So IOW the view is that there are in fact two Gods, one “Almighty” and the other just plain “mighty”, and they work together very well. Is this correct?
DO JWs really sacrifice babies when trying to win the lottery?
Yes, and one is subordinate to the other. Jehovah will send Jesus to lead Armageddon and destroy those who don’t want to serve Jehovah (read as mostly everyone who is not a JW). Those left will live on the earth for 1,000 years as they grow back to human perfection. Jesus and 144,000 humans that went to heaven will ruke over the earth during the Millennium. Satan and his demons are bound up in an abyss during that time. At the end of the thousand years they are let loose to tempt mankind one last time. Any that break away and sin will be destroyed forever, along with Satan and his demons. Then everything is turned back over to Jehovah and Jesus steps aside.
I’m going to assume you were trying for a joke but it just comes off as jerkish. Don’t do it again.
No warning issued.
Thanks for doing this thread. I’ve mentioned this before, but my mother and a few cousins are all ex-JWs (and of course many family members are current JWs). Everything you say is very familiar to me.
I find that when I describe JW culture, people routinely disbelieve me because a large, familiar, public, Christian group couldn’t possibly be that bad. I guess they think if it was, they’d have heard of it, not realizing how strictly the organization polices its boundaries. Do you also have this experience? Do you think it’s a problem that more people aren’t aware of the abuses that go on?
By the way, the two-witness rule has another downside: two witnesses can lie or exaggerate.
Can you talk about Overcoming Opposition, or whatever the term is for the JW double standard with lying?
I attended a funeral for a friend’s father who was an elder in the local hall. It was a very christian and very conservative service, but the one thing that struck me was the mention of a “Torture Stake”. I had never heard a christian denomination that eschewed the Christ dying on a cross story before. I missed the rest of the service, because I was busily googling Torture Stake.
Alright, now I’ll get to this question of yours. This was a big deal.
There is no single moment that made me question. The truth is that I had doubts about some things even when I was a kid. Cognitive dissonance kept me from looking too hard at anything. However, as the years went on, lots of things piled up.
My way out began in 2008. The organization is known to put very heavy burdens on their members. Nothing you do is ever enough. I couldn’t keep up like I was being told I should be able to. To get to every meeting back then you had a one hour study on Tuesday night, a two hour study on Thursday night, and two hours on Sunday morning. You also were told to study the material for each meeting ahead of time. Oh, and you’re supposed to go out in field service knocking on doors on Saturday morning, and probably after the meeting on Sunday too.
I always struggled to read. I love audiobooks but don’t have the attention to sit and read. They would tell me that if I loved Jehovah I should just do it anyway. I struggled to get to the meetings. I had to work all day, come home, eat, shower, put on a suit, and then drive to the local Kingdom Hall for the meeting that started at 7:30 and often I didn’t get home until late. Of course, if your job interferes you’re supposed to quit that job. Then again, without a college education because I turned down scholarships like a good JW I had limited options for employment. Anyway, long story short I couldn’t keep up with everything and it made me feel like a bad person from what they put in my head.
I went to the local elders and asked for help. They told me that “we do what we want to do in life”, so if I wasn’t doing what I should be doing then I must not want it bad enough. I was devastated. I suffered with depression quite a bit anyway, and anxiety, and now I was suicidal. In 2008 I learned that I likely have ADHD, an executive function disorder. This send me down a path that would lead me to exiting the cult.
I suddenly realized that no, we can’t do what we want to do. We don’t have control over everything. We’re imperfect and have limitations. For the first time I realized that. Then I started learning about mental illness and listened to podcasts about other people’s lives and my eyes were opened to this huge world around me. I saw that people did things for many reasons, not just spiritual ones. Not everything can be moralized like the JWs do. I started having compassion for other people. I read books on empathy, narcissism, happiness, emotional abuse, and came to realize that I had been given such an abusive view of the world through the JWs.
As I became more emotionally healthy I realized that the religion wasn’t. It is a narcissistic religion, and breeds narcissists, not to mention attracts them. My parents might fall into that category. Let’s just say that my childhood wasn’t great for now, I’ll answer about that if anyone asks though. Just trying to not write a novel here.
That was really the beginning of the end. It still took me seven years.
