Run! Especially once you get your degree and start getting paid. You will have to make all new friends, so you’ll have to be patient, and you will have to sort out the morals you want to keep and the ones you don’t, but you will and you’ll find lots of good people. You’ll see how ugly JW’s can get and maybe your parents won’t have the guts to stand up to their peer pressure on your behalf and leave them as well, and if they don’t you may see the ugly side of your parents being disloyal to you, but that’s a sad reality. You may be disappointed and even suffer setbacks from being shunned - lack of emotional and sometimes economic support. Don’t let that make you think you’re making a mistake. That’s why they shun, because they hope that if they give you a hard time, you’ll give up and come back. It’s not Satan that’s making you suffer - it’s them. It’s not Jehovah who rewards you by coming back - it’s them. Oldest psychological trick in the book.

You can find other nice people to have as friends until one day you start your own family and show them that you can be a good person without being a JW. I now associate with Universal-Unitarians because they encourage independent thinking and focus on what most people have in common and go to church for like exchanging well-wishing, being thoughtful and supportive of each other through the ups and downs of life, doing meaningful community service, etc. We take insight and inspiration from many religious and secular works. We teach the kids in Sunday School all major world religions and encourage them to pick one or none, whichever suits their conscience.

You seem smart and nice. You can be a good person and not a JW or Christian for that matter! Most popular religion is based on a false sense of security. JW’s tell you that if you do this, that, and that, you’ll be happy forever within the current organisation and forever after in paradise. Here’s the fallacy - No’one really knows what we don’t know and there are no guarantees! I was so frustrated looking for them and never really finding them and am now actually happier accepting that there are no guarantees in this life or after and, because of that, enjoy each day and spread as much positivity as I can and enjoy my life and health why I have it, all the while following the golden rule. I am more Christian than most Christians I know. This is what I call my agnostic faith. I had the conflicting combination of having a JW mom a completely non-religious dad. We went to church and heard that we shouldn’t celebrate holidays if we wanted god to love us and then our dad gave us holiday presents. How irresponsible of my mother to raise us to feel bad about good things! Especially to take us to a place where we heard that our real life was bad and that somehow my father, more moral than most Christians I know, was someone to be ashamed of! They’ll deny they ever said that, but their expressed notions of good and bad ie JW vs non-JW were prejudiced against my dad from the get go and status system they have is designed to be more supportive of the families that are all in it together. A couple sociology and psychology classes made that clear, too. Information control is a cult feature. Every religion has a few cult features, some more than others. Discouraging college is obviously information control because education and critical thinking are a threat to the memorization and repetition concept of the church. I learned early about the cognitive disconnect that people are capable of, but it wasn’t until I went to college that I learned the words to describe it. I think Freedom of Religion is the last legal child abuse. I remember my childhood overshadowed with conflict and anxiety from JW politics that I was asked to evangelize at a young age. I didn’t fit in with the JW’s because my dad wasn’t one and I didn’t fit in anywhere else because I was one. Even my dad was disappointed that I wanted to be like my mom! How could my mom pit me against everyone like that, just so she could maintain her security blanket illusion which allowed her to avoid facing the pain in life by avoiding it and getting caught up in JW la-la-land. I don’t think it’s ok to tell kids that god won’t love them, especially not for arbitrary things, like celebrating birthdays and the hair thing you mentioned. Get used to that one, though. Other organizations you may work for may require a clean cut look. But it’s more about marketing than morals, as you are finding. Most JW’s aren’t smart enough to be aware of what they’re doing, though. If they were, they’d be too smart to be JW’s. JW’s aren’t the only religion guilty of not giving people a hard time about the right things and giving others a hard time about the wrong things. No wonder there are so many churches and yet still so many people who still have a void to fill and fill it with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, lust, entertainment, food . . .

