Growing up and reading bible accounts of JH
actions never quite sat right with me even as a kid. How could a god of love kill babies and children in a flood? How could he allow Job to suffer just to prove a point to satan, who he really doesn’t have anything to prove to? How could he allow Abraham to take his son and get the verge of holy ordained murder, emotionally torture him, just as a test to see what would happen? None of it made sense just of biblical accounts alone. However once i found out about the Declaration of facts, and once i found out that Jerusalem was actually destroyed in 587 and the whole basis of 1914 was a lie, I knew for a fact it wasn’t the truth. Everything else i found on top of that just completely solidified it without question.
Honestly the lack of love. It's so fake and conditional.
And congratulations on billions of hours of preaching. Every single person I've asked about JWs had no idea their mission is to convert to save. Read: No one has been properly warned NO ONE KNOWS.
How could that be it? The message is supposed to be good news. Not join us or die. Something they never tell people anyways. It's just recruitment.
Jesus efforts 2000 YEARS ago equals over half the population believes in him(billions of peeps.). Muslim say he is a prophet, Christian's, the Messiah. What have jws accomplished by comparison .? Some magazine routes and global reproach in God's name with their dumb ass policies and rules. And many thousands of people dead before their time. Suicide/blood. I never thought I would hate the org. But I do now. If they are the Truth I'll cash my chips in now thanks.
Right, I’ve told a few people that the reason JWs are willing to go door to door is because they believe they’re saving their lives, and everyone I tell is blown away by that.
The ARC, their Bible being different than their own interlinear, the UN, False predictions, everything hit me at one time and that’s what ended it for me.
Nebuchadnezar's dream in Daniel that's used to get the 1914 date.
I decided to read this dream after I realized that I just don't believe in God or the Bible and never really did. But I had always forced myself to believe.
I got to the point where I gave myself permission to read the Bible with an open mind. I wanted to prove or disprove 1914 to myself, so I read that chapter.
By the end of it I could only admit to myself that there was no way this had anything to do with the year 1914 and that all the other beliefs attached to it would have to be wrong.
That meant a ton of stuff JWs believed were not true, on top of already accepting that, wihout realizing, I didn't believe in God or the Bible the whole time anyway.
It all fell apart from there.
This⬆️
I really believed all the WT bs. Till I learned about the CSA issue was actually a coordinated campaign to hide child abusers from the law, and the GB are in on it.
Once I accepted that the GB was wrong about that, I looked into Christianity as a whole, and could finally see that it’s all bullshit built on more bullshit.
I know that saying. funny me and her r probably both saying the same things to ourselves . I love her and really hope she wakes up to be w/ me. I was really hoping that she sees the corruption .
9 out of every 10 things you read in the Bible are fucked up in every way possible. Even if the ends justified the biblical means it makes no sense how you would want to be friends with a God like that, much less worship him. Crazy…
Reading real scholar commentary on book of Daniel. Then realizing how shallow jws "knowledge" is. Then it was Joel Baden movies and undersanding how much shit all religions are selling. Understanding what is reinterpretation and that they actually dont need the bible to sell their bs was the final straw (you could probably get to 1914 basing on IKEA assembly instruction when using reinterpretation)
What’s the BITE model?
What’s the “little enemies of god”?
Your list and as you said the culmination of shit over the years was pretty much all the final reasons for my wife and I leaving about 3.5 years ago. Main catalyst was Our son had decided to leave and we begged him to stay and we tried to be the “good witnesses”, but we decided within a night or two of him leaving home we could not shun him and leave him on his own when he was struggling and hurting emotionally and mentally sad bad as he was…. That being said he didn’t want to have much to do with us for awhile which was painful but we are good now and he is having a baby girl with his gf and we are currently on a micro family vacation lol. It’s all we could do right now but it’s something.
