Well I finally got the cajones.....

by hoodwinked 25 Replies latest jw friends

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  crinklestein

  Greetings and salutations! We are the borg. resistance is futile. that is all. Hahaha! Just kidding.

  Isn't it nice to remove yourself from the hive mind? It's nice and peacefull isn't it?
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  Buster

  Welcome to the board Hoodwinked!

  Thanks for sharing your story.
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  AMNESIAN

  Hoodwinked:

  There is no fellowship in this ORG. At least for the new ones on the outside looking in. If one's not in a clique, or one's not related to everyone else, good luck to ya! They say that we are all brothers in the faith but try cracking some of the fleshly-family "cliques", or just regular old "buddy-buddy" cliques that are abundant. No chance bucko! Outsiders not welcome! The fake smiles and greetings took a while for me to catch on to but eventually I realised that it was all just a show to make themselves feel good inside. Some were sincere but for the most part not many were. Very few even congratulated me on my baptism. That set off some warning signs to me but I thought, "ahh what the heck..were not perfect, some people are shy and so on".

  If you don't mind my asking, what do you think made these behaviors so obvious to you within a mere nine months of your baptism when, presumably, your association with JWs prior to baptism surely exceeded 9 months yet still apparently convinced you of the truthfulness of their claims to be Jesus' only true disciples?

  Was the un-Christian treatment your family suffered in the particular instance you reference such a sudden, unexpected and extreme occurrence that arose in total after your baptism that it caused you to virtually overnight so thoroughly reject all that you'd thought you'd learned about JWs that persuaded you to get baptized in the first place?

  Are you no longer attending meetings or turning in time? Are you being shepherded by any of the elders? (Forgive me if your posts already supply this information; under the board's new structure I have difficulty navigating between the reply screen and the thread's posts and so cannot easily refresh myself as to exactly what's been said to which I'm attempting reply).

  Take no offense at my inquiries. It's just that in my experience newly-baptized ones are so blindingly "aglow with the spirit" that it is virtually impossible for one to snap out of the trance in so incredibly brief a period of time---and, most astonishingly, to the point of then trying to enlighten believing family---irrespective the damaging events in evidence. Unless one is reared in the religion and gets baptized as merely the rite of passage it is for many youth---without its representing much in the way of a "symbol of one's dedication" (and, from what you said, I didn't get that as your situation)--- enlightenment the depths of which you describe above takes years of intimate association in the JW culture, enduring the ravages of the cognitive dissonance imposed until one implodes from the weight.

  Yours is a rare thing to encounter on JWD: a unique experience. Are you quite certain your months of lurking here did not persuade you to interpret behaviors and actions on the part of those in your congregation very differently (read: negatively) from how you willingly viewed those exact same behaviors and actions a few short months ago?

  Regardless how you came to be where you are today, welcome to this place and best of everything to you and your family.

  AMNESIAN
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  DanTheMan

  I believe to be "spiritually strong" as they coin it, you have to be cold and unfeeling. Which is exactly what I believe someone who is indoctrinated for long enough period of time eventually becomes (haughty and cold)

  Well, the WT is nothing but a printing company parading as a religion, so moving up in the WT is akin to moving up in a business, which means looking out for number one. There are some kindhearted elders, but usually they are the ones who have been elders forever and were appointed to their position during a different era when the WT wasn't as brutally cold and byzantine as it is now.

  I often felt the same way you do about the impenetrable "family cliques" in the congs. JWism has become such a bizarre, closed society that it is very difficult to function in the org if you weren't raised in it.

  Amnesian's comments are interesting, usually it takes many years of association with JW's before you start to wonder if everything in JW land is as wonderful as you are constantly told it is.
• 

  Yizuman

  Hoodwinked,

  Yizuman
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  hoodwinked

  Thanks to everyone for such a warm welcome! I have been away for a few days and I didn't have time to respond to your kind words of encouragement.

  I am looking forward to contributing to this board and getting to know all of you.

  I am at work now so I don't have a heck of a lot of time to post this, hope that I got my message across ok.

  Sincerely,

  "HOODY"

  "fading fast"