I had a "spiritual experience",
Hey, Toe, so did I. The whisky is not all it's cracked up to be!
Why are you out, what made you leave?
by MrMoe 29 Replies latest jw friends
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Dansk
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Maverick
Rocketman's comment, word for word. Maverick
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ashitaka
I left because I just thought that the whole scene was so hollow, so impersonal. There was no love, just a bunch of people trying to get to the top of the ladder so that they could get to the new world and get the best house on the beach. No one cared about 'worldly' people, didn't care about each other, their wives, their families. Husbands and wives hated each other, kids hated the parents and were much more wild than the rest of the 'world'.
Hyposcrisy.
ash
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RAYZORBLADE
My heading has nothing to do with the band: The Cure.
No it was about my intense service to the organization, and me battling my personal demons: my sexuality.
Nothing...nothing...absolutely goddamn nothing would cure me of being: gay.
I just remembered one night, that I realized I could not live as a hypocrite, nor drag some innocent unsuspecting sister into a life of lies.
I stopped being something I was not.
But I can tell you, the Adam & Eve story and Satan etc., used to drive me mental. That story, to this day, still makes me go: 'right from the beginning, you knew something was wrong...why didn't you leave then?'
Anyways, I'm outta there now. What a relief.
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ChrisVance
I also left be cuase I'm gay. Just couldn't pretend to be straight any longer. Once I left and read COC I was sorry i hadn't left a lot sooner. Those guys have the audacity to tell me there's something wrong with being gay!
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hornetsnest
Well, my departure was a little more dramatic, like Little Toe's was, although longer.
When I came back from Alaska into the same congregation I was raised in, I already knew of the autocratic nonsense that went on there. I remember even as a kid as how Cottage Grove, Oregon was, as one C. O. put it, "The sick man of the circuit." I'd learned a lot about faith, strength, and determination - and solitude - while in the Alaskan bush, though, and was kind of hoping to make a difference. (Okay, you can quit laughing now.)
Actually, though, I did make a difference, one that is still affecting the congregations now, even though it's been 15 years since I've been DFed. They aren't quite so high and mighty as they used to be.
But as time went on, I knew I was being isolated, but having been a loner, it made no difference to me at all. I wasn't serving men, I was serving Jehovah, and if they didn't like it, well, that was their problem. Naturally, the pompous fools that were lording it over everyone didn't like it, but I liked it all the better for that. Like Zedekiah 3:8 says, "ALWAYS keep a pompous ass in a state of perpetual outrage. It's the only Christian way to fly!"
But I seemed to have a real "in" with the youth of the congregation. Some of the kids would come over and stay with us while their parents fought like cats and dogs, etc. Plus I had a bunch of kids too, and as we've always had a very open communication with them, we got to know a great deal of the scuttlebutt.
The kids asked me to hold a study with them so that we could prepare the Watchtower study lesson together. I was glad to. The next thing I knew, the Presiding Overseer came up to me with a scowl on his face. "Why are you trying to supplant the Watchtower Study?"
Now this dude was a piece of work. Autocratic and bullying, he had all the rest of the elders scared to death. You can imagine his reaction when I fired right back at him almost before he was done speaking. "And why are you judging a matter before you hear it, in direct violation of Proverbs 18:13?" My manner was every bit as indignant and accusatory as his was. Wow! He was alarmed and taken aback, speechless, and so outraged he didn't know what to do, so he just sputtered.
Time went by and he kept trying to "tame" me and establish the pecking order. LOL! Every time he tried, I made him look like a fool, in both his eyes and everyone else's. I tried making peace with him, and I think that towards the end he would have, except his was afraid of what the other elders would do. Finally one day I learned through my kids that his kids were spreading it all over the highschool that their parents were drunks. I went to him in an honest endeavor to help, no strings attached. The reaction was astonishing.
He listened for about thirty seconds with a growing look of horror on his face, blurted, "I've got to go!", and left immediately without speaking to anyone. He resigned his eldership the next day, then sold their house and moved out of town within two weeks. I hadn't intended any of that! But WOW! What a reputation that gave me with the rest of the elders! LOL!
By that time I was becoming more and more aware of the things going on. One quick example came about when the parents in one of the "weaker" families in the congregation decided that they didn't want their daughter to associate with a certain elder's son. This pompous unwiped rectum promptly barrels into their home screaming, raving, threatening, and thereby intimidating them into allowing it! YE, GADS!!! How I wish he'd tried that with me! I'd have repositioned his balls up next to his tonsils.
Like I wrote the Society, "Since when is Jehovah's congregation nothing more than a happy hunting ground for elder's sons looking for mates?"
