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My Experience and how I finally let myself see the truth
by OneEyedJoe 80 Replies latest jw experiences
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FadeToBlack
Welcome OEJ. Enjoyed reading that. I think you are just another good example of why the WT doesn't want people going to college/university. They lose all control in the process. You are exposed to other thinking, information, and lifestyles; and, if you got a real education, you are actually encouraged to develop critical thinking skills. Comgrats on a big first step forward with the rest of your life....
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Emery
Welcome OneEyedJoe! This was a beautifully written post -- I sure hope you stay awhile! I really enjoyed how you expressed yourself, I've felt all the same things you did but you expressed it a lot better than I ever could. It will take some time and the journey will get really obnoxious at times but knowing that you're mentally free will make things a lot easier going forward. My wife and officially faded over a year ago and we haven't looked back since. We only make a few appearences a year here and there at conventions to keep some family happy. They just see us as some spiritually weak young couple (28 and 21 yrs old). As far as tips on waking up loved ones...what helped me wake my wife up was asking her questions. I assumed the role of a student and made her the teacher. I never preached at her or talked down to her in our conversations. This will go A LONG WAY. This approach has actually helped me wake up several JW friends. Anways, I wish you nothing but the best and I look forward to reading more posts by you.
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OneEyedJoe
Thanks for the words of encouragement Emery (and everyone!).
I've been thinking about posting a request for comments on how to awaken my wife, I guess now's as good a time as any. My current plan is to "discover" the mis-quotes in the creation book. My wife makes little comments about me watching my science shows whenever they say anything about evolution, and she's been making thinly veild comments about my recent (albiet slight) decline in apparent spirituality - so my plan is to tell her that I took her criticism to heart and decided to do some extra personal study. Since I'm a big science nerd, the creation book would be an obvious place to start. My narative (I feel a little bad for misleading her in the spirit of theocratic warfare, but I'm sure she'll thank me in the end if it works.) is going to be that I saw the "absurd in the highest degree" quote from Darwin, and was surprised that Darwin himself would discount his own theory like that, and I excitedly found The Origin of Species on google books and looked for the section where he admitted he was wrong. Then, upon finding that the way it's quoted is completely misleading and dishonest, I decided to look up other quotations and references. I copied the book from the WT library CD to google docs (ostensibly so that I could read it in my spare time at work, since I don't have a hard-copy of the book) and added comments to all the misquotes. My plan is to ask her to look at it because it's been bothering me, and maybe I'm overreacting. I think I'm going to try to work in something like "this just seems awefully dishonest for an organization that calls itself 'the truth'" and see how she reacts.
I'd love to hear some ideas as to ways she might react and how I should respond. Or if you think this is a terrible idea and I should take a completely different approach, feel free to say so. The only other time I've expressed doubts on anything, she got very emotional and said things like "you're scaring me" because of how I talk. So I'm hoping that presenting it to her in black and white and asking her to help me explain it away will prevent that. Or at least my hope is to prevent her from seeing it as a me vs her thing. I'm not really sure what might be the thing for her that would hit home and make her wake up, so I figure the best strategy for now would be to show her things that I could plausibly could have happened upon with sincere motives, through no fault of my own.
She's going to be a tough nut to crack, though. Getting DF'd will be a huge fear for her, because all her family is in and while they're not the most 'spiritual,' they'd definitely shun her. The other issue is that they did a heck of a job developing a phobia of 'worldly people' in her that will be difficult to get past. I've read Hassan's latest book, but I haven't found a workable way to apply his approach towards fixing the phobias without outing myself as an appostate. Right now I'm thinking I'll have to wake her up completely, then help her deal with the residual programming...
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Apognophos
I don't have any wisdom to offer on the subject, as I said earlier. But keep in mind that fear (what you refer to as "programming") is what holds people back from waking up in the first place. The black and white thinking of a JW is that they feel they have to either believe the truth or believe in nothing. You can't cut someone's trapeze wires and then work on putting a net under them as they fall. First they need to see that there's a net; then you can try to coax them to fall into it. Some of us never felt all that much fear in the first place so we fail to recognize this.
Also, is your wife intellectual and science-oriented? Because if she's not, then all you're doing by pointing out the scientific misquotes is explaining why you're losing faith, which may frighten her rather than be convincing to her personally.
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Emery
I think that's a great idea, but consider where she's at in her belief system. If she's more of a bible based believer -- where the word of god is her final authority, then use bible based arguments/questions where the bible clearly disagrees with WT doctrine. If she's more like you in that she's more open to evolution, then you should use that approach. Like you mentioned earlier, people are emotionally attached to the organization and no amount of facts will deter them from it until an emotional injustice occurs. Many of the people I've helped have in some way been burned by the organization in many respects, which I have always taken advantage of. Start off by asking your wife why she thinks it's the truth? What made her accept it? What she tells you will be your starting point for dismantling.
