Hi Mark,

Thanks for this message. This has to be the most straight forward and cut to the chase of exactly how I feel. Thanks for placing it, there are a hell of a lot of fundamentalists who think I am out to undermine their faith, and although this is partly true it is by no means why I have spent a lot of time placing comments on this site. Unlike the fundamentalist Christian who somehow somewhere has bumped into knowledge he cannot himself understand, but will defend it (almost admirably) with an incredible amount of non logic, quoting of absolutely non relevant scriptures, he will later reflect on the great performance he has put up and believing he has the power of God behind him sleeps very gently at night.

My personal and I must emphasise personal research has indicated a non biblical revelation. Humans on this planet have absolutely no concept of what happens to them after death, and neither do I, however for people to believe in a faith of zero evidence construed by people who shout out guidance by a God of very questionable morals to me is ridiculous.

All I do on this site, is try to help folk who in most cases do not want to be helped, I wish to save them both money and dissapointment. Sorry folks thats the way I am.
Yes the Mother Teresa’s of this world have done endless good, and so have many other people both religious and non.
When I see evidence of preachers having an orgasm
in his white sports car with a prostitute and know that the payment of the said prostitute came from funds from you and me I start throwing my toys.
Faith is a touchy subject, it is an illusion we see evidenced by the JW worker bee thinking he/she is doing God’s work, it is also evident in the aftermath of a happy clappy event so often found at a charismatic church.
I do not care what happens to homosexuals behind closed doors, I do not care what religions do within the walls of their church, do not bring it out to offend my family and I and we will get on just fine.

Cheers,
Markus

Hello again Markus,

I am glad you liked that one.

So, if we can, for the moment, talk about “stage 1, 2 3A and 3B” then the whole thing gets a bit easier.

We are quite clear that a JW, as a rule, is at stage 2, the fundamentalist and institutional stage of spiritual development, and is also clear that both of us have left that stage behind us.

The question is the trigger point. What happened to you to get you to move on? The justification of the move is a different matter, and it happens after the event. The key is what kind of events move people from stage 2 to either 3A or 3B?

In my case I think it was not a single event but a sequence: As a kid I was quite an intolerant little git, a catholic boy who thought that all non-Catholics go to hell. Being quite full of myself, I thought I make a good priest, so after high school I joined a seminary. There were others there just like me, but also some intriguing characters that were different: quiet, listening, hardly ever speaking, always helpful, and never arguing with me about any garbage I churned out over the dinner table. God, if I think how obnoxious I was, I cringe…

Because I was quite clever, I was sent to an ordinary university for studies, and I soon discovered that my save little world was being turned upside down. There were classes in philosophy and a lot just did not fit in with my world view; then we had church history classes and I soon discovered that there were a right bunch of villains as popes at one time or another, as well as a hell of a lot of very crooked decisions. Then doctrine classes, instead of getting a nice clear cut version, we got arguments for this view and then for that, and were asked to balance them up, not what I expected at all. A lot of confusion ensued.

In short, I was force-fed with thinking material. In the end, my overall conclusion was that one church is as good as any other, all have some good points in that they could provide a focus, but in the end none of them, including my own, are “right” in every way. In fact, all religions have something to offer, but it requires real INDIVIDUAL effort to find that little piece of gold in all the clutter and all the rubbish surrounding it. I was also quite clear that all organised religion was dangerous, at it often leads to unreasonable control over people, with frequently disastrous consequences.

So went to get ordained thinking this old crate (the Catholic Church) is about a good or as bad as the next, and if I have to work in one of them, I better pick the one I know best. Not an ideal starting point for a priest, I grant you, but I simply could not see what on earth I could do with my degree if I don’t follow it through.

However, I had one stroke of luck: in my first parish people complained I was too “liberal” in my preaching, and I was upsetting the older parishioners, so the bishop wisely sent me back to university to start an academic career.

So, now I teach ancient Hebrew and classical Greek, and don’t have to preach in public anymore, great. I also operate as a Chaplin for students, and I use this opportunity to get them thinking about religious matters and work things out for themselves.

So, now I am an unimportant, “semi-detached” cleric, without office as such, one that fits into a little corner to teach certain things, but otherwise does not have to tow the “party line”; to me, perfect: I don’t even have to bother the church for money, I get a teaching salary.

So, I have told you my “trigger point” for loosing trust in fundamentalist views and institutions: A requirement to study seriously and contact with good academics.

I would be interested what first cause you to think about getting out of the JW.

Hello once more Markus,

there seem to be several Marks around, the post about armageddon was someone else.

Any good idea for a name for me for posting purposes to avoid confusion?

Thanks

Hi Mark,

I took to addressing the other Mark as Mark UK.

To answer you question: I left the JW’s mainly because I am a lazy person. I was tired of attending countless meetings after a tiresome day and was not receiving any upliftment spiritually. I had a lot of time on my hands all of a sudden and took to reading the scriptures, which I thought I knew so well.
So in answer to your question: I read the Old Testament, and for the first time I REALLY understood. Fact is we are grovelling to a God who is nothing more than a cold blooded psychopath. -End of story.

What I find truly incredible is how the fundamentilist
will dream up any excuse, or invent any story which will protect the deity of which he/she is so hooked.
When I look back and think of the endless hours at meetings, and generally pissing people off by knocking on a lot of doors, I almost feel a part of my life was stolen.
I am a dedicated family man, I earn an honest wage, I take time to do what I enjoy, mainly fishing and golf but at the same time ensure a comfortable home for my family, and if I have erred in the eyes of God, tough shit.
The heartbreaking part is that most Bible thumpers
do not even take the time to read the whole of their good book and are clueless to all sections that do not reinforce their own viewpoints.

