More and more I have been thinking about the mindset that considers the idea that billions are to be destroyed at Armageddon as perfectly ok. Farkel's articles on freeminds.org really helped to bring it home for me. As JWs, we do (or did) think it was perfectly reasonable that billions will have earned a death sentence simply for not accepting religious literature from an uninvited person at their doorstep. How do otherwise good people (for the most part) come to accept genocide as an acceptible, even good, solution to the problems they see and experience?
I know that thousands of pages have been devoted to this subject, especially dealing with the holocaust in Europe during WWII. But what about just dealing specifically with our experience as JWs?
Personally, I think a lot of it comes from, or is exacerbated by, our door-to-door preaching work. Consider: going uninvited to preach to people is a stressful experience. You are risking a lot by doing this. You are trying to present your most deeply-held beliefs and values to strangers, who will mostly reject those beliefs and values to your face. We would try to ease the discomfort by saying things like, "It's Jehovah they are rejecting. I am just the lowly messenger." But day in and day out of near-constant rejection takes its toll. We were not taught to have real conversations and consider viewpoints other than our own. We set ourselves up to be threatened by disagreement, rejection, or even mere apathy. How does the mind protect itself from this constant barrage? It seeks validation. I remember on more than one occasion, hearing someone come back from a particularly brutal householder saying, "Well, cross that one out of the Book of Life". What a terrible thing to say or think! But the person was protecting themselves from the discomfort that comes from being challenged and not being able to back down, not being able to admit that someone else doesn't find these beliefs to be valid, true, or even worth their time.
So, we would naturally seek that validation, that ultimate "I told you so!" And what better way to ease the stress, the discomfort, the pain of rejection than to look to the time when they would all be proved wrong and we would be proved right. It is an awful thought, but we would often embrace that thought with a morbid sense of glee, thinking "That'll show them!" It was our mind's way of protecting itself, its way of seeking validation in the face of constant rejection. I'm sure that this isn't the whole story, but I think that this is a large part of it. The door-to-door preaching work creates people who are ok with genocide. If that isn't a sweeping generalization I don't know what is! But it should be good for generating conversation...
My little rambling rant is done. I would love to hear others' thoughts on this.
zoiks