Lawence Sperry piloted and demonstrated the first auto-pilot controls for an aircraft in 1914, the same year that, according to the Watchtower organization, God's Kingdom took over automatic control of the heavens.
Auto-pilot systems do not work well in turbulent conditions, and in our case, the spiritual auto-pilot that had kept us just gliding along without much thought from 1975 till the early 80's had to be cut off, and flight had to be controlled manually at about that time.
I was working for a group of Witness 'brothers' then, striping cars and adding automotive aftermarket products for new car dealers. The men I worked for were good people, but lousy businessmen. Like all Witnesses they had a superior attitude toward others, and this reflected itself in a sterling example of un-Christlike actions. The company was a franchise business, and these 'brothers' took that to mean it was their exclusive territory - much like the witnessing territory in our home congregations. One elder in another congregation elected to begin a business doing what we were doing. In a move of utter arrogance, Pat L and Walt L, my bosses, took this man before a judicial committee and charged him with some sort of violation of Christian love in the matter. They honestly believed that he should 'bow out' of the areas in which they worked on the basis that they were there first. I had seen this same attitude among the 'brothers' in the janitorial businesses before. Like the 'mother' organization often did, they would twist and bend the scriptures to fit the occasion, in this case to defend a particular 'territory' as their's exclusively.
Walter even explained his line of reasoning to me like this, using Biblical terminology; "In ancient Isreal, a man might be a farmer. He begins his life of farming using just a small area to grow a few crops. Then as time goes on, his family grows and he needs to expand to the unused field adjacent to his home. Since all Isrealites were peacefully acting together as God's people, it would be likely that he would find others accomodating to his future needs, and would yield to his demands that they allow him to expand his livelihood in such a manner. So too, should not our brothers do the same way.?" The dispute was over this other 'brother' doing similar business to theirs, even though he had agreed to stay off the lots of the dealerships we were actively doing business with, and had honored that agreement.
I began to see that this dispute was getting ugly - and I would dare state that these people became 'enemies'. This was a 'watershed' moment in many ways for me. These men were clearly not acting in love by demanding that they had exclusive right to practice a certain trade within a given region of the country. They lowered themselves to criticism of the 'brother', his wife, and all associates of his company. They slandered his name among us as employees, even asserting that he was clearly not 'adjusted right' in his thinking. When the judicial body failed to agree with them in the matter, they then began to accuse them of favoritism and nepotism. This was going on fairly openly for several months. And all these men were elders or ministerial servants. I honestly thought at the time that I doubted that Baptists or Catholics would have acted in such a greedy, self-centered manner. Yet my bosses, active and supposedly 'spiritual' men, in responsible position, daily acted in ways I could not see as even minimally Christian. They rejoiced when Mike failed in some area. And they gloated when they succeeded. Yet, three times a year we all put on suits and ties and marched into the same assembly hall proclaiming ourselves to be the only 'true Christians' on earth.
Partly due to this ugliness, and partly due to the fact that my salary was suffering due to generally poor business management by these fellows, I began to look around for a better way to make a living. I found a similar business that needed help in Oklahoma. In my first conversation with the owner there, he asked me an odd question - one that did not immediately register. He said 'Do you have an uncle in Brooklyn, by the name of Fred?' I said 'What?', completely confused as to why in a telephone interview I was being asked about an obscure relative in New York. He said 'Fred, Freddy Franz.' It finally clicked, and I assured him that I too was one of Jehovah's Witnesses, as he suspected. Arrangements were laid in place, and within a few weeks we were headed to Oklahoma.
Our only daughter, adopted, came to us in the previous January at the age of less than two months. At the agency where we first laid eyes on her, having been pre-approved as adoptive parents, the lady who brought her into the room asked my wife 'Do you think you would want to keep her?' My wife, eyes filled, looked up and said 'Just try and take her back.' Thus began a new chapter, and now with our newest family addition, we were planning a move to a distant area. As we finalized our plans, I made sure I dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's as regards leaving the congregation. I had been serving as a Ministerial Servant for several years by this point, and wanted to make sure that I would be able to continue with little interuption once we settled into our new home. The 'brothers' did not want us to go, and one by one, over the next couple of weeks they told me so. One of the final conversations I had with an elder before we departed was at the Kingdom Hall two or three days before we left. Brother D told me, "Jeff, look you do a lot of work here for us, good work. You conduct a book study, you have several Bible studies, you conduct meetings for service often, meeting parts, and public talks. We hate to lose you." Nonetheless, our plans were firm and we left.
Once we settled into our new home, we made our way to the nearest Kingdom Hall and began to attend meetings. I informed the 'brothers' of my past situation, and they requested a report from my former congregation to be sent. It was. I walked into the Hall one Sunday and the Presiding Overseer approached me. He asked to speak privately with me and another elder there. We stepped into a little room just back of the stage and he handed me a letter from my previous congregation. I nearly passed out. The letter was a solid effort to assasinate my character and contained more than one lie, asserting that I had not shown 'mature and responsible' actions, insinuated that I had actually attempt to defraud one of the elders, and that my change of location, having a new child, a different home, and a new job, made it impossible for the elders in my old Hall to 'make a recommendation' that I remain a Ministerial Servant.
