Longtime JWs: Can you recall the path of JW doubts throughout your life?

by ithinkisee 40 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Odrade

  Bob was a kick. He looked like a Biker version of Santa Claus, he was very smart, and nice, and had obviously studied up on cults at some point. He chose one point, very deliberately, and stuck to it. It was such a little thing, but I'm convinced that indoctrinated people generally don't break their indoctrination over a big thing. It happens, but it's rare, and it's usually a few little things that stick in the mind and let you work things out sort of under the radar.

  I remember that he didn't want to have anything to do with real adults coming around with me. If I brought someone older, the conversation was short. Usually though, I brought someone around my own age, and he was more than willing to chat with us. He said one time after I had brought someone older that he didn't want me bringing those old guys around because they were too set in their ways and they no longer could think, they just parroted what they were taught.

  He had no idea.... or maybe he did?
• 

  Momofmany

  I'm jealous. Wish I had a Bob. My one biggest regret is I stayed as long as I did. I hope eveyone gets their own Bob.
• 

  caligirl

  In my early teens, I remember that when they would read a scripture and tell us it meant this or that, I would read the context and think " No, it doesn't say that at all!"

  And the scripture where Jesus is saying "My yoke is kindly and my load is light" I remember thinking that if the load we were all under was light, I would HATE to see what was considered heavy by those standards.

  Getting in a bad car accident at 16 on the way home from an assembly and spending 3+ months in a body cast flat on my back because the back is hard to operate on with the restriction of no blood, and I felt forced to choose the body cast (not that my parents ever pressured, but I was well trained and knew what I was expected to say) so that I could be a "good girl" even though I desperately wanted the surgery and would have been up and walking within a week or two instead of spending all that time on my back.

  Went through terrible experiences with an elder with a power complex (my whole family did) and trying to make someone do something about it ( CO telling my Mom to deal with it because this wasn't Disneyland!) Going home from meetings and seeing how stressed my parents were over everything. Ironically, my parents are still there, while all of their children have said no thanks to the whole thing.

  Got married at 18 and immediately moving to another hall, and finding out that the aforementioned elder (who had eventually been removed because enough people complained to a new CO but was quickly reappointed when the CO asked my parents to attend anothr hall where they were more needed) had called his buddy, the PO of the new hall, and told him that my husband and I were"troublemakers." Started missing meetings very frequently for not wanting to deal with the rumor mills swirling about us. all of this started my fade at 18.

  Got pregnant and realized that there was no way in hell that I would refuse a transfusion for me or my child should it ever become necessary because I would not leave my child without a mother or let my child die without one hell of a fight first. And knowing I did not want my child to go through the torture of school like I did unable to participate in anything and feeling so out of place. Plus, I knew I didn't beleive what I had been taught anyways, which made what I had gone through seem all that much more futile.

  That's all I can think of right at the moment.
• 

  sass_my_frass

  Generation, terminal singleness, uneducated speakers, the fear of outside research, discouragement of education, that the Bad Associations weren't really so bad, boredom at meetings, a lack of direction, no community spirit.

  It was the little things that got me questioning.
• 

  happehanna

  Thankyou ithinkisee for expressing what I have been thinking about for months now.

  I was born a JW and left at 43 and during that time I had doubts I remember saying to my father "if the whole world is in the power of the wicked one then that would include us"

  The bragging about "deals" they had done at bethel in London made me sick to my stomach they bought up many houses and used slave labour to do them up and make a profit.

  Being female also caused its problems, I was patronized, patted on the head and told to have faith, if I questioned anything at all.

  I decided that if they changed the generation in Matt 24 then I would leave.............thats when I started my fade.

  Having been married for over 15 years to the presiding overseer and my father an elder since the day dot I saw stuff that was upsetting to say the least.

  I met a few people too on the preaching work that made me think, they used to say think for yourself and I have finally done so.
• 

  talesin

  As a kid, I always wanted to 'belong' and longed to participate in school and with friends. They didn't seem so bad to me, and I loved to learn! Before I went to school, I had my first 'acting' job on stage at an assembly (yes, I remember it). I loved mental challenges, so I poured my energies into the KMS and was giving talks by age 7. It was all I had.

  By the time I was in high school, I no longer felt the rest of the world was 'demonized'. Also, even when I was very small (8/9 YO), I remember questioning how the lions could eat grass. A lot of the stuff never made sense. Then, I thought it was horrible that Jah killed Lot's wife for looking back, that David had Bathsheba's husband murdered so he could have sex with her (!) -- the OT just never made sense to me! The interpretations of the complex prophecies (Daniel & Revelation) seemed nonsensical to me. Why was it so wrong to join the Y? How could the UN be evil? These are the types of things I was questioning, though my family was heavily immersed in the LIE.

