Do you have a 'turning point' memory that started you to question?

by Steve Lowry 27 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Steve Lowry

  Mine was when I was about ten years old or so back in the mid sixties. We had a guy in our K.Hall who actually lived through the 1914 experience (Earl Senior). He was well into his seventies I guess even then and was one of the Annointed. Very much repsected and revered. Anyway, one day I asked him about what had happened during that time. He told me he and his other Bible Students (they didn't go by JW yet, I don't believe) friends were told and believed the event of Christ's return was to be on a particular day. When that evening came, they went to bed and expected to wake up in the New System! I asked him what happened the next morning when no such event took place and what was their reaction? He said, " Oh when we realized we were wrong, we all just laughed about it". That's all he said, but even as a young boy I realized the gravity of that situation. I imagined being back there in that time and being fed the whole 'end of the world thing' and it not coming true. OK, I'd be pissed, definately. I'd feel betrayed and decieved. I'd be forced to re-evaluate my belief system. But humar would be the last emotion I would feel. Ironically, this turning point and realization that my religion was 'not quite right', was a foreshadowing of a future event. When 1975 came and went and again nothing happened, it was the thing that help me to make the decision to leave, for good.

  Thanks Earl, you actually helped me more than you know . . .
• 

  Hamas

  I remember working with a Ministerial Servant who still lived with mommy and daddy. They always had the C/O over when his turn was up. He mentioned to me that he knew that there was 'this Governing Body member that left and he even wrote a book!'

  He went on about how he was pride and bitter, and the usual society propaganda that was rammed into him from the C/O.

  How foolish .... a few weeks later I was well into reading this book, Crises of Conscience by Ray Franz.

  Welcome to the forum, Steve Lowry. Any relation to Mike ?

  www.escapethewatchtower.com
• 

  obiwan

  When I was about 7 or 8 I knew something wasn't right, I just couldn't put my finger on it. Even that young my gut was telling me something. I just didn't know how to act on it. It's only because of the internet and all the information there that I could put it together.
• 

  yxl1

  When they announced that my younger brother was no longer an aproved associate. They hadn't informed him or my mother that they were going to announce this. He was about 16 at the time and he hadnt even been told what he was meant to have done. He never returned after that.
• 

  Yerusalyim

  Catholic, not JW, but I began to question my faith and church in earnest back in the late 80's early 90's when the ArchBishop in Atlanta got in trouble for having a "wife". I almost joint the Orthodox Church of America over that issue. Glad I stuck around.

  Yeru
• 

  greven

  I really don't remember very well since I have had doubts from my early youth on... I even concluded at some point that I must be evil for not believing into the jw faith and the bible.

  My earliest memmory involves reading the account in the bible about those 42 children that called one servant of God a baldy and were brutally slaughtered by two bears in punishment. Later the flood story.

  Greven.
• 

  suzi_creamcheez

  When "My Book o Bible Stories" was introduced, everyone said how beautiful it was. I thought it looked really cheezy and cartoonish. I was put off by the blue-eyed Jesus who kept taking his shirt off (beefcake, anyone?). It seemed to me that all the "bad guys" had olive skin and dark hair/eyes, while god's favorites looked caucasian. - suz
• 

  shotgun

  I was just a kid and watched a news program where one of the GB was being interviewed...The reporter asked what Theocratic warfare was and the Annointed brother said he had never heard that term before. The reporter asked again you have never heard that term before and showed him a KM with it in and he denied it again and said he was not familiar with it. I waited for a cock to crow and my mom assured me he was not lying but it was fear of man and it should give us strength to see that even Jah's annointed FDS even have to contend with it.....At the time I thought bullshit.....he lied, I'm 12 and I've heard the term a hundred times.
• 

  voltaire

  I always loved to read about science, I used to read a lot of cosmology, Stephen Hawking etc. I reached a point where I knew something was wrong, but couldn't identify it. The first concrete point that disturbed me was the Creation book's assertion that the disagreements among evolutionists proved the theory was unfounded. It made it sound as tho' evolutionists don't really believe in the theory that they all espouse. I remember asking myself, how could Dawkins say that his book was "science fiction" as quoted early on in the Creation book. Why did he teach it, then? That led me to seek out the original works. It turns out that the society's use of quotes was shockingly misleading. That was enough to edge me toward more questioning, which led, in turn, to more reading.

  (As it turns out, Dawkins qualified his remark by saying that, cliche or not, "truth is often stranger than fiction". So, yes, the ideas in his book are hard to accept. They may sound bizarre, but don't let that keep you from taking the time to evaluate them.)
• 

  Country Girl

  It's a vague memory, as there were many turning points. But the first one that I remember was reading "Origin of the Species" by Darwin, secretly, in the back library of the Hall when I was 9. I remember thinking how some parts just made so much more sense than what I learned at the Hall. My comprehension was not mature enough to understand all the book, but I could grasp it in some undeniable way deep inside..

  CG