Leaving Jehovah's Witnesses is NOT the same as the doctrines leaving you

by Terry 52 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Terry

  So many of the strong statements we find in everyday society polarize people and galvanize them into oppositional thinking.

  Propaganda succeeds because it keeps repeating a lie until it is absorbed and believed.

  The unwary find themselves defending positions that a moment's rational thought would prevent them from making!

  If you have spent years in Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Halls reading, listening, preaching the message your citidel of integrity has been breached!

  YOUR MIND has been invaded!

  The Barbarians at the gate have been invited in!

  If you awaken to find such an invasion horrifying---you can't just expect the Barbarians to leave of their own accord. After all, they were ALLOWED to OWN the city and have their way!

  So YOU are the one who must leave. Half measures do not work.

  But, the invaded mind goes with you.

  A sick mind cannot function well.

  Look for symptoms of this sickness. The most telltale is Absolute Thinking. Black OR White with no gray to be considered at all.

  Are the people who remain behind in the Kingdom Halls fooling themselves that they can "go along to get along"?

  Yes. If a normal, happy, healthy and REAL life is to be lived by them.

  How can we be sure of this? Pretending to be happy is never the same as BEING happy.

  Your life is a LIE.

  The only remedy for combatting a LIE is to let in reality in every way possible.

  The only word nearly as beautiful as LOVE is FREEDOM.
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  FlyingHighNow

  bttt
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  FlyingHighNow
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  Terry

  You've gotta grab life by the horns, because while you MAY have been conditioned to think that time doesn't matter (which is what happens when you believe you'll be given ETERNAL LIFE!), it DOES. It truly does.

  I was quite stricken to the core when I found myself disfellowshipped even though I had stopped going to meetings!

  I think it was because I felt I had built up a fine reputation of service over a number of years. I thought that would count for...well...something....anything.

  But, naturally, I was dead wrong!

  You could spill blood and it would count as something owed.

  There is no doctrine of superogation in the Watchtower religion. Catholics believe you can build up a heavenly bank account of sorts that later can be

  used (even distributed to others) as good works equity!

  All you get as a JW is a kick in the ass.
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  cult classic

  The realization that all of it was for nothing is difficult to come to grips with.
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  Almostdone

  Terry,

  This is my first post. I've read so much on this site that has been interesting, helpful, or that resonates. But your post has been the first that moved me to respond. Thanks for your extremely perceptive advice. I struggle with all of this daily. It's physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting. What you said about taking some time off and being okay with not having all the answers right now is reassuring. Also, after watching some who have left and have felt such an emptiness in their lives that they're driven to replace the organization with something else...church groups, political causes....it's obvious to me that as you state, that's not the answer. It's simply replacing one lie with another.

  It's good to know that people who leave can end up as rational, compassionate, balanced human beings. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. It's a great start to my day!

  Almostdone
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  Sulla

  Just a reminder that, bad as the JW effort at removing your ability to think is, at one time everyone here wanted it to happen. Even born-ins found the sense of complete rightness and complete knowledge intoxicating and desirable.

  The problem is not that they harmed your thought processes as much as it is that we allowed and wanted it to happen. The problem is not in our stars, but ourselves.
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  Band on the Run

  RE: Title of thread: Amen!

  I was born-in with several generations and a large extended family of JWs. My mom's family signed in during Russell's day but, from what I've piecced together, it became very controlling during Rutherford's tenure.

  My rational mind absolutely rejects 99% of their doctrine. As for my gut/soul/psyche, my body has always reacted quite emphatically that I hate them. When I was two and three, I despised it. No real love present. My family had love but not the phony KH crowd. When I was three or four, my mom let me bring a small doll to KH. OMG- the reaction. I was very quiet and obedient. Torture.

  Years of study and much money has been poured into BIblical and NT scholarship. My mind sees so clearly. Since law school I pay inordinate attention the actual text that I am reading.

  Yet I remain on this forum. The reptilian brain in me still fears demons. Even when I totally am absorbed and enjoying "wordly activities," I pause and consider that I would never know such joy if I remained in the Witnesses. Everytime I see a child celebrating a birthday or Christmas, I hurt for my inner child. My profession would be condemned by them. All my volunteer work in many causes condemed/condemns me. There is a deep struggle between the child in me (which wonders if I made the right choice. YHWH is so mercurial that I can never know) and the brain I developed by third or fourth grade.

  This forum helps. Reading the Conti threads, the recent re-posting of a thread concerning rape, the table of gross lies concerns sources cited in WT literature, ----my very being reacts. My reaction to these events is not an intellectual one but one of deep repulsion. I became nauseous -- no exaggeration.

  This may be a burden I bear for the rest of my life. Acknowledging the burden, though, gives way to great joy. It was scary at first but my entire being rejoices that I fled for my life. No matter what the sturggles in my present life, I am so glad that I invested in questions rather than rote answers. My faith in Christ is so much deeper. Following Jesus is so much nicer than YHWH.
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  peacefulpete

  Wonderful thread and many great comments. One of the characteristics of a high control group is the extent in which the person is subsumed into a group identity. Jehovah's Witnesses fall in the middle somewhere. They seek to diminish the individuality but have limited ability to do it, given the groups size and that they haven't fully isolated themselves.

  Noone's experience is identical. My and my wife's were quite different. We were both deeply vested in the church (yes I use the common terminology rather than the loaded language of the religion as part of the detachment process) yet my escape required I delve deeply into the bricks and mortar of the religion and the Bible. My wife not so much, she more readily embraced the potential of career and personal developement.

