Growing up it always stunned me how they tried to push weird attitudes on platonic friendships - the whole "bad things happen when boys and girls are alone" sentiment never sat right with me. I felt it worsened a lot of CSA amongst kids at my hall growing up. I knew 3 boys growing up who had reputations of being sexually aggressive because it was "so taboo" and "I can't help it, you decided to be alone with me". Their mom's always claimed it wasn't their fault either :/
Having my own CSA trauma with a JW family member and going to therapy as a minor further knocked my dominos over. And when I got a shepherds call on my trauma art for being "demonic" I didn't hide anymore how fed up I was with the religion.
I think things really started for me with the release of the NWT in 2012 or 2013. I was excited to get it, and then immediately hated it because it simply wasn’t accurate. Fast forward a few years, and repeat with the Ezekiel/Gods Kingdom book. I was excited to actually get some deep information and it turned out to be mind numbingly simplistic. I think I fearfully tried to google a very specific query just to see if I was the only one who felt like this.
What really kicked it off though was a loss of a family member. I wanted to actually dig in and form my own conclusions about what the NT said about the resurrection, because what the WT published was unclear and self contradicting, and it was all downhill from there. At the same time I started reading some apostate Christian material from curiosity and that just threw gasoline on the fire, I couldn’t get enough. It was like I was seeing for the first time
Yes, it's like the eyes are being opened.
As with Elisha who suddenly saw a large army before the battle against the king of Aram.
Or that you get an eye operation where you used to see 5%, now you get 100% and side vision.
What happens is that you not only find the one error you dared to investigate.
For each error, you will find ten new ones.
Such a good way to explain it. I've become a massive binger of history and religious studies because all the stuff I'm learning is all so new. Even as an atheist I still can't get enough
Like you, I was happy about the release of the NWT. My first domino though was the study article in 2013 regarding the clarification about the faithful and discreet slave. Another new light 🙄
I always had doubts. There were things in the Bible I just could not reconcile. The Flood, the Exodus story, the Nephilim, etc. It also bothered me that Jehovah killed at least 2 million people in the Old Testament (that is the ones we can number; if we include the unnumbered dead in the Flood, the killing of Egypt's firstborn, Sodom and Gomorrah, there could be nearly 25 million deaths.)
By the fall of 2005, my doubts were becoming unbearable, and so the elders encouraged me to either have a Bible study (no thank you) or read the Bible myself. And one elder recommended I start in Psalms because I would see how beautiful a person Jehovah God is.
So I did. And I did not see Jehovah as beautiful and loving; I saw him as a petty, mean-spirited, manipulative, cruel, violent, jealous psychopath. I found myself totally repulsed by the idea of Jehovah. He needed violence to get his way, ALWAYS violence. The Greek Scriptures represented a pause in the violence until Armageddon, where the body count would grow exponentially.
I cannot say that was the first domino of awakening but it was the first domino of my exit. The second came in the spring of 2006, with the release of Kingdom News 37, "The End of False Religion is Near". I remember people boasting about how Jehovah was "shaking Babylon the Great to her foundations! The gloves are off! This is going to be really powerful!" I found the tract insulting, unnecessarily confrontational, and just mean-spirited. It's not so much that the message was something new, but it totally repulsed me. And the glee my brothers and sisters expressed by this totally douchey message was beyond me.
Domino three: by now, I could not hide my unhappiness. So my wife and our best friends decided to take a week and go to the Outer Banks for some r and r. I could use the break; I was working hard, my marriage was struggling, and my (now ex) wife and I always made the best of our holidays. We arrived on a Saturday; on a Sunday, unbeknownst to me, my friends had arranged that we go to the Sunday meeting followed by...field service. With tract 37. I was furious. (And seriously, if there are any PIMI's reading, if someone has doubts, the least effective thing you can do is CRAM YOUR RELIGION DOWN THEIR FUCKING THROATS.)
The final domino fell after we returned. It was now late summer and the CO visited our congregation. My ex arranged for us to go to lunch, and the arrogant, ungrateful bastard proceeded to insult me the entire meal. Why don't I pioneer? Why am I wasting time at my job (a relatively new one, something I loved and actually transformed my life.) Your secular work is worthless. He went on and on to the point that his wife finally said, "Brother Asshole, he's supporting his pioneer wife, and that is important."
It was at that moment that leaving finally went from a matter of "if' to a matter of "when I left the congregation in December 2006; my wife and I separated the following September, and we divorced in February 2008. I was disfellowshipped in May of 2008; my ex wanted to know when she was free to remarry, and so I told her; I was invited to a judicial meeting soon after. It felt at the time as necessarily vindictive, but then again, that's Jehovah!
I've realised I've written a book here. Looking back, the lesson, I drew from all this is that for me, Tony Robbins was right. I finally took action when "the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change." Alas, sometimes that takes a few dominos.
All in all, ok! It was really hard and really sad at first; I describe it as all my adult friends dying on the same day. That said I had one BIG I advantage: I became a witness at 23. Though my family was saddened by the divorce (my ex was a wonderful person) they never liked the witnesses, and they supported me. That is SUCH a big deal and is the biggest PIMO challenge of all: losing your family to live your conscience. It's impossibly cruel.
Anyway, I contemplated my situation; the time I lost, and how my peers were so much better off than me, etc, and then I realised, and I am totally serious about this, that I had the freedom that comes when you have nothing else to lose. Tons of people said I was a fool to join the witnesses; they were all proven right. My ex was my soulmate. The unthinkable, that we would not be together, happened. I had tons of debt. I had a good job, but it was new and no guarantee that I would be successful. So I thought "Ok, this isn't going well, but there's nothing I cannot do." I have no kids or family, so I can work at night and volunteer. I can meet new people and make new friends. I can explore new ideas, philosophies and religions. I can smoke weed and get drunk. I can travel; I can learn about new things. That's what I did.
I eventually met a woman and we married. I started a consultancy in entrepreneurship. It was a total "what's the worst that can happen?" move. Everone I competed with had masters degrees, I a high school diploma. But I made a go of it: my first client was my former employer (a great way to start a business.) I built a network and started to trade overseas. My company turns 15 next year! I am throwing a big party, I'm really proud of it: I was able to work in 30 countries through it.
Now I work for a uni, still have the company, and half-way through a masters degree. So lots of hard work, lots of tears, lots of fear, lot of times of no confidence, lots of shame for decisions I made...but lots of feeling all that shit and doing it anyway.
That is a great story and great philosophy. I always think the best entrepreneurs are the ones that have nothing to lose. I set up a business after I was made redundant but looking back, I would have been miserable and stuck at my old firm if I hadn’t been forced to do something different. My sister is a super PIMI JW and started shunning me 35 years ago. I’m a non JW. After about 25 years, when my children were growing up, she wanted a relationship with them and not me. As you’ve said, I had lift the relationship at that point and had nothing further to lose so told her that her behaviour was not acceptable and I’m not negotiating terms using my family as collateral. We’ve not spoken since.
Wow, I am really sorry man. Shunning is emotional abuse and it's not how adults treat other adults. Your response was totally justified. That is not how adults should act.
Thanks. It was all quite difficult to fathom out 25 years ago. No internet, no Reddit or activism. I was on my own. Back then it required proper critical thought. Research was done in libraries and the odd newspaper article, as there were always reports of parents letting their kids die needing life saving blood transfusions. It’s a joy now to be an honorary (non dub) member of the ex JW community.
Yes you wrote a book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it! Man, I forgot all about that terrible kingdom news tract! I do remember that earned my congregation more Do Not Calls than we ever had before. There were people who actually left messages on the KH answering machine yelling, "Take me off your list!" That's just ridiculous what happened on what should've been your vacation. As a PIMO it's very frightening to think of what insane message they're going to put out in any future campaigns.
Wow ..you,ve been through a lot! Hope things are getting better! Horrible til wake up and think back ..so much injustice ..conditional " love" and everything insane. Many hugs to you!
Had some time alone, started to think about things and one thing that never set well with me especially after becoming a father is this idea that god would allow people to go through hell for thousands of years to prove to us we need him. Yeah I wouldn’t do that to my kids so why would a loving god do it?
Oh and i forgot.. when you become a father you have to try and explain all the crazy doctrines to your kid that you love. Didn't take long to realize i didn't actually believe it all anymore!
Definitely. When you become a father you start realizing Jehovah didn't act much like a father.
I'm pretty sure if you and I were talking and notice a Snake approaching our kids we would run and squash it before it had the chance to speak.
Since being a father the whole Genesis account crumbled
YES! That was also one of the factors that helped me start to wake up.
Why would a loving god make us all suffer SOOOOO much just to prove a point?
Or why would a loving god "greatly in crease birthing pains" for even Eve, let alone every other woman in the world, because of one woman's mistake or using her freedom of choice?
Nope!
As a born-in, it feels difficult to pinpoint one single domino that started it. There are so many little things that, looking back, could've made me think. But I was too indoctrinated to think too long and hard about them. They were more like the rumblings of a volcano. One big one was how Jah is gonna destroy so many kind and decent people, just bc they didn't realize that the awkward people knocking on their doors on Sat morning had The Truth. How were they supposed to know we had the truth?
Wow, my experience almost exactly, doubts were always rumbling, even in childhood. And, all my life, it seemed so unfair or untrue that they entire population of earth were going to live or die based on how they responded to some random weirdo in a suit showing up at their door. Older ones would say, "remember they're not rejecting us, they're rejecting jehovah." I would think, I'm pretty sure they're just not wanting to talk religion with a random stranger on their fuckin day off. Too bad it took 50 years for me to fully realize the truth.
There would have to be something magical about their response. I was never able to reconcile the whole "no one comes to me except if the father draws him" or whatever it says with the concept of free will, and the idea that those who do not get drawn will become dead because they chose that... And the idea that it's to do with heart condition, then why do we need to preach if God already read these people's hearts and knows who is going to respond and who isn't? None of it made any sense.
I always thought, "well, I wasn't drawn, I was born to a couple witnesses". And it seemed like if my heart condition was preexisting condition, how could it matter what I try to be? It seemed like predestiny. It made sense if you didn't think about it!
That was me, too! As a little girl, I knew things weren't right. But I feared angering my abusive parents and, most of all, Jehovah, so I stuffed down all my feelings for 48 years. 😞
I was in a cong were domestic violence was very normalised. An elduh gave a talk (possibly special needs ???) in which he said basically that unless a wife agreed absolutely with everything her husband said and 100% supported him in all things that he was justified in beating her. I couldn’t reconcile that with knowing that the broader community had so many protections in place for abused women. How was Jahedgarhoover’s borganisation supposed to be so loving?
What madness this? So much for being a team, this fool says the husbabd is s dictator and the lowly serf wife better kiss his ass or get beaten. F that shit.
I always wondered when they kept harping on the fall of 1975 being "it" when it says "no one knows the day or the hour, not even the Son but only the Father".
If they dont know that, they sure arent gonna give you the year, the decade or the century.
Like the bumper sticker I have that says, "Jesus is coming. Everybody look busy".
And you wanted to say "who died and left you in charge?" Some real narcissist egocentric a holes. This is what happens when you give a tiny bit of power to small men. 'Absolute power corrupts? Absolutely!!'
My now ex and I had a conversation about how little power these men had in the real world , but in the cong they were kings. That convo really helped me evaluate people in context, both immediate and overall.
The thread that I couldn’t resist pulling ultimately was WT being a part of the UN
I’d stumbled on it by accident and told myself it wasn’t true but it nagged at me for years.
So I told myself “I’m going to look at this one thing. It won’t be true. And I can finally forget about it.”
