Dealing With Witness Relatives

metatron

A simple point but well worth repeating is that just as it took
many gradual steps to 'come in the truth', so also it takes many
gradual adjustments to leave it!

Thus, if you care for your relatives/friends in a loving way,
you will have to get them gradually accustomed to your new found
freedom. Angry, embittered comments about how horrid the organization
is are unlikely to attract anyone - except those who already
recognize that reality! A few other suggestions:

1) Make a happy success of your life and show it! Jehovah's Witnesses
tend to LOVE FAILURE and be jealous of SUCCESS. Thru years as an
elder, I've been shocked by the glee many Witnesses feel when
Brother Dictionary mispronounces a word or Brother Elder's kid
gets df'd. Outside the organization, I don't have to tell you
that they also revel in any disaster that justifies their negative
view of other people and the world ("Boy, the End is really close,
isn't it?")

If you hold your head high, get a decent education, and evince
every sign of happiness and success - while discreetly ignoring
whatever bilge the Watchtower vomits up - you may get them to
change without debates that force them into defensiveness.

2) Never DA yourself or actually seek to be DF'd. Don't play their
game - and if you are DF'd, don't cooperate in any way by
following THEIR rules. Grab a sandwich and sit next to them
deliberately at work/school - if they have to leave, that's
their problem. Get in their face and actively seek their
embarrassment.

If you show up one in a while at the local Kingdom Hall, looking
happy, healthy and successful, you'll accomplish far more
subtle damage than any shock of being df'd.

3) Develop an effective 'story' - tell your friends how sad it is
that the Society is downsizing. Try " in ten years, Witnesses
won't be any different from any other religion" or "I'm too
busy going to college"

Imagine the Watchtower trying to print "We're Not Mainstreaming!"
or "No, We're Not Downsizing"

Gradualism works - and it scares them BECAUSE ALL YOU HAVE TO
CHANGE IS A PERCEPTION. Once that PERCEPTION becomes 'JW's are
becoming the same as anybody else', it's game over.

metatron

roybatty

Youre right on the money with point number one! Let them know that youre enjoying your life. JWs absolutely love to see people fail, even those in the congregation. Brother and Sister Upper Middle-Class buy a new house, others in the congregation have to tear them down behind their backs ("Have you noticed how many meetings theyre missing?") I never understood this mentality. While many non-JWs are the same way, its sad how people who address each other as brother and sister will at the same time tear them down.

I know that my JW family and other JWs in my area would love to see me be miserable and perhaps have some kind of breakdown. My kids, who go to the Hall with their JW mother and see their JW relatives, will tell me about comments they overhear people make to their mother. Comments that turn something positive into a negative, such as me coaching the local youth tackle football team or the kids and I attending church. I just shake my head and feel sad for these JWs. Living a life with so much negative feelings inside must be awful. I use to wonder where this negative attitude came from but now I know. It comes from the pages of the WatchTower. While on the surface there are pretty pictures and words about an earthly paradise, deeper inside there are negative thoughts and perceptions. Everything except the WT is bad. Everything except the WT will be destroyed. These people are bad, those people are bad. Its no wonder JWs think that the "glass is half empty."

While I dont have my new friends over for the sole purpose of showing my JW family and JW neighbors that Im fine, it is funny to see them walk by a dozen times, checking things out. Whether my kids are with me and my friends or my ex and her JW friends & relatives, I want them to have fun. I truly do. Its amazing to me that JWs want me and other ex-JWs to be miserable. Simply amazing.

Mulan

Absolutely agree.

It's a hard one to do though. I want so badly, to tell my mother all I know. Instead, I tell her "we know too much", or if she asks if someone is still 'in the truth', I say "no they aren't ..........they know what we know." I know it bugs the daylights out of her, but she won't ask...........yet.

In the past, I told her what I was finding out, and it made her mad and hurt her, closing the doors to her mind. Recently, she baited me about something, and I said "I could answer that question, but your mind won't go there, so why bother?"

roybatty

"but your mind won't go there"

I love it! I have to remember that one.

Tinkerbell4125

I love that too Mulan! I'll have to remember that!!!!

Oh how I'd love to sit down and write my whole j.w. family a letter and try to explain how I feel and what I know, but I know they would turn a deaf ear to it or say that I was just crazy. I have a mood disorder *bipolar* and I work very hard to maintain a balance.

It's kinda funny in a way....my family is so wraped up in the j.w. teaching, weather or not they live it or not, they still believe it's the truth. Their whole way of thinking just WEARS me out, but if you ask them, they would tell you that I"m the one that's crazy!

I agree with the post here. Show that you are happy and life is and can be good with the watchtower teachings. It would be so easy to go into a kingdom hall and line all the elders up against a wall and scare the shit out of them with a shotgun, but that wouldn't prove a thing....just make me look crazy! lol I wouldn't do that, but boy I sure have thought about it! =;o)

BluesBrother

Love it!

" I could answer your question but your mind wont go there"

Thats the next reply, when I am accused of being mad, when I am shouted down and verbally bullied.

A closed mind just cannot receive.

Dismembered

Metatron & Mulan,

Extremely well put. Thanks for the reminders. This is a thread I will read over & over again. Thanks again

William Penwell

I find that the uncaring for our fellow humans is not just a Jdub thing. I know I was telling someone the other day that I may lose my job and he laughed. Makes me wonder where we are heading to in society when people can be so heartless to someone elses misfortunes.

Will

Bendrr

Metatron, of all your posts that has become my favorite. I'd suggest that from time to time you re-post it.

Mike.

avengers

Thanks for the advice. Sometimes I tend to go overboard, and my JW family dismisses me as bad influence.

You are right. Success is the best "revenge".

Andy

Dealing With Witness Relatives

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