RE: Confessions of a two-cult survivor
October 29, 2018 at 4:08 pm
(This post was last modified: October 29, 2018 at 4:27 pm by TwoCultSurvivor.)
(October 4, 2018 at 5:41 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: Welcome, TwoCults! I don't know if you wanna give Scientology a whirl, but you know the saying: "third time's the charm."
I'm gonna pass on that.
(October 5, 2018 at 4:52 am)OakTree500 Wrote: Welcome aboard!
Out of interest, I can see that you were born in the JW's, but why did you go into other cults/religions following getting out of that in particular? Did you feel the need to, or were you "convinced" to join by people/information that they had?
Well, it's a bit of a long story, but I'll try to be brief.
The problem with my JW experience is that I didn't decide to join and I didn't decide to leave. I never thought of them as a cult, despite what some of my friends tried to tell me as I got older (age 11 or 12).
I "left" because my parents divorced and JW's frown on divorce, so we all stopped going.
It wasn't like I decided to leave because it made no sense.
It wasn't until I joined the second group, The Way, that I began to look at the JW's critically. So I judged the JW religion from the framework of my new religion, which was just as wacky, but in different areas.
The Way and the JW's had a lot in common. They don't believe Jesus is God. They don't believe in immediate life after death. But the similarities pretty much end there. Where the JW's were very strict and legal, the Way was very permissive and forgiving. They smoked. They drank. They swore. And I didn't realize it at the time, but they were "looser" in other areas as well.
I even left that religion involuntarily: They had one of those schisms, and I stuck with a group that schismed out. Stuck with that group for about 8 years or so, give or take. I don't have a solid "I left on" date. It was gradual. My own divorce in the late 1990s had me, well, disaffected with the fellowship. I tried to make sense of the Bible on my own. Then I encountered an online group of former followers of The Way. That helped.
I didn't recognize myself as an atheist until relatively recently -- about five years ago. Off topic for your question, so I'll stop there.
Oh, I didn't quite answer: I was lured into The Way the old-fashioned way. A friend of mine started sharing their teachings with me and I was impressed, so I started going to their fellowships (they were home based) and I really liked the feeling of family. That, and they weren't so full of themselves or holier-than-thou. At least, that's what I thought then.
I've not gone into their real problems. Another time. You didn't ask me why I left, after all.
