Testimony WHERE I AM NOW & WHERE I'M HEADED - THREE YEARS AFTER LEAVING THE WATCHTOWER

[William]

INTRO:​

It's been a little over three years since I walked away from the Watchtower organization ("the borg", hereafter). I'd been part of the organization for only three years (from 2017 to 2020), and I know that's an extremely short duration, compared to others'. But still....
In retrospect, leaving the borg was one of the best decisions of my life, the consequent trauma notwithstanding. In the beginning it was hard; aside the emotional abuse I had to endure as a result of being shunned by my close friends, the more traumatic experience for me was the existential angst I almost drowned in. Nothing made sense to me anymore in those few months following my wake-up from the borg's indoctrination. Everything was open to doubt. I went from certainty to near-nihilism. I wasn't sure if God was real; with my faith in God thus shaken, depression followed....
The long and short of the matter is that I'm in a different and better place now. I'm trying to trace here--briefly--the paths I took to get here, partly as a reminder and encouragement to myself and partly because I'm hoping (in the words of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) to leave some

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother [or sister],
Seeing, shall take heart again.

After three years of struggle--reading, thinking, conversing and arguing with friends and family, etc.--I've arrived at a skeptical affirmation of the Christian faith. A "skeptical affirmation" is not as bad as it sounds, if I explain what I mean. As I said above, I was forced to start my search from a position of uncertainty and profound doubt: all alleged certainties--the borg, including the institutional church, the Bible and others' spiritual experiences--became irrelevant to me. Those were no longer my certainties. I didn't feel bound by any infallible church/magisterium ("Jehovah's Organization"), an inerrant Bible or by any irrestible personal experience of the divine. I found myself in a position where God hadn't spoken--or, if it seemed as if he had (through the Bible perhaps), I couldn't be sure of it. In the absence of all my former certainties, my search for God was bound to start from a skeptical position.
I'll start writing about my journey in the next post. Thanks for reading, and please pardon my self-indulgent prose.

 

[William]

Waking up from the borg​

I'm a bookworm. I read my way into the Watchtower and read my way out of it. I had always found it difficult to restrict my reading to only the Watchtower publications. As any (ex-)JW knows, the borg relies heavily on the scholarship of "worldly" authors and those from Babylon the Great, "the world empire of false religion", as people of different faiths are dubbed. I found that some of the publication they--very selectively!--mined quotations from seemed interesting, and it became increasingly difficult for me not to look into those cited books myself. So, using the Internet, I began to download and read various other books, especially those written about the Bible. But I was extremely careful, veering off topics that might jeopardize my faith in "the faithful and discreet slave". That way, I managed to learn a little bit more about the Bible than simply reading the publications allowed. With time my selective reading of outside-the-borg books made me more confident and I started to read anti-Watchtower publications, such as Ron Rhode's Reasoning from the Scriptures with the Jehovah's Witnesses and David A. Reeds' Jehovah's Witnesses Answered Verse by Verse. I realized that, using the Watchtower Library (I used its PC app), I could refute most of the arguments in those books, based as they are on tendentious readings of the Bible. But this did not prepare me for what I encountered next.
As fate or providence would have it, one day I came across this funny title: How to Escape from Jehovah's Witnesses. Out of curiosity I downloaded, opened and began to skim it. It completely blew me away. In my confidence I thought I'd encountered and dealt with all possible objections to my faith; I couldn't have been more wrong!
Chapter 2 of the book began with the truthful claim that "Jehovah's Witnesses are not dissuaded from doing research." I could even agree with this: "But, as you know ['cause I did know], this 'research' is mostly limited to the Bible and Watchtower publications....", citing a '97 Watchtower article. But when the author began to raise some questions--questions I'd always had but pushed away--all my suppressed doubts resurfaced: "Can the information you are consulting [solely produced by the Watchtower] be considered objective? Is there any incentive for the writers to criticize their organization whenever criticism is warranted.... or is it more likely that criticism will be suppressed by such an organization, while its achievements are grossly exaggerated?" I knew deep down that the answer to those questions is a big "No!" And so began my crisis of faith. But this was just the beginning. Being introduced to the works of Raymond Franz, M. James Penton, and Carl Olof Jonsson and reading Crisis of Conscience, Apocalypse Delayed and The Gentile Times Reconsidered (in that order) set me off on a quest I am still on, a search for the truth about about Ultimate Reality.
I realize now that it was necessary for me to say No to a lot of things in order to say Yes--though hesitantly, skeptically--to a few things. I'm still in the process of unlearning a lot of things I thought I knew. Over these few years I've changed my mind on almost everything. If I've learned anything from my time with the Witnesses it is this: certainty is a myth. (The whole) Truth is beyond the grasp of any (group of) finite mind(s); no organization, religious or secular, has all the answers.... One must cultivate healthy skepticism and keep an open mind.​

 

[Diana S]

INTRO:​

It's been a little over three years since I walked away from the Watchtower organization ("the borg", hereafter). I'd been part of the organization for only three years (from 2017 to 2020), and I know that's an extremely short duration, compared to others'. But still....
In retrospect, leaving the borg was one of the best decisions of my life, the consequent trauma notwithstanding. In the beginning it was hard; aside the emotional abuse I had to endure as a result of being shunned by my close friends, the more traumatic experience for me was the existential angst I almost drowned in. Nothing made sense to me anymore in those few months following my wake-up from the borg's indoctrination. Everything was open to doubt. I went from certainty to near-nihilism. I wasn't sure if God was real; with my faith in God thus shaken, depression followed....
The long and short of the matter is that I'm in a different and better place now. I'm trying to trace here--briefly--the paths I took to get here, partly as a reminder and encouragement to myself and partly because I'm hoping (in the words of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) to leave some

After three years of struggle--reading, thinking, conversing and arguing with friends and family, etc.--I've arrived at a skeptical affirmation of the Christian faith. A "skeptical affirmation" is not as bad as it sounds, if I explain what I mean. As I said above, I was forced to start my search from a position of uncertainty and profound doubt: all alleged certainties--the borg, including the institutional church, the Bible and others' spiritual experiences--became irrelevant to me. Those were no longer my certainties. I didn't feel bound by any infallible church/magisterium ("Jehovah's Organization"), an inerrant Bible or by any irrestible personal experience of the divine. I found myself in a position where God hadn't spoken--or, if it seemed as if he had (through the Bible perhaps), I couldn't be sure of it. In the absence of all my former certainties, my search for God was bound to start from a skeptical position.
I'll start writing about my journey in the next post. Thanks for reading, and please pardon my self-indulgent prose.

We understand where you and your thoughts are coming from., William. You are not alone. This sounds like a cliché almost, but we get you. If you need someone to talk to (if possible on internet) ask Lori for a Buddy or call someone in the What's app groups