Understand, I am not perfect, and no one will admit it sooner than I. But these were out and out attempts to show me a spiritual loafer, one who might even defraud his brothers. It was just venom in retribution for my exit. My failure, as far as I could see, was that I did not ask their blessing on my choices. The lies and innuendo were just thrown in to make sure that I would not be appointed here. And it worked. I almost quit attending meetings at that point. I was so disillusioned, that these men, whom I had called friends for now well over 10 years, and whom I had worked 'hand in hand' with in what I believed was the work of God, would stoop to such tactics in revenge for my leaving the congregation. And to even lie about my conduct.
Not long after this meeting, one night I took a walk outside our apartment community. As the sun set I found myself sitting on the banks of a small creek. As I prayed in consternation over this treatment, I found that I began to wail and cry uncontrollably. Here I had trusted these men, loved these men as my 'brothers', and they were so willing to betray that love without the blink of an eye. Not one of them even hinted that I would be getting such a negative 'recommendation' from them. In fact, just the opposite. They begged me to stay, insisting that they needed my help, and that Jehovah would bless my actions if I stayed. They never told me that they would curse them if I left. The pain of this betrayal was so cutting, that within a few months we made plans to move back to Indiana. I had to confront this matter head on. We were not attending many meetings now due to it, and I believed we were in danger spiritually. Over time I located another job in Indiana, and we moved back. We still had our old home, which we had rented while we were gone. During the first couple of months back we stayed busy with moving back in and getting settled again. We attended a few meetings before I approached the 'brothers'.
The elders were holding their 'quarterly meeting'. I heard about it, and invited myself. That didn't go over well, and what I had to say at that meeting went over even harder. When I was given opportunity to speak, I stood, and I asked each and every one of the elders present to please explain the phraseology and accusations that were made. There was a hell of a lot of 'HimHawing' but not much substance. One elder got so upset, that he stood up, stated something to the effect that if I could not 'accept Jehovah's word on the matter' [which word was not expounded to me by the way] that there was little else to say. He got angry at my response, and charged out of the meeting. Not a single elder could defend what had been stated in the letter. In fact, I am sure they never expected that I would ever lay eyes on it all, as that was not 'Theocratic' protocol. In the end, though no defense was offered, no explanation for the outright lies and innuendo, the Presiding Overseer announced something to the effect ' Well, Jeff, at least you won't do what you did again.' He had never explained what that was, so I walked out of the meeting more frustrated than ever. I could not believe the hatefulness that had been so liberally spread in my direction, and no explation given. Basically they had stated 'We did what we did. We have authority from God to do so. And you are out of line asking us to explain it.'
Life in my 'spiritual paradise' never felt the same after that. I had turned off the auto-pilot, and the flight had taken on a decidedly turbulent nature from that point forward. I could not stand to stay, even though I had uprooted my family now twice in less than a year over this matter.
On March 30, 1981, I was packing for a move back to the Southwest, this time to Amarillo, Texas, when my sister pulled into my drive and suggested that I turn on the television. They were showing film of a man named Hinkley shooting at the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan. I was so upset by the past year and a half that I barely paid attention. In a distant place from that one, another form of assasination had been taking place in Brooklyn, New York over the past year or so. Prominent officials had been dismissed, and many had been disfellowshipped for 'apostacy'. The wheels were in motion that would eventually aid my departure also. A book was being written that I would not hear about for another 20 years that would change my life forever. Others were seeing in greater ways and with greater spectrum than I, the lack of love that had become commonplace among those people professing to be the chosen one's of Jehovah.
As for me, at the time, I was blaming it on the 'local' congregation. Little did I know that this lovelessness was marking in a large way the actions of many, all the way to the top of the organization. In addition to that already stated, another area of grand concern had arisen also. Our daughter was bi-racial, and we were hearing comments through the grapevine, and occasionally head-on that smacked of racial predudice. We were finding ourselves outcast, both due to my standing up to the elder's wrong-headed actions, and due to our having a non-caucasian child in our home. As in the previous move, this one even more so, we recieved no encouragement, no positive send-off. We felt pretty alone in the world.
Amarillo Texas was a three-year stopover. We actually had more friends there than we ever did in Indiana. The congregation was bi-racial, and we fit in pretty well. We soon learned though, that not all that met the eye was as it seemed. Without going into detail, we became aware of infighting within the body of elders, one elder who had been there recently had actually [according to reports I heard unconfirmed in details] had affairs with seven different sisters in the city, and a lot of serious sin has gone on, that had left the congregation in tumult. I worked for a brother there in the janitorial business, and often at night we would have long conversations about what we had seen in our years in 'the truth'. On one of those occasions, he mentioned that he was aware of Brother Franz being disfellowshipped as an apostate. He had served on the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, and had Tom not mentioned him, I would have never known about him at all. Tom stated that he had seen the Time Magazine article in which Raymond Franz related his exit from the Watchtower religion. Over time, and particularly later when I looked back on those conversations, I began to understand that more was there than met the eye. But my memory of that would be repressed for the better part of two full decades more, before those pieces of the puzzle would fit in the picture.
Our field service fell off to nearly nothing while in Amarillo. I believe we were still suffering from unresolved, and likely unresolvable issues from our previous mistreatments. When we arrived back home to Indiana in late 1984 we had become inactive. We still believed in the doctrines and teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses, but the lack of love had taken a toll. It would be several years later before we were reactivated within this religion again. Still, we stayed in contact, attended some meetings from time to time. The turbulance had taken off vector. When we returned, it would be for a long stint of activity, but our last as Jehovah's Witnesses.