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

by ithinkisee 40 Replies latest jw friends

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  Terry

  I don't know about other people's mind; but, for myself I lived on two layers of thought the entire time I was an active Jehovah's Witness.

  Like two walls of glass I could see "out" to the real world through the walls of the compartment I lived in inside my head.

  Whenever a troublesome thought, word or deed came into to my mind I simply dealt with it by a REACTIVE process.

  The reactive process is a knee-jerk programmed rebuttal process that eliminates the one important step needed for a mind which is alive to reproof:

  I NEVER FOR ONE MOMENT CONSIDERED IT POSSIBLE that I was in the wrong religion!

  I proceeded to Step 2, which was fighting the intrusive thought with my techniques learned at the Kingdom Hall.

  It was ego protection more than anything else. I would not tolerate doubt in myself. The absolute certainty of conviction and faith and assured correctitude is the most powerful force on Earth. That was my mind: certain beyond a shadow of doubt.

  And, guess what? I was dead wrong. That will never let me rest!

  It took being kicked out, shunned and regarded as a walking dead man to even get me to think of reappraisal. Even then, I did not have the intellectual training or mind tools to look at evidence with anything approaching objectivity. Jehovah's Witnesses remove objectivity from you.

  I had to re-examine each and every context, word and definition I held in my mind before I could begin a healing process.

  Even today I remain cynical about any authority figure with truth for sale.

  I test everything I hold to be true with a view to allowing the possibility I might be in error.

  I can never be dead certain again.

  Maybe that is a good thing. Maybe not.

  Terry
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  ithinkisee,

  i just want to say, i think your post was brilliant. i really enjoyed it. and everyone here has made great comments. for me:

  • 8 years old and not allowed to watch smurfs. hmmm?
  • one of my earliest seeds of doubt came when i was about 10 years old, and was forced by my mom to write a letter to my aunt who was DF'd 4 years earlier at 16 years old, for fornication, saying that i would no longer associate with her for "biblical" reasons. obviously, i did what my mom emotionally abused me into doing, but it really made me wonder.
  • the next was being emotionally abused by the elders and my mom into giving up university scholarships. i wondered what could be so bad about university, especially since all large multi-nationals like the WTS would need brains to help it run.
  • then while pioneering (of course), getting demolished at the door by an atheist, who was able to show me that within a logic system, god cannot be omnimax. i could not reply, and the WTS line was really dumb, when i researched it. if god was truly who i was taught he was, then how could he be subject so easily to any logic system? got me wondering why "the truth" was so fragile.
  • i was intellectually starved in the truth, and turned to computer science as an output, as it was as close as i could get to real science without stepping on jehovah's toes. but in the end, learning scientific method undid it all for me.
• 

  Quentin

  I had no doubts. There were questions, just didn't think about them. The only thing my dad demanded was meeting attendance and field service, otherwise I went unmonitored. When I turned seventeen I quit school and took a job, coming and going as I pleased. Don't get me wrong. I faithfully attended all the meetings, went door to door regularly and was well versed in Witness rhetoric. When the first installment of the Aid Book came out I was in hog heaven. Read it from cover to cover. I had no doubts. I believed.

  When I look back on it all, for the most part, my JW life was pleasant. Pleasant compared to what many have gone through. For me there were three things that made that possible. When I was active there was no Body of Elders. When I read about those dunces it leaves me stunned. My parents were not pushy. Go to all the meetings and go door to door. Simple. I don't know if Terry would say the same, but for me, the KH we attended was rather laid back. People got DFd, put on reproof and such, after all it was a congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, but generally speaking everyone had a tendency to mind their own business.

  There was no reason to doubt. I came and went as I pleased. Did pretty much what I pleased. There just wasn’t any pressure. What it took for me to wake from my slumber was the cold loveless manner in which a person is treated when they do not follow the WTBTS edicts to the letter. That was when I began to doubt. It was the best thing that ever happened.
• 

  Seeker4

  Some great comments here. Thank you all, and so many of them echo my own experience.

  I was baptized in 1963 at age 11. There were always things that bothered me, though I went on to pioneer for many years, become a MS at 20 and an elder at 26. Was super active, feeling that my questions and doubts were my problem, and would eventually be resolved by Jehovah and his Org.

  In the early 1990s, I stepped down as an elder. Remained faithful for a few years, but became more and more skeptical of all that I had been taught. In 1994 and 1995, with the doctrinal changes in the sheep and the goats, king of the north and especially the 1914 generation change, I decided it was time to finally seriously face my questions and doubts about the WTS teachings.

  What are the WTS teachings that made me sure it was not "the truth" or anything near it?

  The earth was a tropical paradise until the flood, a little over 4000 years ago. (The Polar and Greenland icecaps can be proven to be over 150,000 years old. Then there are those pesky coral reefs, dating back way before the WTS's date for the Noachian flood. ).

  Animals didn't eat meat until after the flood. (Standing in front of the fossilized contents of a dinosaur's stomach contents, hundreds of thousands of years old, and seeing with my own eyes the bones of what it had eaten. Look at the animal kingdom - most animals are perfectly adapted to either kill or avoid being killed by their predators. There are far too many examples of this to even question it an iota.)

  That there were only 144,000 "true" Christians from 33 CE until 1935. What bullshit.

  A couple of decades prior to the 1914 generation change, Time or Newsweek, in an article on the Witnesses, stated that if the end of the century approached, the WTS would be in trouble if their prophecies failed to prove true. I'd tucked that thought away in the back of my mind, allowing that, as some here have stated, the WTS and Jehovah would reveal the "truth" in due time, and I should just stifle my doubts. But then 1995 rolled around, and lo and behold, the Society decides to alter the entire basis of the 1914 generation teaching. It simply floored me, and I knew then that I was dealing with a cynical, covering-its-ass organization. I was on my way out at that point.