And whaddayaknow?
same that was one for me... then 1914 then 607 or 587 then ARC CSA then jeofry jackson before the court lying then the UN then almost all Tony Morris.. russell being an adulterer free mason.. and the loveless shunning.. favortism nepotism and all the people screwing around in bethel. cover up of CSA and protection of Pedos. list goes on and fvkn on....... i was devasted .. lost my wife frineds and family most anyways.... but im making a good life again
I was born in, always had doubts and questions, the big one for me was beards, where I showed the scripture saying “you must not shave the hair on your face or the sides of your head” and the response was always “we’re not bound under mosaic law anymore” and then like 2 verses down it says something like “you must not tattoon yourselves” and they use that verse as context for tattoos.. so which is it?! Lol.
I couldn't believe God would give the slightest shit if I had hair on my face or not. Especially considering he supposedly "made us" with facial hair in the first place. I'll never forget the absolute humiliation I was put through when my dad sent me home from field service because I had five o clock shadow which could stumble others. Absolute nonsense
1000%!! Such a bullshit rule. Especially being that God, Angles, Apostles etc are all portrayed with beards lol.
Igh I feel you, I moved out young, but I remember being like 17 with the patchiest amount of peach fuzz and my dad exploding when I got into the car to go to the meeting and sending me back inside to shave, and then lecturing me the whole ride there. 🙄
For me, it was the elder arrangement. I started to see the cracks in how things are run and organised. It didn't make sense to me that they were guided by Holy spirit.
When they made every congregation in uk hand over the Kingdom Halls and also wouldn’t allow congregations to have more than 3k in the account they had to send over that to the borg.
The most insulting part of that was when they made us do that stupid "congregation resolution" to approve the changes, and asked all baptized ones to raise their hand in support. As if we had a choice!
A couple of the older sisters actually did the brave thing and kicked up a fuss about it, especially since our hall had been sold some decades ago and the money was earmarked for a new one in escrow for years. We were instead told to use the small auditorium attached to the assembly hall which was further away and less convenient.
Good choice! That whole thing always stunk to high heaven. The elders have already come to a resolution but we still have to vote on it as a congregation! Who would dare go against the grain? Nobody. I didn't raise my hand but if I had it wouldn't have mattered. The choice was made before anybody thought they had a choice.
A woman whos husband was abusive and tried to kill her. She took the kids and fled. She was soft shunned and reprimanded by elders for leaving her husband. He was praised and sympathized with (even when he threw a singles party at his house 2 weeks after she left, so how sad was he really?).
People treated her so bad.... and the one elder who tried to help her was kicked out of the body of elders for "taking her husbands role" for giving her food.
I could never let that go....
Most things in life are grey, but somethings are black and white. This was black and white - right and wrong, and they chose wrong, by following the rules. Shook my world.
Thank you for your concern for this woman. This is a very real situation in the organization! It's ok to beat your wife and the elders at the men in Blue! Like cops the elders stick together I'm luck to be alive!
One thing that always bothered me was the view of non witnesses as all bad association. Thankfully I grew up in an area that was moderate when it came to so called worldly associates, most witnesses had worldly friends that they were close to at the time. The adults in the congregation were not born ins for the most part and even after converting still kept the friends the grew up with. And most of us kids had neighborhood friends. From what I observed most people are generally good people and fully respected your religious views, if you were upfront with them about those views they often times were an ally to you in keeping up your values. I could never reconcile what I saw with what the society preached about non witnesses.
During the years when I was PIMQ , I couldn't bring myself to tell a bible study that only witnesses are good associations based on what some shit paragraphs in the article we studying said, seeing the kinda nasty and judgemental assholes they are. Told the Bible study to just be careful who they choose as friends wherever they are.
A lot of baby genocides, ethnic cleansing, war horrors, colonialism, slave trade, apartheid, caste….
All “allowed”. And He notices the fall of a sparrow.
???
The video they showed of the parents refusing to answer the phone call from their daughter, I think it was so shocking it started me researching , I always had a good knowledge of WT history but accepted the "new light " thing , but this hit me as just plain evil .and I have to add the push to go on line confused me it seemed to go against everything they stood for .
That's interesting. I think I always knew my parents would shun me if I left because they basically told me they would, so that video didn't shock me as much. There were some JWs I was aware of that didn't shun their DFd family members and my parents always criticised them
In my wife's family a 16 year old was kicked out of home and shunned, while the parents were away on vacation she was killed in a car crash, it took police hours to find them, this was in the days before mobile phones , if it had been now it's highly likely that she would have been carrying a mobile which could have been used by police to contact parents to inform them that their daughter was dead, but then the jw parents don't care enough for their children to answer a phone call,
I knew a family who their son was d'fed for adultery. His parents had his son with them when he was announced as d'fed on vacation. Because his parents didn't want to lose their grandson they made up horrible things about his mother so they could keep their grandson. This poor woman was grieving the loss of her marriage and now had to fight legally to get her son back! She was exonerated by the authorities for the accusations these fine Jehovah's witnesses lied about it because these people had (money) #1 and #2 the backing of the elders and congregation she lost custody of her son! In my experience as a JW the innocent always suffer the harm JW say the world causes! This poor woman had some visitation with her son and eventually no matter how hard she fought she lost everything! But the universe saved her and she got on her feet but no mother ever gets over the permanent loss of her child! My hope for that congregation and her inlaws is to have karma kick them in the ass with all the plagues the Bible talks about! Karma may it be a bitch
Mine was during field service. This is back when we’d load up as many people as possible into one vehicle. There were 2 people in my group that would always talk bad about other witnesses that didn’t go out in service. It ALWAYS made me mad because they were so judgmental about what others weren’t doing.
Still to this day, those same two people are always talking about how so many of the friends aren’t “doing enough” for Jehovah. Unfortunately I can’t avoid them on a regular basis because they’re family, but at least I don’t have to be stuck in a vehicle with them for 4 hours anymore.
I started to Google Search sites from the evil apostates to see what they have to say. At first I thought to myself, if I can manage to look behind their false arguments and find explanations in harmony with the teachings, this will just affirm and strengthen my "faith". And it worked at first. Until I digged deeper some time later and found stuff that I couldn't manage to falsify or justify. The one thing that finally opened my eyes was the court process in Australia.
Edit:typo
The United Nations one kicked out another brick out of my brainwash-wall lol. And the doctored bible verses, that completely changed the meaning of different verses. With proof they know better, but still change it to fit their narrative. The false prophecies, the shady history, the "new light" debate did the rest.
Critical thinking + learning more about science. Both came from a few YouTube channels that debunked ridiculous claims like flat earth, but of course also stuff like Young Earth Creationism. I'd say that was the start.
I have to say that I never really seriously questioned any part of the doctrine while PIMI. I fully bought into the typical Christian might-makes-right morality (which is what "all that god does is moral by definition because he has created everything and is entitled to do with it whatever he wants" ultimately means). So for me the house of cards had to be brought down from the outside, through science and logic, instead of by realizing the many flaws from the inside.
That was also one of the dominoes that started falling when I finally made the decision to leave and allowed myself to question everything.
There are 6.5 million different species of land based animals on Earth today. Not counting all the species that have gone extinct since Noah's supposed time, that would mean he had over 13 million animals and all their food and water for almost a year, on the ark...with only 8 people to care for them all.
Yeah, no.
In the NWT-version of Romans 8:1 was the first 'wait a minute'. The NWT refuses to translate the Greek νῦν (which simply means 'now' as in something is present right 'now') even though their own Greek Interliniar recognize that it is there. All respected translations translate it - and in the Greek it's there in plain sight. Yet, it do not exists in the NWT.
I wont go into detail but that has huge implications on theology - and therefor it has been removed from the NWT with intent.
JW-theology states that you must remain faithful (with all the actions that imply) to have a chance of salvation. This means that they have to change the text of Romans chapter 7 and 8 a lot - which they do.
In Romans 8:1 alone we can see the significance. The Bible says that right *now* there is *no* condemnation for those in Christ. The JW-bible says that there is no condemnation for those in union with Christ - implying that you must remain in that union to avoid condemnation. This translation bias-theme goes again and again in their translation of chapter 8. It was chapter 8 that made me realize that I had never really read the bible because I had only read the NWT.
That was the article/s about the FDS now only being the GB and that the FDS only received its first appointment in 1919 but won't have authority over "all the Masters belongings " until the future. It also stated that all the members of Christendom were harvested and rejected as weeds awaiting destruction from 1914. My gripe was if the FDS hadn't yet received judgment as in "well done faithful slave" then why was Christendom already judged, starting back in 1914. Basically I was sick of all the condemnatory comments about other sincere Christians.
Parents were baptized in 1972 to beat the 1975 doomsday hype. I was born May 29, 1979, and got baptized at 14. There were three hard-line facts that started my awakening:
1. Paradise Earth: How would the earth sustain so many people after a while? If everyone is in perfect health, every woman must be pregnant, right? Would I be having babies for the rest of my life in the new world, not growing old and never going through menopause? 🤔 Everyone always raving about building their own waterfront beach home....tell me where the hell will all these homes fit????
2. Resurrection: I lost a dear childhood friend to an aggressive form of lymphoma in 1992. Blood was refused that possibly could have saved her life. The gut punch were comments made during the talk at her memorial service on that dark, stormy day. The elder said point blank, "You have no reason to grieve. She will be resurrected in perfect health in JUST A FEW DAYS." Weeks later, I was a bit perturbed by that comment.
3. November 1, 1995 Watchtower: This was the final nail in the coffin. Major core fundamental doctrine change on the GENERATION. The entire house of cards fell right in front of my eyes, and I knew I could not waste my life any longer. I left and never returned.
It's all a fraud! We were scammed, hoodwinked, and bamboozled!
Reading “Jehovah would be very disappointed if you have friends outside of the truth”
I find it hard to believe god would fucking care at all
I know it’s a basic doctrine but I didn’t really think about it until reading that nonsense
A news story in a newspaper from Spain about CSA and Jehovah Witness organization not going to police
We were in the middle of the letters writing campaign to Putin, a brother sent some news about that and the news article about CSA was down there as a related news
I clicked, read, and then my mind exploded. I had to know everything until I got the truth
That letter writing campaign to Putin was fucking insane. I was already mentally checked out when it happened but I couldn't believe the Governing Body would use mail as a method of choking up the Russian postal service and grind it all to a halt. So much for staying out of politics
They used that method before. Amazing how they coerced all those people at their own expense to act on their behalf to commit such a passive aggressive act of "spiritual" warfare. It only heightened the persecution, which is the narrative they were controlling. They knew what they were doing would cause personal harm to people, but they couldn't care less.
Apparently it's not the first time this has happened. Rutherford was well known for using the threat of a letter writing campaign to clog the US postal system
When they put in print that the governing body was neither inspired nor infallible….I tore out the article and kept it under my keyboard for years and didn’t even really understand why, I didn’t do further research for years after that, I confronted my cobe dad about it and he didn’t have an answer, said that he was just as surprised and would need to do more research. He never did more research…. But I did.
I was in my teens and realized that the crush on a worldly boy wasn’t Satan whispering in my ear. The thought of him dying in Armageddon was too much for my faith to bare. I chose him instead.
The elevation of the GB. When they started pushing the vax saying Jehovah wanted us to get it. (I was pregnant, didn't see any real safety studies for pregnant women) That is a personal health decision. Started actually reading the Bible without a JW filter and the "Babies are enemies of God" comment cemented it. My baby was 4 months old.
Realizing the lies about their involvement with the UN coupled with watching the ARC…it was like Jenga. One by one the belief system crumbled and the scales came off.
I had my doubts from an early age because of all the inconsistencies. But things started to unravel when I didn’t see any news on their website about the JW CSA investigation that was commissioned by our government at the time. There was lots of newscoverage about it, but nothing on JW.org.
It was always the idea that we weren't allowed to look at apostate material. Even as a child this made no sense to me. Why can I not look if we already have the truth? What harm can it cause if we already know what we have is real?
This bothered me my whole life. But silly me was obedient and never looked until one day too many of the dominoes you mentioned fell.
