Posts by neverendingjourney

22

Years ago son raised a few years as a JW. Now struggles with depression

by Check_Your_Premises in

background:.

i spent some time here awhile back as an unbelieving mate of a jw wife.

i learned a lot, and was able to be supportive and understanding when she decided to leave the jw.. unfortunately, my son seems to have internalized many of the jw teachings.

neverendingjourney

He seems to be unable to shake the idea that they have "the truth". He doesn't live as a JW though, so he seems trapped in an intolerable state between thinking the JW are the way to go, but unable (and having no desire) to live as one.

This is, unfortunately, an incredibly common problem. There was a guy at my hall who had been disfellowshipped for decades and later returned. He would often talk about the agony of being out and knowing he wasn't living in conformity with "the truth." I believe a lot of the destructive behavior common in DF'd youths is about them beating themselves up over not being strong enough to live up to the "the truth."

I was in this state for a short while, something like a year and a half. What changed? I found this website. I read enough here to lose the fear of reading "apostate literature" and after a few books any lingering doubts about whether the witnesses had the truth disappeared. Don't get me wrong. The programming runs deep and even today, ten years later, I still find myself responding to some situations according to the programming, but I don't agonize over whether I made the right decision.

Without knowing your son, it seems the only thing that can help him get over this hurdle is for him to come to realize on his own that there is no truth to the religion. My best friend when I was a witness stopped going to meetings around the same time I did and I swear he's in your son's position. He won't admit it to me because he knows I'm 100% out, but it's evident by his demeanor and some of the choices he's made. That no-man's land of being 99% out but having those lingering doubts isn't a healthy place to be.

I wish you all the best.

14

All of Human Knowledge Could be Stored in a Test Tube Forever

by cofty in

the dna code could be used to store unimaginable amounts of information.. researchers have shown that encasing the dna is glass it would remain stable and able to be recovered for more than a million years.

by adding redundancies into the code it would still be preserved even if it did become damaged.. why didn't god think about encoding a simple "hello"?.

neverendingjourney

Slightly on topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality_Drive

26

The Pain of Coming to a Decision

by daniel-p in

jw
friends

it's been at least a couple years since i've posted anything on here, and much longer than that since when i was active.

ten years ago i first came here all in turmoil over my disillusionment of my beliefs.

i've been through lots of ups and downs since then.

neverendingjourney

Hey, Daniel. I remember you. I don't come around here very often anymore, either. I'm sorry to hear of your marital troubles. Unfortunately, being a single guy, I don't have much to offer other than a sympathetic ear.

If I'm not mistaken you were considering going to college at one point. Did you ever see that through?

31

Yearbook 2016: Annual Report (15177 Partakers)

by Designer Stubble in

the 2016 yearbook is up on jw.orgbranches of jehovahs witnesses: 89 (was 90)number of lands reporting: 240 (was 239)total congregations: 118016 (was 115416)worldwide memorial attendance: 19,862,763 (was 19,950,019) decreasememorial partakers worldwide: 15,177 (was 14,121 in 2013:13,204) large increasepeak of publishers in kingdom service: 8,220,105 (was 8,201,205) minor increaseaverage publishers preaching each month: 7,987,279 (was 7,867,958)percentage of increase over 2014: 1.5 (was 2.2)total number baptized: 260,273 (was 275,581)average auxiliary pioneer publishers each month: 443,504 (was 635,298) huge decreaseaverage pioneer publishers each month: 1,135,210 (was 1,089,446)total hours spent in field: 1,933,473,727 (was 1,945,487,604) decreaseaverage home bible studies each month: 9,708,968 (was 9,499,933)

neverendingjourney

I think they've reached the top of their hill; they've peaked out.

If they continue selling the same product, then I agree with you. Right now all their marketing gimmicks have simply been efforts to put lipstick on a pig, selling the same burrito but putting it in a shinier tin-foil wrapping.

An ordinary company would recognize the need to make wholesale changes to the product, but there's a two-fold problem here. One, aversion to change runs deep in the religion's culture. They have the truth; why change it? Conformity is required throughout all of its ranks. Two, the men who lead the group spent their adult lives and made their way up through a system designed to select the most pliant and sycophantic among them. Anyone with even a minimal ability to re-imagine the religion's doctrine would have been culled from the ranks long before they ever became candidates for GB membership.

In my mind that leaves two possibilities: they continue a slow, gradual fade into further irrelevance or a younger charismatic person (or a group of persons) grabs control of the religion and takes it in a different direction. The second possibility becomes more realistic the more the religion stagnates.

