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Liquid Hellz
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If you wanted to be a really good boyfriend, maybe you could read up on the JWs, just to understand where she's coming from.
Here's what I would do -- ask her if she wants to develop the relationship further, even if in secret. And then, if it goes somewhere, you two can decide later what you want to do, if the relationship is important enough to risk family.
You wouldn't want her to get in shit with her family, only to break up a month later because you decide you're really not for each other, right?
Besides the relationship itself, just let her decide what she wants to do herself. As you said yourself, it's a bad idea to push her in any direction.
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
I'm not, nor have I ever been, a Witness, but I grew up in a Witness-heavy area and had a chance to study them well.
They are a very close-knit sect, with some quite odd beliefs from a non-Witness standpoint. If her parents (or the church) find out she's dating a non-Witness, you're right. She will most likely be kicked out of the church. What her family decides to do apart from that is their own will. I know excommunicated Witnesses who still have strong relationship with their family even though they're not allowed in the church.
As for her thoughts/feelings on being a Witness, sit down and talk with her on it. Witnesses are trained to convert people to JW, so if you try to bring her out she may subconciously block you out. Don't even try to persuade her one way or the other, just be an unbiased listener. Most of the time, just doing so can show you and her her true thoughts and feelings and bring you both closer to a conclusion. The fact that she's dating you knowing the consequences tells me that she doesn't place as much worth into that 'faith' as other, more devout Witnesses do. Some of the things you stated in your second paragraph are the beginnings of a Witness wanting to come out.
I hope this helps a little. I'd write more, but I have to get back to work.
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Somewhat true but I don't have even the slightest feelings of wanting to break up with her at all nor do I ever think I will, she is an amazing girl who I would love to spend the rest of my life with.
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If she's old enough and independant enough that she really is examining her relationship to religion/family/etc without it hurting her financially or living arrangements, than I would say as a supportive boyfriend you should basically be there for her, offer to attend any other church's ceremonies with her as she searches, or maybe look for some good books on searching for religion and get those for her.
I would just seriously avoid putting her living situation at risk for a potential relationship if that's what could occur.
Is it worth carrying on the relationship in secret? I've been in one like this, and it's not really fun and games. A lot of it is fear and disappointment.
Do you want to get into a relationship with someone who doesn't really know who they are yet?
Could you ever be in a serious relationship when some of your most important viewpoints are pretty much diametrically opposite? What future does it really have?
Is sex before marriage an issue for her? And if so, is that an issue for you?
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Without being ridiculous, what are you looking for out of this relationship?
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Like you said she's in a tender state so you can't really push her either way without some sort of fallout. Just be the kickass boyfriend and let her decide how she will, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.
On one hand, if her parents weren't Witnesses and are in a church where they are accepted, then their church is likely rather "open." Like any religion, a lot of the nuances are going to change depending on who the preacher is.
If she's serious about it (serious enough to consider a move), she should talk to her parents. She should ask them, point blank, what they would think if she eventually married someone who wasn't a jehovah's witness, or at least dated people outside of the church. Advise her NOT to throw her own parent's experiences in their face, despite the fact that she will very much want to -- saying "waah, YOU did it, I want to too!" makes sense logically but it doesn't help with an emotional conversation.
So the good advice is to have her talk with her parents and decide for herself what she feels is best. As SoonerMan points out, though, it's still ultimately her decision, not her parents. So she could ultimately figure that excommunication from the church is great and that she doesn't really need her parents anyway, and maybe jolting them with the prospect of essentially losing their daughter will make them change their mind. All the while you two develop a happy relationship in FL. You can involve yourself as you see fit, of course, just don't try to be manipulative -- that's a poor way to start a relationship, especially under these circumstances.
I used to be a JW (formally up until about 3 months ago, less formal, not so for the past 5 or 6 years, I'm 22 now). I'll answer your posted questions, but feel free to ask some more.
If these are her feelings, she should seriously investigate her beliefs (JW's will encourage this, but only from their own literature, the rest is regarded propaganda/inaccurate/'an attempt to derail your faith' as far as it isn't in line with their beliefs). Show her that the JW literature isn't as accurate as it claims to be (the Awake! of last September (about evolution) is a good target for this
JW's belief that marrying inside the brotherhood is a great protection (you at least know you're marrying a like minded person
I recognize this from myself, you just don't think about leaving your entire group of friends, possibly killing contact with your family and reconsidering the faiths with which you were raised.