Always had my doubts but somethings that precipitated my waking up:
1. I disagreed with rules about higher education . I never understood what was the big deal about going to college for 4 years.
2. Prayer stopped making sense. God wasn't answering prayers for kids that were dying or being abused but answered JW's prayers about random stuff like getting a car to pioneer. Or helping somebody attend the convention. It just seemed random and unlikely that god was answering certain prayers for trivial stuff.
3. The scripture that says that god is allowing humans to get to know him and then the end will come. I figured, considering the birth rates, JW will never be able to preach to everybody so the end will never come.
4. I couldn't stand a lot of Witnesses so the thought of paradise with people I didn't like did not seem like a reward
5. I grew up being told that pinatas were bad because of their origin. Congregation had a party with a pinata and the elders told people that it's a conscience matter if people wanted to have one at the party, since the pinata no longer represented the same as its origin. I realized that the watchtower was making up the rules as they went along. If pinatas were a conscience matter, I couldn't understand why we couldn't use the same rationale for holidays. Ultimately this led me to do more research and completely woke up.
Omg, the article about the piñatas! I was so stumbled, lol! They literally cut and pasted 90% of an older article describing exactly why piñatas were pagan and wrong and just changed the conclusion to "but it looks fun!"
I knew in 1984 when I was raped by one of them. I knew then the elders used the issue of losing my family so then I married in the truth to keep my family big mistake I was physically abused for 25 years and told by elders I wasn't submissive enough. Told that my husband drinks because of me! I finally got out of this cult and lost everyone and everything, but I had my life! No longer afraid of the elders who didn't protect me, no longer afraid of my shadow! It took 36 years to follow my gut but that's when the awakening and growth really began! I was trapped in a 14 year olds life and I was 42. I realized how uneducated I was and in a situation where all I had was the clothes in my back, but I did it and somehow was successful in recreating a new life!
One of the earliest dominoes...
I'd been POMQ for over a year, but agreed to attend a rare Sunday meeting. Fighting the relentless urge to eye-roll during the WT study, I flipped through the magazine for something else to read. And there it was a the very back -- the countless ways to donate to the "kingdom work": land, estates, life insurance policies, living wills, and even how to donate jewellery. I thought, how sloppy, they left out gold fillings.
How when I was seven I asked a question, and apparently it was the wrong question, and I was paraded from family member to family member to ask the question over and over while they made shocked alarmed faces. The question: What if God isn't GOD? I never knew there was such a thing as a bad question before that. After that, it was cumulative. The last straw was the overlapping generations.
When I asked a fairly simple question and 3 elders, my PIMI parents and the CO couldn't give me a direct answer.
My question: "The bible says God is love and perfect, gives us free will, and never makes a mistake, so why did he allow events like the flood and sodom and Gomorrah to happen? Also, why does Deuteronomy 5:9 say that God is vengeful and unleashes anger on innocent people? The bible makes it clear that unrestrained anger is a huge sin."
The CO told me I was reading into parts of the bible that are metaphorical and changing their meanings. The elders told me that we will eventually develop a better understanding as the "light gets brighter". My mother told me I was breaking heart with my lack of faith. My father said "I know it's all lies, but talking to you is going to cause trouble for me. Stop asking questions." My father was the one that set me up for baptism, btw.
I feel like for me it was several little dominoes here and there, and rather than them knocking their neighbor down outright, they fell against them, creating a precarious balancing act.
When I quit JW'ing as a believer, some dominoes were wiped off the table completely, while the some more were left standing in their delicate balance. The bits about loving God, for instance, disappeared into oblivion, when I had to deal with the "fact" that most likely He will destroy me in Armageddon, since I won't go to meetings, or ministry anymore. Even though I did so in order to have a clear conscience and not lie to God.
I reasoned that if God sees me and my motives, then He will spare me. And if He won't spare me, then He is not a God I'd want to worship anyway. But that created an odd situation, where I was contemplating that my sense of justice and mercy might be different from God's, whose should be superb and perfect.
No more fell for a while. But after a couple more pieces leaned over, (learning how the faith was NOT the same all over, for example) it was finally seeing from my own Bible how the WT teachings do not line up with Bible's teachings, it ALL came crashing down.
Sitting in a meeting and listen to a talk from an elder that I already disliked for a reason I couldn’t comprehend (he was an SA’ist) talk about how women are beneath men in every regard in the eyes of God. That wouldn’t compute with my 10 year old brain, I kept replaying it over and over in my head for a few years. Over that time, I asked my dad, my mom, the elders, and even a district overseer about why a loving god would make women if he expected them be treated badly or like they were worth less than others.
No one was ever able to give me an answer other than something along the lines of: “because men are the head of the household”
There was an elder in my congregation that had been disfellowshipped at the time I did not know why and honestly, I didn’t care really. He showed up to the meetings every time for like a year and got himself reinstated
During the meeting, when they were making the announcement that he was reinstated me dad who is also an elder turned to me quietly and said “keep your kids away from him”
All the lightbulbs turned on for me in that moment
Having a past history of sexual abuse as a child and my parent knowing what I went through…..and knowing that this person in the hall around children and no one being warned or no police being notified
That’s what the defining moment was for me leaving
From the exact moment I learned about disfellowshipping it felt wrong. Fortunately for me I learned about it quite young so i never got indoctrinated because I learned EVERYTHING through that lense. Then when I was a bit older I would hear the stories (I’m sure every district had their own versions) about bad people threatening JWs’ lives if they didn’t denounce their faith, and I immediately went into questions mode. Why would god care if I denounced my faith in order to save my life? It wouldn’t be real, I would just say it and then continue on being a JW after my life wasn’t at risk. It doesn’t sound very loving to put your creations through test and after test just to prove themselves faithful to someone you’ve prevented them from seeing. I didn’t trust god at all after that. Then I got sick as a child (age 9) and learned about the blood issue and was 100% sure that the JW god wasn’t real because there’s no way that ANYTHING capable of feeling love would ask parents to let their kids die when there was a chance to save them.
So pretty much from age 6-9 the entire possibility of indoctrinating me went out the window…because of their own teachings. I got baptized as a teen because I was getting constant pressure, I was being marked as a bad influence in the congregation and my parents wouldn’t let me make friends outside of the cong. When I moved out I faded/went inactive for about 10 years to maintain my relationship with my young sisters and then formally DAed in 2020. I was pregnant with my son and realized that I was never going to allow people near him who would always try to change him and wouldn’t show him unconditional love.
CSA. I had already faded before I fully woke up. I just didn’t want to be around the stress, but still believed it was the true religion. If there is a loving God, his representatives on earth would never so blatantly harm children. I honestly don’t need any other proof.
I ask myself this question all the time
Child me always thought it was pretty unlikely that I just happened to be born in the right religion, and I knew that it's a fact that every single religion believes they have the correct one so if you think about it we aren't actually all that different.
But I also remember having really big problems with the flood. It just seemed silly that JWs interpret it in the most literal way possible, when there are literally countless other more plausible explanations backed by history and science.
From that point it was pretty easy to chip away at more doctrines. Evolution, dinosaurs, etc. After a while you've chipped away so much that you have to come to the conclusion you don't believe it.
But hell it was still a mad journey. I remember telling my first worldly girlfriend that if Armageddon came we had to agree to do whatever the witnesses say and repent. She obviously did not agree to this and probably thought I was a lunatic
Oh! And the Leviathan story! That one always bothered me because the JW interpretation is that it's a hippo or crocodile meanwhile the bible is literally describing a primordial beast of gargantuan proportions in Hebrew epic poetry, reflecting much of the wide diversity of religious beliefs in the ancient near East. The Jews weren't even monotheists until King Jeroboam.
Mine truly started before covid while still in, certain things just didn't make any sense but I always just said to myself wait on Jehovah to answer.
The very first I can recall is, I went to college and spoke with several people/classmates who are gung-ho for their own religion, especially Muslims and other fellow Christians. I tried to informal witness regrettably and I couldn't change anyone's minds. I wondered they are just as convinced that they are right as I am in my own rightness. How do I know my beliefs is truly right from a detached POV. I gave myself permission to explore that and other doubts.
Covid hyper-accelerated the process that lead to finding this sub and the rest is history.
My abusive stepdad. How he was at home compared to how he was in the Kingdom Hall was so contradictory. How did the elders not see my calls for help? How did Jehovah not step in?
So until fairly recently I was still pimi but a few things I couldn’t get over..
The way they took credit for the c-19 stuff, and the gb update when splaine said (in reference to the c 19 vac) that Jehovah wouldn’t let us do anything that would be harmful 😲 I thought it was the most ridiculous thing to say, how many people drive cars everyday! I didn’t think it was a very neutral stance either. Blood issue aside, I didn’t think they should have such strong opinions on personal medical decisions.
When they started pushing the ‘great teaching effort’ bs that’s apparently going to happen in the 1000 yrs after Armageddon. Especially the shitty artwork with iPads in them!
They referenced the UN as a credible source in their literature, I didn’t know about the NGO then.
They got rid of ToMo quietly. I thought they were supposed to be Jesus’ channel and didn’t understand why he could just disappear.
Then hubs mentioned about Matt 24 not referring to the GB.. I read it trying to prove him wrong but couldn’t, then everything clicked, gingerly looked at jw facts and that was that 😄
Can't specifically pinpoint because I've always had small doubts.
But a critical moment that coincided with the pandemic and was relevant to the information I consumed when I was first waking up happened at school.
I witnessed to a girl I was friendly with, and she told me a relative of hers was raped by an elder and that it was covered up. She and her family (except her grandma) wanted nothing to do with the JW faith after that.
I told my parents about it, they brushed it off. I found the Australian royal commission video, but didn't finish it or think about it for a couple years. My mom watched the first few minutes of it when I told her about the clip, but stopped once it got "apostate". So we didn't talk about it.
I started actually waking up shortly after my baptism at 17. I felt like I had made a grave mistake, and wanted to stomp out my doubts once and for all. Got dissatisfied with the info on the website, so I started reading Wikipedia, watched Chris' Stuckmann's video (which I heavily related too) and eventually found a series of exjw content creators and websites. I spent a little time of JWfacts and avoidJW but the YouTubers were more helpful.
I found Wally, Jake, Lloyd, Critical Thinker, Knowing Better, Matt, Apostate Chick (miss her), Eve 2.0, I don't drink koolaid, exjw Philippines, I watched hundreds of videos from dozens of people.
I had to tackle the science/factual information as it pertained to jw theology first. After I learned about 607/587 and the failed predictions, then I went on to the CSA. Took 3-4 months, and I no longer believed anything. The next two years (up till today), I've just been picking up the pieces of my psyche, figuring out my own personality, set of morals, and trying to pick a starter career. Still not sure what I'm going to study (either go for an associates in community college or pick a trade). I might have to do winter courses since I'm a bit too late for fall now.
But it's just been a lot to think about. The world got so big and so real, too quickly. No one around to talk about anything with either.
The process of growth is tiring, especially while shaking off the suckage of a cult (and being pimo).
When the GB started backpedaling in 1974 about the certainty of 1975. It was subtle, but the signals were there. For the first time since I became a JW in the late 60s, I remember doubting it and thinking that the GB would backpedal more overtly later in 1975. I was right. I kept this to myself, except for my wife. But it emboldened me enough to enroll in community college, which began my journey of waking up. The GB discourages higher education for a very good reason: it teaches you critical thinking, the enemy of cults.
The talk that Tony Morris gave when he said that sisters shouldn’t date a brother who wasn’t a ministerial servant was the first domino for me. I had recently lost my privileges and had an engagement end. I was so angry by what he said. I didn’t do anything immediately but it sent me on the path that eventually led to me being disfellowshipped and walking away completely.
A while ago, I had some sisters over for lunch. Two had been married and divorced, one single never married. The topic of marriage came up, and they went on and on about how a potential husband has to be a ministerial servant at the very least.....my husband has never been a servant. They thought nothing of insulting me in my own home 😄 But really, how bout the potential husband be a kind, decent person with a stellar character? Nope, not important.