The second huge turn of events was that we owed a ton of back taxes and my wife and I intentionally missed meetings to pay off $55,000 to the IRS in 18 months. We worked non-stop, often 7 day weeks, 12-16 hours a day. During that time away from the indoctrination sessions it is like our brains started to process what we had been told. We started talking about inconsistencies that we noticed and things that seemed just wrong. I have found that many who wake up and leave have a similar period of time that they were away from the indoctrination for x amount of time and suddenly they awoke.
It was definitely a long process. I’m thankful that we had the time to figure it out on our own and then take a stand against the abusive organization that we grew up in.
No, but let me tell you, they sure do attract them. My mom is bipolar II and spent time in mental institutions when I was a kid. My dad was once diagnosed as depressed, and had tons of issues (narcissism among them). He was addicted to sugar and died in April at 63 or 64 (hard to remember when you don’t celebrate birthdays) because he was always non-compliant with any doctors orders. His kidneys failed years ago and after several years of dialysis his heart started to go. He decided to go off dialysis and end it all.
This whole saga started when we moved in next door to a family of JWs. My mom and the mom next door studied the JW materials together and my mom became a JW. My dad did the next year, if memory serves. There was every type of abuse going on in the JW home next to us, and I mean ALL kinds. It was a horror show.
There’s actually a famous talk in JW land where a Brother Mack says that “we’re all surviving on pills and prayers”, and he wasn’t kidding. There is, of course, nothing wrong with taking meds for legitimate mental health or other health issues. Pretty much everyone in the organization is on something though. There is a TON of depression. There is a statistic floating around the interwebs that schizophrenia is diagnosed much more in the JWs than the general population. I wouldn’t doubt it.
It is truly a miserable existence on the inside, despite their claims to be the happiest people on earth. The only people we spoke to that studied with us when we knocked on doors were absolutely certifiable. I’m not joking. Every time my parents would tell me the good news that they got a new study I would ask “how crazy are they”, and there was always a story. They didn’t go after them, but they attracted them.
I personally battled a lot of anxiety and depression and had suicidal ideations since I was a kid. My anxiety was so bad I couldn’t even walk into a Kingdom Hall at times. I’d get ready, drive to the meeting, get to the parking lot, and then turn around and go home. The relief felt was immediate and amazing. My body and mind were trying to tell me something for a long time. Since leaving I no longer suffer from depression, and my anxiety is nothing like it once was. Heck, I go to parties now in situations where I don’t know the rules because I have no experience and I don’t know anyone but the host. I would have never done that with the crippling anxiety I had as a JW.
*** What other firsts have you experienced since you left? We’ve heard about your wife’s birthday party and now Halloween, tell us more! **
Let’s see, I’m consulting the journal I’ve kept of things we’ve done.
We went to our first ever concerts (other JWs do go to concerts, we were just VERY conservative even in our JWism).
We saw my disfellowshipped brother, who had been shunned for 13 years or more(?) for the first time and reunited. That was amazing!!! He forgave like it was nothing because he grew up in it too, and it was like old times, like nothing ever happened. We picked right up. It was actually this act of doing the loving thing instead of the shunning thing that got us initially shunned by our families. If you don’t shun the shunned you risk becoming the shunned. I would rather be shunned for doing the loving thing than loved for doing the shunning thing. My newfound emotional health helped there. We’ve actually reconnected with several ex-JWs from childhood that we hadn’t seen in two decades or so. It has been great.
We went to our first ever non-JW wedding.
We watched Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. My wife always wanted to. She read the books as a kid, but over the years as movies like Harry Potter gained popularity the organization really talked bad about watching such “spiritistic, demonic” movies. And we bought in. Lots of JWs watched that stuff, but we didn’t.
Two families that we clean for (we clean houses) took us in for their Thanksgivings. We got adopted in and had a great time at each. We had never celebrated before.
We didn’t celebrate Christmas last year officially, as I wasn’t ready for it. We did, however, go camping and I bought battery powered Christmas lights and hung them up around our campsite. My wife wanted to celebrate and I couldn’t yet, so I did that to make it more festive. We will be celebrating for the first time this year in a more normal capacity, though the beauty is that we can do anything we want. We didn’t leave on prescribed set of how to do things only to jump into another, so we do things our way, and we’ll figure this out too.
Went camping with friends and were around people doing drugs. Vaporizing weed, doing mushrooms, and lots and lots of alcohol. We didn’t partake, but we’ve never even been around people doing that. It was fun and nobody got hurt. It went very well, imagine that.
Went to Churchill Downs and watched races and placed our first ever bet. JWs don’t gamble. We lost but it was fun just to say we did it.
