Posts by Davin

28

Just a thought-Has anyone ever wondered?

by redhotchilipepper in

jw
friends

maybe if there is a god, that maybe he doesn't want us to know who he is?

maybe he only wants to know us through prayer.

maybe the bible is a hoax?

Davin

I think anyone who's ever been a jw has HAD to wonder about those things.

I guess whenver I've thought about it, I've narrowed it down to one of two things.

One is that God is a cognizant being that doesn't live in a red or blue state. It has the option to simply exist, while everybody argues about how they all want to believe in this same wonderful thing. And maybe if it were to ever have anything consequential to do with humanity, it would be when everyone stops acting like kids on a playground that can't get along with eachother, and he wouldn't have to worry about coming off as a favoritist. Non Partisan God would work okay with me.

Second is that maybe God is simply the pursuit of unity. God is the ideal of a species that hasn't realized it's own motion towards the best kind of strength in numbers - when everybody plays for the same team and cuts out all the trite bs that divides us. My God could beat up your God, my Acura is 2 months newer than yours, a 6 foot tv could change my life - maybe God is just this mutually shared idea in all cultures that there is something more to life than adversity and death, and maybe that something noone realizes is the subconscious desire for simple unity. There you go. Collective subconscious? My college psych theory professor would be psyched (or maybe hate it...)

Maybe this is why my friends call me a hippie sometimes?

4

Running into old members

by Davin in

jw
friends

hey all.

my name's davin and i'm new around here just meeting people.

i love this page.

Davin

Hey all. My name's Davin and I'm new around here just meeting people. I love this page. Since I've never really met anyone who was an ex-jw before (with exception to the one later), I decided to run a search and this has been a great experience for me. I haven't been a witness since I was 16 years old and now that I'm 29 (and FAR removed from any jw association) I find that no matter how far I get away from it, some parts of that experience still seem to catch up to me now and then. Anyone else feel that?

Eithersway, when I was home @ a party for some old college friends I ran into a girl that was a member of my old congregation. She had stopped attending meetings around the same time, and this was the first time I had seen her. I asked her how it was going, and she gave me a fairly odd reply. She pretty much said things had been really good for her, except that she was having a hard time dealing with the fact that Jehovah was going to kill her in a matter of years when Armageddon came. I asked her how many times she thought about this, and she told me everytime she had a beer, smoked a cigarette, or had premarital sex with her live in boyfriend of 2 years. I told her that maybe if she felt so strongly about the faith, maybe she should become a witness again, but she laughed and said there was no turning back from where she was going.

I don't know. I had no idea how to handle it, and I guess it's her choice and all, but what do you do when dealing with something like that?

Again, it's great to be on here, and I thank the coupla people who've emailed me already. It's nice to go someplace where I can talk to people about things that none of my friends have ever been able to understand real well...Happy Tuesday all.

15

Worn down again....

by puff candy in

jw
friends

i wanted to let you know that i told my mother i had found some information on the internet regarding jw,s.

i was then subjected to 2 odd hours on the phone about why apostates are so wrong and how these people are typist's for satan.

she put her husband on the phone too who went on a lot too....basically they wore me down and i ended the weakest again!

Davin

Sorry to hear about your experience. What's sad is that the chances of her becoming a little more flexible in her beliefs to accept you as a person are about as low as you deciding to become a jw. Flexibility and tolerance are two of the issues I wish the jw's would spend a little more time on, but unfortunately that's largely not the way it works. Your best bet is to still treat her with tolerance and respect, and maybe that will rub off. I know that sounds like pretty weak advice, but I don't know if there's any direct approach that will work.

I was talking to a former elder a couple years back after my grandfather had died and my latest relationship was crumbling hard. He took some time explaining what the jw's take on everything was, and I already knew the things he was going to say and I patiently listened to him, told him I respected his beliefs, but then told him that my experiences as a jw had taught me that I couldn't take only one path to spirituality anymore because I needed to understand people and not judge them to love them. He told me "It would be nice if everyone actually had the same religioin underneathe it all." and I was actually amazed. I never thought I'd hear him say anything like that.

The point is, like I was saying before, the only way to encourage tolerance and respect is to struggle your damnest to offer it. I know you've probably been doing this for a while anyway, but push yourself harder. Yourmom's choices are not in your realm of control, but the things you give her to respond to are.

Again, good luck with everything.

12

I'm a mommy!

by Stacey in

jw
friends

just home with my ten week old son and thought i'd pop onto jw.com.

some of my old friends are here.

i wanted to share that i'm now a mommy.

Davin

Congratulations on all counts. And it's true - they grow fast. My niece and god daughter are both 6. I have NO idea how it went so fast, but then again - they're not really mine, are they? ;)

11

I hurt..

by Dirt Rocker in

jw
friends

i got surgery on my hand a few days ago and it f-ing hurts!

i had an extra muscle in my left hand so i go it removed.

and now it really hurts... .

