Where do you think you'd be if the JWs and the WTS had never been part of your life?
How would your life be different from what it is now?
What do you think you might have accomplished or done differently without the encumberances of the JWs in your life?
What kind of relationship would you have with your family?
Who would you be?Since I blame the WTS for causing great divides within my family:
I would probably have had no religion....my parents did not go to a certain church and were not a certain faith. I *may* have ended up exactly where I am. However, I think my mom would have been much more tolerant and forgiving of other people's *perceived bad behavior* and thus may not have caused all these deep chasms that exist today.
She may not have cut off her youngest sister, age 19 with two young children, for fornication with a married man; she may not have cut off my sister for fornication with her boyfriend. She may have tried to make her marriage work rather than deciding that since he was spirtually weak, she might as well divorce my father.
With that divorce came hate filled words about my father. We heard he was scum, hated us for not paying child support, left her to whore around, she gave 17 years to a bastard, he married a younger slut just so he could prove he could still get it up....it went on and on.
If my father were home and we were not dubs, I would have done better in school. He was much more strict with my sister and I with grades and doing homework. My mother didn't care. I would have tried harder. I might have learned to trust men at an earlier age. Without field service every Saturday, I could have slept in, worked on homework, done housework and then played.
As for family, it all went south when my mom became a JW. She became sanctimonious, self-rightous (or the dubs brought out the worst of her personality), arrogant and a know-it-all. When her young, unemployed sister needed help, (money, food, etc.) rather than help, she told her she was a whore for having an older man support her (for sex) and my mother would not associate with her until she stopped living in sin. Period.
I am sure I would have a relationship with my aunts and cousins. My aunts are like my mother. However, without the dubs, they are nice and fun. When they put the dub hat on they become like my mother. My mom convinced them all to do *in home bible studies*....she is also the reason they are dubs. Monkey see, Monkey do.
My father's family would not have cut us off. When we stopped celebrating holidays and my mother refused to go to her MIL because they drank and smoked (it was the 60's), she cut us off from our grand-parents. I saw them, maybe 3-5 times over the next 15 years before they died. My dad's family is quite large and extended. His mother's family is huge and lots of second cousins I recall meeting as a child and then, never again. They were *worldly*, thus bad associations.
I would be me....only a much more mild, soft, probably liberal version. I would know more about inter-personal relationships (from having them as a child) and how to act in social situations. I would understand politics and other religions better because I would have looked into them much harder.
OTOH, I would not have found this board, with all these wonderful, smart, witty people. I would have thought you were all nutty cult members!
