I grew out my hair after I was convicted of apostasy at 14 and informally shunned. Even though I still had to attend the meeting 3 times a week, it felt great to be able to stick it to them with my long ponytail ! And yes, I was relentlessly pressured to get it cut, but what could they do? They had nothing left to threaten me with.
Rainbow_Troll
JoinedPosts by Rainbow_Troll
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13
Grooming as a Witness
by Jules Saturn ingrowing up as a teenager, i would occasionally get some counseling for having my hair a bit too long by a couple of elders in the congregation.
one time i cut my hair shorter than usual and one elder said i was cutting it too short!
so it made me feel like anything i did wouldn't satisfy them.
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Do You Ever Think Of ALL The Wasted Time Because You Were a JW?
by minimus inthe longer you are out the more you see how a cult steals all your time, resources and energy.
we wasted so much because we were witnesses!
👎.
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Rainbow_Troll
I have mixed feelings about it. I did waste a lot of time in 'the preaching work' that could have been better spent studying (or even playing video games, for that matter). The meetings were a bore and the the assemblies filled me with dread. But I did make friends that I never would have had I not been a JW and despite our current alienation I still love them and don't regret knowing them.
I also enjoyed going out in field service and learning about other people's religious beliefs. While many of them were just Christian fundies as insufferably dogmatic and judgmental as JWs, I also had the pleasure of conversing with atheists, new agers, neo-pagans and ufo enthusiasts. I had a hard time concealing my fascination with other belief systems and often had to remind myself that I was there to tell them about my religion, not learn about theirs.
In retrospect, being a JW meant feeling bored and stifled most of time, but there were just enough good things about it to make me hesitate over regretting I wasn't just raised a Methodist instead. The only aspect of my childhood I totally and unequivocally regret is having to attend public school 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. It took up far more of my time than the JWs did and gave me absolutely nothing back in terms of compensation. I wasted so many hours in what was essentially daycare that I could have invested in really learning something; not to mention all the bullying and sexual harassment I had to endure...
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27
Am I selfish?
by Jules Saturn intonight i had an argument with both my parents.
my parents are aware of my feelings towards the organization, and it saddens them because i am their first born son.
they had high expectations of me, my father dreamt of him and i serving together as elders.
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Rainbow_Troll
It's not unusual to feel guilt in your situation, but it is misguided. Your parents are trying to hold you responsible for something you have no control over: your beliefs. No one can truly decide to believe anything (though they can decide to PRETEND to believe things they really don't) because beliefs are simply conclusions that our minds draw from the available evidence. You can no more choose to believe in the Watchtower BS (Belief System) than you could choose to believe that the Earth is flat, motionless and lies at the center of the cosmos. Once you understand something, you can't ever go back to not understanding it.
That said, your parents probably should feel guilty. While no one can control their beliefs, most people can control their behavior to some degree. If they are going to shun you simply because your mind isn't capable of ignoring the overwhelming evidence against the Watchtower BS, then this is a behavior they have definitely decided upon and they are totally free to change it despite the threat of emotional blackmail they are living under.
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Magistrate says Jehovah's Witnesses are complicit because they failed to report to authorities
by jw news 2017 in"former jehovah's witness jailed for historical sex offences against young sisters... .
sentencing magistrate bernadette boss noted it was "most unfortunate" that once again a church had failed to notify the authorities about an allegation of sexual abuse.. that made the church complicit in the matters and "appears to have exacerbated the effect on the victims of the offence," dr boss said...".
quoted text from the web page :.
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Rainbow_Troll
I in no way condone what this man did (what a creep!) but I've got to say that the long term psychological damage these girls suffered seems way out of proportion to what they endured. Being groped and fondled for a few minutes just seems so trivial to me; revolting and skin-crawling yes, but not exactly traumatizing! I was groped and fondled almost every day while on the school bus, but compared to what I had to worry about when I actually got to school, it was nothing.
I guess this testifies to how messed up my own childhood really was.
