What Made You Decide To Finally Leave The Organization?

by minimus 52 Replies latest jw friends

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  Crazyguy

  Finding out they stole jesus as my mediator really pissed me off, but finding out they except cows blood as a fraction for a blood transfusion was it! Hemoglobin is just packed red blood cells with the outer membrane stripped off so the blood doesn’t need to be typed. Hemopure is bovine hemoglobin.

  So you can’t have a blood transfusion even if it means death, but if you can get some cows blood called Hemopure then it’s all good! I don’t believe in demons but if I did I would believe that demons were all over the place inside Bethel!
• 

  Magnum

  Definitely, as with others, cumulative for me. What OnTheWayOut and jp1692 and Sunworshipper805 wrote applies to me.

  I had doubts even before I was baptized - doubts about such things as the flood account and the JW teaching that animals didn't kill each other before the rebellion in the garden of Eden, but I suppressed them. Very early in my JW life, I saw flaws in JW higher up personnel, poor writing in JW publications, flawed doctrine, etc., but I still thought JWdom was what it claimed it to be.

  The 1995 "generation" change took a lot of the wind out my sails. After that, I just couldn't ignore anymore the fact that the ministry and the meetings were largely a waste of time. Most JWs were not effective in the ministry, the meetings were mostly fluff, and most of the appointed men were not good teachers.

  Also, I, as did OnTheWayOut, realized that the org was making money on disaster relief, and, at the same time, bragging on itself for how noble it was. Then, the fact that we were getting further and further away from the year 2000 (kj page 216) with no end in sight weighed heavily on me.

  Finally, after much prayer, I slowly began researching on the internet. Found out about the UN thing, the deception in the Creation book and the Trinity brochure, and lots of other stuff.

  At some point (2012 or 2013?), it seemed like scales fell off my eyes. I sat at meetings in the back and just watched and listened. It began to seem so corny and goody goody and empty and undignified and cult-like.

  Then, the straw that almost broke the camel's back... the last Memorial I went to. The talk was not at all serious and dignified as it seemed to me a Memorial talk should be. The elder talked about how in the "new world" animals wouldn't kill each other and he used a silly example (can't give specifics because doing so might identify me). The JWs chuckled and laughed and ate it up. I and my wife did the opposite of laugh.

  Then, the final straw. Shortly after the aforementioned Memorial, we went to a regular Sunday meeting. During the Watchtower study, in the audience was one of the local elders - a loudmouth who could barely spell his own name and knew nothing of JW history and very little of JW doctrine current at the time. He commented in a boisterous, arrogant way during the Watchtower study something like the following: "Don't even be curious about apostate websites and words. All it takes is a few words to wreck your faith."

  Of course, I had heard that before and, I think, read it in JW publications, but this time, it just hit me hard. It just made me really realize how closed-minded and overly confident and sheltered and cultish and ignorant JWs are. I was thinking "If you have the truth, what the hell are you so scared of? Is your teaching that weak? Is your god that weak?"

  Haven't been to any kind of JW meeting or event since.
  
• 

  goingthruthemotions

  I wasn't in long with this cult..I started to study in 08, got what you would call baptized in 2010 ( i know consider that baptism as false and i don't consider myself as being baptized) any ways. moved up fast, became a ministerial servant in months time, then account servant. (this was eye opening, i realized how much money they make, but yet keep asking for more...and saw people who could not afford to donate, but would donate a nice amount) I was like WTF.

  in the summer of 2013 they changed the faithful slave to just the 7 dwarfs. ( this made me lift an eyebrow as to WTF) and then in November 2013 they came out with the follow us speech even if it sounds illogical and that's when I said i am OUT!!.