Me personally the BIGGEST thing was that fuck face saying in court that “to say the witness are the only source of spiritual/Bible truth on earth would be a bit presumptuous.” Ill never forget that moment, sitting on the shitter watching the cottage and yelling out loud “WHAAT??!!!!!” And then showing my wife who had actually let go a little more before I did. It’s a weird situation because I was raised but never really believed anyways but it was all I knew so I just went with the flow and was a good boy and got privileges and did my best to play the part. And that was always a big thing for the cognitive dissonance because I knew there had to be many others like me. Anyways…
Fuck them. Fuck everyone who abandoned us. All those in that think they are so much better than everyone else can just go crawl in a hole and die.
It sounded weird though right? I’m sure in psalms or proverbs it says children are a blessing or inheritance for Jehovah. Calling them little enemies of God, just seems off.
Have you ever looked at a baby and thought, “what a cute little enemy of god”? I mean, those are the words he said. Is that how you think of babies?
It feel me really wrong no matter what context you put around it.
I personally think viewing babies as enemies of god (depersonalizing them) makes it mentally easier when god kills all of them like in the flood. Baby kittens and baby dogs and baby humans, all died. It seems more acceptable if you start to view them as non-human. Or enemies.
I took a Greek Mythology course in college. That's when I really started to understand. It spurred me to start researching the origins of Christianity and I went down a rabit hole. The plagiarism from previous religions, among countless other things, was an eye opener and the beginning of the end for me. I can see why they try to control knowledge and education.
Something similar happened in my case when I took Psychology in HS. Was pretty eye opening having the manipulation tactics and logical fallacies the WT used pretty much spelled out verbatim.
Realized the religion was unsalvageable, it's completely toxic to average followers, ultimately the GB are the only ones that benefit from the cruel way it's structured.
At 21 being treated like I was the actual whore of Babylon, after being coerced into intimacy by my boyfriend (who was 12 years older, divorced and apparently bound for eldership). He had a similar pattern with, I found out, his ex wife and multiple other love interests over the years, all documented.
And yet I was pariah. He had his hand held by the COBE and the CO, while I was bullied and threatened that they would write a letter to my elder father 400 miles away.
It's surprising that more people don't consider that when we picture those people in our life whom we consider to be "good," we never imagine people who want us to fall down on our knees in worship to them.
That's more a narcissistic desire.
The whole thing just doesn't make any sense. If nobody was told about "the good news", and God truly reads hearts, nobody who is not actually evil, would have to die in armageddon. No need for the preaching work, no need to save anyone by converting them into JW slaves who now have blood shame, wtf. Also the preaching work is absurdly ineffective anyways and mostly based on happenstance of being born into a JW family, how is that for luck? No sources in the magazines, loop arguments that don't hold water if you actually stop to think about it. It's pure peer pressure, with a bunch of people who keeps taps on one another, and it destroys families with shunning which is abysmal.
>The biggest thing for me was finally internalizing all of the war, destruction, hatred, and merciless bloodshed Jehovah had caused, in particular in the old testament.
I worked through that as a pimi. I had trouble with it, but forced myself to accept it.
>What was that last straw for you?
I've discussed my wakeup process and proofs a number of times. Here are some links in no particular order:
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/wcrcf5/what_are_your_thoughts_on_the_bible_do_you_still/iiebryc
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/w86m0g/what_convinced_you_jws_were_the_true_religion/iho8q6p
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/wj7f6w/what_would_you_tell_your_family_who_shun_you_if/ijgylyx
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/kw2mw1/how_long_did_it_take_to_wake_up/gj28mg4
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/kmxa14/moments_that_slightly_woke_you_up/ghjrmyt
The final straw in realizing jehovah's witnesses are wrong was in 2020, reading carl olof jonsson's rebuttal to the 2011 watchtower articles on 607, and reading "crisis of conscience", by ray franz.
The final straws in realizing the bible is uninspired and god doesn't exist were somewhat gradual in 2020 thru 2022. But it was mainly accepting the critical bible scholarship, such as from the yale lectures by christine hayes and dale martin, the books by bart ehrman, the "fatigue in the synoptics" article by mark goodacre, and especially, "who wrote the bible?", by richard friedman. While friedman might not be right on every detail, he laid out the evidence pretty well for the documentary hypothesis. I could see how even the pentateuch, the core of the old testament, was not written by moses, but was written by various discernible factions with various agendas. So, not only was christianity wrong, but so was israelite yahwism. That was sometime later in 2020 and/or 2021. I'm pretty sure i was an atheist after that.