  So many other points as well. But enough already...

  S4
• 

  nowisee

  great thread, ithinkisee. it should give everyone food for thought.

  my story contains many many asides and details which i will not list, but the major ones....

  l)my father had questions re wt articles and nobody would give him the time of day (not the gb, many of whom he knew personally, to the local elders, who simply told him "don't ask questions."), as if that were the righteous course.

  2)my bethelite fiance (to become lst husband) who told me anyone who had any questions was viewed as a"wacko" within the bethel community

  3)personal experiences within local body of elders who lied to me.....about even the most mundane personal things.

  4)elders who would not answer questions honestly, even though evidence was placed directly in front of them.

  5)elders who said they did not agree with wts but would not back it up when tested...showing their positions meant more to them than "the truth".

  it was all built on shifting sand and appearances.
• 

  Thirdson

  
  
  I tried posting this last night:
  

  
  
  That Adam and Eve were real people, in fact the whole creation account as explained twice in Genesis.
  

  
  
  The genealogy of Jesus in the gospels. The lines diverge after David, converge and diverge again. Also, there are too few generations between Judah and David for the timeline used by the WTS.
  

  
  
  Noah's flood was global.
  

  
  
  The Blood ban meant no blood transfusions or no transfusions of certain components.
  

  
  
  That Watchtower convention resolutions in the 1920s were fulfillment of parts of Revelation.
  

  
  
  That Elders were appointed by holy spirit...I got appointed doubting as above.
  

  
  
  3rd
  

  
  
  
• 

  Darth Yhwh

  
  I have to say that first this is probably one of the most interesting topics that I've read thus far. My story goes like this:

  Mom was raised a witness. Mom married my non-witness father. My dad never attended meetings, maybe a memorial every other year or so, but he never discouraged my mother's choices in raising my brother, sister and myself as JW's. As a father now I often think that If my dad knew some of the territories in which we were witnessing in and thus the danger that we were exposed to that he may have actually objected.

  I've had doubts as long as I can remember. Not just about JW's but even the concept of the Judeo-Christian God. How could god have always existed? How can JW's have the only true religion when other religions feel the same way? If God knows the future then how can man have free will? When I was about eight or nine I remember being at a lake swimming with a pioneer brother (since my father was not a witness they were always eager to fufill my fatherly needs) and I made the comment that sister so and so is of the generation that could understand the events of 1914 and that (because in my young mind she was so old and couldnt possibly live too much longer) must mean the end of this wicked system will be here any time now. He reassured me that I was correct in my reasoning reinforcing my belief in what the WBTS was pushing at the moment.

  I gradually distanced my self from meetings and fellow witnesses. I started when I got my first job around 17 years old. I asked to be scheduled on sunday mornings because I would rather go to work then get up and go to a meeting and out in service. It was easier for me to tell my mother that I had to work than I didn't want to go to a meeting. Then I started to hang out with another JW that I had met from another congregation. He shared many of the same views that I did and also was an "independent thinker" like myself. Together we did a lot of research, talking and analytical thinking that surly would have earned us an apostate lable from the elders at the local KH. It didnt take long before I was totally inactive.

  Eventually I moved out of my parents house, got married, had children, and have moved on with my life. I still occasionally will experience a JW on my door step on a Saturday morning. Sometimes I know them and some times I dont. It's always neat when I can finish their thought for them or when I recognize them and they dont remember me. I like it even more when it's someone I've never met and I can play the part of a potential return visit. LOL! Once my mom even stopped by with an elder from my old congregation and invited me to the memorial. My mom had been telling him that I had asked for a copy of the current CD rom. I didnt tell her I wanted it because I was researching their false prophesies. I told him straight up that I have issues with the doctrinal changes that have occured. They pretty much left after that and needless to say I never made it to the memorial.

  I guess my goal is to be like biker dude Bob and to be the quiet frendly guy that can plant those small seeds that eventully lead to someones awaking.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  OD,

  To Bob, who I wished posted here, or lived in the neighborhood so I could tell him for real, I GET IT NOW. THANKS!

  Get conclusion!! brought tears to my eyes. I bet a lot of lurkers are Getting it Now!
• 

  Darth Yhwh

  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention:

  The other question I frequently asked at a very early age was the if the Earth were to be populated by imortal servants of Jehovah then what will happen when it becomes overpopulated? I dont remember the bogus answer I received. I can only imagine what my mother must have thought when her young son asked such a legitimate question that the Bible gives no answer to. She must have stumbled through it.
• 

  blondie

  Learning from brothers in writing and service departments that often the articles written in the magazines and talks at the conventions are meant to address specific problems - and the problem isn't usually readily apparent in the title or general subject of the talk/article.

  (Remember this folks that read the WT, ask yourself what the real title should be. Usually the first 3 paragraphs stick with the title topic and then segue into the real topic.)

  For me it was started with trying to prove Jesus is Michael the Archangel to someone at the door…realized the WTS was reaching for straws and would the WTS doctrine structure fall apart if Jesus wasn’t Michael.

  Tried to explain the 2300 days in the Bible and realized that the WTS has had many interpretations over the years and that less than 1% of 1% of JWs could explain it.

  The pedophile issue

  Realizing that lying elders were the rule rather than the exception.

  Ditto on all of IT IS Bethel comments (double ditto).