I do give the JW’s credit for developing my verbal strength at a young age. Being forced to memorize things helped me memorize things to do well in school. The theocratic ministry school prepared me to do well in sales. Sadly, though, that’s all it really does for people who are still JW’s, too. If you take a marketing class, you can see how manipulated you really were or “guided” at best. JW’s can’t believe they’re a cult because no’one seems to be profiting financially. Well anyone making a living, or at least having their family provided for in the headquarters, even just the basics, is profiting at least that much and everyone else gets ego profits of praise and status as they follow a track. Everyone else profits by maintaining the illusion of their false security.

This is the first time I ever reached out on-line. I’m 30 now and I rejected JW’s when I was a teen. My rebellion was similar to yours, except I didn’t have any facial hair to grow, so I just stopped dressing up for meetings. I wore jeans and sweatshirts. If my mom was going to make me go, she couldn’t make me dress up, and she, like the elders couldn’t give me any moral reason. In fact, churches should welcome everyone and it shouldn’t be about fashion. I understand wanting to get dressed up, too, to present your best self, but that’s a personal choice, and shouldn’t be a religious requirement. Some others tried the “Those dresses you used to wear were so nice . . .” I was already too smart and over it. I never regret not going back. It is amazing how things do creep up even this far and this much education later where I have an anal reaction to something and I realize I’m thinking in the dualistic absolute terms of a JW and I have to unravel the knot I get into and reconstruct the thought in relative terms. Sometimes, I get an almost PTSD reaction and panic if I sense conflict or fear that everyone will turn against me if I say something counter current. I have enough experience and new skills now, like conflict resolution, to work through that one, too, but it’s amazing how much that culture affected me. The fact that I’m pouring my heart out in the middle of the night to reach out to a stranger to say it’s ok, you’re not alone, you’re not crazy, you’re actually on the path to sanity.

If anyone wants to email me directly, you can at alelebo@yahoo.com

Trust me they will be waiting in the wings to see if you fall flat on your face and then re direct you back in to the Org should you leave for good.

Its your life and you gotta live it, I can remember when going to college was a disfellowshiping act, I listen to the people around me feared losing my Sisters and family and gave up my College chance.

I wish I was strong like you, I raised my boys in the Org but we were not a strict household, since my husband was always video game addicted he was never much of a brother either. So it was pretty much left up to me, and I was a liberal so following the rules was never my strong point.

I wish more Young people were like you who are trapped in there, though here on the East Coast many of them do go to College but just not the sleep away kind LOL.

i know how you feal i grew up as a JW too and the defining moment for me is when i asked my mother if she would rather me be happy or JW and she paused and refused to respond after i told her i wanted to go to UNI. JW put to much pressure to conform that in the end i just wanted to stand up and yell ARE YOU PEOPLE KIDDING ME THIS IS SUCH CRAP!

Since my last comment on 07/28, I have read the books “Crisis of Conscience” and “In search of christian freedom” both by Raymond Franz. This shows very clearly that the WTBTS is not Gods sole communication source and certainly is not THE truth.

Recommended reading for all Witnesses in any doubt. These two books put any doubts I had to rest and I have started fading away…

Read these books and decide for yourself, but Revelation 18:4 certainly applies to the WTBTS.

Good health to you.

However with the 80/20 (80% of faith is correct, 20% is human interpretation) rule in mind - I do not know of a better alternative. So continue.

Hope this helps you understand you are not alone - and the only important thing at the end of the day is your relationship with Jehovah.

Hang in there!

JWs have no prohibitions on eating any food, provided it isn’t “Blood Sausage”, but they do teach that vegetarianism is what will take place in the paradise earth.

Now reread this text
“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will renounce the faith by paing attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. They forbid marriage AND DEMAND ABSTINENCE FROM FOODS,which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” - 1 Timothy 4:1-3 New Revised SV

So the question is, Is the new system in paradise earth, a later time, when the WTBS says to abstain from foods, (i.e) all meats?

Watchtower is “hypocracy of liars,” demons etc..
Brothers we would do well to avoid such false profits.
(clap,clap,clap,clap)

And on #3…well, my grandmother claims to be a part of this 144, 000. Shes a lovely, sweetheart of a woman, love her to death, but she’s known for going over the top in every aspect of life lol. I could never even ask her how she knows without getting blasted. Eh.