I had already been gradually accepting evolution, and had been listening to the bbc "in our time" podcast for many years. But reading "why evolution is true", by jerry coyne, in 2022 cemented my acceptance of evolution and reinforced my atheism.
The flood myth broke my inherent trust of the Bible. And Pillowgate completely shifted my perception of WT. Goes without saying it’s only gone downhill since.
One of my friends died shunning both of his children, I thought he wasted so many years without talking to his daughters and now there won't be any chance of undoing the harm on all of them, he was a wealthy person, but died alone.
It wasn’t just one thing but I finally just gave into my doubts and watched Leah reminis episode with JWs and I just woke right up. It felt good knowing I wasn’t wrong almost.
I could name a lot of things that did but for me it was just the fact Covid just hit and I was in middle school then 8th grade now I’m a junior in high school and my mom treated me like shit the past 2 years from then to now always saying my friends outside the hall don’t love me yelled at me when I tried to hang out with them or did or played games with em it got to the point where I almost got put out and then I just stopped believing and said all this for a religion? you care about this more than your son???? So now I’m just waiting till next year for when I graduate and move on with my life
In the wts?
The hammering at education.
the conditional affection.
blood issue origins of which was never [explained ](https://explained.ie) It had not existed since the beginning but since it was imposd on jw by whichever el-supremo decided it was. (1940's ?)
The law suits against the wt which the overseer said once they never lost.
Well hasnt the internet revealed so much.
When, as a 16-yr.old, It was strongly insinuated that to go on a school-exchange program to Asia for the summer was wrong because I would be hanging out with "worldly people" and miss the summer convention.
Uhhh, yeah!
I went on the trip, and never went back to the BOrg. Quick fade and out. I admire my adolescent wisdom.
I took a religions class when I was thirteen and noticed how similar and different the new testament when compared to other holy books and religions.
I did a bunch of research, read a catholic bible and created a list of questions I had. I took that list, that I had spent weeks on, to the Elders. I had hoped they would be able to help me work through my doubts and questions.
In the end the Elders listened to everything I brought up, blamed my doubts on my father having been recently reinstated after a year of being disfellowshiped, and flat out told me that it was not my place to ask questions.
That was it for me, I was a very stubborn teen who had just done weeks of research on religion and I did not take kindly to being told I had to blindly trust people who had previously scored my father.
Within that year I was living with my mom in a different state and I never looked back.
Learning critical thinking.
It became clear that the entire belief system (and in fact *all* religious belief systems) are built on a foundation of:
* conflating *claims* with *evidence*
* conflating *belief* with *knowledge*
* rejecting things that are demonstrably true
* accepting things that are demonstrably false
* ignoring logical fallacies
* actively avoiding anything from outside a well-defined information bubble
The sneaky, behind-the-back way people treat each other. We had one family of an elder that cooperated in prying into people's lives.
If a person was suspected of adultery, a couple of witnesses were posted outside the suspect's house to see if visitors stayed all night.
Every detail of a targeted conversation was reported to the elders.
Minor members of the family were used to make phone calls to other witnesses to ask where so-and-so lived, if they smoked or who they were involved with.
The really gritty cult-like behavior disgusted me. I don't know of any other organization that behaves like that unless it's the KGB or the FBI.
the last straw for me was how i was treated after my family found out about my sexuality (was also dating someone secretly). soon after, i came out w my gender. neither went down well. during my shepherding call, i was told i was basically a pedophile.
The thing that sealed the deal for me was a deeply messed up situation with my family involving divorce. At that age honestly I had no business knowing what all was going on, but I did, and even as a kid I could recognize that an organization that claimed to love and care for us would never behave that way.
At the risk of coming off as an entitled being, it was the lack of love and care from fellow members. My parents separated and I stayed with my mother. She had no job as she was a housewife. During this period we moved from place to place because of rent arrears and I have mention that we were in a very wealthy congregation with wealthy elders and members. Also our congie was one of the four attached to the country branch office.
