those experiences. Yet they were thoroughly unpleasant at the same time. I still wouldn't care to repeat them.
Absolutely yes! I have gone from being very serious, judgemental, self righteous, and anxiety ridden to a woman who has found out who she is and how to laugh and live and love.
No contest.
Loz x
ITSCRAP--Do you happen to be me and I don't know it? We sound exactly alike. One of the things I was most excited about after I left was the prospect of doing absolutely nothing on the weekends.
Definitely, I got my old personality back, and it's still progressing. I am happier, smilier, friendlier with people, much more accepting of people, more open to their point of view, less judgemental mentally toward people (not that I said much when in the org, but I thought negative things, because of WTS beliefs and teachings, that I don't think now).
When in, I was getting more and more down, quieter, more withdrawn. It was happening because I just couldn't pretend to accept all the Watchtower concepts anymore. I had quit the TM School, even though people enjoyed my talks...I put much time, effort and thought into them.
Now I am free, and it feels so good! I find myself laughing a lot these days. I find humor in many things. This was part of me for a long time, but it was vanishing more and more the longer I stayed in, pretending, going through the motions. What a downer it is to have to pretend when things are dreadfully wrong.
No longer do I have to hear an assembly speaker say to the audience, "You are God's happy people," and that is a great thing.
I changed A LOT! I learned how to have fun, not hate myself, that there were good people that were not JWs (many many people way better in fact), that is was normal to want to get married and have children, that I didn't have to feel guilt 24 hours a day that I wasn't good enough for God, that I could be friendly to other people, man I could go on and on and on...
I became a much more tolerant and loving person once I got out of that religion that teaches us to hate others.
I just couldn't do it, anymore.
Even churches say to hate the sin but love the sinner.
Not JW's. We were taught to be awful people, though it went against our basic human instincts to be awful.
We had to fear others and stay away from them, unless we were witnessing to them.
"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side."--Yoda.
White Dove said, "Even churches say to hate the sin but love the sinner.'
Speaking of hating the person, here is a comment from the Watchtower.
W 7-15-61 p420 “Jesus encouraged his followers to love their enemies, but God's Word also says to "hate what is bad." When a person persists in a way of badness after knowing what is right, when the bad becomes so ingrained that it is an inseparable part of his make-up, then in order to hate what is bad a Christian must hate the person with whom the badness is inseparably linked.” (Emphasis added)
Although the Watchtower usually gives lip service to the concept of hating the act, not the person, hate by way of actions is almost always there.
The above Watchtower quote is a not-so-common glimpse into the true nature of the Society...in writting!
