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Am I The Only BLer who grew up a Jehovah Witness?

CfZrx

CfZrx

Bluelighter
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Nov 23, 2014
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Crawling toward the light
Somethin tells me I am not the only ex-JW who fucked around with drugs and ended up on BlueLight ;) If you grew up any culty religion please respond and explain what it was :)
 
My mom used to bounce around different Christian denominations when I was younger. So for about 2 years, I was a Jehova's Witness. Hehehe.
I kind of like thought what I picked up in all these different ideologies that all came out of one source. It DEFINITELY made me question religion as I grew older, to the point where I am now. I basically define my spiritual beliefs as a mix of Spiritualism, Buddhist, Gnosticism, Agnosticism, Kabbalah and interested in Hinduism, Rosicrucianism and Paganism. I know, it's a mouthful. LOLOL!! I like to meditate, read up on consciousness and just read a bit about all these different ideologies. Mind you, I was baptized Catholic. Maybe that explains it all. LOL.
 
I was raised Jehovah's Witness (partially), I slowly realized the religion was absolute shit after none of it made sense, I was instructed to punch myself in the cock every time I experienced an erection, and was not allowed to have friends (Also the entire religion dealt with Armageddon, fuck all that I'm still alive & the worlds still turning). My drug abuse began in part because of my depression brought on by the religion, I was a social outcast, didn't know right from wrong (keep in mind you were punished if you associated with "worldly" people). So growing up I didn't have many friends. My family was completely fucked, and I already had a genetic disposition for drug addiction, my mother was banished from the church for weed and cocaine usage. So there's that... awful religion though, decent people who are highly misguided.
 
Beefy said:
My mom used to bounce around different Christian denominations when I was younger. So for about 2 years, I was a Jehova's Witness. Hehehe.
I kind of like thought what I picked up in all these different ideologies that all came out of one source. It DEFINITELY made me question religion as I grew older, to the point where I am now. I basically define my spiritual beliefs as a mix of Spiritualism, Buddhist, Gnosticism, Agnosticism, Kabbalah and interested in Hinduism, Rosicrucianism and Paganism. I know, it's a mouthful. LOLOL!! I like to meditate, read up on consciousness and just read a bit about all these different ideologies. Mind you, I was baptized Catholic. Maybe that explains it all. LOL.
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Awesome... I'm kinda gnostic in a way... but I'm more of a deist.
 
Wasn't really brought up religious at all... There are some good videos on Youtube of ex-Jehova's Witnesses tho from a wide range of people...



 
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The other day, a few of my students and I were at recess talking about our ultimate birthday fantasies. One of my bubbly girls was uncharacteristically quiet and seemed uncomfortable.. So, I asked her more about it later, and it turns out that her family is Witness.
So, since they don't celebrate secular holidays, she'd never had a birthday party before. In fact, she'd never been given a gift at all!
I feel sad about it.. I mean, it's not like kids NEED presents or anything. But, seeing her all mousy and forlorn as her friends and peers were ranting and raving about these giant celebrations and their favorite toys.. And she wasn't even bitter or angry.. just wistful. Girl broke my heart lol. I'm gonna get her something when her birthday rolls around soon.
Anyway.. that's my only personal encounter with the religion. Seems isolating and repressive..
 
I have two JW students right now in public school. They cannot participate in a lot of art projects (for instance a school-wide collaborative project making a traditional "Ofrenda" for Day of the Dead even though there is nothing at all religious about this) They are both very young and I do find myself wondering how this is going to go later for them. But I had a couple of students a few years ago that followed the Huichol tradition and I was surprised and dismayed to find out that they could not be around images of owls (being symbolic harbingers of death) on the day that I started a science illustration lesson drawing--you guessed it--an owl.
 
Beefy said:
My mom used to bounce around different Christian denominations when I was younger. So for about 2 years, I was a Jehova's Witness. Hehehe.
I kind of like thought what I picked up in all these different ideologies that all came out of one source. It DEFINITELY made me question religion as I grew older, to the point where I am now. I basically define my spiritual beliefs as a mix of Spiritualism, Buddhist, Gnosticism, Agnosticism, Kabbalah and interested in Hinduism, Rosicrucianism and Paganism. I know, it's a mouthful. LOLOL!! I like to meditate, read up on consciousness and just read a bit about all these different ideologies. Mind you, I was baptized Catholic. Maybe that explains it all. LOL.
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thats how I would describe my beliefs as well.... (my family would call me a satanist haha) I was raised hard core mormon. which is probably a step above Jehovah's witness honestly (haha mormons love to rag on JW's because they remind us of us in a not so good way lol) ... ( both mormons and Jehovah's witnesses go door to door , are passionate about their religion, both preach they are "the one true " , and have a monopoly on heaven)

although mormons are not supposed to use drugs , in utah drugs are pretty much the most popluar thing in the world... it used to be RX drugs only, but now mormon kids out there are really getting into smoking heroin, its like an epidemic. My mom use to beat us when we were kids for not being perfect mormons... she would threaten to "brain us" ...and often times would sick my dad on me, and he would pretend to hit me with a belt and I would shriek out , and it was all an act, but my mother thought it was real and that was what is important now.... She use to tell me that I would be never have a wife and family because no one could possibly love me , ( mind you that all this abuse was because I refused to be Mormon) ... she would wake us up at 5am to read the Book of Mormon as a family... She would turn on these live televised conference talks featuring sermons from the 90 year old mormon prophet and she would crank it up on the stereo system so loud that you could not escape it anywhere in the house, ney, the neighborhood!