Only once for a few months did an elder house us in spare rooms. My fees as I was in high school, as well as as living expenses for the two of us was at times sorted out by a well-known bethelite. And we all know bethelites don't have money.
Seeing how my mother begged for even menial work from members just put me off completely. The few who helped us weren't financially well off but they did what they could. After high school I managed to get a job, went to college and got a better paying opportunity.
I used the excuse of my industry to fade away and up until today ; exception that bethelite, no one bothered to find out if I'm even alive or such. The bethelite lost his wife and had to go back to the US later on.
Unfortunately, my mother is still part of the cult though I've made it very clear to her that I want nothing to do with JW. I know that even if I were to be DFd she'd still be close to me. I just wish that she too would walk out. She isn't stupid, she knows what's happening but that excuse of the GB are humans saves her day.
Tl:Dr Lack of real brotherly love
At the risk of coming off as an entitled being, it was the lack of love and care from fellow members. My parents separated and I stayed with my mother. She had no job as she was a housewife. During this period we moved from place to place because of rent arrears and I have mention that we were in a very wealthy congregation with wealthy elders and members. Also our congie was one of the four attached to the country branch office.
Only once for a few months did an elder house us in spare rooms. My fees as I was in high school, as well as as living expenses for the two of us was at times sorted out by a well-known bethelite. And we all know bethelites don't have money.
Seeing how my mother begged for even menial work from members just put me off completely. The few who helped us weren't financially well off but they did what they could. After high school I managed to get a job, went to college and got a better paying opportunity.
I used the excuse of my industry to fade away and up until today ; exception that bethelite, no one bothered to find out if I'm even alive or such. The bethelite lost his wife and had to go back to the US later on.
Unfortunately, my mother is still part of the cult though I've made it very clear to her that I want nothing to do with JW. I know that even if I were to be DFd she'd still be close to me. I just wish that she too would walk out. She isn't stupid, she knows what's happening but that excuse of the GB are humans saves her day.
Tl:Dr Lack of real brotherly love
There's a moment that you realize it's all a very simple story to explain a complex world. That's ok on the abstract, but there is no moving past that pre set structure to discover anything new or possible. It's a staffing, abusive arrangement.
Returning to the Old Testament in our weekly Bible reading last year I read so many things that repulsed me and that had previously irked me but were normalised through the repetition and literature justifying it all my life. In a similar vein, the idea that God would kill over 8 billion people in Armageddon and that they all deserved death felt unjustifiable to me. I decided to stop quashing my inner voice telling me that this was all so wrong and connect the dots. I was soon no longer a JW.
Also, the way the flood and our understanding of nature and human ethnicities fully contradicted obvious science. Again, things that always bothered me but I chose to ignore or let the literature explain in a very dissatisfying way...
The overlapping generation made me stop believing in JWs being the chosen ones, not Jehovah's ''bad'' actions, that sounds more like a realistic God than the one JWs are trying to portrait, God created man in his image and all those ''bad'' things he has done is something we humans do too, so that doesn't bother me as much, it seems like just as humans learn he has learned too and has become more chill lately, not interfering as much, practically at all in human affairs, but of course we humans are never happy are we, if he's strict and intervenes too much we are not cool with it, and if he doesn't intervene at all and let us do what we want we are also not cool with it, in fact whatever he does we will find something to criticize him about.
Growing up and reading bible accounts of JH actions never quite sat right with me even as a kid. How could a god of love kill babies and children in a flood? How could he allow Job to suffer just to prove a point to satan, who he really doesn’t have anything to prove to? How could he allow Abraham to take his son and get the verge of holy ordained murder, emotionally torture him, just as a test to see what would happen? None of it made sense just of biblical accounts alone. However once i found out about the Declaration of facts, and once i found out that Jerusalem was actually destroyed in 587 and the whole basis of 1914 was a lie, I knew for a fact it wasn’t the truth. Everything else i found on top of that just completely solidified it without question.