I know your approach may appear to be dishonest but, your motive is to wake them up to truth. Reminds me of a fitting quote from the movie 'V for Vendetta'
“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”
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Apognophos
Many of the people I've helped have in some way has been burned by the organization in many respects,which I have taken advantage of.
In fact, as a corollary to this, I would go so far as to suggest that if someone has not been harmed by the organization, you cannot and should not try to extract them from it. If the religion is "working" for somebody, there is little you can do to convince them to uproot their belief system and social life and possibly their familial relationships just because technically it's all founded on lies.
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OneEyedJoe
That's a great point...I guess I never thought of it as 'believe this or believe nothing.' In fact, I'd long thought to myself "If I wasn't a JW, I'd be an atheist" and I was always comfortable with thought of being athiest. For her it's possible that it'd be entirely different. If anyone has any ideas how to build up the safety net, I'd love to hear it. I'm at a loss there.
She's not science oriented, but the quotes are taken so far out of context I don't feel like you'd even have to understand evolution at all to see the dishonesty. In the case of the darwin quote, he states that it seems rediculous that the eye could've evolved, then in the next sentence explains how it could happen. When it's quoted, though, they stop at his saying it seems absurd, and write " More than a century has passed since then. Has the problem been solved? No." If you read Darwin's writing, you see that the "problem" was solved in the next sentence!
But this is why I'm here...trying to figure out the best approach in a vaccuum is a daunting task. So far the above is the only thing I've come up with that I could present without her immediately going on the defensive against me, but maybe that wouldn't even work. She knows I hate service, and shes a little less of a thinker (though still smart) than I am, so I don't have a habit of asking her questions on things that I could've been asked in service, so I can't use that one. Besides, no one can ask a difficult question in service anymore since all we do is hand out leaflets for the householder to throw away.
Ugh, it's hard not to feel hopeless thinking about it...Sometimes I think the best strategy would be to get DF'd for asking questions and record the JC, or just straight up DA, but I want to try other things before I start burning bridges.
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jgnat
Instead of studying more books (which is obviously in your comfort zone), I suggest you make a study of your wife as a book. This will require asking her many questions. Filling out the survey as I suggested will give you the questions to ask. Knowing her personality, interests and dreams hides key to get her out. For instance you may ask,
- Why do you think so-and-so left the truth? (Chances are she will mention HER chief doubt in the answer)
- Did you ever dream of doing anything differently when you grew up? What was that?
- If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would you do?
- If money or time were no object, where would you go and what would you do here on earth?
- Who is the person you would most like to talk to in Paradise, and what would you ask them?
For heart-to-heart conversations, I suggest you time them to be as far away from the meetings as possible, both in time and in distance. The cultic personality wears off the longer you away. Schedule vacations and times away so you can enjoy your wife's natural personality and get to know her as a person.
This exercise has the side-benefit of helping you be a more sensitive and with-it husband!
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OneEyedJoe
In fact, as a corollary to this, I would go so far as to suggest that if someone has not been harmed by the organization, you cannot and should not try to extract them from it. If the religion is "working" for somebody, there is little you can do to convince them to uproot their belief system and social life and possibly their familial relationships just because technicallyit's all founded on lies
That's something that I've been struggling with, too. She's not been overtly harmed by it, but I keep coming back to 2 issues:
1. It absolutely harms EVERYONE who's 'in' because they don't plan for the future and have to live in a perpetual state of waiting for something that's not going to happen. It restricts them from living life to it's fullest, and it restricts thier time (which is limited, if you aren't living forever anymore) and it can potentially kill you at any time if you ever need blood.
2. Since I'm awake, it's definintely going to harm our marriage if she remains in the cult. maybe not end it, but there will be harm done.
If she wants to go from this to being catholic, I won't stop her, but I think there's a difference between something that's just founded on lies, and something that's founded on lies and wants to control every aspect of your life.
Emery:
I really think the only thing that keeps her in is the fear of the big A, and the hope for eternal life in paradise. I talked to her about some biblical things (144000 being literal) and she basically said she didn't care if it was wrong, because the only reason it matters to her is so she can know how close we are to the end. I also mentioned the contradiction in the fact that we can't donate blood, but we can take vaccines and use fractions derived from donated blood. That seemed to be a touchy subject so I stopped at that point. (also, to my horror, I found that she's elected not to allow any fractions on her blood card)
How can I ask what initially made her think it was the truth (she was born in, so it was probably just her parents telling her it was the truth from birth) without setting off alarm bells that her husband is doubting?