confused

free will

hello all. i'm a newbie who has recently admitted to myself that 'the truth' isn't the truth. i'm struggling with my new found freedom. i don't know what truths i should believe anymore. my biggie is how do i worship jehovah now. i was raised a jw, had a long hiatus then came back into the fold to be baptized. i realize now that during my hiatus, i would pray to jehovah often. now i don't pray at all. i felt closer then than i do now. i would look at a simple creek and praise jah for it's beauty. but, i don't do that anymore. i've been inactive for awhile now. although the elders don't know it by my service report. but i've attended meetings only sporadically. got called in for the big talk, soon thereafter, i realized i've been too burdened with society rules. i felt guilty for not going to the meetings like i should, i felt guilty for lying about my service report, i felt guilty that i didn't agree wholeheartedly with the org. i felt i'd betrayed god. so, i didn't pray. then i learned about the un thing and felt sort of vindicated. the blinders came off. i've been able to find out more things that prove to me that i have been trying to be loyal to the organization, not to god. (paraphrased from ray franz crisis of conscience). but where does that leave me? how do i feed my spirituality and not fall into the same trap again?....thanks for listening....sorry so long.

nowisee

27 years ago i was exactly in the same place you describe. the biggest mistake is to believe that the organization is the same as God. it absolutely is not. a large part of the process is divorcing the two, and takes a real adjustment in thinking. start reading the bible without wt literature, without bias, and see where you get. pray for guidance. don't stop seeking. don't allow a misguided feeling of betraying God prevent you from knowing who God really is!

m0nk3y

Here is a fairly simple solution free will, it's somthing I don't always do but I still do from time to time .. you know when you talk to yourself in your mind ? well why don't you direct that line of communication to god, throw his name in there a few times and it will start to become habit.

Just a suggestion

m0nk3y

zanex

my best suggestion wud be to not focus on any type of spirituality at this point until you have had some time to cleanse yourself at least somewhat of the mental conditioning recieved from the organization. I came from 17 years of programming and when I got cut loose I went through multple stages of finding out who I was WITHOUT any type of spirituality or religious suggestion. I have now, 11 years later found that I am now beginning to achieve the smallest level of trust for ANY religous figures. It takes time. This is just MY two cents..take it for what it's worth...

be wise

Religion is like a dirty word for me now. I'm just trying to separate the two, religion from fanaticism but I am struggling as I've only experienced one of these. I think God is someone I will never come to understand or the concept at least. I don't think it's healthy to be extreme one way or another, but I'll probably, gradually change over time.

I recentley visited a good website with quotes of Eric Hoffer. These really helped me in my thinking and where I am at with a lot of it, you should check it out if you haven't already it's at http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/hoffer.htm

I just thought I'd throw in this experience. When I was about ten or twelve I remember doing my forced stint of door knocking when a woman who's face I'll never forget just looked at me so sympathetically and sadly. It seemed somehow she understood something about me that I obviously wasn't aware of, she didn't even really say anything in return. When I left I thought, what does she know, but it stirred something inside of me and made me feel really uncompfortable for quite a while. Was she a so-called apostate, maybe. Well, now I understand that look on her face and I never thought I would. Now that's what I call a sign of things to come.

Francois

Many here have been where you are now, myself included. I think the hardest thing for me to finally grasp was that Jehovah is really only a concept of God that was harbored by the ancient Hebrews. His real introduction to the Hebrews in the form we know him today was accomplished by Moses. Before that, Jehovah was just another tribal god of an illiterate group of bedouins who wandered the deserts of the middle east; he was not too different than Baal, Astoreth, and the other desert gods of the place and time.

There is ample evidence gained through archeology that Jehovah had a wife, and that at one time early in the history of the Jehovah concept, the ancient Hebrews performed human sacrifices to him. Of course, you won't find these evidences in the pages of the Watchtower but they are there for any to discover just like any other fact in a library is open to investigation.

Once I was convinced that Jehovah was not a concept of God I could worship, especially when I compared the angry judge-accountant thundering his laws from Horeb with the gentle and loving Father as introduced by Jesus, the "God of Love" introduced by Paul, then I knew I was on the right track.

Strangely, I found the concept of God that felt most like the real thing in a book called "The Tao Te Ching" written 600 B.C. by Lao Tzu, translations of which are like the flowers in a spring valley. The very simple statement made by this God-knowing oriental is that "The God you can name is not the eternal God." Once you name something, label it, then it cannot be anything but what the label describes and of course an infinite being cannot be described with a lable - for once the label has been exhausted, so has the description of the god associated with the label. That is the God described is limited to his definition and a limited God isn't God at all. The Tao Te Ching is a short work. You can read it in an hour. And re-read it in many, many translations for as long as you like. But after five or six translations, you begin to get the flavor of this transcendental God.

I know it's a big chunk to bite off, this idea that Jehovah is just a concept held by a savage tribe in the ancient middle east, but there you have it. It was the best those people could do at the time. And that's one reason among many that Jesus came here - to reveal God to man, the real God; he also came to reveal man to God; and finally to reveal man to himself.

There is a fantastic word of new truth awaiting you out here my friend, free of JW propaganda, deceit, false prophecy, and man-made teachings and traditions. And I hope you will revel in it.

francois

goofy

One publication that is great and is unbiased for he most part is a little book called "Our Daily Bread", It is similar in concept to the Daily Text published by the Watchtower, but is not in fact anything like the Daily Text in message. Everyday there is a little encouraging paragraph to read along with a Daily few paragraphs to read from the Bible. It is not published by a particular religion and is really uplifting and makes you think of God positively. I look forward to reading it and it has given me a small step in the direction of getting back to Bible reading. If you like, email me and I will find the address and send it to you on how to subscribe to it, it's free and they don't bug you afterwards.

email

First of all... WELCOME to the board... I'm glad you found us....

You said:

i was raised a jw

and this is a HUGE hurdle to overcome... I like you was also raised a Jdub... it may take YEARS to completely deprogram yourself from the mind controlling techniques they use... but you have just taken the most important step... accepting they are NOT the truth.

Hope you can keep posting and that you can get some support from us here...

("email")

free will

WHOA....francois...that concept is a little too much for me now...but, i thank you for telling me about jehovah's origin...i'd be interested to know where i should look for more info... and to all, thank you for your compassion.

A Paduan

but where does that leave me? how do i feed my spirituality and not fall into the same trap again?....

my biggie is how do i worship jehovah now?

You can do what it was you could have done back then - help the poor, sick and needy and don't judge them - give one away of your two, and to those who can't / won't repay - try it - it's still a really revolutionary idea - it's got nothing to do with door to door talking to please an imaginary beast - Christianity - try it - it's an Adventure.

confused

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