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Ran into my brother at a concert; first time I've seen him in years......
by dubstepped inmy wife and i went to a concert on friday night.
there was a friend of ours there doing security, and she happens to be an exjw too.
she sent me a message on messenger to inform me that my brother and his wife were at the show, not knowing that i'd be there too.
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Rainbow_Troll
I no longer live in the same place as my old JW friends but I wish I had possessed your courage back when I did. Back then I would just try to avoid them as much as possible... something I really regret now that I've finally grown a pair. The problem is that even if I now had the opportunity to meet them in person, I'm afraid I'd still be the anxious one while they would come out of it calm and unperturbed. How do you pull it off without looking like a desperate, jilted lover?
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How to convince someone to leave.
by Smiruk inhey everyone, long time lurker, first time poster.
i'm currently in a jehovah's witnesses household, which is very deep into the "truth".
i woke up a few months ago, and i haven't told my parents yet.
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Rainbow_Troll
There are a lot of sound, logical, ethical reason to leave the Watchtower and I encourage you to look into them; but when it comes to your family or any other JW I'm afraid that there is only one reason they will accept: you would rather sin than serve Jehovah. Tell them you're gay, addicted to heroin or whatever and it will be easier on you than if you told them your true reason for leaving.
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Warning: A. Vogel (JW-run organization) treatments popping up in the US
by Anony Mous ini've noticed a few of my local grocery stores are stocking a. vogel homeopathy products.
a. vogel is a company ran primarily by jehovah's witnesses, the "brains" behind the operation, alfred vogel, has since died but he claimed to be one of the anointed.
the bolle family (co-founders of the company) is a well-known, (now very wealthy) family in the netherlands and there have been significant "contributions" in the past from the company to the watchtower organization.. alfred vogel was a well-known conman, he claimed blood transfusions would change someone's personality, he claimed to have studied native american herbal healing methods... from a native american tourist photo-op actor.
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Rainbow_Troll
My aunt is into homeopathy which surprised me, since I've always taken her to be fairly intelligent. How anyone who actually understands the principle behind homeopathy (the lesser the dose, the greater the effect) could believe that it works is beyond me!
But maybe I should try it. Something that counter-intuitive must be true. No one could invent homeopathy anymore than someone could invent particle-wave duality or quantum tunneling. Nonsense like that has to be discovered! Genuine pseudo-science always sounds superficially plausible; only the truth can defy common sense.
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Imagine if Jw ran schools ?
by Chook inafter learning the alphabet no other education required.
history would be distorted, science rejected.
i'm surprised that gb didn't realise there is big money in education, big tony could be the professor of bullshit..
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Rainbow_Troll
Chook: Imagine if JWs ran schools. After learning the alphabet no other education required. History would be distorted, science rejected.
That's a very interesting conspiracy theory.
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To kill or not to kill
by Chook inhow many jws would kill a violent rapist in there home or protect their family with lethal means .
the one thing i love about the usa is the right to defend oneself with lethal force in their own home.
it's not that i want to kill someone but better them dead than my children..
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Rainbow_Troll
JWs are politically neutral, not pacifists. I can't see anyone who owns a gun hesitating for a second in a situation like that.
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Who Is An Apostate?
by NeonMadman inmaybe you've heard the story of a brother in the watchtower's writing department who was very smart, hard working and a good writer.
we'll call him charley.
charley was so good, in fact, that he advanced through the ranks and became a co-editor of the watchtower magazine.
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Rainbow_Troll
According to the Oxford English Dictionary an Apostate is "a person who renounces a religious or political belief or principle." (Interestingly, the word is derived from the Greek apostatēs, which was a term used to designate a runaway slave.)
The fact is that any JW who wasn't born into a Jehovah's Witness family, and who practiced a different faith before their conversation, is now an apostate by definition! My mother was raised a Methodist, not a JW. Thus, the moment she decided to abandon her childhood faith and get baptized, she became an apostate. There are so many JWs with similar backgrounds and any JW who calls you an apostate should be reminded of this fact. In fact, an apostate who criticizes others for being apostates is also a hypocrite and we all know how Jesus felt about hypocrisy.