I Survived Being Raised Joho

i am a Jehovah's witness and everyone i know wears blue jeans to school and has a tv, we are not crazy or anything. my mom was disfellowshipped, i don't know what your circumstances were but life continued as normal family wise, i talked with her and joked with her. i wear normal clothes any time except for going to meeting of course, Jehovah deserves to have me wearing my best for him.

I don't know what to do with my life I have left .. I feel like I am wasting it ! Xx cat

Aww I just want to hug you and show you the love I have in my heart .. I have hurt my family as a suffering alcoholic I can somehow feel a bit of your pain xx cat

why don't you go back??? weeza6

Wow all of you above are so brain washed... "none of my friends beat their kids or were beaten" how do you know.... i was beaten raped by an elder.. yeah theyre so holy arent they.

God is love...if you do not find love in it, it does not come from God. Love will not do any other things except to love. Our love come from above not of ourselves. Jesus said I AM the vine and you are the branches...without me you can do nothing.
Love does not come naturally for us sinners...it is a choice ....by the grace of God not of your own.
We can love only if we have freedom to choose... love can not be regulated...
love is not uniform, it is universal...
God is love....His commandments ...to love Him and love one another ...love is sign for His true church...would you ever think that God our most loving father would make mistake by doing the most unloving thing ... letting His children died because they can not receive blood transfusions... This thing comes from somebody that from beginning of times has been accusing our Father. ...

I have studied with witnesses and been around them for years. I am not a Witness but I have never seen anyone of my friends beat their children. As all people are imperfect, the few that these others complain about must be an exception. There are nutty people in ALL religions. I never saw evidence of it being a CULT.

I THINK THAT IF YOU DID'T LIKE THE TEACHINGS OR DISCIPLING, YOU SHOULD'NT CALL IT AN OCCULT, BECAUSE ONCE YOU GAINED YOUR SO CALL FREEDOM YOU DRIFTED DEEPER INTO SOMETHING THAT WAS VERY BAD FOR YOU, SOMETIMES WE KNOW THAT WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS IS RIGHT BUT WE REFUSE TO LIVE BY HIS STANDARDS, I KNOW IT IS'NT EASY, AND WHY DID'NT YOU REACH OUT TO YOUR FRIENDS THEY COULD HAVE PROABLY GIVEN YOU SPIRITUAL ADVISE, PEOPLE ARE'NT PERFECT, SO MAYBE THERE WAS SOME LACK OF COMUNICATION ON YOUR PARENTS SIDE, NOW THAT YOU'RE AN ADULT YOU CAN APPROACH OR CALL YOUR FATHER AND MAYBE ASK HIM , ABOUT WHATEVER IT WAS TO DRIVE YOU AWAY, I HOPE YOU GET ON THE RIGHT TRACK SOON.

Is it normal for jws to be abusive? And alcoholics? Why is that an acceptable behavior

Thanks for sharing also! I know alot of them. of course they want me to come to Kingdom Hall on sundays. I was raised Catholic, and have looked at all groups ( Religions). just beleave and except Christ in your life, pray and answer to him and him only. he will talk to you and show you where you need to be in life. you dont need to part of a church or group to be saved and go to heaven. be honest, treat people the same (be a good person), and dont buy into all the distractions of life. if you look around its all about money and power and control.

Thanks for sharing! Interesting that the "truth" seems to bring out the best in everyone! Mental / physical / emotional issues, and abusive behavior. I was just disfellowshipped July '12. It's been hard, but liberating at the same time.

Interesting to see that many who escape these sinister cults that supposedly worship God, still themselves worship that God, albeit in their own way. Frankly those experiences would have made me an atheist, though my Anglican background was far milder and I still don't believe in God anyway.

What comes through time and time again with all such cults is their real motive: cold, inhuman and very un-Christian power over others. Power whether within families or imposed by the cult elders: generally, self-appointed (or at least voluntary) self-important little dictators with no genuine theological training and a very narrow view and understanding of the world and of humanity. This is evident even in the door-to-door evangelists, trained as they to be unable to think and analyse anything for themselves, but only to follow blindly the cult script.