First ever July 4th party with fireworks. We went to someone’s house for that.
Saw one of my cousins for the first time in probably 25-30 years, and reconnected with others through Facebook. JWs often keep away from “worldly” (non-JW) family for fear that they might be a bad influence.
*** When someone leaves, are there ever any people still JWs who only pretend to shun them? I realize there may be no way to truly know, but I just can’t imagine that occasionally Mom’s favorite granddaughter (or whatever) doesn’t get a surreptitious phone call when she’s at the store. **
Yeah, it happens. Some refuse to shun. However, it isn’t the norm. In fact, they had a special video on their convention this summer shown to all that was very manipulative and aimed at getting people to be more diligent in their shunning, for even a simple hello may be enough to satisfy the needs of the outcast and they might not come back. It’s all psychological pressure to force you to come back.
I can say though that although I was allowed one final visit to my dad when he went into hospice, no other JWs were okay with being there at the same time I was. When I arrived my mom tried to hide us behind the elevators while the JWs that were there walked out due to our presence. They wouldn’t even look at us.
I was not welcomed at my dad’s memorial. I was not invited either or given details. I will not be getting calls from family. My wife’s family hasn’t spoken to her since we saw my brother in May of 2015. They didn’t even tell her. They just all blocked her on social media, unfriended her, and never responded to the goodbye letters that she sent them. That is the cruel reality.
*** Are you still bumping up against things that you know you only believe a certain way because you were raised JW, yet fight in your heart because you know you now don’t? Argh. That sounds really convoluted, but let me give an example from my own life… I used to be pretty homophobic due to the religion I was raised in. Now, I have a faith that much more fits me and I’m now very pro GLBT. However, in the beginning I really had to tamp those “It’s wrong and unnatural!” feelings down to come around to how I actually thought. So, like that. **
Oh yeah, some of the time. It’s mostly just being uncomfortable when, for instance, someone did mushrooms in front of us. I can say the same about homophobia, though honestly that song by Macklemore called “Same Love” (I think) was huge while I was waking up. I am open to anyone how they are and for who they are now. I was once a very judgemental person and looked down on others. Our first Christmas will be uncomfortable but we’ll do it and over time it will be better.
*** If I may ask, how’s it going dealing with the loss of what I’m sure was some extremely important folks in your life? Having your siblings or best friend shun you must be one of the worst things in the world and I’m so sorry you and your wife have had to go through that. :(**
Um, it just it what it is. We expected it and knew what was coming. My wife struggles with it a lot more than I do. As a JW growing up I had to cut a lot of people out of my life and got used to it. People came and went all the time. So I have an easier time with that. My wife really misses her four younger sisters in particular. She had really started developing a good relationship with them when it was all taken from her.
For me it was hard to be un-shunned long enough to see my dad one last time at hospice. To walk into a room with my dad, mom, and sister (I have one brother too that is still in but he couldn’t get there when I did) and act like nothing was wrong was such a mind f*ck. I went to give him dignity in death. It wasn’t for me as much as for him. It just seemed sad to me to die without your kids around. My brother who was out for 13+ years and lives in another state opted not to come. As soon as I left hospice I was right back to being shunned. In fact, I told my dad that maybe I’d come back the next day too if he was still there, and after I left I decided that it ended well and I should leave it alone. I called my mom and told her that I wouldn’t likely be coming back and she said “oh honey, we didn’t think you were coming back anyway”, so that was it. Unceremoniously accepted back into the fold for 30 minutes, then thrown back in the trash. It hurt then, and it hurts to think about now, but it was the expectation going in.
**But I’ve got to say; y’all are so brave. It takes really strong and resilient individuals to breakout of brainwashing like that. This internet stranger is so proud of you both and I hope there’s only great stuff in your future. **
Thanks! It was the hardest thing either of us has ever had to do. I can’t even put it into words, and as you can see I have no problems putting things in to words.
I think some of this may have been answered in some of the others that I gave, but I’ll speak strictly to socially.
We clean houses, and it gave us opportunity to break out of our isolation as JWs and to observe people in the real world. We had a term for all of you outsiders, “worldly”. Funny how a word that kind of means something admirable in normal humanity was made evil by the cult.
So here we were working closely with “worldly” people, you know, the murderers and adulterers and thieves that existed outside of the protection of the organization. And these people were nicer, more well adjusted, and just overall better humans than the people we went to meetings with as JWs. It was mind blowing.