As for being kicked out for having sex before marriage, true, but you can repent and be forgiven, not what you want anyway.
Her parents will react shocked, trust me. You aren't supposed to have too close a connection to anyone outside the brotherhood, let alone date someone outside. The kicking her out is possible, but there is an escape clause for this. First, is she baptized? If not, she cannot be kicked out, so ask her this (JW aren't baptized at birth, but usually after their own consent around the age of 16 or so). The second option is to become 'inactive', this means she will have to rebel against the JW's, refusing to actively take part in their religious activities (going along doors, visiting church, etc.). After a sufficient amount of time (no stats on this though), you are simply no longer considered a JW, but the dis-fellowshipping part, and the shunning part, have been dodged. Also, JW's will never abandon their children over this, or face dis-fellowshipping themselves (according to the bible, he who does not take care of his own (your relatives), is worse than a godless person).
Again, if this is the case, encourage her to do some investigation into the belief systems. Some words of warning though, JW's are trained to persuade people, and can be pretty persuasive. They are keen to captalize on lack of explanation (arguments from incredulence and ignorance are very common) and a lack of knowledge. They also tend to focus on the (more or less remarkable) achievements of their organization, claiming this has to have a god power it. An often used escape clause is that there is no motivation to do X or Y (in their heads, again argument from ignorance), therefore, there is absolutley no reason to even investigate possibilty X or Y. Another trick is to state that they have never been cheated by the brotherhood, everything has been for the good, all JW are good (basis: No true Scotsman fallacy), therefore X or Y must also be good >> accept it.
Ah well, getting carried away here.
One thing though, JW's are trained to think within a certain framework, everything outside this framework cannot be true, and questioning it is equal to questioning gods wisdom (and you will get yelled at for arrogance
Well, if you have any other questions, don't be shy to ask.
PS. It's late (already half past bedtime
PPS. couldn't resit
The openness of the JW's is very limited, you can get converted, but this is not something to be taken lightly as with a catholic baptism, you will be expected to be baptized, to go along doors, to take active part in the brotherhood and show up regularly at meetings. How you can do this without completly spitting in the face of your own convictions is a riddle to me.
With the JW's, very little nuances are going on depending on the preacher. First, there isn't single preacher, but a group of them. Secondly, what they should teach is all written down and every half year or so, inquiries proceed to find out whether these rules have been adhered to.
The reaction will be: shocked parents, a lot of heavy talks with the elders, and expect the response to be very negative. Marrying and dating are (as 'fun-dating' and sex before marriage are 'not allowed') almost equal to JW's, in their opinion the only reason to date is to get married.
I agree with the not using of the parents experiences in the discussion, they will simply refer to it as something they did because they were not yet enlightened (i.e. without a law there is no sin) and that her situation is different (which it is).
I fully agree with this, but I don't suggest taking the excommunication path, as I suggested above. Even if it were only for the sake of your family as to not bring them in religious trouble for wanting to see you.
She was a JW.
Pretty much a hardcore JW. So it went down the rocks.
I dated a mormon once.
Never will again.
Those religions are almost cults, and chances are your relationship will have a LOT of very big and (in my view) unnecessary drama, hardship, and trouble which will cause you a lot of, I don't know, consternation.
My advice is to move on if you don't love her.
If you do, you'll eventually learn that on your own.
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She gets kicked out and loses all family support.
You two do NOT work out as a couple.
Can you handle being there for her and keeping her ass off the street, even if she decides she doesn't even -like- you anymore, due to resentment?
It's a sadly important thing to consider.
Can you handle the possibility of having a temporary dependent who hates your guts.
You can get hold of it by simply asking a JW...., just tell them that a friend said that it was really interesting or something, but that you do not want to be visited again.
Argument from ignorance means something entirely different. It's a logical fallacy which, according to the D&D FAQ means: 'absence of evidence equals evidence of absence'. "Unicorns cannot exist because nobody has ever seen them". Just because nobody has seen one does not prove that Unicorns do not exist.
Yes, the exact same options are open to her, dating you or not.
Well, she had a choice at that age, but the 'well-informedness' of that choice can of course be questioned (I was 15 when baptized, and damn, did I know little about the world then.). On another note, who cares whose responsibility it is? The problem is there, it won't go away, it's pretty big, so she would do best just accepting any help she can get.
