Someone named John Free popped in on one of my posts at exmormon[dot]com and mentioned this website.
Hello! I have a lot of questions. I never knew much about about the JW church. I served one of those two-year missions for my church when I was nineteen, and my "companion" and I frequently saw JWs out "tracting" like we do. I was so curious, but they would never talk to me. They would pass us by without a word and without an eye glance. (So odd!)
I was able to get my hands on a New World Translation (the other Mormon missionaries jokingly called it the "new world transgression") and a little pamphlet called, "What does the Bible REALLY teach?"
I was a bookish young missionary obsessed with religion, so I familiarized myself with parts of the pamphlet. I can't remember much except some novel moments, like a picture of Jesus that looked uncannily like Commander Riker from Star Trek:TNG, a section that mathematically 'proved' that 1914 was important for some reason, and some others.
Jay-dubs, as the Mormon missionaries affectionately call them, are known to us mostly by their 'weird' beliefs. They would rather die than get a blood transfusion? They predicted the Lord's coming in 1914, and when he didn't come, they said it was a spiritual coming? And everyone believed it? They shun their own family members if they apostsatize? "Wow," I thought. The next couldn't help itself, "said what a cult!"
X,D imagine the irony that I couldn't see it in myself or in my own way of life. I'll admit, the quirks are a bit different, but the Mormon church is every bit as culty too if the JW church can be called one.
I want to exchange some culture with you guys to compare and contrast. We both know that when you're inside the delusion, the idea that it could be a delusion is ever-present, but you defend off the thought by ascribing it to Satan the devil tempting you away from a conviction of the truth. Thus, when someone has got their conviction all thought-out, the accusation that it is a delusion, or a cult, seems to be as far from plausibility as one end of the universe is from he other, but it still rattles your cage and makes you angry that other people won't stop, listen, and put as much thought into this as you have, because it is the THE MOST IMPORTANT MESSAGE EVER!
I look back, and I'm amazed at how many people tried to 'rescue' me there on their own doorsteps. Everyone seemed united against us, and it only strengthened my conviction that the Devil was against us and he had the world in the bondage of sin.
I knew the way I saw the world was different, but I was convinced it was good. Not just good, but just and true. Not just just and true, but absolutely necessary for someone's "eternal progression" (Mormon salvation).
Mormons are big on feelings. There's a moment in the gospel of Luke, chapter 24 I think, where two disciples meet Jesus in the way, and he expounds the scriptures to them. They don't realize it was him until he vanished from their sight, and then they turned to each other and said, "Did not our hearts burn within us?"
In this way, Mormons believe that the "burning in the bosom" is one of the most intimate ways that God communicates spiritual truth to us. In fact, everything we do for and teach our children or our "investigators" (proselytes) is calculated towards helping them induce that mindset where they will be "open to the spirit." The spirit comes in and testifies to them by causing their hearts to burn, or if failing that then by giving them the chills or making them feel really good about what we are preaching to them. We tell them that these feelings mean the Book of Mormon is true and Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God.
What would surprise you the most about meeting with Mornin missionaries is how utterly sincere they seem when they say these things. Most of them do mean it, but we are taught in a thousand conscious and unconscious ways always to testify of the gospel with the uttermost conviction around nonmembers. When we aren't "bearing our testimony," we make sure we are doing it through our good example. Some people think we are most creepily cheery people on earth, and that's because we overdo it when we know someone is watching. It doesn't mean there isn't plenty of misery in Mormon culture. Once you become a familiar (say, two or three years a new member), people stop treating you nicely and treat you like the meat that we all feel like when we attend church. By "meat," I mean we feel like going to church is expected, serving "faithfully in the kingdom" is expected, and anyone who doesn't pull their wait and do exactly as they are told is a shame to themselves and treated accordingly by the most Puritanical religious society you have ever been a part of.
Thats about the time that you start to learn about all the baggage from the Mormon church's past. Mormons believe in "milk before meat," which means they will not tell you certain things about their beliefs until after you have progressed another circle in towards the most inner circle. Knowledge is given as fast as you prove that you are able to bear it, otherwise Mormons believe it is forbidden, and they bite their tongues around investigators and recent converts about the most controversial aspects of church history and some of the more 'unique' beliefs that we have that jive against the Christian image that we carefully lulled them into baptism with.
If the Mormon people can, they will. Your baptism is what matters most to them: scoring points in heaven. That's not to say all Mormons are insincere, but it IS to say these are their priorities and the church is at the very top of the list. God, Jesus, the church, the kingdom of God, the living prophets and apostles who guide it, etc. all comes on the same package for us. It is not divisible or open to committee. It is ALL true, or get out, because you are obviously one of 'those,' a wolf in sheeps clothing.
Meeting someone who thinks for their self with impunity, when it wasn't expected, is an experience that can really rattle a Mormon. We have this automatic sorting system in our heads for church leadership, faithful members, less active members, and apostates. Everyone else is a gentile who hasn't heard the good news yet, or they would already be Mormon, at least, if it weren't for the thousand religions and contradictory ideas that Satan had spread throughout the world with the single intent of preoccupying and distracting people from the true gospel that is found only in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I began waking up a few years after I returned from my mission and all the pieces started coming together. It was the novel 1984 by George Orwell that finally put them in pace for me to see clearly, "oh my God!!! We're a cult!!!"
Tell me about what it is like growing up as a Witness. What is family life like? What are JW parents typically like? Share the culture with me and also, what is it like becoming a member of the JW church? I want to know what JW culture is like in general, not just all the ways it sucks (believe me, I require no convincing of what cruelty, abuse and inhumanity a cult is capable of inflicting and hiding it, more or less successfully, from the public eye. I've already made tremendous progress overcoming some traumas myself from my very abusive 'daily walk with the Lord.' Mormon God is a cruel, childish, capricious bastard.)