If you are drowning - and you are - you cannot save another life.
pc
long time lurker (3-4 years) first time poster
by Patient-dude 42 Replies latest jw friends
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DNCall
Welcome Patient-dude. Your OP and replies have raised a question for me. Is there anyone reading this, or anyone any of you know of, who "awakened" because they were coaxed by someone else to do so? This isn't a rhetorical question. I'd really like some feed-back.
The reason I ask is that, from what I know, each of us has to initiate the process of awakening on our own. SomeTHING or someTHINGS have to trigger OUR thinking so as to begin to dismantle the programming (as opposed to someONE).
As time goes on, I believe there will be more and more THINGS that will trigger members to wake up. My current opinion is that things (i.e., events, actions, rulings, changes in policy, scandal, erroneous theology/chronology/prgonositcation) will change members' thinking, not the persuasion of someone on the inside. I'm not asking for your thoughts just for me, but for Patient-dude and everyone else.
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00DAD
DNCall: each of us has to initiate the process of awakening on our own. SomeTHING or someTHINGS have to trigger OUR thinking so as to begin to dismantle the programming (as opposed to someONE).
Great point!
It really is an individual experience, our awakening. And yet many of those "someTHINGS" of which you speak are the actions or words of others. Often, for me at least, it was the unintended consequence of other JWs being hypocritical, illogical, hurtful or sometimes just plain stupid that forced me to confront the ever growing dissonance in my JW-beliefs.
That being said, I think we can drop hints like a breadcrumb trail to help others wake up. But if we are too obvious or push too hard we're likely to just push them further into their cult-programming. The indirect method seems to work best.
Steven Hassan has written and spoken extensively on the importance of trying to connect with a cult-member's authentic self. He also cautions against discussing doctrine directly as that usually just backfires.
That being said, I think the expressed intentions of Patient-dude in his OP may be good, but the plan is ill-conceived. If he actually pulls it off it'll just be more mixed-messages from the platform causing even more confusion among the members of an already confused flock.
00DAD