  I believe the difference was because I had always fancied myself a "Bible expert" and a JW because it was the logical thing to be. My experiences with the Headquarters and in the missionary field had given me a pretty unvarnished impression of the organization, yet my core belief was thay they were "right". When that rightness evaporated away with uncensored research, the logical move was to no longer be a JW. IOW, My identity remained fairly intact. My wife had self identified as a career woman, the career path she was steered to as a JW was as a preacher, she simply needed to shift to a carreer of her choosing.

  I'm sure some have more fully adopted a JW identity and find the transition very challenging and yet many we know that left had nearly no identity crisis at all, we are all different.
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  earthfire

  What a great thread. It's really interesting at the sameness and also the differences we've all felt. Like Band On The Run, it still effects me physically. Just the thought of stepping into a KH or seeing my family who are very deeply into the religion makes me nauseous.

  My leaving is a very long story but I'll try to just hit some highlights here. I was born into it. My grandparents on my dad's side were JW's and they scared my mom and dad into getting married basically. My mom was 14 dad was 17 and both were very impressionable of course. They got married in 1971 and part of that reason was because 1975 was just around the corner. I came along in 1973 and was the first of 3 kids, my brothers are still witnesses and one of them is currently an elder and missionary in Ecuador. '75 came and went but my family stayed JW's and I grew up very spiritually minded. But even though I devoured all the literature and did my best to be a good JW there were always doubts which I felt guilty for. My dad was a very abusive (physically and emotionally) alcoholic. He would regularly beat my mom up and I'd have to call brother so and so in the middle of the night. They would come over and calm him down, etc. After years of that my mom decided to have an affair with a guy from work. Then my dad did the same with her best friend at the KH who was married to my dad's best friend who wanted to have get back at them both by sleeping with my mom. Thank god she said no! Anyway, I remember being at the KH holding hands with my best friend who was there daughter (our families were very close, ahem) but we sat there while my mom was disfellowshipped, her mom was disfellowshipped and my dad was only reproved. All 3, one blow same night. It was totally F****d up. I was 12 then and I remember being angry that my dad basically got a slap on the wrist for doing so much worse than my mom had done. But the brothers always thought he was some humble and meek. My mom was beautiful and when she walked into the KH I'd watch all the brothers staring at her and the sisters glaring at her. I hated them for thinking what I knew they were thinking but then treating her horribly and feeling sorry for my dad. I watched this growing up and couldn't understand where Jehovah was in all of this.

  During this a brother killed his wife. They had both been friends with my parents. She was so sweet and he wanted to be with a youger woman at the hall. So for some reason he beat her with a baseball bat one night while she slept. It was absolutely horrible. Plus they had two awesome little kids who are now in their twenties. But aside from the utter devistation of it all, he was reinstated within a couple of years. Brothers had been visiting him in prison and they decided he was repentant and so could now preach to others in prison.

  Then there was an older couple who were beloved by everyone. I really thought of Leon (he was an elder) as a grandpa and liked him a lot. One day it was found out that he had been seeing a pioneer sister from another hall and she was pregnant. So he left his wife of over 30 years and married this other sister. They were both DF'd but later reinstated. His previous wife had been so hurt that she fell away. So my thinking as a kid was like this, " So you mean to tell me that this guy can have an affair, get her preganant leave his wife and be re-instated within a year or two and they'll get to live in paradise as a new family. But Carol gets totally hurt and falls away and her faith isn't strong enough for her to be able to live in paradise?"

  Watching these things happen in our congregation (Kenosha County, Wisconsin) it really impressed upon me at how ridiculous it all was. Another elder had been having an affair with a teenager while he was counseling others in the congregation. It was just filled with BS and our congregations were known for not being good association. As I got older it never changed. I tried going to other halls but they weren't much better. If people weren't sleeping with one another they were judging you for assuming you were going to do something wrong. The only reason I stayed in so long is because I didn't want to lose a relationship with my younger brothers. My dad got custody (thanks to all the JW's from my dad's new congregation who testified in court as to how bad my mom was even though they had never even met her!) Finally when I was 22 I decided I couldn't do it anymore. I was done. I left behind a lot of family members who were JW's, many have since left and we've reconnected but my brothers, my half sister, step sister, grandparents and of course my dad and his wife are still witnesses.

  I had A LOT of anger when I left. So many questions. I still have a certain amount of anger 16 years later but it's not like it was. Time is one thing but we all have a path that will work for us. I was given the book "Conversations with God" to read. I made myself read it even though all I could think was that Satan was the one behind it. But something happened when I read it. My mind started to open, even just a little crack in all the dogma that I had grown up in was enough. I started reading other books too and I started to feel better. Books by Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, Debbie Ford, etc. Many books later I have a completely different belief system. It is completely based on love. I don't have all the answers but I do feel that when you can bring love into your everyday life that it works better. I do not believe the bible is all divinely inspired. I think there are parts that are but now knowing the history of where the bible came from it doesn't have much weight with me anymore. I think that we all "know" in our hearts what is real and what isn't. The struggle is to get out of your head and let your heart in too. This was my path and has helped me to heal. But I'm not done healing. Knowing that most people in the world are awesome and good helps. I have not been judged since I left the organization and that's a burden off there. You don't have to look over your shoulder or question every little thing you do and that makes you free.