Proselytizing for the Borg

by Sith 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  ithinkisee

  I have gone out in service several dozen times this year ... I have either manipulated it to go on calls with someone or I fake that I ring a doorbell when I am at a door with someone. If I do get someone home or someone outside and they do take literature (I have no idea WHY they do with my lame-ass presentations nowadays), I never go back and I make up an excuse that I went back some other time and they weren't interested.

  It is all some of us can do until the time is right (strategically speaking, of course). I have already (and I'm sure many others have) began to be more open about my disdain for service. I make little jokes that even the so-called "hardcore" JWs make about field service (because they do). I just make them a little more often now, and get them to be a bit more vocal about it - that way when my choice is made public it will cause them to look at themselves.

  Will it help get them out? Probably not. But even if I can get one to stop and think ...

  -ithinkisee
• 

  Aude_Sapere

  ** How do you justify proselytizing for the Borg when you are on your way out, knowing how much it has screwed up your life and may screw up those you help to convert? **
  
  I did as most have said: Inefficient. Knock softly. Work with people who loved to talk. Feign illness/headache (actually no need to fake much, i felt ill to my stomache).
  
  In my 2nd year of pioneering, I was starting to fade. I would often just use my Bible. My objective was not to place literature. Merely to stimulate bible reading. I LOVED to show people how to look up scriptures in their own bibles. It made my service time pleasant.
  
  During those years of fading, I did not realize that was actually doing the fade. I thought it was just me. When I realized that it was them, I honestly thought Jehovah would fix things in his due time. Until then, I would wait outside the Kingdom Hall doors because I could not sit and show support by commenting or even just listening to what was being preached.
  
  I eventually just shut my mouth to anything pertaining to god or religion. 12 years later, I found JWD.
  
  Now I'm angry about all the lies.
  
  But my conscience is clear. I did not perpetrate (much) of the hate and falsehood.
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  144001

  "I'm not being accusatory or confrontational here, I'm just curious about the mind-set. The question is... How do you justify proselytizing for the Borg when you are on your way out, knowing how much it has screwed up your life and may screw up those you help to convert? "
  
  Wow, Sith, this is about as honest as your assertion in another thread that questioning someone's honesty or integrity is not a personal attack. Let's see now, "I'm not being accusatory or confrontational here," is followed by the implicit suggestion in the rest of that quote that you are a hypocrite if you're a fader yet still engage in field service.
  
  I find your patent misrepresentations of your position to be akin to the tactics utilized by JWs in spreading the cancer that is the Watchtower. As I've said to you before, you might have left the kingdom hall, but the kingdom hall never left you.
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  EvilForce

  I think qustioning others going in field service or any other portion of Witchtowerism while fading or leaving to be too judgemental and simplistic. It's easy to look back or look at someone else's positon and tell them what SHOULD be done.
  
  Most of us didn't simply wake up one morning thinking that the WTBS was bunk. It was a slow and methodical realization. It's just like at our jobs. There are plenty of things we don't like or agree with. But guess what we HAVE to do them to get our paycheck. It's not our fault that the WTBS doesn't simply allow you to say "I don't agree with this anymore" and walk away. They try and cull you from your friends and family. That's a big thing to lose for most of us. No one should race into a decision like that. Thoughtful, careful, reasoning is in order.
  
  IP-Sec recently just DA'd himself. He had posted about 6 weeks before he left that he still gave some talks and whatnot. He got jumped on by the board for being dishonest. No....he was and elder trying to figure out how to leave on his terms. So I don't feel he nor anyone else in a similar situation is being duplicitous. The WTBS forces us in that mold at least for a time being.
  
  Put the blame where it belongs! On the WTBS.
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  Sith

  "It's easy to look back or look at someone else's positon and tell them what SHOULD be done."
  
  I agree with you Evil. However, I was never in the situation where I participated in "field service" and at the same time, didn't believe what I was preaching. Throughout the years that I spent in the "ministry", I thought I was doing God's will. It wasn't until I was thrown out (disfellowshipped) that I realized it was all a dirty trick. So I have no way of relating to fading JWs who continue to preach. I am really not trying to sound judgemental. If I was in their shoes, I would more than likely do the same thing. But I'm not and I never have been, so I'm curious about what goes on in their head and how they feel about it.
  
  To me, with my 20/20 hindsight, it seems like knowingly handing out poison. I would like to know how they feel about it.
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  144001

  "I am really not trying to sound judgemental. . . . To me, with my 20/20 hindsight, it seems like knowingly handing out poison. I would like to know how they feel about it." -- Sith
  
  Yes, asserting that what others are doing is akin to "knowingly handing out poison" is certainly not judgmental, just like questioning someone's honesty and integrity is not a personal attack (as asserted by Sith in another thread).
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  Sith

  144001, this is way off topic, but I've sent you a PM
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  rebel8

  I actually don't mind the question and freely admit to engaging in preaching work while not believing a great deal of what I was saying. It's something I felt a great deal of guilt about--both at the time and afterwards--and it's something I've come to terms with. I readily state what I did to sabotage the success of that preaching so as to eliminate/minimize the harm it could do to others. If I had to do it all over again, I would have stopped preaching altogether. At the time, my mind did not comprehend that choice though....which was partially my fault.

  I also understand how the question could really rustle people's tailfeathers.

  I don't know about any previous exchanges you guys have had, but judging on the statements in this thread only, I personally don't think Sith was being duplicitious (if by that you mean dishonest). It is inaccurate to say, "I'm not being confrontational," then be confrontational. When most people say that, they really mean, "I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings or criticize." That being the case, what he's probably guilty of is using the wrong words rather than lying.

  I started a thread a while ago asking parents who refused blood for their kids how they felt and what their experience was like. I am one whose parent risked my life many times in service of that doctrine, and I was interested to comprehend how a parent could do that. I wanted to know to see if I could somehow forgive my mother. Surprisingly, no one seemed upset about me asking the question.
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  Sith

  The question I asked is a fair one, I believe. It's something I've wondered about since I came upon this forum. Before then, the term and practice of "fading" was completely foreign to me. Thank you rebel8, for your honest answer
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  GentlyFeral

  Sith,

  That's the same thought I had U/D, but it was more along the lines of poison, not heroin. Instead of just flushing it down the toilet, you hand it to someone else, then subtly encourage them not to drink it?

  As long as we're being melodramatic, consider this: You go on attending Nazi rallies, assisting the local HitlerJugend and saying "Heil Hitler" to draw attention away from the Jews hiding in your attic.

  edited to add:
  While I agree that the Watchtower culture is poisonous, I think you overstate the danger to the average householder at the door. Most people who take any pleasure in life or have any confidence at all find the dumbed-down faux-pedantic Bible-literalist approach extremely unattractive. And most of the Watchtower's target audience is actually more comfortable in almost any other Fundamentalist church.

  When I quit believing, I had already quit preaching for over a year. But before that, I had been a devoted (though timid and irregular) preacher of the good news for over twenty years. In that time, not one single person I preached to became a Jehovah's witness. Not one.

  gently feral