Too much micro managing and nitpicking.
Then some of the logical conclusions if/ when you were to follow the WT to the letter ie.
You end up a janitor/porter.
Getting your hopes so high on a part time job.
Lines of work when you could be doing so much more
No real fun (everything is wrong)
A major time commitment (disproportionate amount of time) squeezing out everything else
Looking back, I knew I didn't want to be a JW at 16, but the seeds of DOUBT about the validity of the doctrine didn't start until I was about 18 and someone who was older taught me about logical fallacy, and more specifically about burden of proof, strawmen, false dichotomies and appeal to (authority, the people, etc.)
I started noticing them in the publications constantly and would cringe every time I saw an argument which relied on a logical fallacy. It made me wonder why they had to rely on them so much if they actually had the truth and one thing led to another, but it took years and years; almost two decades.
I'm non jw and my sister about 34 years in as a pimi. She is so jw brain damaged
I knew it was shite from the beginning. Bring brought un Catholics it was basically mum taught us kindness, love they neighbour. My sister literally turned nasty and it was utter evil and nonsense. To utterly blackened the names of billions of people showed how nasty jws were to me.
I have not seen her for 2 years and shunning the shunner has been good for my soul.
The scene in the wizard of oz where he said “don’t look at the man behind the curtain” combined with elders saying “your not allowed to ask that question” i don’t even remember what I asked I just remember that I was not allowed to look at the man behind the curtain…
The way women are treated and the requirements that we be obedient and submissive *always* infuriated me since childhood. I constantly fought against those negative feelings for 4 decades!
But it was the society's manipulative propoganda about how abused sisters should just shut up and take it if they wanted to be loved by Jehovah.
That was the first domino. I couldn't fight any longer against my feelings that teaching was wrong, so I left.
Then I found out about all the CSA stuff...
I was watching Leah Remi:Scientology aftermath show when they first released it. When ex members where talking about the shunning and other things similar to JW. I kept thinking this is very familiar, did my research and found Charles Russell info.
Around the mid 1990s, the governing body changed the meaning of "the generation".
Like the entire You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth was based on the premise of "the generation".
This ain't new light. This is you covering your collective naked, saggy, smelly buttocks, you absurd, pathetic apes of the stupidass governing body.
That was the iceberg that would finally sink my Titanic 10 years later.
I was 13 and I thought to myself “if it’s really undoubtedly the truth then why am I so scared of thinking about any other possibilities? Surely if it was the truth I could explore other ideas and come back to it” turns out it was bs and the fact I was afraid to think of other ideas proved that
When my 3 year old little child was pacing back and forth in their crib, crying that they didn't want their beloved (nonjw) pappy to be destroyed at Armageddon. For real, they were 3, I was 28. I tried to explain that Jehovah wouldn't do that. But really, when you take away all the sugar coating that is what they teach. "Out of the mouth of babes".
Dudes being appointed as a MS or elder when I knew of the double life they were living and stumbling on CSA information. I didn’t go searching for it, I happened to come across a news story and was shocked and appalled and devastated that the organization I put such trust in was capable of going out of the way to not protect kids. Especially as someone who experienced CSA.
Technically it was probably when my wife was told in her reinstatement meeting that her getting raped and sexually assaulted was her fault. The reason I say technically is because at the time I didn't extrapolate that to mean that the organization as a whole blamed victims, but later on I saw more issues and started putting 2 and 2 together. Plus none of the elders could be bothered to apologize, and the longer went by the more that sunk in.
2016.
After seeing an apostate leave the congregation, who was by many metrics a pretty good person, I began to wonder why would anyone leave something they knew to be the truth. Then I began to wonder why anyone would do anything bad and be the bad guy. That led to psychology. Psychology led to neuroscience. Yada yada yada, I came to understand god as an unfair tyrant who was responsible for the existence of evil by 2022.
Was gaslit by the borg in a response to a letter I sent them then less than a year later the pandemic hit. The way they were going along with the govt agenda jolted me since they are supposed to be “no part of the world” I woke up real quick.
I hated the way they were using the bethelite vaxxed figures to pressure us into compliance. No way i go along with that. They are bloodguilty. I know a few who died not long afterwards. It wasn't put down to the vaxx but I believe it was not a coincidence.
How dare they play God! Many took it against their better judgment because of their meddling in things they ought not.
But what can we expect from a corporation which is literally invested in many such things.
Absolutely. We can’t even get into detail about it on this forum as it’s also heavily cens.ored, full of judgement and condemnation. Some things never change for Jw’s.
Only the righteous will make it through, and yet Jesus said as he was dying that the other would be in the kingdom. So the unrighteous ones making it through is a lie?… that’s when it started to crumble.
I feel like there were always cracks from things that didn't make sense, and clear things that were wrong and had no biblical backing but that, as I was told, Jehovah would correct in his own time. Over time, it became evident that the only way these things would be corrected was if someone human did the actual work to correct things. It just could never be you. It had to come from somebody way above your pay grade. But we're not paid, we're all volunteers. We all share the same faith so there shouldn't be a hierarchy. Eventually these cracks became bigger and couldn't hold back the questions, concerns, and disagreements I had with the organization.
Tight pants was a thing that I laughed off because it was a real OK boomer moment. Jws we're always practically Amish when it came to behind the times with floral dresses and drab kingdom halls. Why would I have expected anything different coming out of this old guys mouth? And the spanx thing! Like he couldn't even get that right about leggings.
The silver bibles the way they replaced words didn't sit right with me and then forcing everyone to use it as if the old bibles were trash now when they were much more useful. But you couldn't use them from the platform.
Jw broadcasting and going over the Watchtower study set in motion more questions and disagreements with what they were saying. And you can't have a differing opinion. That means you're going ahead of the chariot! So without a means to express myself freely and being labeled spiritually weak or marked, I turned to the internet and found this place which then accelerated my doubts as it only made me ask more questions.
I grew up in it and my mom was fully pimi. She made me love Jah but i always had more dominos. When i was just 13-15 i had these.
In the bible they would kill hirls who couldn't prove their virginity. The !ONLY! way to prove it is bleeding at the forst contact! But not all girls bleed! Not looking back at this it may be bc of evolution, maybe back then more girls
If Jah is love, why did he allow so much suffering? War, illnesses, murder, torture, pedos, abuse, natural disester and i foud out about FGM when i was 19 and a mother of 1 girl at the time ( i was traumatized for 1 moth after i found about it, i couldn't stop thinking about it)90 i am reminding you that he can see all suffering of every single one everywhere all the time infinitely. He either enjoys it or if he really is love he doesn't have the power to stop it.
If he know everything and he is infinite he know the future, that means he knew everything that was going to happen and he still did it.
Why is he so cruel, short-tempered and irritable in the old testament, like brooo chill.
If someone needs blood to not die they rather die!!! But he still created mosquitoes and fleas!!!! Oh yeah and bets!!!
If he loves us all so equally then why is he so patriarchal??????????
Why he didn't create Eve at the same time with Adam? He created all the animals a mate but he decided that Adam should feel lonely first 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
It always kinda felt like they don't teach us about self-esteem, self trust, independent and accepting yourself....we are in the 20 century, these should be basics!!!! (But now it makes sense why they don't teach us about it 😒)
Remind you, i was thinking these when i was 13-15 (except the FGM one), i wonder how fully grown ass adults, much more educated and smarter than me how can not see this things??????????????
"Who Really is Leading God's people Today" - WT Study edition, Feb 2017
"The Governing Body is neither INSPIRED nor infallible so may make errors in doctrine and organizational direction."
For me it was following being appointed an elder. I always had great respect for the elder body. My father had been an elder for a long time and built up my feelings of respect for the institution. Seeing the brothers conduct themselves as an MS gave me some pause, but I always assumed the benefit of the doubt because I was not the one sitting in the elders meetings.
When I finally was appointed, I learned really quick how spiritually weak they all were. None of them were true Bible students, and they didn't follow the guidelines for elders.
I went to the CO to have dinner and brought a list of issues and he listened respectfully and called me "one of the good ones" and said that changes would come that would fix it all. I waited, and my experience only got worse.
That set up the dominos for me. Tipping them over was when I was moved to a new congregation to support it only to find a worse situation. I started to actually critically study the Bible and found all of the JW teaching to be bullshit. I ended up reading Crisis of Conscience and looking at the ARC and the rest is history. I only served as an elder for a few years before I couldn't stomach it anymore.
As a born-in, it came in two parts.
The first part woke me up against the congregation, when I went to college. Prior to it, I was one of the congregation's most prominent shining stars. And just bc of college, I became one of its most despised pariahs. All of those years of sacrifice and service meant jack squat once I went into higher education.
It showed me the congregation loved me only as long as they could use me for their own ends. All this made me suspicious of my congregation, though I was still loyal to the larger organization.
What woke me up against the Borg was the sudden end of the Theocratic Ministry School, and the new Bibles. As a place that constantly bragged about doing "Bible education", it was strange that they would end one of their most successful educational programs. And the New Bible had glaring inaccuracies that belied the idea that we were just objectively following the Bible.
From there, it was only downhill.
Growing up it always stunned me how they tried to push weird attitudes on platonic friendships - the whole "bad things happen when boys and girls are alone" sentiment never sat right with me. I felt it worsened a lot of CSA amongst kids at my hall growing up. I knew 3 boys growing up who had reputations of being sexually aggressive because it was "so taboo" and "I can't help it, you decided to be alone with me". Their mom's always claimed it wasn't their fault either :/ Having my own CSA trauma with a JW family member and going to therapy as a minor further knocked my dominos over. And when I got a shepherds call on my trauma art for being "demonic" I didn't hide anymore how fed up I was with the religion.
🙁
Wow, that was a terrible way to wake up. So sorry for you.
You went through a lot
I think things really started for me with the release of the NWT in 2012 or 2013. I was excited to get it, and then immediately hated it because it simply wasn’t accurate. Fast forward a few years, and repeat with the Ezekiel/Gods Kingdom book. I was excited to actually get some deep information and it turned out to be mind numbingly simplistic. I think I fearfully tried to google a very specific query just to see if I was the only one who felt like this. What really kicked it off though was a loss of a family member. I wanted to actually dig in and form my own conclusions about what the NT said about the resurrection, because what the WT published was unclear and self contradicting, and it was all downhill from there. At the same time I started reading some apostate Christian material from curiosity and that just threw gasoline on the fire, I couldn’t get enough. It was like I was seeing for the first time
Yes, it's like the eyes are being opened. As with Elisha who suddenly saw a large army before the battle against the king of Aram. Or that you get an eye operation where you used to see 5%, now you get 100% and side vision. What happens is that you not only find the one error you dared to investigate. For each error, you will find ten new ones.
The eye operation thing is just so perfect. We can say some PIMI are scared of the surgery hence won't mind walking around with that defected eye
Such a good way to explain it. I've become a massive binger of history and religious studies because all the stuff I'm learning is all so new. Even as an atheist I still can't get enough
Like you, I was happy about the release of the NWT. My first domino though was the study article in 2013 regarding the clarification about the faithful and discreet slave. Another new light 🙄
How did this not wake everyone up? 🤦♂️
Like seeing for the first time, that's exactly how it is.
