Jehovah's Witnesses are some of the most hypocritical people I've ever met. I've been on Facebook for a while now. Most people are. It has been great; I've been able to reconnect with people I lost touch with over the years. I have a cousin who is also df''d and we keep somewhat in contact with one another. Our friendship on Facebook has allowed us to keep in closer contact despite our very busy schedules. However, once we were "friends" on Facebook, an interesting thing started to happen....JWs started sending me friend requests. The people sending me the requests were all people I knew while I was still a JW. Most of them were best friends with my cousin, and I knew them from her. I can't say I was extremely close with them, since growing up I was a few years older than them (and back then that made a big difference!). I have to admit I was surprised they were 'friending' me. I even had to ask my cousin if they were all df''d because I knew many of their families well and their fathers happened to be Elders. My cousin's response? "Oh they are cool. They don't care about all that." I was still a little confused as to whether they were active JWs or not. I couldn't imagine active JWs associating with a df''d person, simply because all my friends decided I was unworthy of their friendship when I was df'd. So, I asked my cousin to clarify. She told me that they all still went to the meetings, but that she was just as close when them now as she had been before she was df'd. They were even in her wedding...though they all got flack for that from the Elders when they found out.
I was shocked! I couldn't believe the fortune of my cousin! The fact that she was able to keep all her life long friends once she was df'd when I lost mine was great for her. I can't lie, I was even a little jealous of that. Based on what she told me, I decided to friend them all. I started to notice a few things right away. First their posts. Their language would never be allowed in any JW Kingdom Hall. Second, their pictures. I started to notice that they were throwing birthday parties for their kids and going to Christmas parties, both of which are big no-no's in the Organization. I also noticed that each of these women were either divorced (after getting married way too young at 18 or 19) and were now dating 'worldly' men. Remember, most of these women are daughters of Elders! I was shocked. I am still shocked.
As time has gone by I've seen them post pictures of themselves at various conventions, then in the very next set of pics they are posting pics of their kids birthday party, or at some night club dressed in a way that no 'god fearing woman' would. I am truly amazed that these women have managed to keep one foot in the Organization, maintaining all their familial relationships, while doing just as they pleased on the outside. Even more surprising, their children are all involved. I often wonder how they manage to keep their children from telling Elder grandpop about their birthday/Christmas/Halloween party?
What I've concluded is that this behavior isn't unusual. There are many in the Organization that are living lives just like these women. Though I never wanted to exert the energy of maintaining a double life, many were just fine with it. I see evidence of this attitude every time my mother calls me for some random conversation while keeping the fact that she talks to me at all a secret from all other JWs. I wonder why bother keep one foot in and one foot out of an Organization that makes adults feel the need to sneak around when they just want to live a different life. I don't understand it, and probably never will. I just know that sort of dishonesty isn't for me because I want to live an open life, a life without secrets and deception.
Leaving the so called 'truth' in no way whatsoever makes a person automatically any better then those in the group he/she just left. The very same ignorance and fears they allowed themselves to live under when in the truth, they take with them when they leave. No it's not just Witnesses that shun each other either. I have seen Ex-Witnesses shun each other with the very same intensity.
ReplyDeleteThey often leave with the same ignorant, sexist, racist selfish, calculating, bigoted, arrogant superior blinkered attitude they had when in there. It's made a whole lot worse by the sad fact that hardly any have more then a very rudimentary education and extremely limited life experience. These people as a result of having lived in a cult with cult mentality for most of their lives are also among the most emotionally and intellectually stunted individuals you will ever come across. Not all, but very many.
You probably can gather now that I do not have a lot of sympathy for Witnesses or Ex-Witnesses any more. I have spent a good bit of time with both. We each are responsible for our own lives as soon as we are able to think. God gave us all free choice if you even still believe in him that is. If you chose to give your life, mind and heart away to a high control group cos you simply were too much of a coward to live your own life and make your own decisions then more fool you. If you were too weak to follow your own conscience through life but instead chose to be a people/family/elder/congregation/society/governing body pleaser then more fool you. To those that woke up due to experiencing the pain of of being disfellowshipped, remember that they too shunned their own brothers and sisters at one point or another at the request of their leaders. You too condemned, shunned and left for dead the so called apostates that they themselves have now become. Look how they now crave the understanding and love that you yourself never gave to those that needed it.
I have been watching all the popular and not so popular ex-witness forums and it's mainly for updated info on the activities of the Watchtower including doctrinal changes, flip-flops, contradictions, lies, deceptions. I am not looking for love and cuddles, hugs and handshakes, or endless reassurance that I am now in the "REAL TRUTH ABOUT THE TRUTH". That too is another misnomer. The fact is that the "The Truth" ™ and "The Truth about The Truth" ™ are both wrong which no doubt in time will all become apparent. Neither group has love among themselves. They are all as messed up as each other.
Many of those ex-witness forums are run by rather unhealthy individuals. People like Simon Green of jehovahs-witness.net. who is an absolutely arrogant self obsessed megalomanic and control freak to put it mildly. People like him pretend to offer a place for free expression and sharing of views but in fact all he has done is set up his own personal totalitarian Organisation to rival the one he got thrown out of. There is little difference.
ReplyDeleteI wish them all well and sincerely hope that they all managed to get off wasting whats left of their lives in hating an Organisation that they freely and by their own choice handed your entire life over too. Once one has made the decision that something is not the truth, are we not meant to just discard and forget it? Realising the the Org lied to and deceived you.. like a bad relationship is it not much more healthy simply to leave this person and get them out of your life? Forget them? Why spend the rest of your life going over in agonising detail as to how they hurt you.. broke your heart, betrayed you, ad infinitum?
Maybe it's just time to get over it and move on and find something else to love.
This stuff can get extremely deep and enslaving. It's also true that when I did start reading the literature way back and then got "love bombed " I got totally seduced neck deep the same as everyone else. But when it came to giving total and unquestioning obedience to a group of guys in New York that did not care if I lived or died, well that just did not sit well with me. I could not comply... and did not.
Regarding all the trapped families in there. It does not happen by accident. Some great grand parent had to start that stuff off with that first bible study... by getting involved.. choosing a wife or husband in there... having kids in there born and then educated into the same slavery.. selling their entire family out. What an entangled mess. To do that takes years and years of switching your own mind off to all the rubbish that's fed to them. These are all constant mental decisions day in and day out over years and years until they are so deep that they become completely imprisoned. Whole decades of wrong choices ignoring all sense and logic. The mind was completely switched off. It's a form of insanity I'm afraid.
But at any point.. any one of us can do what is written below.
Psalm 124:7
New Living Translation (©2007)
"We escaped like a bird from a hunter's trap. The trap is broken, and we are free!"