When my older brother came home early from his mission , and when I refused to go, it nearly destroyed her. That and my older sister and her husband getting married OUTSIDE of the mormon temple! OMG absolutely crushes her soul those things.
 
^wow, I didn't know mormons were so fanatic.

They don't exist here in Italy and they are also pretty much non-existent in Europe, so the only knowledge I had was from films, they generally portray them as very conservative but nothing that extreme haha.

Edit:
Actually googled them and have found mormons exist also here in Italy, they have 25,000 members and 101 congregations throughout the country, they are called 'La Chiesa di Gesù Cristo' meaning the Church of Jesus Christ, but I hardly ever heard of them, while instead Jehovah's Witness are quite well known for disturbing people by ringing the buzz on Sunday morning. lol
 
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My mother went to a Jehovah's Witness church for a couple of months when I was a little kid. Other than being painfully boring and that I think it was at night, I don't remember much about it.
 
Al12 said:
^wow, I didn't know mormons were so fanatic.

They don't exist here in Italy and they are also pretty much non-existent in Europe, so the only knowledge I had was from films, they generally portray them as very conservative but nothing that extreme haha.

Edit:
Actually googled them and have found mormons exist also here in Italy, they have 25,000 members and 101 congregations throughout the country, they are called 'La Chiesa di Gesù Cristo' meaning the Church of Jesus Christ, but I hardly ever heard of them, while instead Jehovah's Witness are quite well known for disturbing people by ringing the buzz on Sunday morning. lol
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Fastest growing "religion" in the world. Read the book Under the Banner of Heaven for the history. My family's roots(once they got to this country) are Mormon, then an offshoot that called themselves the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (try saying that as a kid). I was a grown up before I ever read the Book of Mormon and I have to say that I could not stop laughing. Mormonism is anything but funny however. I have many Mormon-lite or "Jack" Mormon friends and we come to a complete impasse when it comes to talking about Mormonism. I see it as a destructive rather than constructive force in the world despite that many of my friends are very good people that seem to use it more as a social and business networking group and for the family support it offers.
 
I would say that most mormons are not THAT crazy... my mom was one of the "passionate" ones.... in reality they are no more crazy than born again christians. .. its just that we get way more shit than born again christians because we have our own book and doctrines and stuff.

That book Under the Banner Of heaven is good, but it is about R-LDS mormons (who are fundamentalist and extremist) They are connected to us i guess, but its a different animal.
 
motiv311 said:
I would say that most mormons are not THAT crazy... my mom was one of the "passionate" ones.... in reality they are no more crazy than born again christians. .. its just that we get way more shit than born again christians because we have our own book and doctrines and stuff.

That book Under the Banner Of heaven is good, but it is about R-LDS mormons (who are fundamentalist and extremist) They are connected to us i guess, but its a different animal.
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Yes, I quite agree that they have no monopoly on craziness. Fundamentalist anything is a scary beast. I just went to see the film about the girl that was shot in the head by the Taliban for speaking out about girls' right to go education and it was heartbreaking to see the transformation from a much more peaceful and open Muslim society (that included both progressives and conservatives but notably had a dynamic arena for discussion of social change) to the absolute skewering of the faith by the Taliban. (The film is called I Am Malala).

The book Under the Banner of Heaven starts out with an investigation into a murder committed by a fundamentalist Mormon but ends up being an exploration of the secrecy, hierarchies and control of the Mormon church as well as their ties to the fundamentalists that they publicly repudiate. The history was mainly what interested me. My own family supposedly went with Brigham to Utah whereupon they escaped after being pressured to take a second wife. My great grandfather was excommunicated and thus began the ensuing craziness with the "Reorganized" church. I think they now have a new name but many of my relatives are still involved. One of the things that I have always found strange about my family is how none of them seem to even have a working knowledge of the Book of Mormon itself, though they defend everything about it. They are all about the Bible (wonder how many have actually read that either?).
 
Woah, Utahns! Small world here on the internet.. Born and raised here myself, but not within the church. Most Mormons I know are very reasonable and moderate, but there are definitely some zealots in the ranks.. lol.
 
In all honesty growing up among mormons was a privilege and a joy, and I considering myself lucky to be one of them. Now there are some obvious problems with the church , im not denyuing that
 
^is it true that it's very similar to freemasonry?

In terms of hierarchy and secrecy
 
^
in fact a lot of the mormon temple rituals are almost identical to freemasonry.... I think mormons would say that their temple rituals are identical to those that happened in the Temple of Solomon in ancient Jerusalem ....


There is a ton a symbology...and many of the mormon doctrines are only taught to those who have been in the church their whole lives and worked their way to the top.... mormons would only say its important to keep what goes on inside the temple secret
 
Lol i've looked up and I've found quite a lot of conspiracy theories of mormons being masons and believing Jesus and Satan are brothers along with other weird stuff about temples having satanic and other occult symbols.
 
Mormons really are the nicest people in the world.. to strangers. I've seen weird passive aggressive shit though, too.

As far as LDS ties with the occult, the fundamental religion and early doctrines were much more interesting than the modern church.

Look of the Adam-Man Doctrine. Brigham Young believed that Adam was the true first Father. This is also tied into the widely circulated stories about Mormons becoming gods upon their deaths, with absolute dominion over their world (a steward, like Adam to Earth).
 
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