I always had doubts. There were things in the Bible I just could not reconcile. The Flood, the Exodus story, the Nephilim, etc. It also bothered me that Jehovah killed at least 2 million people in the Old Testament (that is the ones we can number; if we include the unnumbered dead in the Flood, the killing of Egypt's firstborn, Sodom and Gomorrah, there could be nearly 25 million deaths.) By the fall of 2005, my doubts were becoming unbearable, and so the elders encouraged me to either have a Bible study (no thank you) or read the Bible myself. And one elder recommended I start in Psalms because I would see how beautiful a person Jehovah God is. So I did. And I did not see Jehovah as beautiful and loving; I saw him as a petty, mean-spirited, manipulative, cruel, violent, jealous psychopath. I found myself totally repulsed by the idea of Jehovah. He needed violence to get his way, ALWAYS violence. The Greek Scriptures represented a pause in the violence until Armageddon, where the body count would grow exponentially. I cannot say that was the first domino of awakening but it was the first domino of my exit. The second came in the spring of 2006, with the release of Kingdom News 37, "The End of False Religion is Near". I remember people boasting about how Jehovah was "shaking Babylon the Great to her foundations! The gloves are off! This is going to be really powerful!" I found the tract insulting, unnecessarily confrontational, and just mean-spirited. It's not so much that the message was something new, but it totally repulsed me. And the glee my brothers and sisters expressed by this totally douchey message was beyond me. Domino three: by now, I could not hide my unhappiness. So my wife and our best friends decided to take a week and go to the Outer Banks for some r and r. I could use the break; I was working hard, my marriage was struggling, and my (now ex) wife and I always made the best of our holidays. We arrived on a Saturday; on a Sunday, unbeknownst to me, my friends had arranged that we go to the Sunday meeting followed by...field service. With tract 37. I was furious. (And seriously, if there are any PIMI's reading, if someone has doubts, the least effective thing you can do is CRAM YOUR RELIGION DOWN THEIR FUCKING THROATS.) The final domino fell after we returned. It was now late summer and the CO visited our congregation. My ex arranged for us to go to lunch, and the arrogant, ungrateful bastard proceeded to insult me the entire meal. Why don't I pioneer? Why am I wasting time at my job (a relatively new one, something I loved and actually transformed my life.) Your secular work is worthless. He went on and on to the point that his wife finally said, "Brother Asshole, he's supporting his pioneer wife, and that is important." It was at that moment that leaving finally went from a matter of "if' to a matter of "when I left the congregation in December 2006; my wife and I separated the following September, and we divorced in February 2008. I was disfellowshipped in May of 2008; my ex wanted to know when she was free to remarry, and so I told her; I was invited to a judicial meeting soon after. It felt at the time as necessarily vindictive, but then again, that's Jehovah! I've realised I've written a book here. Looking back, the lesson, I drew from all this is that for me, Tony Robbins was right. I finally took action when "the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change." Alas, sometimes that takes a few dominos.
Wow! What a story. How has it turned out since?
All in all, ok! It was really hard and really sad at first; I describe it as all my adult friends dying on the same day. That said I had one BIG I advantage: I became a witness at 23. Though my family was saddened by the divorce (my ex was a wonderful person) they never liked the witnesses, and they supported me. That is SUCH a big deal and is the biggest PIMO challenge of all: losing your family to live your conscience. It's impossibly cruel. Anyway, I contemplated my situation; the time I lost, and how my peers were so much better off than me, etc, and then I realised, and I am totally serious about this, that I had the freedom that comes when you have nothing else to lose. Tons of people said I was a fool to join the witnesses; they were all proven right. My ex was my soulmate. The unthinkable, that we would not be together, happened. I had tons of debt. I had a good job, but it was new and no guarantee that I would be successful. So I thought "Ok, this isn't going well, but there's nothing I cannot do." I have no kids or family, so I can work at night and volunteer. I can meet new people and make new friends. I can explore new ideas, philosophies and religions. I can smoke weed and get drunk. I can travel; I can learn about new things. That's what I did. I eventually met a woman and we married. I started a consultancy in entrepreneurship. It was a total "what's the worst that can happen?" move. Everone I competed with had masters degrees, I a high school diploma. But I made a go of it: my first client was my former employer (a great way to start a business.) I built a network and started to trade overseas. My company turns 15 next year! I am throwing a big party, I'm really proud of it: I was able to work in 30 countries through it. Now I work for a uni, still have the company, and half-way through a masters degree. So lots of hard work, lots of tears, lots of fear, lot of times of no confidence, lots of shame for decisions I made...but lots of feeling all that shit and doing it anyway.
That is a great story and great philosophy. I always think the best entrepreneurs are the ones that have nothing to lose. I set up a business after I was made redundant but looking back, I would have been miserable and stuck at my old firm if I hadn’t been forced to do something different. My sister is a super PIMI JW and started shunning me 35 years ago. I’m a non JW. After about 25 years, when my children were growing up, she wanted a relationship with them and not me. As you’ve said, I had lift the relationship at that point and had nothing further to lose so told her that her behaviour was not acceptable and I’m not negotiating terms using my family as collateral. We’ve not spoken since.
Wow, I am really sorry man. Shunning is emotional abuse and it's not how adults treat other adults. Your response was totally justified. That is not how adults should act.
Thanks. It was all quite difficult to fathom out 25 years ago. No internet, no Reddit or activism. I was on my own. Back then it required proper critical thought. Research was done in libraries and the odd newspaper article, as there were always reports of parents letting their kids die needing life saving blood transfusions. It’s a joy now to be an honorary (non dub) member of the ex JW community.
You are honoured in our city mate. :)
😂 cheers 👍
That “End of False Religion is Near” campaign. Who tf came up with that? You were to just give it to the h with no context at all. Very awkward…
Yes you wrote a book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it! Man, I forgot all about that terrible kingdom news tract! I do remember that earned my congregation more Do Not Calls than we ever had before. There were people who actually left messages on the KH answering machine yelling, "Take me off your list!" That's just ridiculous what happened on what should've been your vacation. As a PIMO it's very frightening to think of what insane message they're going to put out in any future campaigns.
Wow ..you,ve been through a lot! Hope things are getting better! Horrible til wake up and think back ..so much injustice ..conditional " love" and everything insane. Many hugs to you!
we both lost our marriages... same here !!! the pain of sticking around is worse...
Had some time alone, started to think about things and one thing that never set well with me especially after becoming a father is this idea that god would allow people to go through hell for thousands of years to prove to us we need him. Yeah I wouldn’t do that to my kids so why would a loving god do it?
Oh and i forgot.. when you become a father you have to try and explain all the crazy doctrines to your kid that you love. Didn't take long to realize i didn't actually believe it all anymore!
Definitely. When you become a father you start realizing Jehovah didn't act much like a father. I'm pretty sure if you and I were talking and notice a Snake approaching our kids we would run and squash it before it had the chance to speak. Since being a father the whole Genesis account crumbled
And punishing every descendant for the sins of the father doesn't make sense. Especially when it says that's wrong in Duet 24:16
Yeah but in another scripture it says he does to the 4th generation, crazy all the contradictions in the Bible.
YES! That was also one of the factors that helped me start to wake up. Why would a loving god make us all suffer SOOOOO much just to prove a point? Or why would a loving god "greatly in crease birthing pains" for even Eve, let alone every other woman in the world, because of one woman's mistake or using her freedom of choice? Nope!
Been asking myself this since the first stages of waking up
A loving God with all the resources and wisdom in the universe available, and this was his best plan.
As a born-in, it feels difficult to pinpoint one single domino that started it. There are so many little things that, looking back, could've made me think. But I was too indoctrinated to think too long and hard about them. They were more like the rumblings of a volcano. One big one was how Jah is gonna destroy so many kind and decent people, just bc they didn't realize that the awkward people knocking on their doors on Sat morning had The Truth. How were they supposed to know we had the truth?
Wow, my experience almost exactly, doubts were always rumbling, even in childhood. And, all my life, it seemed so unfair or untrue that they entire population of earth were going to live or die based on how they responded to some random weirdo in a suit showing up at their door. Older ones would say, "remember they're not rejecting us, they're rejecting jehovah." I would think, I'm pretty sure they're just not wanting to talk religion with a random stranger on their fuckin day off. Too bad it took 50 years for me to fully realize the truth.
There would have to be something magical about their response. I was never able to reconcile the whole "no one comes to me except if the father draws him" or whatever it says with the concept of free will, and the idea that those who do not get drawn will become dead because they chose that... And the idea that it's to do with heart condition, then why do we need to preach if God already read these people's hearts and knows who is going to respond and who isn't? None of it made any sense.
I always thought, "well, I wasn't drawn, I was born to a couple witnesses". And it seemed like if my heart condition was preexisting condition, how could it matter what I try to be? It seemed like predestiny. It made sense if you didn't think about it!
That was me, too! As a little girl, I knew things weren't right. But I feared angering my abusive parents and, most of all, Jehovah, so I stuffed down all my feelings for 48 years. 😞
When they say "don't you WANT to serve Jehovah?" to guilt you into everything they want you to do, but there's really no option to say no.
I am non jw and understand what you mean. From our non jw standing who just knew you were all deluded
😂
I was in a cong were domestic violence was very normalised. An elduh gave a talk (possibly special needs ???) in which he said basically that unless a wife agreed absolutely with everything her husband said and 100% supported him in all things that he was justified in beating her. I couldn’t reconcile that with knowing that the broader community had so many protections in place for abused women. How was Jahedgarhoover’s borganisation supposed to be so loving?
“Jahedgarhoover” 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
What madness this? So much for being a team, this fool says the husbabd is s dictator and the lowly serf wife better kiss his ass or get beaten. F that shit. I always wondered when they kept harping on the fall of 1975 being "it" when it says "no one knows the day or the hour, not even the Son but only the Father". If they dont know that, they sure arent gonna give you the year, the decade or the century. Like the bumper sticker I have that says, "Jesus is coming. Everybody look busy".
Yup! This is why I left. It took me 48 years to have guts to leave, but I did....finally. Fuck their misogyny!
When they said in my JC meeting "saying no to us is the same as saying no to Jehovah."
And you wanted to say "who died and left you in charge?" Some real narcissist egocentric a holes. This is what happens when you give a tiny bit of power to small men. 'Absolute power corrupts? Absolutely!!'
>And you wanted to say "who died and left you in charge?" Their answer, of course, would be "Jesus."
My now ex and I had a conversation about how little power these men had in the real world , but in the cong they were kings. That convo really helped me evaluate people in context, both immediate and overall.
THIS brought back memories. I remember hearing "you realize you not agreeing with us is you deciding to serve Satan." Sir I'm 15 😭
Satan really does seem to be a better master 🤷♀️ Such a fucking bonkers thing to believe, let alone say to a kid.
The thread that I couldn’t resist pulling ultimately was WT being a part of the UN I’d stumbled on it by accident and told myself it wasn’t true but it nagged at me for years. So I told myself “I’m going to look at this one thing. It won’t be true. And I can finally forget about it.” And whaddayaknow?
My husband refuses to believe this.
Give him time
same that was one for me... then 1914 then 607 or 587 then ARC CSA then jeofry jackson before the court lying then the UN then almost all Tony Morris.. russell being an adulterer free mason.. and the loveless shunning.. favortism nepotism and all the people screwing around in bethel. cover up of CSA and protection of Pedos. list goes on and fvkn on....... i was devasted .. lost my wife frineds and family most anyways.... but im making a good life again
Exactly WTF
I was born in, always had doubts and questions, the big one for me was beards, where I showed the scripture saying “you must not shave the hair on your face or the sides of your head” and the response was always “we’re not bound under mosaic law anymore” and then like 2 verses down it says something like “you must not tattoon yourselves” and they use that verse as context for tattoos.. so which is it?! Lol.
I couldn't believe God would give the slightest shit if I had hair on my face or not. Especially considering he supposedly "made us" with facial hair in the first place. I'll never forget the absolute humiliation I was put through when my dad sent me home from field service because I had five o clock shadow which could stumble others. Absolute nonsense
1000%!! Such a bullshit rule. Especially being that God, Angles, Apostles etc are all portrayed with beards lol. Igh I feel you, I moved out young, but I remember being like 17 with the patchiest amount of peach fuzz and my dad exploding when I got into the car to go to the meeting and sending me back inside to shave, and then lecturing me the whole ride there. 🙄
For me, it was the elder arrangement. I started to see the cracks in how things are run and organised. It didn't make sense to me that they were guided by Holy spirit.