  I stepped down as MS. I faded, but not without consequence. it has destroyed my marriage!!!! our sons don't go. our older son is a freshman in college, younger one will go to college and has trained MMA since he was 6, he is now 13 and amazing kid and fighter. could easily turn pro. but i encourage college first than fighting. they have seen how this cult of a religion has destroyed there family.

  i don't ever see my wife stopping, i am not sure how long the marriage will last. but, it will only survive if she awakes from the control and i don't see that happening. so I guess our days are numbered . i have shared so much TTATT with her that it would make your mind explode. I don't say anything anymore and am just going through the motions.

  thanks JW. ORG for ruining my family and marriage.
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  sillygirlforgotpassword

  The fact that organ transplants were not allowed for a period of time and that was overturned at some point. I read about someone that lost a family member a month before the small “Questions from readers??” Section at the end of a Wt made transplants a personal choice. It was so little most people would’ve missed it. I was blown over.

  I mentioned it at a meeting with elders I had for an unrelated reason and the college dropout elder said the WT was right to make that change because the technology had developed enough to clean blood properly out of organs and thUS it was a wise and informed decision.

  But what about the family that lost a relative a month prior to the WT déçiding this. It’s amazing how people can justify lost lives with very little empathy and then call themselves God’s shepherds.
• 

  freddo

  Cumulative. 1995 generation change was a biggie but in my mind of course even (under the old rules) then this system might go on to 2000 or even 2014.

  Stupidity upon stupidity was added to doctrine or "guidelines" and I resigned as an elder. Jborg sealed the deal for me with its electric church and pappy videos and cartoons. After a year or two I was pretty stagnant and in for family.

  Overlapping Splane-generations was the final straw.

  Now I am part way through a fade.
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  ssn587

  I was basically awake after the generation fiasco in the late 90s, stayed because wife needed my support. How she was treated while suffering depression and the lack of care from her supposed friends was the last straw. My last meeting was inJuly of 2011. I was at the meeting and got up and walked out never to return.
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  scratchme1010

  Was there one certain event or was it more a cumulative thing?
  

  There was one specific event that precipitated my decision to leave, but the decision to leave itself was not made abruptly. There are two things, my decision to leave, and what made me start acting on my decision when I did.

  My decision came about by a combination of my history in that organization. The way I was treated there was not in a very nice, loving way. The other factor was my depression. I decided to take the Jehovah crap seriously when I was an adolescent, just to find myself entering adulthood with the most severe depression I've ever experienced. At best, what I got was accusations that my depression were caused by my conscience, meaning that I was supposed to confess to something, so they can discipline me, reprove me, etc. That was the only suggestion they bother to give me regarding it.

  I went to see a therapist, and that did wonders for me. After that, I just started looking at the entire dynamic in the congregation from different point of view. I started observing and noticing that not only was I the only person in need of outside professional mental health help, but that the congregation was full of people with all kinds of issues, some people with severe mental illness. I opened my eyes and realized that the leadership in the WT is made up of people who are incapable of providing appropriate guidance and recommendations to people, but at the same time they are the ones that I was supposed to trust with my most important life decisions.

  I sat with those thoughts and started entertaining the idea of leaving that organization as I knew that it was all bullshit. That started making me look at all the crap I was told in terms of doctrine differently too, not that I cared much for a lot of it, anyway.

  Though at a conscious level I knew I was out, what made it a process is that I was born-in, so leaving meant walking away from my entire life up until that point, not something that is to be taken lightly. I knew I couldn't just leave, and I knew that I needed to start building the foundation for my life out.

  Two things happened: 1- I met who became my first relationship, a nice gentleman who happened to have a mother who was taking bible studies, and he was very curious about the Jehovah crap, trying to know what was his mother getting into. He was very supportive in my process of leaving. 2 - The trigger came from some pathetic bitch of a sister who started giving me shit for showing up to the KH without properly shaving. The way she talked to me was so verbally abusive, so nasty, ad in front of all the people present. I just looked at her, aside from being upset, I also saw something different. As I saw her in that "mode", I noticed something odd. Now I understand a little more about brainwashed people and when people are in sad, bad circumstances. I just knew at that moment that the message from the people who are supposed to love and care about me was never going to be positive or loving.

