DanTheMan

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Posts by DanTheMan

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  54

  JW's and drinking

  by DanTheMan in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  is it just me, or is alchohol consumption at parties and vacations virtually an unwrittten rule of jw-culture?.

  when i was in, i did not drink, and i still don't.

  i often felt almost ostracized for this by my jw associates.

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  DanTheMan

  Sabine:

  Oh, baby!

  (drool running down chin)

  Xander:

  I am from central Ohio. I guess things vary a lot from congo to congo.

  Edited by - dantheman on 15 June 2002 15:25:22
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  54

  JW's and drinking

  by DanTheMan in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  is it just me, or is alchohol consumption at parties and vacations virtually an unwrittten rule of jw-culture?.

  when i was in, i did not drink, and i still don't.

  i often felt almost ostracized for this by my jw associates.

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  DanTheMan

  the drinking issue was one of the things that made me feel that individuality is stifled in the org. There is so much pressure to be this way or that way or to do this and that. I just wanted to be me, and me was never quite right to the small-minded dubs.

  Sabine, is that you in your profile pic? Let's get together for some drinks.
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  40

  JW marriages

  by Realist in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  .

  since jw are not allowed to live together and cannot have sexual relations before they get married are many jw marriages unhappy?

  i hear that they think jw marriages are much happier than normal marriages...can anyone verify that?.

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  DanTheMan

  My Catholic parents, who should never have married in the first place, divorced when I was 16 or so.

  When I started studying Watchtowerism with the JW's, I quickly, and naively, assumed that Watchtower marriages were by far happier than all others. Wasn't until after I publicly pledged allegiance to the WTBTS by being immersed in a pool of water that I started to see that my assumptions were incorrect. I agree with Amazing that successful, happy marriages among the Watchtowerists are more the exception than the rule, and occur in spite of the Watchtowerism.

  I wish the 80 year olds in Brooklyn could spend a year as a semi-active, non-authority-position-holding JW in an ordinary congregation of Watchtowerists. How their fantasies of normal Watchtowerist lives would be crushed.
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  25

  Surviving the Hearing to DF Me.

  by Sentinel in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i must say that reading all these posts have really brought back so many memories for me.

  i had a terrible experience at my hearing, which i believe now, really bordered on sexual abuse of the mental kind.. our congregation was small.

  this was difficult for the few young people that attended.

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  DanTheMan

  Being a guy, i never was aware of what a misogynist organization I was in.

  I had a similar experience about a year ago. I got involved with a girl at work, and the inevitable happened. My conscience was stricken, I immediately went to the elders.

  They didn't ask any intimate questions at all. A guy confessing his sexual escapade probably wasn't exciting to them.

  Your story makes me ill. How I have come to hate the WT. "By their fruits, you will know them..."

  I bet they all went home and masturbated after your JC, or had the extremely rare - good sex - with their wives.

  Fucking morons, they're as bad as the Taliban.
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  54

  JW's and drinking

  by DanTheMan in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  is it just me, or is alchohol consumption at parties and vacations virtually an unwrittten rule of jw-culture?.

  when i was in, i did not drink, and i still don't.

  i often felt almost ostracized for this by my jw associates.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DanTheMan

  Is it just me, or is alchohol consumption at parties and vacations virtually an unwrittten rule of JW-culture?

  When I was in, I did not drink, and I still don't. I often felt almost ostracized for this by my JW associates. It really irritated me. Does anyone else have a similar experience?
• 
  14

  did I miss the point

  by DanTheMan in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  sometimes i wonder if the legalism and the authoritarianism in the wt have a purpose that i intuitively understood at first, and that somehow i've become blinded of the necessity of those things.. two things keep entering my mind - .

  1. jesus likened his followers to sheep, and;.

  2. the israelites got tired of the manna.. in leaving the wt, am i like the israelites who complained about the "contemptible bread"?

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  DanTheMan

  crawdad:

  I didn't mean to sound like I was advertising for the Society. But you know how they repeat the examples of Biblical rebels again and again, in an effort to keep you in and unquestioning. I never realized how deeply those things had penetrated my mind until I left. The WT paints us as being disloyal, ungrateful, on and on. And for years of my life I really bought into the anti-apostate dogma (the whole "where else can I go" thing).

  3 months ago, when I went online and learned all those things I never knew, or thought much about, it was so liberating. But now I'm faced with the "what now" and it is scary as hell.

  I was venting some when I posted this topic. I have good and bad days, and that day was a bad one. Today was much better.

  Thank you all for yor support.
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  40

  Is apostate an appropriate term for us?

  by sleepy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  .

  how do you feel?do you like to be called apostate ?.

  apostate just means: someone who renounces a former belief or principle.. to people who have never been witnesses it may not symbolise much.but to witnesses the word means a lot.in many of their minds it is synonymous with evil and perverted.. since it jw's who will likely call us apostate not others the term almost always has a bad or negative useage.. but it does identify us as people who have completely rejected the religion.. so is it good for us to use it or not?

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  DanTheMan

  from 1984:

  The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.
  
  As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity....

  ...In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O'Brien's heavy face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out 'Swine! Swine! Swine!' and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein's nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in...

  This is an extreme example, but I think that ex's like us are the WT's Emmanuel Goldstein. I know the emotion I used to feel at the word apostate, a mixture of fear and disgust.
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  14

  did I miss the point

  by DanTheMan in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  sometimes i wonder if the legalism and the authoritarianism in the wt have a purpose that i intuitively understood at first, and that somehow i've become blinded of the necessity of those things.. two things keep entering my mind - .

  1. jesus likened his followers to sheep, and;.

  2. the israelites got tired of the manna.. in leaving the wt, am i like the israelites who complained about the "contemptible bread"?

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  DanTheMan

  2SYN:

  Yup, I am pretty immature in my self-seeking, security-craving nature.

  When I was in, I always took the WT view of "worldly social efforts", that it was polishing the brass on a sinking ship. I guess I'm still carrying that idea.

  Michelle, it is like divorcing an abusive, domineering mate, isn't it?

  larc, I appreciate those comments. But of course my WT mind thinks of all the negatives that go along with those inventions (nuclear weapons, plane crashes, pollution and global warming, etc.)
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  14

  did I miss the point

  by DanTheMan in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  sometimes i wonder if the legalism and the authoritarianism in the wt have a purpose that i intuitively understood at first, and that somehow i've become blinded of the necessity of those things.. two things keep entering my mind - .

  1. jesus likened his followers to sheep, and;.

  2. the israelites got tired of the manna.. in leaving the wt, am i like the israelites who complained about the "contemptible bread"?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DanTheMan

  Sometimes I wonder if the legalism and the authoritarianism in the WT have a purpose that I intuitively understood at first, and that somehow I've become blinded of the necessity of those things.

  Two things keep entering my mind -

  1. Jesus likened his followers to sheep, and;

  2. The Israelites got tired of the Manna.

  In leaving the WT, am I like the Israelites who complained about the "contemptible bread"? Have I lost my sheeplike nature that I once had? Am I part of the Korah, Nadab, and Abiram class? Am I just a complaining rebel?

  There were things I hated about being a JW, but there were things I loved too. I just feel like I've made a big mistake.

  The world is nuts, and it seems like things are ready to explode.
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  20

  JWs Are The Smartest People on Earth

  by comforter in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  comforter is just pulling your leg guys!!!

  at least i hope so!!

  !

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  DanTheMan

  The scribes, sadducess and pharisees were pretty smart guys too.

  The smartest J-dubs are often the most arrogant and unloving ones.