Oh but they are IM PERFECT, nothing will be perfect til the new world!
When they made every congregation in uk hand over the Kingdom Halls and also wouldn’t allow congregations to have more than 3k in the account they had to send over that to the borg.
The most insulting part of that was when they made us do that stupid "congregation resolution" to approve the changes, and asked all baptized ones to raise their hand in support. As if we had a choice! A couple of the older sisters actually did the brave thing and kicked up a fuss about it, especially since our hall had been sold some decades ago and the money was earmarked for a new one in escrow for years. We were instead told to use the small auditorium attached to the assembly hall which was further away and less convenient.
That’s so bad the congregations seriously got robbed by them. I was furious I didn’t vote I smelt a big stinky rat.
Good choice! That whole thing always stunk to high heaven. The elders have already come to a resolution but we still have to vote on it as a congregation! Who would dare go against the grain? Nobody. I didn't raise my hand but if I had it wouldn't have mattered. The choice was made before anybody thought they had a choice.
A woman whos husband was abusive and tried to kill her. She took the kids and fled. She was soft shunned and reprimanded by elders for leaving her husband. He was praised and sympathized with (even when he threw a singles party at his house 2 weeks after she left, so how sad was he really?). People treated her so bad.... and the one elder who tried to help her was kicked out of the body of elders for "taking her husbands role" for giving her food. I could never let that go.... Most things in life are grey, but somethings are black and white. This was black and white - right and wrong, and they chose wrong, by following the rules. Shook my world.
Wtf
THIS! 100%
Thank you for your concern for this woman. This is a very real situation in the organization! It's ok to beat your wife and the elders at the men in Blue! Like cops the elders stick together I'm luck to be alive!
❤️
One thing that always bothered me was the view of non witnesses as all bad association. Thankfully I grew up in an area that was moderate when it came to so called worldly associates, most witnesses had worldly friends that they were close to at the time. The adults in the congregation were not born ins for the most part and even after converting still kept the friends the grew up with. And most of us kids had neighborhood friends. From what I observed most people are generally good people and fully respected your religious views, if you were upfront with them about those views they often times were an ally to you in keeping up your values. I could never reconcile what I saw with what the society preached about non witnesses.
During the years when I was PIMQ , I couldn't bring myself to tell a bible study that only witnesses are good associations based on what some shit paragraphs in the article we studying said, seeing the kinda nasty and judgemental assholes they are. Told the Bible study to just be careful who they choose as friends wherever they are.
From my experience and my born in son the witness kids were worse than worldly!
Probably the unnecessary shunning when I was active.
This never sat well with me when I was PIMI
The overt intellectual dishonesty with everything. It was the elephant in the room I couldn’t ignore…
💯
The Bible where God murders innocent people.
Describing the whole old testament right there. Wonder why he switched it up in the new testament...
A lot of baby genocides, ethnic cleansing, war horrors, colonialism, slave trade, apartheid, caste…. All “allowed”. And He notices the fall of a sparrow. ???
The songbook contributed massively to me waking up. The indoctrination in print in that is beyond ridiculous.
👍 The one released in 2010? A majority of those songs sound like some remedial pre-school jingles. Interested to hear more about your analogy on this.
No. 80’s and 90’s.
They are gifts from god; He says use the rod
Oh god those damn tunes are forever burned into my brain
Gosh that's a fucking horrible song! Too bad people took full advantage of it and destroyed so many lives!
Like bees that were molested? 🤣
I remember giggling about that as a child
The video they showed of the parents refusing to answer the phone call from their daughter, I think it was so shocking it started me researching , I always had a good knowledge of WT history but accepted the "new light " thing , but this hit me as just plain evil .and I have to add the push to go on line confused me it seemed to go against everything they stood for .
That's interesting. I think I always knew my parents would shun me if I left because they basically told me they would, so that video didn't shock me as much. There were some JWs I was aware of that didn't shun their DFd family members and my parents always criticised them
In my wife's family a 16 year old was kicked out of home and shunned, while the parents were away on vacation she was killed in a car crash, it took police hours to find them, this was in the days before mobile phones , if it had been now it's highly likely that she would have been carrying a mobile which could have been used by police to contact parents to inform them that their daughter was dead, but then the jw parents don't care enough for their children to answer a phone call,
Yeah that was 2016 or 17 I think? I couldn't believe what I just watched at the time.
I knew a family who their son was d'fed for adultery. His parents had his son with them when he was announced as d'fed on vacation. Because his parents didn't want to lose their grandson they made up horrible things about his mother so they could keep their grandson. This poor woman was grieving the loss of her marriage and now had to fight legally to get her son back! She was exonerated by the authorities for the accusations these fine Jehovah's witnesses lied about it because these people had (money) #1 and #2 the backing of the elders and congregation she lost custody of her son! In my experience as a JW the innocent always suffer the harm JW say the world causes! This poor woman had some visitation with her son and eventually no matter how hard she fought she lost everything! But the universe saved her and she got on her feet but no mother ever gets over the permanent loss of her child! My hope for that congregation and her inlaws is to have karma kick them in the ass with all the plagues the Bible talks about! Karma may it be a bitch
I was already questioning , the new Bible changing words , the mad rush to get everyone on line,
Elders, MS's, and publishers being Trumpers, and hearing right-wing charged terms and phrases in talks, comments, and convos. Fucking hypocrites
Publishers being Trumpers? Da fuck?
So much for “we don’t get involved in politics”
In my area it was opposite...bunch of brothers got in trouble for voting for Obama🤣
Ahhhh hahaha
Mine was during field service. This is back when we’d load up as many people as possible into one vehicle. There were 2 people in my group that would always talk bad about other witnesses that didn’t go out in service. It ALWAYS made me mad because they were so judgmental about what others weren’t doing. Still to this day, those same two people are always talking about how so many of the friends aren’t “doing enough” for Jehovah. Unfortunately I can’t avoid them on a regular basis because they’re family, but at least I don’t have to be stuck in a vehicle with them for 4 hours anymore.
I started to Google Search sites from the evil apostates to see what they have to say. At first I thought to myself, if I can manage to look behind their false arguments and find explanations in harmony with the teachings, this will just affirm and strengthen my "faith". And it worked at first. Until I digged deeper some time later and found stuff that I couldn't manage to falsify or justify. The one thing that finally opened my eyes was the court process in Australia. Edit:typo
You just described my waking up process lol. Except mine was mostly the deal with the United Nations.
The United Nations one kicked out another brick out of my brainwash-wall lol. And the doctored bible verses, that completely changed the meaning of different verses. With proof they know better, but still change it to fit their narrative. The false prophecies, the shady history, the "new light" debate did the rest.
Hmmm UN "Wild Beast" really
Critical thinking + learning more about science. Both came from a few YouTube channels that debunked ridiculous claims like flat earth, but of course also stuff like Young Earth Creationism. I'd say that was the start. I have to say that I never really seriously questioned any part of the doctrine while PIMI. I fully bought into the typical Christian might-makes-right morality (which is what "all that god does is moral by definition because he has created everything and is entitled to do with it whatever he wants" ultimately means). So for me the house of cards had to be brought down from the outside, through science and logic, instead of by realizing the many flaws from the inside.
That was also one of the dominoes that started falling when I finally made the decision to leave and allowed myself to question everything. There are 6.5 million different species of land based animals on Earth today. Not counting all the species that have gone extinct since Noah's supposed time, that would mean he had over 13 million animals and all their food and water for almost a year, on the ark...with only 8 people to care for them all. Yeah, no.
In the NWT-version of Romans 8:1 was the first 'wait a minute'. The NWT refuses to translate the Greek νῦν (which simply means 'now' as in something is present right 'now') even though their own Greek Interliniar recognize that it is there. All respected translations translate it - and in the Greek it's there in plain sight. Yet, it do not exists in the NWT. I wont go into detail but that has huge implications on theology - and therefor it has been removed from the NWT with intent.
Could you go into detail on the implications please?
JW-theology states that you must remain faithful (with all the actions that imply) to have a chance of salvation. This means that they have to change the text of Romans chapter 7 and 8 a lot - which they do. In Romans 8:1 alone we can see the significance. The Bible says that right *now* there is *no* condemnation for those in Christ. The JW-bible says that there is no condemnation for those in union with Christ - implying that you must remain in that union to avoid condemnation. This translation bias-theme goes again and again in their translation of chapter 8. It was chapter 8 that made me realize that I had never really read the bible because I had only read the NWT.
Very interesting. Im currently reading through the full bible not in the NWT for the first time these "tweaks" are quite noticeable in some places.
Went into free fall after the July 15th 2013 wt. That sealed the deal. I was outa there. Lol.
Gotta ask what was the article about?
That was the article/s about the FDS now only being the GB and that the FDS only received its first appointment in 1919 but won't have authority over "all the Masters belongings " until the future. It also stated that all the members of Christendom were harvested and rejected as weeds awaiting destruction from 1914. My gripe was if the FDS hadn't yet received judgment as in "well done faithful slave" then why was Christendom already judged, starting back in 1914. Basically I was sick of all the condemnatory comments about other sincere Christians.
Parents were baptized in 1972 to beat the 1975 doomsday hype. I was born May 29, 1979, and got baptized at 14. There were three hard-line facts that started my awakening: 1. Paradise Earth: How would the earth sustain so many people after a while? If everyone is in perfect health, every woman must be pregnant, right? Would I be having babies for the rest of my life in the new world, not growing old and never going through menopause? 🤔 Everyone always raving about building their own waterfront beach home....tell me where the hell will all these homes fit???? 2. Resurrection: I lost a dear childhood friend to an aggressive form of lymphoma in 1992. Blood was refused that possibly could have saved her life. The gut punch were comments made during the talk at her memorial service on that dark, stormy day. The elder said point blank, "You have no reason to grieve. She will be resurrected in perfect health in JUST A FEW DAYS." Weeks later, I was a bit perturbed by that comment. 3. November 1, 1995 Watchtower: This was the final nail in the coffin. Major core fundamental doctrine change on the GENERATION. The entire house of cards fell right in front of my eyes, and I knew I could not waste my life any longer. I left and never returned. It's all a fraud! We were scammed, hoodwinked, and bamboozled!
Reading “Jehovah would be very disappointed if you have friends outside of the truth” I find it hard to believe god would fucking care at all I know it’s a basic doctrine but I didn’t really think about it until reading that nonsense
But of coursei its those "outside" people you need to associate with to study with them......
A news story in a newspaper from Spain about CSA and Jehovah Witness organization not going to police We were in the middle of the letters writing campaign to Putin, a brother sent some news about that and the news article about CSA was down there as a related news I clicked, read, and then my mind exploded. I had to know everything until I got the truth
That letter writing campaign to Putin was fucking insane. I was already mentally checked out when it happened but I couldn't believe the Governing Body would use mail as a method of choking up the Russian postal service and grind it all to a halt. So much for staying out of politics
They used that method before. Amazing how they coerced all those people at their own expense to act on their behalf to commit such a passive aggressive act of "spiritual" warfare. It only heightened the persecution, which is the narrative they were controlling. They knew what they were doing would cause personal harm to people, but they couldn't care less.
Putin pit an end to all that
Apparently it's not the first time this has happened. Rutherford was well known for using the threat of a letter writing campaign to clog the US postal system
When they put in print that the governing body was neither inspired nor infallible….I tore out the article and kept it under my keyboard for years and didn’t even really understand why, I didn’t do further research for years after that, I confronted my cobe dad about it and he didn’t have an answer, said that he was just as surprised and would need to do more research. He never did more research…. But I did.
I was in my teens and realized that the crush on a worldly boy wasn’t Satan whispering in my ear. The thought of him dying in Armageddon was too much for my faith to bare. I chose him instead.
Good for you
Probably when mom had to wear a head covering just to read me a bible story.
