{"id":1012,"date":"2010-01-17T10:55:30","date_gmt":"2010-01-17T15:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/?p=1012"},"modified":"2012-12-10T12:06:36","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T17:06:36","slug":"ex-jehovahs-witnesses-for-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/ex-jehovahs-witnesses-for-haiti\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex Jehovah’s Witnesses For Haiti"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jehovah’s Witnesses are actively discouraged (virtually forbidden) from contributing to relief organizations in response to disasters.\u00c2\u00a0 On Friday afternoon someone on the Jehovah’s Witnesses Recovery Forum <\/a>suggested setting up a site to encourage ex-JWs to donate to Haitian relief funds.\u00c2\u00a0 Friday night several of us had a conference call to plan out the details.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, on Sunday morning, less than 48 hours later, Ex Jehovah’s Witnesses For Haiti<\/a> is up and running.<\/p>\n

A half dozen people contributed their skills to make it a reality.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m very proud of all the people involved, and proud to have been a part of it.<\/p>\n

An Open Letter to Everyone who has Escaped from Jehovah’s Witnesses<\/strong><\/p>\n

When we were Jehovah’s Witnesses, we responded to disasters with a perverse glee. We believed things like the earthquake in Haiti were a fulfillment of prophecy, a welcome sign that we were closer to our eagerly anticipated apocalypse. We were trained to be observers on standby, obediently waiting to hear from Bethel if there were any “brothers” or “sisters” in need. If there weren’t, we did nothing. If there were we’d be generous, but our generosity was limited to other Witnesses. Once in a great while, if anything was left, some non-Witnesses might receive some of the leftovers, but that was rare in our experience. We were disgustingly self-centered.<\/p>\n

Now we’ve escaped and become the “worldly” people we were warned about. We read what we want to, watch what we like, pursue education, and develop friendships with good people who have real compassion that we never experienced in the cult. We no longer have the self-serving fear of humanity that defined us in our past life. And we are no longer discouraged from helping people in their times of need. We will never again help only “our own”. Now we understand that all of humanity is united, and our “brothers” and “sisters” are everyone, including those suffering in Haiti.<\/p>\n

Transitioning from the Witnesses to the real world is always very difficult and usually takes many years. We try things, experiment, fail, try again and fail again, over and over until we finally succeed in finding our place in the real world and being comfortable in our own skin. While many skills, attitudes and actions are difficult for us to learn, some are pretty simple. An easy one, one we never did as Witnesses even though most “worldly” people do it as a matter of course, is helping out others in extreme need. It takes very little effort, other than to truly love all of our neighbors.<\/p>\n

Whether you’re someone who hasn’t donated to an outside organization yet or a seasoned volunteer looking for a way to help, this is a perfect opportunity to both help Haitians with their recovery and show solidarity with other ex-Witnesses who wish to provide real relief in disaster situations. Simply select one of the charities on the home page, click the button, and make a donation. If you can only afford a few dollars, that’s fine. Discover how great it feels to give freely to help complete strangers in a dire situation.<\/p>\n

Dropping money into the contribution box never felt this good.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n

ExJWs4Haiti<\/a> never touches the money that’s donated \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it goes directly to the charity of your choice.\u00c2\u00a0 Donations are completely anonymous.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The organizations we’ve selected, The Red Cross, CARE, Doctors Without Borders and Save The Children, are letting us know the dollar amounts contributed, but by design are providing no other information.<\/p>\n

According to their official press release the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the controlling body of Jehovah’s Witnesses – are offering Haiti \u00e2\u20ac\u201c prayer.\u00c2\u00a0 Whoop de do.\u00c2\u00a0 If they ever get off their self-righteous butts and send real aid we can be certain it will be earmarked for other JWs, and no one else.<\/p>\n

If you’ve escaped from the JWs, or any other cult, this is an opportunity to pitch in and offer some real help.\u00c2\u00a0 It only takes a few minutes, and every dollar helps.\u00c2\u00a0 Please stop by Ex Jehovah’s Witnesses for Haiti<\/a> and give what you can.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.exjws4haiti.com\/<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jehovah’s Witnesses are actively discouraged (virtually forbidden) from contributing to relief organizations in response to disasters.\u00c2\u00a0 On Friday afternoon someone on the Jehovah’s Witnesses Recovery Forum suggested setting up a site to encourage ex-JWs to donate to Haitian relief funds.\u00c2\u00a0 Friday night several of us had a conference call to plan out the details.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1828,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions\/1828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}