Best to leave these organisations as soon as possible; certainly not join them!

im 13 and plan on leaving soon jw are so blind to extremes my parents made half hardly and i get cursed out and told im an idiot,then she say how whould jehoovah feel about you talking back all i can think is how would he feel about this.my grandfather thinks my brother is bothered mr saten because he has autism ,and my grandma follows him a round like a puppy. i dont want to live being told im useless andwill be nothing but a house and not allowed to have opinoins i plan on being succsesful and been told thatjobs are for men and i should just pioneer.i cant wait till they see that i have a brain of my own

I'm very sorry this happened to you. I used to be a Jehovah's witness, I saw hypocrisy, prejudice and abuse in that cult. I lef
t them the hard way. Getting myself disfellowshipped on purpose to officially leave them
I'm glad I did. That was 16 years ago.
I'm glad you left them

Well times change, and certain rules change over time Labarron..when I was being raised within this religion there was no long hair for boys, no facial hair, and a biggie was..no interracial couples! Not that anybody was racist...ohh perish the thought! I guess the excuse is they didn't want to upset any racists? Who might be interested in joining? This was in the 70's and 80's, not the 1950's! I can find a few 80's Watchtowers and Awakes that very nicely and pleasantly explain while the races shouldn't mix. What a progressive religion, huh?

I was raised as jehovahs witness since I was 8 years old but left three years ago I am now 27. I left of my own decision. I was engaging in practices that i knew were wrong and it was bothering my conscience so i became inactive. I am very sorry for your experience but from my experience the people are very nice. I dont know if I can agree with you about the no blue jeans and no tv claims. You ARE allowed to where jeans and you CAN watch television, however it is advised that you not watch certain things with a lot of sex, drugs, violence, etc...I am sorry for your mothers mental breakdown. I am sure that it was not the elders intent to cause her any harm; they must follow the rules that are made by the governing body. If your father was abusing you the way you say he did you could have reported it to one of the elders. Jehovahs witnesses do beleive in dicipline their children but not the way you say your father did. The only thing I can agree with is the teasing in school. Jehovahs Witneses children are teased when they attend school because they are different from everybody else. They do not celebrate holidays and attend revelry parties. I am glad that you still beleive in god, though.

i got to thinking about something,..with all these various revealings of

"new light",..im wondering where this "new light" comes from?,..

especially since "satan keeps transforming himself into an angel

of light",..are you getting the picture?

whats important isnt where you started but its where you end up...you are a survivor ..you are great...you are an inspiration....see the positive in every negative situation

It is through forgiveness that you truly find GOD!

"i found god in the strangest place......my heart.thats the only book you need..."



I like that statement. It is one thing I found to be true. I believe that if you need someone or something to teach you how to be "good", how to love etc, perhaps you don't have it in you to do those things, so you search outside yourself for something to make you feel good, to make you feel love.



Religious doctrines and religious works present a facade or a mask of righteousness. Often times they hide what is lurking beneath. But hey, tag religion onto any old sinner and you wouldn't notice the rust beneath the shiny new body. What did Jesus call it? Dead man's bones in a shiny coffin? Something like that.



Anyway, I'm glad you got out of there. Religion, as far as I can tell, only brings about division, an us against them mentality. I wonder, would God exalt one group of people over another just because they are trying harder or maybe even doing better? I think not. Let us, as the chiildren of God help each other to grow, as brothers and sisters. Instead of trying to push onto others our way of life.

If I could ask, have you ever read the Bible in its entirety? :)

You left at 17, don't be too sure all your old friends are still JW's. I'm 48 and walked into a kingdom hall a few years back on some sort of god quest, for the first time 25+ years and 90 percent of em had been replaced with new people. Nobody I grew up with was still in. I hung around for a little bit, they were trying to get me interested in this woman I knew since childhood. They called on her at a meeting and she started spouting off about how everybody in the world was evil except JWs. I knew people, people who would lay down their life for me if needed, who arent JW's. And I was offended that this room fulla phonies was all patting each other on the back for being the spiritual Yankees, and everybody else is Boston.