Meanwhile the rest of the elders were keeping me entertained by taking turns trying to establish the pecking order, and I just laughed at them. Finally, after I contributed to the removing of a few other elders for misconduct, including my own father, they concocted some utterly ridiculous false charges, ran me through a kangaroo court and DFed me. That ended up funnier than all get out, too.
Before it could be announced, I went around to a whole batch of the publishers and announced it myself, letting them all know what had really happened. This put the elders in a bad light and outraged them to boot. "We told you not to speak of this to ANYONE!"
I just laughted. "I've got news for you gentlemen. When you disfellowshipped me, all you accomplished was to remove yourself from any position of authority over me. Get lost." Since then, I've richly enjoyed going and doing what I wish. I still occasionally attend the Kingdom Hall - and sit where I darn well please. My wife and kids are well respected within the congregation, and those few numbskulls who wanted to make something of it paid, the hard way. It's like I told my son: "If they won't respect me as a fellow human being, or for my knowledge and the things I've done with my life, then they will damned well respect me for other reasons." And that's pretty much how it's turned out.
A small hint for those who would like to know how to survive in such an environment: When you are surrounded by preditory people, deliberately allow yourself to look weak occasionally, but make sure that those "weak" spots are booby trapped ahead of time. They will come sailing in with a haughty, sneering attitude intending to take you for all you have. Then you close the trap, and don't have any mercy on them until they appear publically as utter boneheads (Which they are.). Once or twice like that, and they will give you a wide berth.
By the way, if there are any fancy-pants lawyers out there that want to make something of my naming the Cottage Grove, Oregon congregation as the place where these things happened --- make my day. You know who I am and where I live.
Tom Howell (Alias - LoneWolf)
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TresHappy
Quite simply, I didn't believe it anymore.
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Ghost of Esmeralda
i'm with you, treshappy...i just didn't buy it anymore. since they'd had me since i was a zygote, it never occurred to me to question, hell, questions weren't allowed. it was like i finally grew up and when i looked at the watchtower fairytale with open, adult eyes, i couldn't believe it anymore than i could believe in the easter bunny. if someone had come to my door with the 'truth' when i was an adult, (without all those years of childhood indoctrination) i never would've believed it, or wanted a study.
for me the first 'last straw' was when the elders told me that the life of my miscarried babies was inconsequential to god, that they had 'no hope' for a future on earth or in heaven. "But," i wanted to scream "you say abortion is wrong and yet my babies don't matter?" that was the beginning of the end. I was 21.
The final last straw..by 25 i no longer had any faith in it at all, my father in law was a PO and i saw up close the curruption in the elder body/system of government of the congregations, and though there are good men struggling with what they see (who i believe eventually leave it themselves) the rest all just take the cowards way out and look the other way when women and children are being abused.
i want no part of any organization that has a conspiracy of silence. i will never, ever be a part of any organized religion again. i think they're all a crock.
this is why no matter how bad it hurts for my family to shun me, i can't go back. i can't un-know what i know, and i can't force the lies down anymore. i think many in my family have doubts, and shoving them down is making them all physically sick. it's their fear that keeps them in, i guess i realized that my biggest fear was living a life made useless by fear of men. i'm not afraid of god, and that puzzles them all beyond belief.
...probably making no sense this morning...
essies ghost
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dedalus
I, too, don't think there was just one reason. But the doctrine of mass genocide was something that had bothered me all my life. The ways Witnesses are taught to believe in genocide without actually thinking directly about what it means -- the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle employment of euphemisms to touch up a hideous belief and hope -- didn't ever really take with me, for whatever reason.
The best I did was to ignore the doctrine completely for several years. I left when it surfaced with the disfellowshipping of my mother. Suddenly all I heard was death, death, death, because my mother was going to die, die, die. It was in my face, and I realized then that the entire "happiness" of being a Witness is predicated on the death of billions of innocent people. You can't simply ignore it -- sooner or later, as a Witness, you have to endorse it or leave. I chose the latter.
Glad you're back, Es, for as long as it's good for you to be here. I want to thank you for writing again about the harsh disregard the "friends" had for your miscarried babies. Outrageous. The way you remain connected to them after so much time is beyond "touching" ... they existed, and you loved them, and they're part of you now in a way that's beautiful, not just sad.
Dedalus
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Hamas
For me, I suppose it was just a mixture of everything. You are prepared to give something one last chance but when its like this it just gets ridiculous.
I would never had left simply because of a few assholes within the borg. I used to think that my friendship with Jehovah was more important than a few mindless fools.
I guess these are the main reasons behind me never setting foot in a KH ever again :
- United Nations scandal
- Ray Franz 2 books
- Silent Lambs
- GB not being the faithful slave they said they were
- Doctrinal differences
- Finding out 587 bce was the date Jeru. fell not 607
- The thought of never doing what they told me to anymore
- Freedom
Amen.