32

Peer presure to use Ipad

by Gorbatchov in

jw
friends

earlier this season i advised my retired father to ignore the use of a tablet during his kingdom hall congregational visits.

his response was hopefull, but between the lines i could hear he had no choice.. yesterday he showed me his new 600 euro 64 gb ipad air 2. he had no clue what he has to do with it, he told me one of the elders will install the jw.org apps.. so, i feel he had to deal with presure to buy this ipad and i think he is not the only one.. do you recognize this?.

gorby.

neverendingjourney

Both of my parents have ipads. My father loves it as he's always been the type of person who wants to the have the latest, greatest toy, even if he doesn't need it or know how to use it.

My mother is completely lost. She was never able to learn how to operate a VCR and that's back when she was in her 30s. Now that she's in her mid-60s, she's not going to be able to learn how to navigate an ipad.

It's pretty stupid. I personally have no use for a tablet. I've purchased one before but didn't find any use for it. The WT is obviously weaning the flock off of printed materials as that's a money drain now.

25

Twelve Days of Evolution - A video a Day

by cofty in

from the guys and girls at "it's ok to be smart".. stay curious!.

....

neverendingjourney

They do good work. I'm subscribed to their YouTube channel.

I'd recommend Sixty Symbols as well if you haven't already run across them.

Their presentation isn't nearly as polished, basically just a guy with a camera running around the physics department in Nottingham, but they've been putting out great informational videos for years.

57

Is zeal beginning to vanish?

by Caupon in

jw
friends

it has to be starting to fade somehow.

the very last time i went out in field service, hardly any were out.

maybe just about nine people were out and man if you could just see their faces.

neverendingjourney

I got baptized in the mid-90s. At that point every elder was expected to be able to hold their own in field service. About half the ministerial servants could do the same, maybe 1/2 the regular pioneers, and the odd publisher or two who was really smart but never ascended up the ranks. I'd say 20-25% of publishers could hold their own. The rest were just there to drop off magazines, count time, and run away as fast they could. I can only speak for the men since I wasn't in the habit of going out in FS with women.

By the early 00s there were already a few elders who were complete dunces, the type of men who'd been professional MS's but had been pulled up the ranks due to attrition. FS had become more nakedly a time-counting operation. A lot of the intelligent publishers with no titles simply disappeared from the map, moved away or stopped attending meetings. I estimate the number of people who could hold their own dropped to 15% or so by 2005.

After I left, things seemingly got much worse. Contemporaries of mine who were not very bright and had spent their adolescence and early adulthood being two-faces and constantly finding ways to avoid JCs started becoming MS's and elders. Men who had once been considered pillars, intelligent men who could quote hundreds of bible verses, began to drop off from the elders' list and either stopped attending or became a lot less involved than they had been. Being inquisitive seemingly went from being a virtue, a sign of someone being a deep, spiritual person, to being seen as a sign of an independent spirit and possible apostate tendencies.

72

Update on everything going on in JW Land - Insider Information

by thedepressedsoul in

i'd like to start off by saying that i will be very vague in everything i say.

i am fairly "high up" in jw land and have to be somewhat careful how i word and say stuff.

sorry in advance if any specific details are left out.

neverendingjourney

We have often heard on here that the GB are now "rock stars". I have witnessed this first hand.

It's hard to imagine how it's gotten any worse. I remember sitting at an international assembly 15 years ago or so and the flash cameras that would go off when a GB member walked by were blinding, people literally running to the front row to grab a better picture. You would have thought it was a Taylor Swift concert.

41

Sheep and the Goats - The Light Gets Brighter

by nmthinker in

perhaps some of you remember a new understanding of the sheep and the goats in the epic march 2015 wt study edition - specifically the article "loyally supporting christ's brothers".. while this article was studied many months ago, it was instrumental in helping me wake up.

during my study of the 2015 article i recalled that we had just revised our understanding of the sheep and the goats a few years ago and this caused me to research the real progression of the jw understanding of this parable.

i put the results of my research in an excel spreadsheet.. .

neverendingjourney

I read this article with interest back when it was released. I wasn't baptized yet, but I had recently embraced the religion I was brought up in and read every magazine as soon as it arrived in the mail.

For me it was incredibly exciting. New light! I couldn't wait to tell everyone at the KH, but the response I received was surprising: lots of blank stares, abrasive and judgmental questioning, and people assuming I was stupid and misunderstood what I read. Not a single person had read the article.

It turned out to be just the opening act. Two weeks later the following Watchtower contained the generation change and nobody seemed to pay any attention to the sheep and goats change anymore. Kind of got buried by the follow-up.

113

I just found out that my youngest brother committed suicide

by SnakesInTheTower in

jw
friends

my middle brother called me a couple of hours ago.

our youngest brother, josh, who was 38, was found by his friends in his apartment.

he hung himself.

neverendingjourney

Absolutely terrible news. I've always appreciated your contributions to the board, and as is this thread confirms, you have a lot of people here who feel the same.

Best of luck in these trying times.