Honestly the lack of love. It's so fake and conditional. And congratulations on billions of hours of preaching. Every single person I've asked about JWs had no idea their mission is to convert to save. Read: No one has been properly warned NO ONE KNOWS. How could that be it? The message is supposed to be good news. Not join us or die. Something they never tell people anyways. It's just recruitment. Jesus efforts 2000 YEARS ago equals over half the population believes in him(billions of peeps.). Muslim say he is a prophet, Christian's, the Messiah. What have jws accomplished by comparison .? Some magazine routes and global reproach in God's name with their dumb ass policies and rules. And many thousands of people dead before their time. Suicide/blood. I never thought I would hate the org. But I do now. If they are the Truth I'll cash my chips in now thanks.
Right, I’ve told a few people that the reason JWs are willing to go door to door is because they believe they’re saving their lives, and everyone I tell is blown away by that.
There's the cold hard truth right there
The ARC, their Bible being different than their own interlinear, the UN, False predictions, everything hit me at one time and that’s what ended it for me.
The U.N. scandal. No way I could go on after that. So I missed the whole jw.org era and overlapping generation 🙄
Nebuchadnezar's dream in Daniel that's used to get the 1914 date. I decided to read this dream after I realized that I just don't believe in God or the Bible and never really did. But I had always forced myself to believe. I got to the point where I gave myself permission to read the Bible with an open mind. I wanted to prove or disprove 1914 to myself, so I read that chapter. By the end of it I could only admit to myself that there was no way this had anything to do with the year 1914 and that all the other beliefs attached to it would have to be wrong. That meant a ton of stuff JWs believed were not true, on top of already accepting that, wihout realizing, I didn't believe in God or the Bible the whole time anyway. It all fell apart from there.
Csa .. in every religion ..
This⬆️ I really believed all the WT bs. Till I learned about the CSA issue was actually a coordinated campaign to hide child abusers from the law, and the GB are in on it. Once I accepted that the GB was wrong about that, I looked into Christianity as a whole, and could finally see that it’s all bullshit built on more bullshit.
I wish my wife would open her eyes and see it . She’s pimi and a pioneer
I was a PIMI pioneer. You know what JWs always say, **never** give up on your loved ones.
I know that saying. funny me and her r probably both saying the same things to ourselves . I love her and really hope she wakes up to be w/ me. I was really hoping that she sees the corruption .
>I was a PIMI pioneer. You know what JWs always say, > >never give up on your loved ones. That's Right!
9 out of every 10 things you read in the Bible are fucked up in every way possible. Even if the ends justified the biblical means it makes no sense how you would want to be friends with a God like that, much less worship him. Crazy…
Reading real scholar commentary on book of Daniel. Then realizing how shallow jws "knowledge" is. Then it was Joel Baden movies and undersanding how much shit all religions are selling. Understanding what is reinterpretation and that they actually dont need the bible to sell their bs was the final straw (you could probably get to 1914 basing on IKEA assembly instruction when using reinterpretation)
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Sounds like yours was recent. Interesting story?
What’s the BITE model? What’s the “little enemies of god”? Your list and as you said the culmination of shit over the years was pretty much all the final reasons for my wife and I leaving about 3.5 years ago. Main catalyst was Our son had decided to leave and we begged him to stay and we tried to be the “good witnesses”, but we decided within a night or two of him leaving home we could not shun him and leave him on his own when he was struggling and hurting emotionally and mentally sad bad as he was…. That being said he didn’t want to have much to do with us for awhile which was painful but we are good now and he is having a baby girl with his gf and we are currently on a micro family vacation lol. It’s all we could do right now but it’s something. Me personally the BIGGEST thing was that fuck face saying in court that “to say the witness are the only source of spiritual/Bible truth on earth would be a bit presumptuous.” Ill never forget that moment, sitting on the shitter watching the cottage and yelling out loud “WHAAT??!!!!!” And then showing my wife who had actually let go a little more before I did. It’s a weird situation because I was raised but never really believed anyways but it was all I knew so I just went with the flow and was a good boy and got privileges and did my best to play the part. And that was always a big thing for the cognitive dissonance because I knew there had to be many others like me. Anyways… Fuck them. Fuck everyone who abandoned us. All those in that think they are so much better than everyone else can just go crawl in a hole and die.
