I Just Knew This Was the Truth as Soon as I Heard It !

by bigmouth 17 Replies latest jw experiences

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  IsaacJ22

  It's a religion that places a huge amount on emphasis on rational belief. They like to take mysticism out of it as much as possible (except where it comes in handy, like explaining how God uses the FDS to provide new light....).

  Mr Monroe, this played a part in my reasons for joining as well. I hadn't had much exposure to other denominations at the time, so what I know of them made them sound like they didn't really know what they were talking about. At least, to me it did. They could explain pretty much everything I had questions about, so I was impressed. Little did I know that all faiths have answers to most questions. Whether the answers are very convincing is another matter. JWs answers only make sense if you don't look so carefully.

  Ultimately, if I had been better informed back then, I wouldn't have joined so readily.
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  factfinder

  Mr Monroe- I agree with the way you put it too. I was born and raised in the Jewish religion but it did not answer my questions so I gave it up by the time I was 15. I met the witnesses right after High school- trying to prove to my brother that Jesus was not in the Bible. ( And he is not mentioned in the Tanakh.)

  I ended up agreeing to sit in on my brother's Bible study and the conductor answered my questions from the Bible! (I was not looking for a religion so had no interest in what they teach.) What the witnesses said made sense and could be proven from the Bible- yes- it had the ring of truth. But I did not accept everything right away and it took 3 months of inviting me to come to meetings before I did and I did not get baptized until 1978 although I became a publisher in 1976.
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  journey-on

  If you have a choice, then using that declaration in your post's title is fair. You were a grown-up with experiences and a body of knowledge to assimilate a theology like the JW dogma into. You made a free choice whether it was based on a gut feeling or careful research. It was an adult choice.

  For people like me that were born and raised in it, we had nothing to compare it to. To even think about examining other possibilities was verboten. We didn't have that luxury of saying we "just knew it was the truth".

  When we reached baptism age, we should have been given a length of time to research other possibilities, ask tough questions without fear of reprisal, and given the dignity of making our own choices. If we decided against baptism, it should not have been held against us. There should be a different "rule" applied to us, imho.
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  bigmouth

  journey-on, good point. Don't the Amish give their children an opportunity at some point in their teenage years to make an informed decision and then respect that choice ?
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  irondork

  Doesn't this all play into Satan transforming himself into an angel of light? Wouldn't it make sense for some of it, if not a lot of it to be really attractive? I would bet a good bit of it is also "the truth". It wouldn't do for the devil to put a sign on the front of the Kingdom Halls that read: COME ON DOWN! GET YOUR SATAN HERE!

  When you have a message that is THAT attractive and situations like: MrMonroe - why God wouldn't create humans with the intention that they'd die, why an intelligent creator suggests an intelligent purpose ..., who would ever think to roll it over and look for the ugly underbelly?

  "This is the TRUTH!"
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  breakfast of champions

  Being raised in the religion, I never had such an 'epiphany' as this. In fact, I always kind of thought I my faith was more 'valuable' because I had always seen the wackiness of the whole thing, and yet still 'hung in there.'

  Now I wish I had just seen the wackiness for what is. WACKY!
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  ziddina

  Aaaaarrrgh...

  Like "Breakfast of Champions", I was - well, not 'born-in', but the parents converted when I was 5 years old...

  That crap never had the "ring of truth" for me...

  In fact [and many of you have heard this before...], when a brother read Exodus 19:16-19 from the podium, and I recognized it as a rough but fair description of an erupting volcano, the Jehovah's Witness blather suddenly revealed itself as euphemistic idiocy...

  I was NEVER able to understand the allure of the Watchtower Society's special little sect... I considered anyone who joined willingly to be the worst sort of self-deluded victim of an elaborate con.

  Later on, when I read about cults, the process by which they entrap people became clearer, and my viewpoint changed somewhat...

  But it NEVER sounded like "truth", probably because the bible itself was exposed as thoroughly man-made, by that scripture - and other information, later on..

  Zid
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  jookbeard

  another old chestnut that generally used to come from opposing, wife beating non Dub husbands who converted is "I just could not win the arguments"