In the Kingdom Hall I was like a big dumb shaggy dog waiting for his feed bowl to be filled.
They poured and I woofed it down.
After I left my nerve endings in the old brain started to tingle again as feeling came back and the blood flow commenced anew.
Problem was, I didn't know what I needed to do. I had phantom limb syndrome. The Watchtower thinking was always there like an hallucination.
The biggest obstacle I faced was that I had invested a large amount of my time and my emotions in the world view the Watchtower Society had given me.
I could ONLY see the Bible as the inerrant word of God. No need to change that!! I would lose too much.
Better to START with that as a FACT and an absolute "given."
So, I floundered around for the first ten years with a false premise tucked away like a grub worm at the root of all the new trees I was planting.
Then, I had a conversation with a woman I was dating. She was a psychologist and a professional woman. Intelligent.
Somehow we got on the subject of angels. Her mom was a Jesus enthusiast (that's my term for somebody who gets in your face). Her mother sent her a framed picture of a guardian angel. That triggered our conversation.
I started talking to her about what I "knew" about Angels from my study of the Bible (very confident I was well-informed!)
I watched her face as I spoke and it started changing...expression-wise like melting wax.
"So these angels came down and materialized human bodies and started having sexual relations with the daughters of men and their offspring were the Giants of Old and......"
She was horrified that I ACTUALLY BELIEVED these things!! I lost all credibility for her!!
As I was telling her the angel "information" I became aware how ridiculous and mythical it actually sounded!!
I was shaken. Why was I saying those things which NOW sounded like a fairy tale??
I went out to the library and started reading about the Bible.
Most of the books propped up the scriptures every way they could.
That was comforting at first.
Then, I had a casual talk with a Rabbi who went to the same Starbucks I was at every morning.
I asked him about the Nephilim and angels and all that.
His reply cracked me in half!
"Terry, my friend, those stories were told in the infancy of human civilization. They reflect a sense of imagination and wonder. They are not newspaper articles!"
I replied, "You mean...are you saying...you don't have faith they are True?"
The Rabbi smiled and shook his head like one does when talking to a wide-eyed child....."Things can be 'true' in a different sense than factual if you are trying to make a mystery undrstandable. Sampson killing Philistines by the hundreds with the jawbone of an ass is about as true as Paul Bunyon or Robin Hood. There is something there. But, it isn't the kind of 'true' you swear to in a court of law."
After that, I grew up a bit.
I learned there was a lot more to the scriptures than divine inspiration.
Nothing at all remains of those writings except the hundreds-of-years-later echoes in the memory of mankind.
Devout and pious people have re-created what they believe may have been true and shaped it over the years.
But, they cannot live their lives based on it unless they erase THEIR OWN PART in making it exist!
The bible is a puppet and man always has held the strings offstage.
Once you accept that you become responsible for your OWN LIFE.