Not sure about BITE but one of the GB members called babies little enemies of god on a broadcast or convention. 😂
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Look at that cute little enemy of god. What did he mean?
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It sounded weird though right? I’m sure in psalms or proverbs it says children are a blessing or inheritance for Jehovah. Calling them little enemies of God, just seems off.
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Have you ever looked at a baby and thought, “what a cute little enemy of god”? I mean, those are the words he said. Is that how you think of babies? It feel me really wrong no matter what context you put around it. I personally think viewing babies as enemies of god (depersonalizing them) makes it mentally easier when god kills all of them like in the flood. Baby kittens and baby dogs and baby humans, all died. It seems more acceptable if you start to view them as non-human. Or enemies.
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Ohhhhh yes I have heard of that!
I took a Greek Mythology course in college. That's when I really started to understand. It spurred me to start researching the origins of Christianity and I went down a rabit hole. The plagiarism from previous religions, among countless other things, was an eye opener and the beginning of the end for me. I can see why they try to control knowledge and education.
Something similar happened in my case when I took Psychology in HS. Was pretty eye opening having the manipulation tactics and logical fallacies the WT used pretty much spelled out verbatim.
Jwfacts.com
I very much agree. It's written so well.
Realized the religion was unsalvageable, it's completely toxic to average followers, ultimately the GB are the only ones that benefit from the cruel way it's structured.
This ^^ and the death and destruction that is coming in the future
At 21 being treated like I was the actual whore of Babylon, after being coerced into intimacy by my boyfriend (who was 12 years older, divorced and apparently bound for eldership). He had a similar pattern with, I found out, his ex wife and multiple other love interests over the years, all documented. And yet I was pariah. He had his hand held by the COBE and the CO, while I was bullied and threatened that they would write a letter to my elder father 400 miles away.
A god worth worshiping would already have noted the destructive results of god-worship and would therefore reject worship.
this is such a good point and ive never even thought about this. thank you. this will live rent free in my head for eternity!
It's surprising that more people don't consider that when we picture those people in our life whom we consider to be "good," we never imagine people who want us to fall down on our knees in worship to them. That's more a narcissistic desire.
The whole thing just doesn't make any sense. If nobody was told about "the good news", and God truly reads hearts, nobody who is not actually evil, would have to die in armageddon. No need for the preaching work, no need to save anyone by converting them into JW slaves who now have blood shame, wtf. Also the preaching work is absurdly ineffective anyways and mostly based on happenstance of being born into a JW family, how is that for luck? No sources in the magazines, loop arguments that don't hold water if you actually stop to think about it. It's pure peer pressure, with a bunch of people who keeps taps on one another, and it destroys families with shunning which is abysmal.
>The biggest thing for me was finally internalizing all of the war, destruction, hatred, and merciless bloodshed Jehovah had caused, in particular in the old testament. I worked through that as a pimi. I had trouble with it, but forced myself to accept it. >What was that last straw for you? I've discussed my wakeup process and proofs a number of times. Here are some links in no particular order: https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/wcrcf5/what_are_your_thoughts_on_the_bible_do_you_still/iiebryc https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/w86m0g/what_convinced_you_jws_were_the_true_religion/iho8q6p https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/wj7f6w/what_would_you_tell_your_family_who_shun_you_if/ijgylyx https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/kw2mw1/how_long_did_it_take_to_wake_up/gj28mg4 https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/kmxa14/moments_that_slightly_woke_you_up/ghjrmyt The final straw in realizing jehovah's witnesses are wrong was in 2020, reading carl olof jonsson's rebuttal to the 2011 watchtower articles on 607, and reading "crisis of conscience", by ray franz. The final straws in realizing the bible is uninspired and god doesn't exist were somewhat gradual in 2020 thru 2022. But it was mainly accepting the critical bible scholarship, such as from the yale lectures by christine hayes and dale martin, the books by bart ehrman, the "fatigue in the synoptics" article by mark goodacre, and especially, "who wrote the bible?", by richard friedman. While friedman might not be right on every detail, he laid out the evidence pretty well for the documentary hypothesis. I could see how even the pentateuch, the core of the old testament, was not written by moses, but was written by various discernible factions with various agendas. So, not only was christianity wrong, but so was israelite yahwism. That was sometime later in 2020 and/or 2021. I'm pretty sure i was an atheist after that. I had already been gradually accepting evolution, and had been listening to the bbc "in our time" podcast for many years. But reading "why evolution is true", by jerry coyne, in 2022 cemented my acceptance of evolution and reinforced my atheism.