I walked out of there upset, because I was really looking for God. And I asked God, "You saved me, how do I connect with you, how do you want me get to know you?"



Well I might as well go to an AA meeting...I walked in and they were having a special meeting, a history of AA. and the guy kept mentioning this guy, Emmett Fox. He said he wrote the greatest spiritual books ever, and everybody else was still stealing whole paragraphs from his old books and claiming it as their own. He said why not read the original. So I did. And I found an extremely humble man writing about finding god from within. A man who didn't say "only I have all the answers", a man who said there were good people all over the earth, in every country, in every religion. And I suddenly found God, very much to my liking!

I'm so sorry I was abused 2 and had 2 mentally ill parents who left me in homes 2 rot. I feel your pain, You Are a Survivor Above All.

to all those who have not nice times jehovaha god will see to it that there held accountable and they will pay jehov. aha is a loving god and forces no one to worship him je i ddovaha s laws r for r own benifit and hes real whether he gets slanderd r not jw is not a cult u r not forced r made to stay u dont have to pay money they pay there taxis and they would lay ther life down for u like one person said above the bible says we willl get people of allsorts and if doing wrong the congragation has to be kept clean i done over fifteen years disfelloshiped but jah is jah hes real

no they aint your friends in there at jw

just move on



but like you said easier said than done.



vp

your father can not even call him self a cristen, my mum and dad are jw and i have a brother and a sister and we were tought to belive what we wanted to, they are very open people and do not make jugements on any ones faith i am very sorry for your exp but what makes you think that jehovahaka god is on your dads side think about it.

My mother and her boyfriend and later step-father were involved in a witches coven and I and other children suffered horrific abuse under this cult including breeding babies,child and animal sacrifice and more.

I understand that it takes along long time to heal from being in a cult.

i hear you and I want to validate your experience because while others may have had good experiences in the same religion, that wasnt your experience.

Your dad sounds like he would have been a sadistic abuser no matter what,it just suited him to do it under the name of that religion.

Im sure like with any religion or beliefs,95% of those who call themselves witched are innocent just as there are always good in most religions but there will always be those who abuse it.

If you live in the UK or Aus try googling Mayumarri as you will be believed and validated and helped to heal there.

A few of us are from cults but Mayumarri is for all survivors of child abuse,a pioneering program which has worked out we can not just survive but thrive.

I have no motive for suggesting the healing weeks Mayumarri runs other than that it has been such a huge step in my healing and that of many others.We charge ppl what they can afford and dont get government funding so am always needing money so there's no financial incentive for making it known.Everyone that works there are volunteers and all the carers are also survivors who have done their own healing weeks and continue to heal so everyone there wants passionately to reach out to other survivors.

I must admit because of my past I was initially worried it was a cult but that couldnt be further from the truth.



Wherever you're from,your experience is yours and is valid and you desrve to heal and to be happy and to be able to have healthy relationships with yourself and others and live a full,healthy life.

Wishing you all the very best.

just because your dad was crazy dosen't mean the religion is wrong. You can't control what types of people slip into the cracks of a good religion. People like him give the religion a bad name. You didn't "survive" from being a "JOHO" .. you survived from an abusive father who had a mental illness. Forced to wear certain clothes to school? Thats not the religion. Don't play dumb. Don't bash either.

amazing you got out. that is some of the worst kind of abuse because it is legalized... hate filled people who call it love... my parents didn't know about my abuse... i hid it from them... it was a different kind of cult ... they used children to get their way... and they used their own children to bait other children that is how i got caught up in the abuse.... i am sorry that the situation had to happen for you the way it did... trust is hard isn't it?

omg ! sweet sister...



God bless you!