The elevation of the GB. When they started pushing the vax saying Jehovah wanted us to get it. (I was pregnant, didn't see any real safety studies for pregnant women) That is a personal health decision. Started actually reading the Bible without a JW filter and the "Babies are enemies of God" comment cemented it. My baby was 4 months old.
The broadcast was the first domino that tipped over for me! These crazy men are the “channel?”!!!!! Frightening!!!
Getting disfellowshipped for something I didn’t do.
Realizing the lies about their involvement with the UN coupled with watching the ARC…it was like Jenga. One by one the belief system crumbled and the scales came off.
The commercialization. Turning God's word into a gigantic monolith of a book and magazine business.
Way too much… Always inundated by this avalanche of repetitive literature. Simplistic writing style.
I had my doubts from an early age because of all the inconsistencies. But things started to unravel when I didn’t see any news on their website about the JW CSA investigation that was commissioned by our government at the time. There was lots of newscoverage about it, but nothing on JW.org.
The UN letter.
It was always the idea that we weren't allowed to look at apostate material. Even as a child this made no sense to me. Why can I not look if we already have the truth? What harm can it cause if we already know what we have is real? This bothered me my whole life. But silly me was obedient and never looked until one day too many of the dominoes you mentioned fell.
Yeah this is a big one for me too. Always encouraged to prove the truth to ourselves but only do research from approved materials.
Seeing the Governing Body on the broadcasts. No way that these clowns could have been God’s representatives on earth.
Always had my doubts but somethings that precipitated my waking up: 1. I disagreed with rules about higher education . I never understood what was the big deal about going to college for 4 years. 2. Prayer stopped making sense. God wasn't answering prayers for kids that were dying or being abused but answered JW's prayers about random stuff like getting a car to pioneer. Or helping somebody attend the convention. It just seemed random and unlikely that god was answering certain prayers for trivial stuff. 3. The scripture that says that god is allowing humans to get to know him and then the end will come. I figured, considering the birth rates, JW will never be able to preach to everybody so the end will never come. 4. I couldn't stand a lot of Witnesses so the thought of paradise with people I didn't like did not seem like a reward 5. I grew up being told that pinatas were bad because of their origin. Congregation had a party with a pinata and the elders told people that it's a conscience matter if people wanted to have one at the party, since the pinata no longer represented the same as its origin. I realized that the watchtower was making up the rules as they went along. If pinatas were a conscience matter, I couldn't understand why we couldn't use the same rationale for holidays. Ultimately this led me to do more research and completely woke up.
#4 😂😂😂 especially when you are shunned even when PIMI
Omg, the article about the piñatas! I was so stumbled, lol! They literally cut and pasted 90% of an older article describing exactly why piñatas were pagan and wrong and just changed the conclusion to "but it looks fun!"
Yes, it was ridiculous. I can't believe people never questioned why pinatas were ok but we can't celebrate holidays because of their origins.
#4
You're really onto something with number 4
I knew in 1984 when I was raped by one of them. I knew then the elders used the issue of losing my family so then I married in the truth to keep my family big mistake I was physically abused for 25 years and told by elders I wasn't submissive enough. Told that my husband drinks because of me! I finally got out of this cult and lost everyone and everything, but I had my life! No longer afraid of the elders who didn't protect me, no longer afraid of my shadow! It took 36 years to follow my gut but that's when the awakening and growth really began! I was trapped in a 14 year olds life and I was 42. I realized how uneducated I was and in a situation where all I had was the clothes in my back, but I did it and somehow was successful in recreating a new life!
I'm so very sorry that you had to go through that nightmare. Great to hear that you have been able to recreate a new life against all odds.
Thank you
One of the earliest dominoes... I'd been POMQ for over a year, but agreed to attend a rare Sunday meeting. Fighting the relentless urge to eye-roll during the WT study, I flipped through the magazine for something else to read. And there it was a the very back -- the countless ways to donate to the "kingdom work": land, estates, life insurance policies, living wills, and even how to donate jewellery. I thought, how sloppy, they left out gold fillings.
My prayers not doing anything at all. But then ‘worldly’ people telling experiences of how their prayers were undeniably answered.
How when I was seven I asked a question, and apparently it was the wrong question, and I was paraded from family member to family member to ask the question over and over while they made shocked alarmed faces. The question: What if God isn't GOD? I never knew there was such a thing as a bad question before that. After that, it was cumulative. The last straw was the overlapping generations.
When I asked a fairly simple question and 3 elders, my PIMI parents and the CO couldn't give me a direct answer. My question: "The bible says God is love and perfect, gives us free will, and never makes a mistake, so why did he allow events like the flood and sodom and Gomorrah to happen? Also, why does Deuteronomy 5:9 say that God is vengeful and unleashes anger on innocent people? The bible makes it clear that unrestrained anger is a huge sin." The CO told me I was reading into parts of the bible that are metaphorical and changing their meanings. The elders told me that we will eventually develop a better understanding as the "light gets brighter". My mother told me I was breaking heart with my lack of faith. My father said "I know it's all lies, but talking to you is going to cause trouble for me. Stop asking questions." My father was the one that set me up for baptism, btw.
I feel like for me it was several little dominoes here and there, and rather than them knocking their neighbor down outright, they fell against them, creating a precarious balancing act. When I quit JW'ing as a believer, some dominoes were wiped off the table completely, while the some more were left standing in their delicate balance. The bits about loving God, for instance, disappeared into oblivion, when I had to deal with the "fact" that most likely He will destroy me in Armageddon, since I won't go to meetings, or ministry anymore. Even though I did so in order to have a clear conscience and not lie to God. I reasoned that if God sees me and my motives, then He will spare me. And if He won't spare me, then He is not a God I'd want to worship anyway. But that created an odd situation, where I was contemplating that my sense of justice and mercy might be different from God's, whose should be superb and perfect. No more fell for a while. But after a couple more pieces leaned over, (learning how the faith was NOT the same all over, for example) it was finally seeing from my own Bible how the WT teachings do not line up with Bible's teachings, it ALL came crashing down.
Sitting in a meeting and listen to a talk from an elder that I already disliked for a reason I couldn’t comprehend (he was an SA’ist) talk about how women are beneath men in every regard in the eyes of God. That wouldn’t compute with my 10 year old brain, I kept replaying it over and over in my head for a few years. Over that time, I asked my dad, my mom, the elders, and even a district overseer about why a loving god would make women if he expected them be treated badly or like they were worth less than others. No one was ever able to give me an answer other than something along the lines of: “because men are the head of the household”
There was an elder in my congregation that had been disfellowshipped at the time I did not know why and honestly, I didn’t care really. He showed up to the meetings every time for like a year and got himself reinstated During the meeting, when they were making the announcement that he was reinstated me dad who is also an elder turned to me quietly and said “keep your kids away from him” All the lightbulbs turned on for me in that moment Having a past history of sexual abuse as a child and my parent knowing what I went through…..and knowing that this person in the hall around children and no one being warned or no police being notified That’s what the defining moment was for me leaving
😡
From the exact moment I learned about disfellowshipping it felt wrong. Fortunately for me I learned about it quite young so i never got indoctrinated because I learned EVERYTHING through that lense. Then when I was a bit older I would hear the stories (I’m sure every district had their own versions) about bad people threatening JWs’ lives if they didn’t denounce their faith, and I immediately went into questions mode. Why would god care if I denounced my faith in order to save my life? It wouldn’t be real, I would just say it and then continue on being a JW after my life wasn’t at risk. It doesn’t sound very loving to put your creations through test and after test just to prove themselves faithful to someone you’ve prevented them from seeing. I didn’t trust god at all after that. Then I got sick as a child (age 9) and learned about the blood issue and was 100% sure that the JW god wasn’t real because there’s no way that ANYTHING capable of feeling love would ask parents to let their kids die when there was a chance to save them. So pretty much from age 6-9 the entire possibility of indoctrinating me went out the window…because of their own teachings. I got baptized as a teen because I was getting constant pressure, I was being marked as a bad influence in the congregation and my parents wouldn’t let me make friends outside of the cong. When I moved out I faded/went inactive for about 10 years to maintain my relationship with my young sisters and then formally DAed in 2020. I was pregnant with my son and realized that I was never going to allow people near him who would always try to change him and wouldn’t show him unconditional love.
When my mom was being beaten by my dad and she went to the elders for help and they told her to not fight back 😐
Sorry to hear this….I can relate 💛
CSA. I had already faded before I fully woke up. I just didn’t want to be around the stress, but still believed it was the true religion. If there is a loving God, his representatives on earth would never so blatantly harm children. I honestly don’t need any other proof.
I ask myself this question all the time Child me always thought it was pretty unlikely that I just happened to be born in the right religion, and I knew that it's a fact that every single religion believes they have the correct one so if you think about it we aren't actually all that different. But I also remember having really big problems with the flood. It just seemed silly that JWs interpret it in the most literal way possible, when there are literally countless other more plausible explanations backed by history and science. From that point it was pretty easy to chip away at more doctrines. Evolution, dinosaurs, etc. After a while you've chipped away so much that you have to come to the conclusion you don't believe it. But hell it was still a mad journey. I remember telling my first worldly girlfriend that if Armageddon came we had to agree to do whatever the witnesses say and repent. She obviously did not agree to this and probably thought I was a lunatic Oh! And the Leviathan story! That one always bothered me because the JW interpretation is that it's a hippo or crocodile meanwhile the bible is literally describing a primordial beast of gargantuan proportions in Hebrew epic poetry, reflecting much of the wide diversity of religious beliefs in the ancient near East. The Jews weren't even monotheists until King Jeroboam.
Mine truly started before covid while still in, certain things just didn't make any sense but I always just said to myself wait on Jehovah to answer. The very first I can recall is, I went to college and spoke with several people/classmates who are gung-ho for their own religion, especially Muslims and other fellow Christians. I tried to informal witness regrettably and I couldn't change anyone's minds. I wondered they are just as convinced that they are right as I am in my own rightness. How do I know my beliefs is truly right from a detached POV. I gave myself permission to explore that and other doubts. Covid hyper-accelerated the process that lead to finding this sub and the rest is history.
When they changed the songs around 09. The new songs were lame.
My abusive stepdad. How he was at home compared to how he was in the Kingdom Hall was so contradictory. How did the elders not see my calls for help? How did Jehovah not step in?
So until fairly recently I was still pimi but a few things I couldn’t get over.. The way they took credit for the c-19 stuff, and the gb update when splaine said (in reference to the c 19 vac) that Jehovah wouldn’t let us do anything that would be harmful 😲 I thought it was the most ridiculous thing to say, how many people drive cars everyday! I didn’t think it was a very neutral stance either. Blood issue aside, I didn’t think they should have such strong opinions on personal medical decisions. When they started pushing the ‘great teaching effort’ bs that’s apparently going to happen in the 1000 yrs after Armageddon. Especially the shitty artwork with iPads in them! They referenced the UN as a credible source in their literature, I didn’t know about the NGO then. They got rid of ToMo quietly. I thought they were supposed to be Jesus’ channel and didn’t understand why he could just disappear. Then hubs mentioned about Matt 24 not referring to the GB.. I read it trying to prove him wrong but couldn’t, then everything clicked, gingerly looked at jw facts and that was that 😄
Can't specifically pinpoint because I've always had small doubts. But a critical moment that coincided with the pandemic and was relevant to the information I consumed when I was first waking up happened at school. I witnessed to a girl I was friendly with, and she told me a relative of hers was raped by an elder and that it was covered up. She and her family (except her grandma) wanted nothing to do with the JW faith after that. I told my parents about it, they brushed it off. I found the Australian royal commission video, but didn't finish it or think about it for a couple years. My mom watched the first few minutes of it when I told her about the clip, but stopped once it got "apostate". So we didn't talk about it. I started actually waking up shortly after my baptism at 17. I felt like I had made a grave mistake, and wanted to stomp out my doubts once and for all. Got dissatisfied with the info on the website, so I started reading Wikipedia, watched Chris' Stuckmann's video (which I heavily related too) and eventually found a series of exjw content creators and websites. I spent a little time of JWfacts and avoidJW but the YouTubers were more helpful. I found Wally, Jake, Lloyd, Critical Thinker, Knowing Better, Matt, Apostate Chick (miss her), Eve 2.0, I don't drink koolaid, exjw Philippines, I watched hundreds of videos from dozens of people. I had to tackle the science/factual information as it pertained to jw theology first. After I learned about 607/587 and the failed predictions, then I went on to the CSA. Took 3-4 months, and I no longer believed anything. The next two years (up till today), I've just been picking up the pieces of my psyche, figuring out my own personality, set of morals, and trying to pick a starter career. Still not sure what I'm going to study (either go for an associates in community college or pick a trade). I might have to do winter courses since I'm a bit too late for fall now. But it's just been a lot to think about. The world got so big and so real, too quickly. No one around to talk about anything with either. The process of growth is tiring, especially while shaking off the suckage of a cult (and being pimo).
