Hi friends. Well its seems my wife has hit a standstill with the dubs. Some of you may know my situation, but I guess its all relative anyway. My wife was raised by a strict jw mom and dad and was never baptised. She is 25 now, left home at 17 and started a self destructive path of rebellion. She is one of six kids, all girls, and almost none of the 8 people in her family has any contact with any others. Her mother is the only baptised jw right now, and only calls other family members once in a while to see how they are doing spiritually. So my wife has been studying with a pioneer since last March or so and the official study was finished about a month ago. They were supposed to keep getting together once or twice a week to study other things. My wife is 8 months pregnant, and we have 2 kids already, and it is summer and we do alot of family activities. So needless to say she cant make it to every meeting. This past week her friend told her that she is not going to do the rest of the study unless my wife makes the meetings. So in any case ive been sharing all the great info i have found out about the jws in the past 6 months or so. She has always had some doubts about them so in a way she was glad. So an elder stopped by yesterday to check on her. It is well known that I have been showing her things I have found out about them. I had my wife give them some questions to answer for me and they refused to answer them. In lieu of all the proof I have, they maintain that from scripture you will know the true religion by the love they have amongst each other. So i guess you can be a false prophet, hypocrite, bloodguilty, etc. but as long as you have love for each other you are the true fatih. OK. So I know she really wants me to prove they are false. But she is so scared that she may be wrong and what if she is? I told her if they are right then i wouldnt want to live forever with them anyways. She has so many issues because of them. She feels she needs to make her mom happy, she always feels guilty, its horrible. Well anyways the elder wants to talk to me again. He said that he doesnt want to just argue with me though. I dont want to argue them either. I told my wife that I am just going to tell him that they can tell her whatever they want I dont care, but I am going to tell her what i think about what they say. Well my wife will be reading your replies. Please post anything you can to help her see them for what they really are. Thanks friends.
My wifes struggle
by gringojj 126 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
candidlynuts
use the " if they have love " argument with her..
if they had love they'd not be threatening to stop studying with her because she's not making every meeting. she's 8 mos pregnant! she shouldnt be around crowds right now anyway because of virus's and stuff like that..
wheres her study conductors human kindness? love? joy? peace? long suffering?
she's been around jw's since she was young.. can she honestly say she's seen the love? or does she feel like the loves there and she's just not good enough to benefit from it?
show her what real love is ,build her self esteem, let her make her own conclusions and she'll see the difference.
-
Goldminer
Hey there!
I wish my wife was willing to look into the religion a little closer.I've told a lot and showed her many things from the WT that don't make sense but she's still clinging to a religion that doesn't make her happy.As far as having love among themselves,that is a real joke.The sister who is studying with your wife is a real hypocrite.She's getting hours,return visits and a bible study off your wife's back and she's trying to force to attend meetings to keep her study,basically black-mailing her.Since when do jw's tell people they'll stop the study if they don't attend meetings?Most of them are ready to study for 10 years with you as long as they can count their time.
As far as the elder stopping in,I'll bet it was in the morning service.Trying to look genuine but really looking for some easy time to fill in his morning,he was out anyways so why not stop in and make it look like he cares.
My wife asked me for a list of questions that I had so I wrote up 30 of them about 2 months ago.She's called a few elders from distant congregations who didn't give her any answers to them and one finally told that if I didn't have the truth in my heart it didn't matter what they gave as answers.Sounds like an easy cop-out to me.
I would recommend that you purchase the books Crisis of Conscience and In Search of Christian Freedom and read them both,if you haven't already done so.After reading those 2 books you will be convinced that the WTS is not the truth.
Goldminer
-
mrsjones5
Wow, so her faith is based in fear? That's so sad. Being raised in the organisation I got so tired of the fear. It made any kind of faith I had in God seem so shallow, I was only worried about my own butt, because I knew I could never measure up. I hated field service, the meetings and the book study was a bore, and there was no way I was going to sign up for the ministry school. I was doomed. I felt like if this was what I had to do for salvation and ignore whatever gifts I had to do the drudge work of the society, then so be it, I'm birdfood at armageddon.
But all these years later I found out that the society is wrong. I dont know what to tell your wife other than don't be scared and do some independant research away from the jws and the elders.
Oh and I wouldn't meet with that elder again. But that's just me, I dont trust elders.
Josie
-
sweet tee
Where did Jesus say "I will love you as long as you make all the meetings?" In fact, where in the bible does it say that 'Chrisitians' must attend 5 meetings a week?
-
gringojj
Well shes never been exposed to any other religion so how can she judge the love? I was raised in a congregational church and i always remember love amongst the people there. I even remember we had something called "fellowship hall" After services everyone would go there and have coffee and donuts and chitchat it was very nice. I also recall having church dinners together, spending time with families of other church members, helping out with the food pantry for the less fortunate, hosting soup kitchens, and auctions for charity. I recall it was very nice. I was just an athiest so I dont go anymore.
-
Frannie Banannie
Tell your wife they "love-bomb" people in the front door....then slap 'em out the back door. If she doesn't believe it, show her Randy's website (freeminds.org) and tell her to read a few bios on this JWD forum.
