Hello everyone! I am a twenty-eight year old ex-Witness. At the age of fifteen I had developed an alcohol and drug problem mainly due to my dysfunctional upbringing. My parents were divorced at a young age causing my mother to run to the Witnesses for emotional support and fellowship during a trying time. My father being an alcoholic was largely absent from my life; and the schism that was created in my immediate and extended family created a lot of confusion for me. This also led me to living a "double-life", which seems to be a very common theme for young Jehovah's Witnesses because of youthful rebellion and what I believe to be a yearning for a relationship with mainstream society. I was disfellowshipped at sixteen years old due to this drug problem, and was assured by the elders that I would be assisted in overcoming any problems that I was having. Instead, I was thrown into a world that was very depressing. The council and guidance that I was promised by the elders, who claimed they had "agape" love for me, wasn't there whatsoever. I did not receive a modicum of help from anyone at the hall except for the frantic scrambling of my mother to find some sort of professional assistance, and the usual, and oftentimes disobeyed commands to read my NWT Bible, Watchtower magazines and publications. Most of the absentminded (which as I'm sure most of you know are many) Witnesses viewed me through a lense of judgment, criticism, presumption, and outright dislike. I felt alienated, confused, hopeless, alone, depressed and torn apart inside because of the people who claimed that they loved me and were followers of the one true God, Jehovah, were nothing more than cold and callous to my plight for help. I missed my friends and the companionship of my mother. It was very difficult to live with her and not be able to take part in social activities with her and others at the Kingdom Hall. Most of my closest friends were Witnesses and I missed them a lot! I remember this being a very difficult time of my life that only complicated the awkward teenage years that most, if not all of us go through. Obviously there were some Witnesses who had some vestiges of respect for the emotions of another human being over the command of the Governing Body that spoke with me and offered whatever help they could to a teenager that was at his wit's end. One friend in particular never turned his back on me through all the drama that I went through at the hands of my own poor decision making, and the cruel judgment of the elders that are commissioned with the responsibility of making sure I didn't poison the rest of their flock of sheep (blind followers of men - not God).
I oftentimes would wonder how such a loving God who created me could put me through such pain. I also wondered how a God who created everyone and everything could judge my actions in this finite existence and that those same actions would determine the course of eternity. I also wondered where the Jehovah's Witnesses Governing Body (whom I now jokingly refer to as Club J-Dub) got many of their teachings from. I noticed so many glaring contradictions in their NWT Bible, and when I mustered up the open-mindedness (a quality that is highly frowned upon by Club J-Dub) to read another translation of the Bible I became even more confused.
I was indoctrinated (brainwashed) with so much dogma that Jesus himself never spoke of. Jesus scolded the religious teachers of his day for their cold adherence and blatantly emotionless stretching of the Mosaic Law. Does this activity ring bells for any of you? The brainwashing of the Witnesses still suffering under the cold hand of self-righteousness and presumptuousness is so deep that they cannot even realize that their most "erudite" and "learned" of teachers are of the same spirit as the Pharisees and Saducees in the first century. They're so brainwashed that they don't even second guess the second guesses that have been made over the years by the WTBTS. They're so brainwashed that they don't realize that when you prophesy something as an organization that claims to "speak for Jehovah" (a mispronounced name of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton) , and the prophesy doesn't come to fruition, that the organization itself is under the the title that they so harshly judge: A FALSE PROPHET. A man whom I love very much woke me up with a statement similar to that one while I was serving time in a Michigan prison due to my trials and tribulations of drug abuse. Fervently studying to get reinstated in prison this man and I would write letters back and forth to one another. He noticed that the letters I was writing went from being all about me and my academic and secular interests I was studying in prison, to being 75% about me and 25% about the Jehovah's Witnesses, to 50% about me and 50% about Witnesses, to being completely about the false "truth" that I was studying from publications printed by the WTBTS. As a REAL Christian he started to get concerned and did massive amounts of research in an attempt to steer me away from the great deceit of the organization, Jehovah's Witnesses.
Gratefully so, today I am free of the shackles that were provided me in prison and in the prison of lies of Club J-Dub. I still suffer from having an almost inexistent relationship with my mother; because I finally mustered up enough courage to explain to her my beliefs about her heathen religion. Beliefs that were always there, working under the the thick blanket of deceit and false indoctrination, yet were not fully realized until I was given a little push by a man whom I believe the real Savior was working through in an attempt to show me a better way of life. I also suffer from what I believe to be emotional wreckage of a very dysfunctional childhood mainly due to the trauma (I know this sounds like a severe word but if you've been through what I've been through than I'm sure you can relate) of the Witnesses. I would like to start working towards getting my emotional health back on par, but I don't even know where to begin. I am pleased with anyone here who took the time out to hear my long winded story, and I hope to hear back from you all.
Thank you,
MeRKaBa