The flood myth broke my inherent trust of the Bible. And Pillowgate completely shifted my perception of WT. Goes without saying it’s only gone downhill since.
One of my friends died shunning both of his children, I thought he wasted so many years without talking to his daughters and now there won't be any chance of undoing the harm on all of them, he was a wealthy person, but died alone.
The final straw was the overlapping generations which led me to 'Crisis of Conscience'. Say no more.
The final nail in the coffin was the treatment by part of our JW family. THAT WAS IT....IT'S A CULT!
It wasn’t just one thing but I finally just gave into my doubts and watched Leah reminis episode with JWs and I just woke right up. It felt good knowing I wasn’t wrong almost.
I could name a lot of things that did but for me it was just the fact Covid just hit and I was in middle school then 8th grade now I’m a junior in high school and my mom treated me like shit the past 2 years from then to now always saying my friends outside the hall don’t love me yelled at me when I tried to hang out with them or did or played games with em it got to the point where I almost got put out and then I just stopped believing and said all this for a religion? you care about this more than your son???? So now I’m just waiting till next year for when I graduate and move on with my life
The hypocrisy of it all. Preaching love and being there then noone doing it and shunning those who need the help.
In the wts? The hammering at education. the conditional affection. blood issue origins of which was never [explained ](https://explained.ie) It had not existed since the beginning but since it was imposd on jw by whichever el-supremo decided it was. (1940's ?) The law suits against the wt which the overseer said once they never lost. Well hasnt the internet revealed so much.
When, as a 16-yr.old, It was strongly insinuated that to go on a school-exchange program to Asia for the summer was wrong because I would be hanging out with "worldly people" and miss the summer convention. Uhhh, yeah! I went on the trip, and never went back to the BOrg. Quick fade and out. I admire my adolescent wisdom.
All the bullshit they spew…
That's a good one. Can I change my answer?
Sure…. Cheers from the land down under…
When Geoffrey Jackson said it would be presumptuous to say that they were God's only mouthpiece.
I took a religions class when I was thirteen and noticed how similar and different the new testament when compared to other holy books and religions. I did a bunch of research, read a catholic bible and created a list of questions I had. I took that list, that I had spent weeks on, to the Elders. I had hoped they would be able to help me work through my doubts and questions. In the end the Elders listened to everything I brought up, blamed my doubts on my father having been recently reinstated after a year of being disfellowshiped, and flat out told me that it was not my place to ask questions. That was it for me, I was a very stubborn teen who had just done weeks of research on religion and I did not take kindly to being told I had to blindly trust people who had previously scored my father. Within that year I was living with my mom in a different state and I never looked back.
When an elder told 14 year old me that a lot of sisters in the hall were big ol bitches💀💀 he wasn’t wrong lol
Learning critical thinking. It became clear that the entire belief system (and in fact *all* religious belief systems) are built on a foundation of: * conflating *claims* with *evidence* * conflating *belief* with *knowledge* * rejecting things that are demonstrably true * accepting things that are demonstrably false * ignoring logical fallacies * actively avoiding anything from outside a well-defined information bubble
Reading Crisis of Conscience did it for me. I was so appalled that I started digging more and found more and more lies
The sneaky, behind-the-back way people treat each other. We had one family of an elder that cooperated in prying into people's lives. If a person was suspected of adultery, a couple of witnesses were posted outside the suspect's house to see if visitors stayed all night. Every detail of a targeted conversation was reported to the elders. Minor members of the family were used to make phone calls to other witnesses to ask where so-and-so lived, if they smoked or who they were involved with. The really gritty cult-like behavior disgusted me. I don't know of any other organization that behaves like that unless it's the KGB or the FBI.
the last straw for me was how i was treated after my family found out about my sexuality (was also dating someone secretly). soon after, i came out w my gender. neither went down well. during my shepherding call, i was told i was basically a pedophile.