  Then, in my teens, I became very disillusioned by the elders --- their shady business practices and heavy drinking, their treatment of my brother with DF, though his friends 'got away with murder' ... also, I think my abuse had something to with it, though the memories are too cloudy to know at this point. By age 17, I was walking out the door.

  tal
• 

  Wolfgirl

  Being interested in wildlife and archaeology caused some niggling doubts in my mind. Like why were predators created with sharp teeth if they originally ate vegetation? Or what was the purpose of dinosaurs? Why would God create them and then allow them to become extinct? No one could explain that one, although one person tried. He said that somehow the dinosaurs helped get the earth ready for us. *rolls eyes* I thought, "If God is all-powerful, why would he need dinosaurs to do it? He could just THINK it, and it would be right."
  
  I could parrot the Society's explanation for not celebrating birthdays, but it never made sense to me. I thought, "Bad things happened at the only 2 birthday celebrations in the Bible. So what? Bad things happened when a woman tried to help someone she thought was sick, and she got raped by him. Does that mean we shouldn't help someone who is sick?"
  
  Everyone knew that a friend of mine at our hall was being abused by her husband. The elders knew it, and his only punishment was not being allowed to serve as a MS anymore, and they even said he was stepping down for health reasons. He continued to hit her, and no one did anything. All 3 of her kids left the "truth" because of him, and somehow she got looked down on.
  
  Being told by the elders that I should stay with my abusive husband; that I didn't have Scriptural reason for a divorce. Being told that they could do nothing to him because there weren't two witnesses. Um...yeah, what kind of abuser rapes someone in front of an audience?
  
  The elders telling my father that he did not have to step down as an elder when he admitted to sexually abusing me and lying about it for 25+ years. They told him he could still be an elder because it had happened so long ago, and supposedly only before he became a Witness. Never mind that he did it and lied about it all that time. That's OK. He could continue to give talks about how to be a good father. *gag* (He stepped down anyway.)
  
  When I had genuine questions post-DF, and wrote a letter to the elders in my congregation asking them these questions, things that turned out to be doctrinal faults, they refused to answer me. This despite telling me that if I ever wanted help, to contact them, and despite me saying that my decision on whether to try to get reinstated depended on their answers. I waited for ages for a response, and pestered my sister and mother into asking them about it. They told my sister that I "sounded argumentative" and so they were not going to answer. So I had to go looking for answers elsewhere.
  
  My long-DF'd aunt found me online, and directed me to this site, pointing out the UN info specifically. That was when I was 100% certain I would never return.
  
  There are other things that my husband (athiest) showed me, and finally seeing through all the crap to realise all the prophecies they had made that hadn't come true showed them to be a false prophet, that made me certain I had made the right choice.
• 

  blondie

  Teenage years:

  Lack of love

  My twenties

  Different congregation--still lack of love

  Lying elders

  My thirties

  Different congregation--different state--still lack of love (big time)

  Lying elders

  My forties

  Different congregation--new state--still lack of love

  Lying elders

  My fifties

  Different congregation--still lack of love

  Lying elders

  Finally figured out no matter what congregation, state, country--Lack of love and lying elders were all that I would find in the WTS.

  Blondie
• 

  Undecided

  I was totally brain washed from youth. Didn't have doubts, just got tired of it all and faded out. I think it was after I went to the H2O forum and Farkel that I really saw the light. Can't remember what really was the teaching that I first doubted, maybe it was the flood. I lost my faith when I realized the Bible wasn't really a book of truth. I attended another church for a while and saw it was like the JWs in much of it's faith, believe it because the bible says so. I thought if Christainity was true based on the bible, then all Christain churches should be in agreement. I just became an agnostic and think all religions are based on a desire for a future life after this one. They do some good but religion as a whole has caused more trouble than it has good down through the history of mankind.

  All you good Christains when you reach your pie in the sky tell God that I would have loved him had he given me an observable reason to do that.

  Ken P.
• 

  greendawn

  For me it was the lack of brotherly love in the congo I was in and all the neighbouring ones, the lack of freedom of speech with the ridiculous don't run ahead of the FDS concept, the fact that the GB were completely ignoring the rest of the "annointed" and the no blood policy.
  
  When the internet came out with so much info, it became totally obvious to me that the WTS was a manipulative lying cult, the early history of the borg and their meddling in the occult and free masonry and the vitriolic, demonic personality of Rutherford and the many failed prophesies.