Hi there. I'm new, but I have been acquainted with your site before. I'm a 40 year old female with a family knee deep in the JW religion. I left when I was 18 and never looked back, but the majority of my family is still in. I thought I had put this piece of my life behind me, but after a divorce and trying to maintain a somewhat civil relationship with some of the more moderate members of my family, I was informed yesterday that I can only have very limited contact. It just really let out some serious issues I have with this organization/cult. Seems there was some "new light" shed in a magazine that is severly limiting family member's interaction. Anyway here's my letter. Anyone that can shed support or help would be much appreciated:
I need to vent anonymously. At least for right now. I am sure I am not alone in my disgust and complete contempt for organized religion. Religion has broken my family apart. Deaths, depression, mental illness, huge families broken apart in discord. Welcome to the cult of the JW. And if you don't know what the JW stands for, then you are probably someone who never heard of them, but if you have, then somewhere you know where I am going with this because there are thousands that have experienced my pain. And no matter your religion, if you have ever decided to LEAVE or WANTED TO LEAVE a religion but you were afraid that your decision would cause you to lose your family, your friends, and your entire support system. This is for you.
For your JW people, I have NOTHING but sheer contempt, disgust, and at this point, I am just not taking it anymore. I can't. Too many people in my family have died, too many suffered from mental depression, too many attempted suicides, too many isolated family members because they choose to walk away from one of the largest cults in this world. From your apocalyptic beginnings prophesying the end of the world, to your flip flopping on everything from blood transfusions to 1914 to "anointed" to the 144,000 to when Armageddon would actually come, I have really had enough. I'm tired of the "new light" - your favorite little buzz word to compensate for the fact your group is making it up as the go along. And yes, life is so very fluid, I'm catching that this is your new way of indoctrinating your fold in your nonsense. But no more will you play step and fetch to the non-believers, particularly this one.
All of us suffer when you change your doctrine on how to deal with non-believers or disfellowshipped people or disassociated members. We have to wait for your "new light" or "new information" and see if we can see or even be around our family members. Family members that we love, that we have taken care of or taken care of us and all because of a simple ideological difference in belief, we have to allow your hypocritical, inconsistent theology to break apart our families. The JW religion breaks families apart. It is a lying hypocritical cult. Anyone that has dared to think for themselves, ask questions, or even consider that the Governing Body might be incorrect on anything is KICK OUT! That is a cult. Any group that tries to separate people from education and any association outside of their way of thinking is a cult. They suppress free thought, they want to control a person's freedom to interact and associate with anyone they prefer. They use a title over common sense. And I can tell you from first hand experience that people of the JW religion are pedophiles, rapists, murders, adulterers, engage in incest, bestiality, and not even HALF of that is ever reported or persecuted. It is a sexist religion that more times than not persecute and blames women even when they have been victims of attacks. How many pedophiles have been reinstated in the congregation and went onto molest and rape young people? How many rapists have gotten away with rapping their wives, other sisters in the congregation with the FEMALE being disfellowshipped? Oh yeah, I am ripped the top off this thing. I know way too much. How many presiding elders have gotten away with incest and severe beatings in their own family? And how many family members have died because of the refusal of blood transfusions only to have the great JW CHANGE THEIR DOCTRINE after huge criticism.
What about 1914? What about the anointed? What about the prediction of Armageddon? Never have I seen a group so fundamentally happy over the suffering of other people and crisis in the world. These people celebrate death. And I really believe before it is all over these JWs are going to build a compound and tell all their followers to leave their life behind and wait for the Hellfire to come. Time is ticking away and their foundation of the "end of the world" is starting to crumble. What about that generation that will never pass? Most have died. Have you changed 1914 again? I mean, more people are waking up to the ridiculous nonsense of this group, but I must give it to them, they know how to keep people even the doubters tightly in their midst:
1) They engage you by promising a life outside of the hard life you live, where everyone loves you, where you have a promise of friends and companions that will always be there. They love to focus on minorities and those from broken homes and abject poverty. And how can one forget "everlasting life". Ah yes, I get to live forever with only JWs.
2) Once they bring you in, one by one the "leaders" of the group highly pressure you to count off contact with "the world". *Another indicator of a cult, separate lingo that acts as a way to indoctrinate its members. You will hear words like "the world", "sister/brother", "worldly", "demons", "demonized", and the ever popular "Armageddon". These words and phrases are meant to guilt you, control you, suppress your thought, and condition your mind.
3) Next it will repeatedly get you to convert your family members. One by one, if they all fall for it, your entire support system is now the JW. Your entire group of family and friends are JWs. And when it is all good life is just one great JW party. But don't let anything go wrong or someone question anything you do say or wear. Or heaven forbid a scandal happen not of your own doing or you come across information about one of the step-ford members that causes you to question it all. Trust me, when you realize that that elder's wife is actually a practicing witch or that Bethelite or lifelong pioneer was actually sleeping with someone else's 14 year old son or daughter, the cloud that you have been under will move away.
4) Then after sitting after meeting for years on end, you start to realize they all kind of sound the same, except they KEEP CHANGING doctrines. They keep having "new light", they keep coming up with new and highly grandiose revelations until you truly are on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next. Trust me, the compound is coming. They are running out of ideas, the world is still here, economy has been crashing since the beginning of time, WARS has happened all over the earth since time began, and civilizations has been destroyed time and time again, Armageddon has come and gone a few times over, and in some places Armageddon is an everyday occurrence. They are going to have to step it up or risk a great "falling off".
5) If you ever decide you don't want to play by their rules they will start a campaign to break you down in every way they can, and sorry for you if you entire family has drank the JW kool aid, because if they kick you out, you will be out there on your own by yourself, stuck. Homosexual? Bye bye, unless you can "hide it" or have weekly conferences with the ministers. Trust me, this goes all the way to the top. And for me, I never had a choice, I was born in this cult. My entire family on both sides were heavily indoctrinated in this before I was ever a twinkle in my parent's eyes. It was not until I was 18 years of age that I walked away from this and in that time I had witnessed everything from beatings, rapes, adultery, mental breakdowns, incest, drug abuse, theft, pedophiles let loose on congregations, and everyone hiding behind the Watchtower and Awake and a political Governing Body to tell you how to think, what to feel, and how to behave.
If you are like me, you will see organized religion for what it is. And I say here and now, the lid has been taken off. I will not stop showing this religion for the corrupt cult that it is, too many people have lost their family, too many people have suffered, have lost friends, lost people they loved through death or separation, watched otherwise healthy loving people break down in ways that no person should have to endure. Any why? Because they choose to REJECT A RELIGION! Does it make sense?
I will stop now. I could literally write for days. Maybe I will write again. It's not over. It is just beginning. If any one out there knows what I am feeling, what I am going through, feel free to reach out