There was a point in time where we didn’t have any friends. The JWs are very cliquish, and if you aren’t in the cool club you’re dead to them. We weren’t cool enough, I guess. So I’d pray and pray for friends, as did my wife, and we kept having people that we cleaned for invite us to do things. We’d turn them down, of course, because we weren’t supposed to hang out with “worldly” people. One day as we woke up I looked at my wife and pointed out that maybe, just maybe, our prayers had been answered time and again but we were so busy putting God in a box and expecting JW friends that we overlooked those answered prayers.
Those same people that we turned down for years are now our biggest supporters as we made our way to freedom. They are our friends, our new “family” of sorts, and they mean the world to us.
I guess I’d have to say none. As I said earlier, I believe in possibility. There’s just nothing there in any religion for me anymore. With that said, I do realize that there are sayings in the Bible that are good, or lessons, the same with Buddhism or probably others. Again, nothing is all good or all bad, but I just don’t respect religion anymore or adhere to any of it. I do have to admit that it repulses me at this point. That may not be fair, but it is where I am today on some level.
I am not good at keeping my mouth shut. If something is deeply troubling me, or honestly just nagging at me (not always a good thing), I tend to bring it up. I started being very vocal about things I saw that weren’t loving. I think those things were standing out to me as I got more emotionally healthy. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was making my wife very uncomfortable. It started with those things around love, but then it was did get more doctrinal, which is where my wife really felt that icky feeling.
There was a moment, as she tells it, where we were driving over some specific railroad tracks where I was expressing serious doubts and she had a choice to either open up about her own or tell me to knock it off. I said something to the effect of “look, I know you have doubts, everyone does, and if we acknowledge them and talk about them we’re just admitting what already is there, it doesn’t change anything”. Well, she chose to indulge me and opened up. Turns out we had a lot in common.
Now, let me say that like anything, sometimes you have to watch what you ask for. Although I started this process long before her, once she got rolling she was ready to drop every bit of it quickly. She was able to let it go easier than I was many times. There were times where I had it easier too. We decided to work together and that we wouldn’t do anything until both parties were ready for whatever the changes were. We knew we could trust each other and that we would wait on one another.
I should mention that my wife and I have been married for 16+ years now. We also work together every day in our cleaning business. We’ve been through a lot together, and working together forces us to deal with whatever comes. The good thing is that we like being together. The bad thing is that on bad days where one or both of us wants to kill the other there’s no escape. We’re stuck. That has forced us to learn how to deal with all manner of things. It was that trust that was built over all of those years that led her to listen to me. She knew I was trustworthy and that I wouldn’t bring something up without merit.
Now, like you said, it didn’t have to go that way. She could have turned me in, or one of us could have decided to stay in the religion. I love my wife, but honestly if she stayed in or worse, turned me in for what I was saying, I think I would have left. It would have hurt too much and I don’t think I could have taken it. It would have been better to leave and never see her again. Remember, I was accustomed to shunning from my youth, so that may have been easier for me. I don’t really know for sure because it’s hard to put yourself somewhere where you’re not, especially in something so heavy. I can say, however, that it often leads to divorce, or the spouse that is out pretends to be in and hopes that over time they can save their spouse that is still indoctrinated.
As to your question about the Mormons, I don’t know a ton. I have watched “Meet the Mormons”, the BBC special (not the one produced by their church by the same name to try and throw people off the scent of the BBC one that they didn’t like). It is reminiscent in many ways of the control exercised and the pretending done by members to paint the right picture for others. So much is about appearances. I do know that the JWs have recently gotten a new website, new children’s cartoons, new online television set, and much of it is said to be similar to the Mormon’s setup. I also seem to remember hearing that Charles Russel, the founder of JWs, was closely related to or friends with some Mormons. There are definite similarities though. In fact, sometimes on ex-JW forums we see ex-Mormons come to compare notes.
Yes, it is hard to get people to believe what goes on in the JWs. “They’re so nice”, is often the reply. People have relatives in it and don’t want to believe that they’re in an organization capable of such abuses. They also are so adept at image control and so much is about keeping up appearances that it makes it hard to believe there’s anything rotten underneath. Honestly, the members that are in are sheltered from the realities of the organization, so they don’t even know.