Frannie (who's got LOTSA examples or their love to hate)
-
MerryMagdalene
Greetings, gringojj and wife:
Here are a few quotes from an article which I found to be quite eye-opening in regard to the WTBTS even though it is not about them specifically.
It was written by W.P. Brown, a member of British Parliament, and it outlines the dangers of becoming a slave of institutions or organizations:
Imprisoned Ideas
There are many classifications into which men and women may be divided....But, as I think, the only categorization which really matters is that which divides men as between the Servants of the Spirit and slaves of the organization....
In the field of religion, a prophet, an inspired man, will see a vision of the truth. He expresses that vision as best he may in words. He will not say all he saw. For every expression of truth is a limitation of it....What he says is only partly understood by those who hear him; and when they repeat what they understand him to have meant there will already be a considerable departure from the original vision of the prophet. Upon what his disciples understand of the prophet's message, an organization, a church will be built. The half-understood message will crystalize into a creed. Before long, the principle concern of the church will be to sustain itself as an organization. To that end, any departure from the creed must be controverted and, if necessary, supressed as heresy. In a few score or a few hundred years what was conceived as a vehicle of new and higher truth has become a prison for the souls of men.
...the idea having given birth to the organization, the organization develops a self-interest which has no connection with and becomes inimical to, the idea with which it began.
Among the rank and file many things combine to keep them in the organization, even when they become uneasily conscious that there is a dawning, and even a yawning gap between the organization and idea. First there is the force of inertia. It is easier not to resign than resign. Drift is easier than decision. Next there is the factor of sentiment. All of us tend to project onto the organization of which we are members, the virtue we would like it to have, and to be blind to its defects. And, finally, men are gregarious creatures and dislike falling out of the ranks away from the comrades of years.
...even when we are members of an organization, our attitude to it should be one of partial detachment. We must be above it even when we are members of it. We should join it in the knowledge that there we may have no abiding place....We should accept no such commitments as would prevent our leaving it when circumstances make this necessary. We should reckon on being in almost perpetual rebellion within it. Above all, we should regard all loyalties to organization as tentative and provisional....We must be Servants of the Spirit, not Prisoners of the Organization.
http://www.freeminds.org/fishin/ideas.htm
~Merry
-
La Capra
But she is so scared that she may be wrong and what if she is?
This struck a chord with me. I was in a college seminar with about a dozen other students about a year and a half after I DA'ed. One of the other students had been raised in a similar way in LDS as I had been in WTBTS. In discussion of personal religious practices, she and I told similar difficult stories of how hard it was to make the personal decision to exit from what we considered to be mind control cults. Not to allowed to get away with rash generalizations about anything, we were equally challenged about why it was so hard when we had so much evidence of their mistakes, errors, etc.
Without looking at each other, we answered the same way, almost in unison, to the point that it was eerie, "What if we're wrong and they really are right?"
Hearing it from someone else who had been told the same thing by a group that taught a completely different doctrine (and followed by a hell of a lot more people, btw) helped me to see that my mindset-similar to your wife's-was easily debunked.
A chance meeting of my classmate a time later confirmed that she had similar reaction to our chorus.
So MANY religions say they really are the only path to salvation, and that not following THEM means sure destruction (hellfire, whatever.) Why would it be the JWs that would be right? Why them?
If we will really know them by their love, then no one would say to your wife,
she is not going to do the rest of the study unless my wife makes the meetings,
and if they really are right, they wouldn't say, (from Goldminer's post)if I didn't have the truth in my heart it didn't matter what they gave as answers,
when asked tough questions.
The JWs claim to prove themselves by being able to back all they believe from the Bible, but when asked to do so and held accountable for it, will run away.
The book Crisis of Conscience is good (I read it after I decided to leave). But If you wife was never baptized, and left home at 17, it is likely that there is a lot of missing "knowledge" about the religion in her personal memories. Is it possible she is responding to the feelings of urgency, fear of armageddon and the hope of everlasting life on earth and resurrection she remembers from her childhood, rather than concrete belief in what the book she and the JW woman finished? You probably could find dozens of misquoted or misrepresented scriptures just in the first chapter of that book -- just read five verses before and after each quoted scripture to see. This may help ease her fears about the doomsday prophecies of this cult.
Hang in there, your wife sounds sincere about doing the right thing, but also seems to be struggling with some deep rooted past history. Shoshana
-
Double Edge
I've been to many many religions. Some are just as adament as the JWs that they are the truth, and some of them too control their members with the fear of "What if this IS true", blah, blah, blah... as religions go, that line is a dime-a-dozen, the JWs aren't the only one holding a 'trademark' on that....it's only when you've had experiences with many churches you find out that the JWs aren't unique with the so-called "truth".
If your wife believes in Jesus and the scriptures, she needs to "listen" to them, and not to "men" as to what is true: Here's a sampling:
James 1:27 (King James Version)
27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, > To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Matthew 11:29-31 (King James Version)
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
1 John 4:15-16 (King James Version)
15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. 16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
1 Corinthians 13 (American Standard Version)
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
4 Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; 6 rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; 10 but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.
12 For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. 13 But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.