I am not sure how you all feel as we all left at different times for different reasons...
But this new bible seems to have put some final nails into a coffin that was once my JW life. The religion is so far and so different to the religion I grew up in that it has become something I feel no affiliation with anymore, no bond, no shared ideas or even sentimental views. It is so......different...
different teachings on when the end is coming
different teachings on its founding and Russel
different teachings on 1914 and the generation
different FDS
different financial harvesting method (stocks shares, hedge funds, property)
different headquaters
different governing body
different president
different videos and cartoons
different weekly meeting
different sunday talks
different magazines
different songs
and now a.......different bible
I only left around 2004/5 and I have never felt so disconnected as I do now from what is such a shambolic mess of doctrines and flavours that arrives about every ten years, probably based on new tombstones and resulting new management.
The more the waves of real life take me away from that crazy island , the more I forget what a weird, isolated and unique place it was to live for 20 years. The people I miss, when I meet them are people I no longer recognise or understand. People locked into an idea, a sale, their knuckles white from how hard they hold on to things that tommorow could be 'old light'. They just seem so desperate ...... Desperate in wanting their beliefs to be real, legitimate.
My main point really is...... I feel like this is my goodbye with the Watchtower Society, the stolen youth, the pioneering, the quick builds, the bethel work... It all seems like it has been underscored away, written off as a loss and I am ready to move on now.This new bible milarchy has given me a real sense of closure, the WT is on a pathway long deviated from my experience of it.
I left a religion that ......simply does not exist anymore!
It has evolved into a corporate, fundementalist movement I don't recognise or share any common ground with now and I think that is a positive thing.
So...
Goodbye the smell of the old books (creation, revelation, greatest man) on a late tuesday night crowded into someones front room. Goodbye brown money stubbs (alarm bells where were you?) from the 80's at district assemblies, goodbye pondering the age and health of people alive in 1914 as I left school, goodbye green battered old bible with several names of people in the cong that no longer attend in its front that you somehow owned, goodbye gold edged funny smelling or harback cold to hold NWT of the bible, goodbye watchtower cover art from the 80's and 90's that was super embarassing and all those cold mornings trying to pass off menopause/depression/death/pagan halloween magazines off to normal people, goodbye blood brochure from the 80's that oddly was titled how blood saves your life, goodbye reasoning book that only worked in sisters talks on a thursday night, goodbye dissapointment of seeing how long your side of the street was when arriving st the territory, goodbye the feeling of relief when the end of the street was reached, goodbye standing in the district assembly trying to figure out how only we could know something everyone else in the world could not, goodbye denouncing hard evidence and science with silly examples involving scrap yards or building houses or why we havent evolved wings, goodbye the feeling of fear/doubt/guilt because I would not face up to my own inner questions about the religion, the bible, mybeliefs, goodbye pretending that getting dunked in a luke warm pool made me feel different, goodbye wardrobe of countless dodgy ties and shirts, goodbye cheap plastic tract holders that split down the middle, goodbye coffee from a flask in the hall on a sunday afternoon before going on the ministry and returning home with a non specific feeling of time lost and wasted.....
Goodbye Jehovah's Witnesses .........hello JW.ORG, sorry but I am not interested thank you, have a nice day.....
Snare x