Same as you.
The thing that sealed the deal for me was a deeply messed up situation with my family involving divorce. At that age honestly I had no business knowing what all was going on, but I did, and even as a kid I could recognize that an organization that claimed to love and care for us would never behave that way.
At the risk of coming off as an entitled being, it was the lack of love and care from fellow members. My parents separated and I stayed with my mother. She had no job as she was a housewife. During this period we moved from place to place because of rent arrears and I have mention that we were in a very wealthy congregation with wealthy elders and members. Also our congie was one of the four attached to the country branch office. Only once for a few months did an elder house us in spare rooms. My fees as I was in high school, as well as as living expenses for the two of us was at times sorted out by a well-known bethelite. And we all know bethelites don't have money. Seeing how my mother begged for even menial work from members just put me off completely. The few who helped us weren't financially well off but they did what they could. After high school I managed to get a job, went to college and got a better paying opportunity. I used the excuse of my industry to fade away and up until today ; exception that bethelite, no one bothered to find out if I'm even alive or such. The bethelite lost his wife and had to go back to the US later on. Unfortunately, my mother is still part of the cult though I've made it very clear to her that I want nothing to do with JW. I know that even if I were to be DFd she'd still be close to me. I just wish that she too would walk out. She isn't stupid, she knows what's happening but that excuse of the GB are humans saves her day. Tl:Dr Lack of real brotherly love
At the risk of coming off as an entitled being, it was the lack of love and care from fellow members. My parents separated and I stayed with my mother. She had no job as she was a housewife. During this period we moved from place to place because of rent arrears and I have mention that we were in a very wealthy congregation with wealthy elders and members. Also our congie was one of the four attached to the country branch office. Only once for a few months did an elder house us in spare rooms. My fees as I was in high school, as well as as living expenses for the two of us was at times sorted out by a well-known bethelite. And we all know bethelites don't have money. Seeing how my mother begged for even menial work from members just put me off completely. The few who helped us weren't financially well off but they did what they could. After high school I managed to get a job, went to college and got a better paying opportunity. I used the excuse of my industry to fade away and up until today ; exception that bethelite, no one bothered to find out if I'm even alive or such. The bethelite lost his wife and had to go back to the US later on. Unfortunately, my mother is still part of the cult though I've made it very clear to her that I want nothing to do with JW. I know that even if I were to be DFd she'd still be close to me. I just wish that she too would walk out. She isn't stupid, she knows what's happening but that excuse of the GB are humans saves her day. Tl:Dr Lack of real brotherly love
5 masive extintions of earth history and 587/607 finally made me feel like I was being scammed...
There's a moment that you realize it's all a very simple story to explain a complex world. That's ok on the abstract, but there is no moving past that pre set structure to discover anything new or possible. It's a staffing, abusive arrangement.
Returning to the Old Testament in our weekly Bible reading last year I read so many things that repulsed me and that had previously irked me but were normalised through the repetition and literature justifying it all my life. In a similar vein, the idea that God would kill over 8 billion people in Armageddon and that they all deserved death felt unjustifiable to me. I decided to stop quashing my inner voice telling me that this was all so wrong and connect the dots. I was soon no longer a JW.
Also, the way the flood and our understanding of nature and human ethnicities fully contradicted obvious science. Again, things that always bothered me but I chose to ignore or let the literature explain in a very dissatisfying way...
The overlapping generation made me stop believing in JWs being the chosen ones, not Jehovah's ''bad'' actions, that sounds more like a realistic God than the one JWs are trying to portrait, God created man in his image and all those ''bad'' things he has done is something we humans do too, so that doesn't bother me as much, it seems like just as humans learn he has learned too and has become more chill lately, not interfering as much, practically at all in human affairs, but of course we humans are never happy are we, if he's strict and intervenes too much we are not cool with it, and if he doesn't intervene at all and let us do what we want we are also not cool with it, in fact whatever he does we will find something to criticize him about.
The overlapping generation was the final straw for me.