What playing with caterpillars taught me about Witnessing to Witnesses

by Mindchild 15 Replies latest jw friends

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  JamesThomas

  Mindchild, That was an excellent post; your analogy right on, and your advice:

  offer a new pathway for your Witness caterpillar friend to travel down. Don?t make it scary and confrontational or they will head the other direction and shun you. Exploit your relationship to your advantage. Ask them to help you reason some things out.

  I agree with; but only 100%. Unfortunately I sense that often times when the truth about the "truth" is discovered there is ignited a fiery anger; and in this heat it is all but impossible to keep a clear head and follow wise advice such as your own. It takes time to regain a semblance of compassion and patience towards those still entrapped. It is certainly a weakness of mine. j
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  flower

  Great post Mindchild!

  I'm wondering the same thing. If he didn't believe in God, then why did he start studying?

  Maybe he knew the Jw's was a cult and his whole plan was to free Mindchild from it? If so, it worked beautifully and I hope this guy is studying again with some other unsuspecting cult member. :)
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  jgnat

  First birds, now caterpillars. I love it! Great story.
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  anglise

  Hallo mindchild

  Another good post.

  for showing that the increases and decreases in the preaching work were predictable)

  Can you give more info on the above please. It sounds interesting.

  Anglise
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  Mindchild

  anglise,

  You can find a discussion about my research on the very first thread I made on this board.

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/9862/1.ashx

  James,

  You are so right about the emotional state most new ex-JW's find themselves in after discovering the life they have lived has been a huge lie. Because of this almost universal angry reaction, it is really hard to effectively get someone else out by means of a calm and rational discussion. The first thing I did after I left, was to send a 14 page letter to every JW I knew, detailing why I left. Out of all the people I knew, only one wrote back and told me that he could feel the anger burn in what I printed, and he was right. I think sometimes we need undercover operatives who have been out of the Borg for years to tactifully and effectively help dubs to get to the point where they need to investigate things for themselves. Easier said than done, for many reasons.

  For everyone else,

  thanks for the kind words.

  Skipper
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  imallgrowedup

  Skipper,

  Great analogy, and well-written, too! It's kind of funny that you mention asking Witnesses to help you reason something out. It reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother over the issue of saluting the flag. I asked her to explain the incongruency between them considering a flag as a form of symbolic worship, yet wedding rings apparently are not. She kept changing the subject, and I just kept changing it back. There was definately tension in the air, and she never was able to answer the question. I see now that had I asked her to help me reason this incongruency out, instead of asking her a point-blank question, she probably would have felt less threatened and perhaps I could have gotten different results. Hmmm... This is definately something to apply when witnessing to Witnesses!

  Thanks for the advice and the time it took you to write this all out!

  imallgrowedup