Davin

On your left hand? Is that why we only see your right hand in the picture? ;)

23

I just found something...

by mrsjones5 in

.

i was at the grocery today and on my way out i found a watchtower tape, dated july 1, 2002. i took it.

mrs jones

Davin

A LOT of good ideas on this post. If you're gonna tape over it, check out Mr. T's solo album from the 80's. That'd be a good choice, too.

Either way, it's not like it's something you have to fear. It's a tape. Unless you really want it, then do what you'd do with anything else you don't really need and toss it... (and shoot it if you're into clay shooting or anything like that...)

22

Do You Now Feel Liberated Since Leaving The "Truth"?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i do.

once you realize how much bondage you were under....it's easy to feel good not having the weights of man made rules.

it's very liberating for me to tell people that i no longer associate with the jw religion----very liberating!!

Davin

Halfway I guess.

My brother had problems growing up so in some ways our family was on the outside looking in with our congregation. They like me, but they were afraid to let kids be near my autistic brother - maybe they'd catch it or something. I always hung out with "worldly" kids in the neighborhood, too and got a long well in school but was never completely one of them because I was a member of a "weird religion"...so I don't know. It was extremely liberating to be able to be who I wanted to be without having to walk down the middle line all of the time.

The only problem is that by the time I quit in high school I had missed out on a lot of the growing pains that a lot of kids go through earlier, and I was kinda stranded in the middle of everything. I knew I liked everybody, but I didn't know who I could really trust or put any sort of stock in, and I had a lot of friends but shut out a lot of relationships because underneathe it all I didn't know how I felt about anything. God, sex, booze, football, death...what was important and what was the reason for anything...it definitely created five million new questions.

I think that's why I'm on this board to talk to other people who had that tough road to hoe. Anyone who wants to feel free to email btw, I'm new here and don't know ANYBODY.

Leaving the Truth is liberating but it's only the first step, learning how to find yourself once you've made the choice to walk alone is the second - and the tougher one too.

32

New here, would like to say hello.

by puff candy in

jw
friends

i just registered right now.

i would like to introduce myself.

i am a 30 year old female and not a jw but my mother is so thats how i came by this site.

Davin

Hey Puff Candy. I'm new here, too, and have been spending a little time reading the different posts, and I hope you can find something that can help you. I was born a witness and was out by the time I was 16 and I got my mom to leave with me about a year later. My brother had left about five years earlier and it was devastating to her, so it's a pretty tall hill to get anyone to leave without someone leaving with them because I think they fear the fact that they will lose pretty much everything and EVERYBODY in their life. I know that you are a very important somebody, but when you're talking about turning your back on something that has been her entire life (faith, social net, daily routine) for the past 14 years, it's a tall order. My mom @ first wanted me to go back to the meetings and I agreed to go to one more meeting if she agreed to listen to everything the speaker was saying and tell me she could honestly believe that everything he said settled with her - after the meeting we went out to our car and she looked at me and said she didn't really feel like she agreed with everything but she was scared to leave her faith because she didn't know if she could find another faith again. Where was truth if she couldn't find it with the Truth? She eventually has found happiness, but it's been a pretty long, hard road for her, so be aware of that too. I truly wish the best for you and your mother, one of the things that drove me away from the witnesses was the way they told me to beware of how much time I spent with family members that weren't witnesses, and considering some of the best, kindest people I had ever known were NOT witnesses, I couldn't swallow any of it anymore. I hope your mom can see the same thing someday, or at least find a balance between her faith and her love for her family. It's a tall order, but maybe there is a way. Good luck.

37

would you go back if...

by what_Truth? in

a member of the gb splits breaks away and takes a few billion with him.

he decideds to found his own church.

this church is almost exactly the same as the jehovah's witneses except for a few major changes .

Davin

This is pretty much my first time on here, and I've never really had the chance to meet anyone who used to be a witness or anything like that so this is kinda different for me, but here goes.

No.

My grandparents were not witnesses (much less ANYONE else in my family - just me, my mom, and my brother) and the witnesses always were encouraging me to spend less time with them if they weren't interested in coming to meetings. They felt that way about pretty much everybody who didn't share their faith - and the one thing I learned from being a witness is you can't be free to truly love people in this world if you spend most of your life drawing lines and walls between people who don't share your exact beliefs. There pretty much is no little thing that could be changed to make that any better because the heart of the faith is rooted in "We're right and unforunately for everybody else, you're all wrong." That doesn't work for me in any faith, because if there is a benevolent God, I'm assuming he wouldn't be judging people based on the culturally different ways they try to reach out for him, but hopefully by the ways they tried to make the world a little bit better by being good to everybody regardless of what they look like or what they believe.