by HiddlesWife 42 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
It's a sad story, but it's not unique to JWs and leaves out the huge factor of parental and personal responsibility.
At some point you grow up and should start thinking about the direction of your life. Many don't and it's easy to drift downstream ...
Simon;
Exactly!!!!!
Many have pointed-out in videos and whatnot, that you can't worry and fret over your past life in the Borg and the opportunities which you may have missed-out on being in the Borg. Or events you missed-out because of a Witness upbringing.
Just focus on your future and that is all you can keep looking forward to.
SIMON & BETH SARIM:
I mostly agree. But, there is the factor of people waking up before it’s too late!
They will have to ‘go against the grain’ and take themselves off the pioneer list and concentrate on pursuing a decent job. This will certainly invite criticism and unwanted intrusion into somebody’s life!.. They have to be courageous enough to fend off the remarks and busybodies and stay focused on what they need to do.
This will also result in their ‘popularity’ ending abruptly. They will no longer be the congregation darling invited everywhere! They will have to accept this like I did back in the day.. If I was hung up on being popular like the woman mentioned in the OP.. I would not be retired!
Timing, of course, has a hell of a lot to do with it, too.
For example, when saving for retirement, it it is not the amount put away per week/month/year that counts nearly so much as the time period over which these amounts are invested (if anybody doubts that, just check the formula by which compound interest is calculated - together with a certain story about a blacksmith and his incremental rates for shoeing a horse!)
Also, and as I found out the hard way, the best time for learning things is when you are straight out of high school. After the JWs made me throw in my apprenticeship (almost exactly 50 years ago), I attempted to pick the pieces up some six years later.
By then, I was married with a family. The results of that ultimately proved to be fatal to both family life and the marriage, although I did come out of it a full-fledged electrician (what a price to have to pay, though!)
Then,too, there were those in the congregation who had the daggers out for me for doing even that. (I do agree with LHG on that front - it comes to the point sometimes to forgo ones popularity and take the course which is most practical).
It was only in very late middle age that I finally managed to acquire tertiary qualifications in Electrical Engineering. That only became possible because of the internet, and learning institutions which cater to persons like me, who were working on remote sites, and putting in eleven hour workdays.
I am still working full time now, while staring down the barrels of 70 years of age (that is ten years older than my father was when he retired from the workforce). However, I am finally in a position when it won’t matter if my employer decides he no longer requires my services.
The lesson I carry away from all of this?
There are actually two:
1) If you allow religious leaders (of any stripe whatsoever) to dictate to you as to how you live your life, then you are setting yourself up to get hurt.
2) And as my late father warned me back in the day, “Religion is like whisky and beer - you can live without it.”
River - And as my late father warned me back in the day, “Religion is like whisky and beer - you can live without it.”
TOMO the drunk 3rd can't live without whiskey.
Religion can certainly “get” a person like booze can, that is for sure!
I remember a circuit assembly in the 90's were the CO told complaining jw's about Jobs and retirement, they have to shut up. "It was you who made the choice", hé told the audience whit a cold and hard voice.
I was POMI then. My father always told me to get a good job and not to trust the end time doctrine. Our family was investing and buying property arround 1975, even from witness, who sold it because of the time of the end.
G.
I know an Elder who has two children Pioneering and teaching at an English school in India. They are both in their mid-30s and childless and don't have a pot to piss in. This elder has built himself a fairly comfortable middle class life.
I know having your kids pioneering makes you look good as an Elder but there has to has to be a point where you would want better for your children. You would think ? Encouraging your children to throw their lives away to make you look good for your club.
Despicable...................just horrible.
True believer JWs probably are not concerned about their children's futures, because the New System is around the corner and they won't ever get old enough to worry about it. They feel this way, even when they are surrounded by JWs who are facing financial hardship because they though they would not need to save for retirement.
My mother is like that, she did not prepare for old age because she was certain she would be living in the paradise Earth by now (heck, she expected it to arrive before the 1980s did). She is fortunate that her children took care of ourselves so that she gets to enjoy a much better life than she planned for. But she is not grateful. That is what the JW poison does to people.
"She now at age 55 doesn't have a retirement plan, and she has very little savings in her bank account."
And what does that have to do with religion? There are very many non-JWs who are in the same boat and even ones with University degrees.
Why are you looking at this one sided when it applies to everyone?
