Another survey from Lee

by Lady Lee 54 Replies latest jw friends

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  Tinkerbell4125

  What year did you leave? For good?......1999

  How old were you when you left? 39

  Did the internet have anything to do with your decision to leave? Absolutely, but not completely

  If you left before you got on the internet what reading did you do about the WTS or cults that helped you make your decision? Kingdom of the cults............In Search of Christian Freedom.........Crisis of Conscience....the list goes on and on.

  What was the one most important reason that helped you decide to leave (even if the decision was made for you through a DFing). I D.A.ed myself. The main reason?....The cult doesn't protect women and children from abuse, rather they protect the sick bastards that abuse. Don't get me started.

  If you left and still thought it was "the truth" what helped you change your mind? FINALLY educating myself. Reading EVERYTHING that I could get my hands on. Staying up till 3 in the morning reading on the internet. People that haven't been raised in the borg, have no idea what a blow it is.
• 

  Phantom Stranger

  Hi, Lee.

  1986 - 87

  20-21

  Internet? What's that? :)

  No reading about cults or the WTS helped me make my decision. Reading history, philosophy, and science (and Heinlein, of course:)

  At the time, I don't know if I thought of it as a conscious decision based on a reason. I just couldn't be told what to do any more. I do remember a feeling of "If they were wrong about this, what else are they wrong about?". A huge part of it was going into the work force and meeting good, kind, loving people who weren't JWs. It was also becoming good at something besides school (which I didn't continue) and being a JW, which allowed my microscopic self-esteem to grow to amoeba size, giving me enough strength to emotionally conceive of living apart from the WTS.

  I don't know the last time I had thought of it as the truth. In my teens I started to occasionally think about how my leaving the WTS would kill my mom and grandmother (of course, it didn't...), but I would stuff those thoughts as soon as they came up. At around 11 I started asking logical questions of the elders that they couldn't answer... but I avoided putting them in a corner, because they were mostly good guys and friends of the family.

  Hope those help...
• 

  Lady Lee

  I will be compiling the results of the survey so if anyone else wants to add their answers feel free to join in

  Lee
• 

  Euphemism

• What year did you leave?

2003

• How old were you when you left?

21

• Did the internet have anything to do with your decision to leave?

Not directly, although it probably helped.

• If you left before you got on the internet what reading did you do about the WTS or cults that helped you make your decision?

Reading Crisis of Conscience was really the clincher.

• What was the one most important reason that helped you decide to leave (even if the decision was made for you through a DFing).

I realized that the doctrine of the F&DS was not biblically based.

• If you left and still thought it was "the truth" what helped you change your mind?

N/A