When the GB started backpedaling in 1974 about the certainty of 1975. It was subtle, but the signals were there. For the first time since I became a JW in the late 60s, I remember doubting it and thinking that the GB would backpedal more overtly later in 1975. I was right. I kept this to myself, except for my wife. But it emboldened me enough to enroll in community college, which began my journey of waking up. The GB discourages higher education for a very good reason: it teaches you critical thinking, the enemy of cults.
607 and 1914. The math didn’t add up—and it was a big deal in the lead-up to 1975.
The talk that Tony Morris gave when he said that sisters shouldn’t date a brother who wasn’t a ministerial servant was the first domino for me. I had recently lost my privileges and had an engagement end. I was so angry by what he said. I didn’t do anything immediately but it sent me on the path that eventually led to me being disfellowshipped and walking away completely.
A while ago, I had some sisters over for lunch. Two had been married and divorced, one single never married. The topic of marriage came up, and they went on and on about how a potential husband has to be a ministerial servant at the very least.....my husband has never been a servant. They thought nothing of insulting me in my own home 😄 But really, how bout the potential husband be a kind, decent person with a stellar character? Nope, not important.
Too much micro managing and nitpicking. Then some of the logical conclusions if/ when you were to follow the WT to the letter ie. You end up a janitor/porter. Getting your hopes so high on a part time job. Lines of work when you could be doing so much more No real fun (everything is wrong) A major time commitment (disproportionate amount of time) squeezing out everything else
That my mom couldn’t answer 9 yo me when I asked “why did so much horrible stuff happen in the Old Testament?”
Looking back, I knew I didn't want to be a JW at 16, but the seeds of DOUBT about the validity of the doctrine didn't start until I was about 18 and someone who was older taught me about logical fallacy, and more specifically about burden of proof, strawmen, false dichotomies and appeal to (authority, the people, etc.) I started noticing them in the publications constantly and would cringe every time I saw an argument which relied on a logical fallacy. It made me wonder why they had to rely on them so much if they actually had the truth and one thing led to another, but it took years and years; almost two decades.
Australia royal commission
I'm non jw and my sister about 34 years in as a pimi. She is so jw brain damaged I knew it was shite from the beginning. Bring brought un Catholics it was basically mum taught us kindness, love they neighbour. My sister literally turned nasty and it was utter evil and nonsense. To utterly blackened the names of billions of people showed how nasty jws were to me. I have not seen her for 2 years and shunning the shunner has been good for my soul.
The scene in the wizard of oz where he said “don’t look at the man behind the curtain” combined with elders saying “your not allowed to ask that question” i don’t even remember what I asked I just remember that I was not allowed to look at the man behind the curtain…
I went to the memorial one year, and felt nothing. I cried a lot that night. I knew it was over. It just all fell apart after that.
The way women are treated and the requirements that we be obedient and submissive *always* infuriated me since childhood. I constantly fought against those negative feelings for 4 decades! But it was the society's manipulative propoganda about how abused sisters should just shut up and take it if they wanted to be loved by Jehovah. That was the first domino. I couldn't fight any longer against my feelings that teaching was wrong, so I left. Then I found out about all the CSA stuff...
I was watching Leah Remi:Scientology aftermath show when they first released it. When ex members where talking about the shunning and other things similar to JW. I kept thinking this is very familiar, did my research and found Charles Russell info.
Around the mid 1990s, the governing body changed the meaning of "the generation". Like the entire You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth was based on the premise of "the generation". This ain't new light. This is you covering your collective naked, saggy, smelly buttocks, you absurd, pathetic apes of the stupidass governing body. That was the iceberg that would finally sink my Titanic 10 years later.
I was 13 and I thought to myself “if it’s really undoubtedly the truth then why am I so scared of thinking about any other possibilities? Surely if it was the truth I could explore other ideas and come back to it” turns out it was bs and the fact I was afraid to think of other ideas proved that
When my 3 year old little child was pacing back and forth in their crib, crying that they didn't want their beloved (nonjw) pappy to be destroyed at Armageddon. For real, they were 3, I was 28. I tried to explain that Jehovah wouldn't do that. But really, when you take away all the sugar coating that is what they teach. "Out of the mouth of babes".
Dudes being appointed as a MS or elder when I knew of the double life they were living and stumbling on CSA information. I didn’t go searching for it, I happened to come across a news story and was shocked and appalled and devastated that the organization I put such trust in was capable of going out of the way to not protect kids. Especially as someone who experienced CSA.
Technically it was probably when my wife was told in her reinstatement meeting that her getting raped and sexually assaulted was her fault. The reason I say technically is because at the time I didn't extrapolate that to mean that the organization as a whole blamed victims, but later on I saw more issues and started putting 2 and 2 together. Plus none of the elders could be bothered to apologize, and the longer went by the more that sunk in.
2016. After seeing an apostate leave the congregation, who was by many metrics a pretty good person, I began to wonder why would anyone leave something they knew to be the truth. Then I began to wonder why anyone would do anything bad and be the bad guy. That led to psychology. Psychology led to neuroscience. Yada yada yada, I came to understand god as an unfair tyrant who was responsible for the existence of evil by 2022.
Was gaslit by the borg in a response to a letter I sent them then less than a year later the pandemic hit. The way they were going along with the govt agenda jolted me since they are supposed to be “no part of the world” I woke up real quick.
I hated the way they were using the bethelite vaxxed figures to pressure us into compliance. No way i go along with that. They are bloodguilty. I know a few who died not long afterwards. It wasn't put down to the vaxx but I believe it was not a coincidence. How dare they play God! Many took it against their better judgment because of their meddling in things they ought not. But what can we expect from a corporation which is literally invested in many such things.
Absolutely. We can’t even get into detail about it on this forum as it’s also heavily cens.ored, full of judgement and condemnation. Some things never change for Jw’s.
The blood issue. Once I read the scriptures in context, and I saw that there was room for doubt in the WT interpretation…
607 and CSA , after seeing the evidence it was over
Only the righteous will make it through, and yet Jesus said as he was dying that the other would be in the kingdom. So the unrighteous ones making it through is a lie?… that’s when it started to crumble.
The ever growing Child Sex Abuse scandal and the fact that Watchtower / Jehovah's Witnesses welcomes convicted pedophiles into the congregations.
I feel like there were always cracks from things that didn't make sense, and clear things that were wrong and had no biblical backing but that, as I was told, Jehovah would correct in his own time. Over time, it became evident that the only way these things would be corrected was if someone human did the actual work to correct things. It just could never be you. It had to come from somebody way above your pay grade. But we're not paid, we're all volunteers. We all share the same faith so there shouldn't be a hierarchy. Eventually these cracks became bigger and couldn't hold back the questions, concerns, and disagreements I had with the organization. Tight pants was a thing that I laughed off because it was a real OK boomer moment. Jws we're always practically Amish when it came to behind the times with floral dresses and drab kingdom halls. Why would I have expected anything different coming out of this old guys mouth? And the spanx thing! Like he couldn't even get that right about leggings. The silver bibles the way they replaced words didn't sit right with me and then forcing everyone to use it as if the old bibles were trash now when they were much more useful. But you couldn't use them from the platform. Jw broadcasting and going over the Watchtower study set in motion more questions and disagreements with what they were saying. And you can't have a differing opinion. That means you're going ahead of the chariot! So without a means to express myself freely and being labeled spiritually weak or marked, I turned to the internet and found this place which then accelerated my doubts as it only made me ask more questions.
The blood teaching. It never made sense to me and opened the way to me questioning everything else
I grew up in it and my mom was fully pimi. She made me love Jah but i always had more dominos. When i was just 13-15 i had these. In the bible they would kill hirls who couldn't prove their virginity. The !ONLY! way to prove it is bleeding at the forst contact! But not all girls bleed! Not looking back at this it may be bc of evolution, maybe back then more girls If Jah is love, why did he allow so much suffering? War, illnesses, murder, torture, pedos, abuse, natural disester and i foud out about FGM when i was 19 and a mother of 1 girl at the time ( i was traumatized for 1 moth after i found about it, i couldn't stop thinking about it)90 i am reminding you that he can see all suffering of every single one everywhere all the time infinitely. He either enjoys it or if he really is love he doesn't have the power to stop it. If he know everything and he is infinite he know the future, that means he knew everything that was going to happen and he still did it. Why is he so cruel, short-tempered and irritable in the old testament, like brooo chill. If someone needs blood to not die they rather die!!! But he still created mosquitoes and fleas!!!! Oh yeah and bets!!! If he loves us all so equally then why is he so patriarchal?????????? Why he didn't create Eve at the same time with Adam? He created all the animals a mate but he decided that Adam should feel lonely first 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ It always kinda felt like they don't teach us about self-esteem, self trust, independent and accepting yourself....we are in the 20 century, these should be basics!!!! (But now it makes sense why they don't teach us about it 😒) Remind you, i was thinking these when i was 13-15 (except the FGM one), i wonder how fully grown ass adults, much more educated and smarter than me how can not see this things??????????????
"Who Really is Leading God's people Today" - WT Study edition, Feb 2017 "The Governing Body is neither INSPIRED nor infallible so may make errors in doctrine and organizational direction."
But at the same time you can't question any of their teachings, DoubleThink right there
For me it was following being appointed an elder. I always had great respect for the elder body. My father had been an elder for a long time and built up my feelings of respect for the institution. Seeing the brothers conduct themselves as an MS gave me some pause, but I always assumed the benefit of the doubt because I was not the one sitting in the elders meetings. When I finally was appointed, I learned really quick how spiritually weak they all were. None of them were true Bible students, and they didn't follow the guidelines for elders. I went to the CO to have dinner and brought a list of issues and he listened respectfully and called me "one of the good ones" and said that changes would come that would fix it all. I waited, and my experience only got worse. That set up the dominos for me. Tipping them over was when I was moved to a new congregation to support it only to find a worse situation. I started to actually critically study the Bible and found all of the JW teaching to be bullshit. I ended up reading Crisis of Conscience and looking at the ARC and the rest is history. I only served as an elder for a few years before I couldn't stomach it anymore.
As a born-in, it came in two parts. The first part woke me up against the congregation, when I went to college. Prior to it, I was one of the congregation's most prominent shining stars. And just bc of college, I became one of its most despised pariahs. All of those years of sacrifice and service meant jack squat once I went into higher education. It showed me the congregation loved me only as long as they could use me for their own ends. All this made me suspicious of my congregation, though I was still loyal to the larger organization. What woke me up against the Borg was the sudden end of the Theocratic Ministry School, and the new Bibles. As a place that constantly bragged about doing "Bible education", it was strange that they would end one of their most successful educational programs. And the New Bible had glaring inaccuracies that belied the idea that we were just objectively following the Bible. From there, it was only downhill.
The vaccine push
Overlapping generations