By the way, how are her contacts outside of JW's? This can get pretty important as she will not formally be shunned, but still a lot of JW's will consider her a bad influence and disallow their children to be with her (depends on age of course) and will shun her; so any contact persisting after this without any problems is very very valuable.
According to me that means you have started to let go of the framework. According to JW's, it means you do not know enough of it to answer your own questions and see the truth of being a JW
Trust me, you will not bring in any problems by doing this, only that, if she wants to return, she will have to break contact with you. However, the fact that she already has started to date you, tells me she's not really planning on it.
I will try to find what JW's themselves say about the route to be taken in these cases, I will look it up in the library (I live with my father who still is a JW), somewhere this afternoon.
You're not agnostic. You're atheist.
Agnostics accept that god is a possibility. Atheists dont.
Tinuz, I gotta call bullshit. Firstly, for someone who claims to be a former witness you aren't using any of the typical Witness vernacular. Calling the organization a "Brotherhood", the ministry "going on doors", or disfellowshipping "shunning" is one thing, but calling their place of worship a "church" and not a "Kingdom Hall" completely escapes me. I mean, they have it written right there on the side of the goddamned building.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kingdomhall.jpg
Secondly, you quoted a scripture and not only did you not use the NWT but didn't even cite it. (1 Timothy 5:8 in case anyone was wondering) so I'm wondering on the off chance that you were, how seriously you were taking it.
Thirdly, and this is for Munacra. Not agreeing with what the witnesses believe is fine but for fucks sake do you have to call it a cult? Yes they take their religious beleifs seriously. They're not drinking cool aid with mercury in it, or flying planes into buildings. As strange as it may seem they are infact still capable of thinking for themselves and making their own desicions.
As for this girl, I'd call you a manipulative weasel for trying to undermine her religious beliefs for your personal gain but she's already decided she doesn't want to be a witness and she's using you as her out. Be prepared for drama.
Well, I'm dutch, so I'm not up to date with the English lingo, sorry for that. I generally use the term church for the kingdom hall, as it causes less confusion. Citing the bible is of course something I could do, but it was late yesterday, so I got lazy. As the attentive reader will have noticed, my excerpt was lacking citation marks, as it was not a citation, it simply was something I reproduced from the top of my mind.
If you want some quotes, here ya go:
1 timothy 5:8 New world translation, English version:
"Certainly if anyone does not provide for those who are his own,* and especially for those who are members of his household,** he has disowned^ the faith^^ and is worse than a person without faith."
references to:
*:Matthew 15:5
**:Isaiah 58:7
^:Titus 1:16
^^:Jude 3
(in the NWT alphabetically labelled f to i)
Well, you will probably tell me that anyone could have gotten hold of the NWT, so, just ask me a question, exceptions of course being english names of things, and I will give you an answer, complete with references to whatever publication by the faithful and discreet slave class (the 144.000 in lingo).
As for me taking it seriously, well, I was never really into learning every reference and where exactly it can be found. Other than that, I had a healthy ministry report of around 12 hours on average and took active part in the ministry school (or whatever you guys call it, the thing we did on tuesdays, first hour (thursdays are popular as well in the Netherlands)), and had progressed beyond the reading part doing lecture 4 (free subject, don't know how english JW's call it).
(I know most of this can be found on Wikipedia as well, so you can go on and challenge me)
JW's are a cult, but perhaps not in the popular meaning of the word.
There's a pretty nice description at websters dictionary: http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/cult .
If you read the article you will notice that JW's fit certain definitions and don't fit others, so whether or not JW's are a cult depends on which definition you use.
Sit her down and ask her how she feels about her faith. And then express how you feel about it. Don't mince--tell her the truth.
You may end up splitting apart because of it, but I guarantee that neither of you will be happy if you try to lie to each other about it.
From the OP's posts thus far, it seems like she is unsure of her faith.
So, it may just be in the OP's best interest to be quiet, listen, support and deal with the decisions she makes. If she goes back to her faith, then the relationship is done. If she decides to break from the religion (hopefully just from her own thoughts, and not a rushed -Iloveyouanddon'twanttoloseyou-) then the relationship goes on.
Either way, give her time. :P
I think that's the more blunt way of saying what concerned me about the whole thing too. Even if you aren't flatout asking her to give up her faith, it could be the outcome of her being with you. That is a buttload of pressure on a relationship and could end extraordinarily messy.
Personally, I'd try to keep things on the cool side relationshipwise until she's made up her mind on what she wants to do and moves into her own place.
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