Let’s say that there’s an expose on child abuse in the JWs in the local newspaper. There was such a thing when I was young. We were flat out instructed from the platform not to read such things, that often they were “apostate lies”, which is a convenient way of turning anyone that has been hurt by the organization into an “apostate”, someone deceitful and evil, not someone genuinely hurt. I guess I am such an apostate. As such, they would immediately shut anything down from a source like me or anyone that speaks negatively about the organization. If someone speaks positively, they’re all over that, quoting it in their own publications. If it is negative, it must be apostate lies. Individual JWs were do all sorts of mental gymnastics to discredit anything negative. I’ve read stories of JWs being told by family members to look at the Australian Royal Commission, a publicly available court proceeding that was heavily documented, and the current JW will refuse to do so because it is probably lies. They completely turtle up and stick their heads in their shells so that the outside world doesn’t exist.
So yeah, it’s all a frustrating thing.
“Theocratic Warfare” is their term for lying when they deem it necessary to protect the image of the organization. I’m not sure what to talk about other than that. They will lie to keep up appearances. There is a court case in San Diego right now that is about child sexual abuse and the JWs redacted so much of the information that they turned over that it was unusable. The court grew so tired of their games that they fined the organization something like $4000 daily until the next trial date or until they provided copies of the information that were usable. The organization refused to comply and will pay the fine. That is “theocratic warfare”. Be obstinate and don’t give anything you don’t need to give. During the Royal Commission one of the seven governing body members was actually in Australia because his father was dying or sick or something, and they tried to hide the fact so he wouldn’t have to testify. They did all kinds of maneuvering. In the end, he did stand trial, and lied on the stand.
You are correct. JWs do not teach that he died on a cross. They believe it to be an upright stake, with hands above him and feet at the bottom. Here’s a great resource for things about JWs, and for this issue specifically:
http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/cross-or-stake.php
As to JW funerals, you will often notice that it is just a generic sales pitch for the religion. You will hear very little about the deceased other than that they did this or that in the JW religion, had x amount of sons or daughters or a wife or whatever. It is about pitching the religion to any in attendance because they know that many there aren’t JWs and that death makes people vulnerable and search for answers. They have a script for the entire process. They don’t care to make it about that person’s life or whatever, it’s all about the JWs.
Alright, I believe I caught up on everyone. Feel free to ask anything else you like. If I missed you, let me know. Or comment or whatever. This is actually kind of fun. I like teaching people about something that they have interest in and this organization is something that a lot of people really don’t know the ins and outs of. Great questions everybody!
I know a person at work who keeps having an acquaintance give her copies of The WatchTower, which she pitches in the trash as soon as the giver is gone. But I have perused a couple of copies. (BTW, I happen to be Episcopalian) The magazine make the JW’s out to be such a normal and healthy group, and soft pedals their theology. It gives their advice on how to live through difficult times, or how to deal with any number of problems, appearing to be much the same as other denominational publications.
What is your opinion of the magazine and it’s role in JW witnessing?
This thread has been a treasure and a quiet joy to me, b/c I’m happy for your clearly genuine happiness. I’m so glad you and your wife have each other through this journey and now your partnership is that much more equitable and open; I bet you make a great team.
You’re finding, as I did but for slightly different reasons, that family isn’t always blood; sometimes, family shows you who they are. (I also cleaned houses for about 5 years and most of my clients also became dear to me.)
I’m actually a bit surprised that you went to see your dying father. I would feel anger at him for involving me in such a dysfunctional social arrangement. I suspect it’s a function of slowly seeing the light and not realizing the grief he surrounded you with. But any religion that pits family members against each other missed the concept of love and respect.
Sorry to hear the people around you lost your friendship. But really, it’s their loss.
The magazine has really evolved over the years. Initially it was deep and Biblical. It got more general interest articles over the years. Recently they changed the format so that there is a public copy that they place with people like you, and a study copy for the JWs only. Yeah, their goal is definitely only to show you so much in their magazines. I should also note that for probably over 100 years there were 2 Watchtowers produced each month for the public. Now it is one for the public, one for the JWs. They have slowed production of all magazines, inluding the Awake magazine that used to go with it.
They really don’t rely on the magazines anymore. With the advent of their new website, that website is where they really direct people. They like to show people videos from it when going door to door. They also now set up little carts with literature on it in high traffic areas and let people take publications. They are really changing their tactics. That magazine was the lifeblood of much of the organization for decades and an identifying mark of them. They’ve really re-branded in the past decade, or even the past few years.
A beautiful post. Thank you for that!