  The rest is history.
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  ssn587

  Making money on disaster relief was another reason, had asked the PO if it was true that they asked those whom they helped to donate the insurance $$$ to the society and he told me they did, he wasn't so forthcoming about did they help those that refused. Just one of the many things that were a wtf to my mind. My wife's treatment was the final kic in my rear to get me out.
• 

  Wild_Thing

  When I was 16, my mother and I finally escaped from my abusive father, who had been an elder for years. She sought help from the elders for years. The only help they provided was telling her what a good little JW wifey she was for keeping secret and not "bringing reproach upon Jehovah's name", and to pray more. It took her 29 years to get away from him.

  When we got away from him, we started over in a new town. Initially, we had nothing, except a suitcase of clothes. No job, no car, no place to live. Eventually, things started to fall in place (without the assistance of our "brothers and sisters") and we were able to go back and get only some of our stuff that we had left behind.

  After it was all said and done, I told my mother that I didn't want to be a Witness anymore. I just couldn't imagine living forever with these people who wouldn't help us. Her response was "I know. I feel that way too sometimes, but there's nothing else out there." I attempted suicide shortly afterwards. It took another seven for me to be able to stop going to meetings and attempt a fade, but this is what precipitated my decision to leave. I would rather be dead than with the Witnesses, so how bad could the world be?

  The final straw where I said I absolutely will not step foot in a Kingdom Hall again? It was a drama at the summer convention. My mom convinced me to go on that one day because she knew when I was growing up, the dramas were always my favorite part of an otherwise boring 4 days. (Showing my age).

  The drama was about Moses and Korah, and how Korah would not listen to Moses when he came down from the mountain serving as God's mouthpiece. Korah wouldn't accept Moses's authority so the earth opened up and swallowed him. They very clearly lined out the correlation to today. Moses represented the organization/ F&DS. Korah represented any JW that questioned their authority.

  I was in my early 20s, and was incensed at the very blatant fear tactics they were using. It was the last JW ANYTHING I went to. That is not why I left, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. It made me realize I was old enough and strong enough to walk away, and the only thing keeping me in the Borg was my own two feet.
• 

  jws

  It was cumulative. I never really felt the zeal and hoped once I grew up, it would come. During that time, I know I was "ahead of" the "truth" at times like when they changed the meaning of the heart being the seed of emotions. They literally believed emotions came from a pump. I knew they were flat wrong. My parents warned me not to tell anybody and to keep quiet about it. Eventually they changed (I think after the first artificial heart). And that stood out. I knew before "God's channel" did? And it was obvious too. I also saw the hypocrisy. Elders playing favorites. People being duplicitous.

  And it's also kind of like any scare. Remember how edgy we were in the days after 9/11? But over the years, we tend to live with that and the fact that nothing's happened. Maybe get relaxed. From early on, in grade school, I remember being scared Armageddon was due any day. I was terrified I wouldn't make it. Then after growing up, eh. Not here yet.

  But if there was also a "thing" that happened, it was Franz defecting. That left an impression. How could one of the governing body (a group I thought conversed with God) leave? It's like the Israelites giving up on god while Moses is up in the mountains. How? After they saw all of the miracles, why defect. I always thought there's more to the story. Something missing. Then Franz wrote a book. When I was older, I found out where to mail for a copy and got one and read it. It made sense to me. This was not God's religion. But I think it sorted things out. I had a lot of things where I sort of dismissed it, all in favor of the JWs. This is just imperfect men, blah, blah. Or blamed myself. Or dismissed inconsistencies. Or just had a "I'm sure it'll all be explained one day" attitude. And that book helped me decide that the JWs were not the true religion and I left it. Or faded from it. But I was probably half way through Franz's book when I had already decided I'm not going back.

  I did, a couple of times, at the request of my father to go to a Memorial. So I did, just to honor his wishes, but it was NEVER the same. And after moving 1000 miles away, I also attended a few meetings to trick a JW who knocked on my door into thinking I was an interested householder (he had no clue) and over time, I reasoned against the JWs. And now he's disappeared from their ranks! And an assembly once, just out of curiosity to see what it was like (boring as ever, same stuff). So not going back didn't mean I never stepped across the doorstep of a Kingdom Hall again. But mentally, they never controlled me afterwards.