Turns out Jesus is not much better than Joe Hover and in fact points out to us we should never disregard the good teachings in the Old Testament.

So the message to all Christians out there is: Stop praying for me and you read your very own good book cover to cover before you come to me insisting Jesus died for me and loves me, because nothing can be further from the truth.

Cheers,
Markus

Ok, this is most interesting. So, because not much was happening in term of spirituality, you started off on your own, and that is how you got where you are today.

So, how to get people to start off on their own?

That is the million dollar question.

You see, for me the bible is not at all the same thing as for a JW. If you imagine God to be room full of bright light, the bible is a tiny beam of light that escapes through the keyhole, with dust dancing in it.

The minute anyone tries to commit a religious experience to paper, it becomes just a shodow of what is once was. This applies to all biblical writers. They all try to put into words what essentially cannot be expressed. If we then add to that problem that they wrote is languages very different from ours, so that translations are always faulty, and they wrote so long ago, that all of their words may as well be from a different world, we are beginning to understand the problem. That does not mean the old book is useless, but it certainly is not the authoritative manual to all things relating to God. Things just are not that simple.

Someone once said if you want to know what a rose is, you need to look at one and smell it, not to cut one up and look at it under the microscope. Perhaps it is the same with religion. God cannot simply be found in any book, first people need to find him inside ourselves. We don’t even absolutely need that book to really find God, a site like this where people talk about things is just as good, maybe better. At least we can ask each other, a luxory we do not have with bible authors.

You often mention hell: Well, hell is like this:

Imagine a room full of people. In the middle there is a large dish of food. Each person has a one meter long spoon which they must gasp at the end, to get food. They keep trying but nobody manages to get any food to their lips. Heaven is an identical room, with one difference: people simply feed each other. We make our own heaven and hell.

Sorry, preaching again, old habits…

Thanks for telling me, we are getting somewhere. I wonder if I can get James-NonJW, fri and the rest tell us also?

Have a nice day

Mark (the padre, not the UK Mark)

Hi Mark,

A slither of light emerging from a hey hole will never find me, as far as spirituality is concerned. Read what Albert Einstein thought about spirituality, now there is an idiot for you.
Thanks for the rose analogy, it looks beautiful, smells lovely, and works wonders on my wife, why scrutinize it? I may look at something if it is not good but if it ain’t broke why try fix it, as the saying goes.

Here is an excerpt from a comment I placed a long time ago, I forget where I found it and although it is somewhat humorous, it reflects many a true homage as to how religion has been conducted since time began, and still is, and the monkeys conducting it today still do not have even a clue:

Take a group of monkeys and place them in a room or large cage, place a ladder in the middle of the cage, leading to some lovely fruit hanging within reach just above the ladder. When a monkey climbs the ladder and attempts to reach the fruit, A high powered hose is blasted against all the monkeys. It takes a while, but eventually the monkeys learn to leave the prize alone. When a monkey starts to go up the ladder, he gets battered by his mates, as they don’t want to get punished by this monkey’s doing.
Introduce a new monkey into the cage and it will soon go for the fruit but stops, once he gets the shit kicked out of him by his piers.
Introduce another monkey into the arena and the same thing happens, only this time with the last primate that got wacked, joining in vigorously.
Over time disassociate all the original animals so that only the ones WITHOUT knowledge of the dreaded hose remain.
We now have a cage full of animals that do not know why they cannot climb the ladder, but dare not.

After a couple of years of us being born, we get ingrained into our heads how God is watching over us, and 99.9% of us accept it without question.
We go our various ways each believing our religion is right and all others are mistaken. We never get to question the validity of an actual God but we will go to war to preserve our own doctrine.

By the way Mark, please do not give me well meaning instructions on how to find heaven, to me there is no such thing, and the closest one gets is in the happiness
one finds in one’s own heart.

Cheers,
Markus

Hello again.

God the policeman is really not my idea of God either. Nor is the God of dogma and factions.

I think we both have moved on from that, but in different directions.

Let’s leave all that on one side, and see what else we can find out. We are both quite clear that JW are stuck in a stage of thinking of God as a policeman and fixated in dogmatic squabbles with everybody else. We both know that this is a waste of a life, and can even be dangerous, and yet neither of us have quite worked out how to get some movement into this mindset.

We have established so far that a degree of dissatisfaction, even if only vague, may sometimes trigger movement. Perhaps it starts with a general notion that there must be more to it than humdrum bible studies, or some genuine doubts that the doctrinal stuctures on offer are not right. There surely are other such trigger events, but we don’t know what they are yet. Possibly events in personal lives?

A JW in that state of mind of even vague doubts or dissatisfaction it ready for some help, because he will have recovered his ability to listen. In your experience, have you had contacts with other ex-JW? What did they say about what got them to reach a decision to leave? Was is always similar to your own experience, or sometimes different?

Also, did most such others always follow you in your perspective on religious issues, or did some go into a different direction? The guy who set up “freeminds”, tells a similar story to you, but he went a different way.

In particular, do most ex-JW move to stage 3A, like you, or do they mainly move sideways to a different group, replacing one nice secure mindset with another? Did any move to the 3B stage?

Sorry, lots of questions. When I become a nuisance, tell me, and I stop asking you. It’s just you are the best person I know who can tell me.

Take care
Mark