In reviewing some letters that I sent in the months following my official DA from the cult, I came across this one, an important one, perhaps the most important one to me at the time.
Six months ago I sent it - but it was the culmination of 2 years of rewrites - still not particularly well written I suppose. The addressee was my long-time confidant and best-friend, who happens to be my cousin. He has still not answered, and with the family reunion coming up this week, I thought I would review what I had said in case we come face-to-face there.
To my knowledge, he remains a faithful worshiper of the GB to this day. I have not heard from him;
Dear Rick,
I just did an interesting inventory of my archives. Beginning about two years back, and continuing till just a few weeks ago, I had written many letters to you. In fact, in review of them, I have discovered that I have written perhaps 5 or 6 such letters. I have revised them, updated them, edited them, and filed them away. I also never sent them. In all, they comprise thousands of carefully considered words, scriptural references, Watchtower quotes, and personal deeply felt conviction, both for my personal faith and for our friendship.
Just what did these letters contain? And why did I end up not sending them? And why do I, from time to time, dredge them out and edit some more with a view to sending them, and then again, choose to just leave them in my files?
In a word, frustration. Frustration, or perhaps internalized pain from recognition that my personal love and concern for you, my cousin and my very good personal friend for most of 4 decades, may have been very one sided. My love for you has never been attached to condition. During your down periods, your divorce, your agonizing over your children, your nearly suicidal depression - who was there? Who stepped up to the plate and did the right thing to let you know that you were valuable as a person, as a friend? I did. When you needed a job in order to relocate to Indiana, who was there?
I was. When you fought with your emotions over the failings of the brothers to deal with Lisa’s unfaithfulness, and your internal struggle to deal with your own need to let go of that situation, who was there? Little ‘ole me again. Who cried with you, rejoiced with you, laughed with you through the foibles of life and it’s constant trials? I did.
Yet - while I was engaged in a struggle with a conscience trained by the Bible, which struggle leads to a near emotional breakdown, and eventually the single most serious decision that I will ever make, one that affects my very relationship with God, where are you? When that decision eventually leads to my need to remove myself from what I have discovered to be fraudulent, were you there? Nope.
Through all of that - the only time you have been in my home was in an attempt to sell me burial insurance. But this letter is not about brow-beating you. It is about conditional love, and the way a religious institution controls those who have been hypnotized by it’s claims, substantiated or not.
Probably outside of my wife, no one has known me better than you do. Rick, please ask yourself some soul-searching questions; Do you honestly believe that I am ‘evil’? That I have ‘allowed the Devil’ to mislead me? I dedicated the majority of the first 48 years of my life to a religion that I accepted whole-heartedly. There was never a Jehovah’s Witness that was more Jehovah’s Witness than I was. You know that! You also know I am not stupid. And I don’t have suicidal tendencies and a desire to die at Armageddon. I am not a rebel at heart. I did not leave the religion without absolute, water-tight proof for the reasons. You should know that better than anyone else. If the tables had been turned, I would have still been there for you. More than one reason for that; First, I would want to do all I could as your close companion and friend to make sure you were not being mislead by some foolish ’apostate’ thinking. And second, if you had gotten it right, and the organization was just as fraudulent as other religions are, I would want to help you through the pain and agony of that realization, whether I re-committed my life in another direction or not. That is just what friends do for friends. Thirdly, and perhaps of the greatest importance, is that if you discovered what I have discovered, I would desire to know if I was wasting my life believing lies or not. My family would deserve to know the ’truth about the Truth’ too. Otherwise I would continue to belabor them under false premise and promise. All these reasons, and the ultimate one, that to serve God correctly and in full harmony with His will, is the precise reason I accepted the institution to begin with. If you had found it to be wrong-headed, perhaps even evil itself, I would have hoped that you would have done all you could to help me understand reality also.
Even though my conscience was, and is, completely clear in the matter, my heart is completely broken. I will never get over that decision - for I had poured my heart and soul into this institution, believed it was the truth, and offered up 48 years of my precious life on it’s alter - but I know without any doubt, not even a shadow of any doubt, that I made the right decision - the one that God would want me to make. That decision was not momentary and reactionary. Far from it, it was based on absolutely irrefutable evidence. My life was at stake to make sure I was right. My wife’s life was at stake to make sure I was right. My grandchildren’s life’s were involved. I had to make sure I was right. I was right. Not because I say so, but because the proof is so concrete that anyone who ever looks at it objectively will come to the same conclusions.
If you had ever made such a statement to me, I would have been at your door in the hour, seeking to find out if I needed to ‘rescue’ you from tainted thinking, or maybe I needed to rescue myself from falsehood. Either way, Rick, I would not have just allowed my friendship to ‘fade off’, because it was easy and would keep the religious figures in my life at bay. I am drastically hurt at heart that, from your perspective, our friendship was that disposable.
I think that you too, are a man of integrity, and of character. I really thought you loved me more than that; that you would just abandon our friendship without a fight. I really thought you knew me better than that; that I would just leave without absolute proof.
Previously, my ‘proof of the truth’ was basically circular. What I mean to say is, the society’s claim to exclusivity was basically; “We have the truth. If you don’t believe that, just ask us. But don’t ask anyone else, or experts outside the organization. We have it right. They have it wrong. Just ask us, look it up in the Watchtower.“ You have to admit that is true, don’t you? And how does that differ from the Mormons? Or the Moonies? Or the Hare-Kristna’s? Or any other sectarian and tightly controlled religious group. No difference at all. And yet we condemned them for that reasoning!
But none of what an organization says makes it ’truth’. Truth is truth. False is false. Both can be proven with cold hard facts.
As I go back and proof-read what I have written, I see it is strongly worded. But I am going to leave it as written, for it is how I feel. I have always been a true friend to you, Rick. My love for our friendship has always been without condition. I wish I could convey to you how much my heart hurts over the way I have felt cast aside in this matter. I do not beg for our friendship, for that is immature and needy. But it was [and is?] important to me, and I have done nothing worthy of it’s discontinuance. My daring to leave is enough to invoke hatred by my former companions. Isn’t that ironic, coming from the organization that claims to be directed by Jesus, the great exemplar of love?
If I have struck any chord with you, you know where I live, my number. If not, I have not lost anything, since I was already rejected. My love remains UNCONDITIONAL.
How can anyone doubt the wrongness of this religion? Beyond me to understand.
Jeff