Leolaia: Where is your story?

pirata

I looked through your posts but couldn't find your life story. Have you written it?

I would love to read your progression from/through JW to Avid Scholar :)

asilentone

She and her mother studied with a sister that I know personally, they did not get baptized.

asilentone

She is not posting much sometimes like she used to.

asilentone

I reviewed her posting history, she has been posting recently, you probably already know that.

VampireDCLXV

What's with the name Leolaia anyway? And what's with the avatar? (Doctor who fan?)

V665

pirata

I was mainly interested in how Leolaia developed her interest and knowledge regarding all things Jewish and Early Christianity.

Yeah I never wrote my own story out, other than brief bits here and there. My parents were bohemians, my dad was a beatnik/hippy, my mom's sister was already a JW. When I was born, the 1975 expectation was in full swing and my aunt was pressuring my mom to study with the Witnesses before Armageddon comes. She puts my mom in touch with a local sister, the person that asilentone knows, and my mom studies with her. Then we moved to a new congregation and that was when we started going to the meetings full time, and I had to stop celebrating holidays and birthdays. I was 7 at the time. 1975 was already in the past, but the Armageddon expectation was intense. Suddenly, I began to ponder what it meant for the whole word to come to an end in just a few years. I thought my dad would perish because he was an UBM. I had my first part in the TMS with a local sister who was abusive and I was fearful of her (she babysat me a lot). I was also a very sensitive and introspective child and had all sorts of issues unrelated to the JWs, which I have touched on elsewhere. I was a late talker and always had a hard time expressing myself verbally and understanding how to socialize with others, and so I was often quite withdrawn and shy and awkward. I am this way today too. I still am much more comfortable expressing myself through writing than verbally. My favorite book as a child was E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan, which spoke to my own experience of being unable to communicate and relate to others.

I didn't take an interest in the Bible until a circuit assembly in 1982 or so (that had Leo Greenlees as the speaker), when I was bored and opened my Bible and I was looking at Genesis 10, and suddenly became fascinated with all the names and realized that they were countries, and then I spent many hours going through the Aid book learning about each of the names. Then in junior high, I expanded my interest in the Bible and especially was interested in Enoch, the Nephilim, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and so forth. I started writing a book about Genesis and all my friends thought I would publish on the Bible. Then in 1984 I became interested in trying to harmonize WT chronology with Sumerian, Egyptian, and Babylonian history. I was very committed to the chronology but through my efforts I realized that there wasn't enough time for everything to have happened, with the Flood being dated to 2370 BC. By this time I had read the Aid book cover to cover twice, and browsed through it often. Meanwhile I was getting pressured to pioneer and to get baptized. As much as was into the Bible and religion, I never could commit to getting baptized. I kept putting it off. Also I had all sorts of bad experiences, such as people saying bad rumors about me that were untrue and then having fixed the problem, endure the humiliation of an elder giving a local needs talk that embarassed everyone involved. One of my best friends from elementary school was disfellowshipped for "immorality", and although shunning was beyond the point for me (as we hadn't been on speaking terms since fourth grade), it did make me think a lot because suddenly people were gossipping nastily about her, and I knew what that felt like.

Then a friend at school started studying with the JWs, which shocked me, so I started witnessing with him. We talked a lot about the Bible and about doctrine and while we agreed with the JWs about basic beliefs about hell, the soul, and the trinity, but gradually we realized that many things did not make sense. We had trouble reconciling the idea that Armageddon was close with the fact that there was so much witnessing to be done in many lands. We studied the statistics and did all sorts of computations and realized things like that the number of partakers was increasing and that the witnessing work was ineffective. We talked a lot about the 1914 generation and how that teaching is going to have to change soon if Armageddon doesn't come first. This was back in the '80s. So I had doubts then but I still believed that JWs had the truth. I even thought of myself as a JW apologist. But one thing that really bothered us was the judgmental tone of the Society, especially against other religions and against "worldly people". Weren't there good loving people who were not JW? And many JWs I knew were not loving at all. Then he got his own shock when his dad started studying with the JWs, but his interest was really a sister in the congregation that he wanted to date. He made it clear to my friend that he was really after the girl and recognized the religion as a means to that end; we both were aghast at this. And very soon afterward they started dating, he married her, and eventually he became an elder. Meanwhile I started attending university, against the wishes of the elders. I initially toyed with the idea of pioneering right after high school, but at the last minute I submitted my application to college and was accepted, and I was happy to pursue my interests and use the wonderous resources of the university library. I sank my teeth into the many journals and Bible commentaries and other many books. The library had a full collection of the Overland Monthly and seeing that Pastor Russell published his sermons there, I began to read Russell's writings firsthand. I took Greek and Latin classes and for a while thought I'd be a classics major. I also read Penton's Apocalypse Delayed and Timothy White's A People For His Name in my first semester in college. That really opened my eyes to the history of the organization and I learned many things I had no idea of. Then the Revelation Climax book was released and I was shocked at how wacky and arbitrary its interpretations of Revelation were. Compared to the critical commentaries I was reading, it looked very amateurish and eisegetical. Previously, I believed that the JW literature was written by Bible scholars (as the Aid book, the Reasoning book, the 1984 NWT, etc. all looked quite scholarly), but now this seemed not to be the case. Then the Trinity brochure came out and I almost immediately became upset at its intellectual dishonesty, as by this time I was very familiar with the early church fathers and recognized that the brochure distorted heavily their views. I faced the conundrum when this brochure was being studied at the book study -- would I go to the meeting and be silent while I hear people regurgitate what is written, or would I share what I know? I decided not to go to the meeting. And then when the Revelation Climax book was studied at book study, I again felt like I was wasting my time going to the meetings, "Why am I going here to hear this nonsense when I have Greek homework to do?" I already stopped going out in service because I did not want to feel like a hypocrite teaching things I didn't believe. But I was still going to meetings and assemblies because I was living at home and my mom was a JW. But the elders viewed me with much skepticism because I was going to college and not pursuing theocratic interests. Also without anyone knowing, I went to other churches for a while. My best friend was a Filipina and I went to her Catholic church a number of times and my other friends were born again "non-denominational" and I went to their church a few times. What I noticed was that there was so much emotion and a sense of community in these meetings that I never felt at all in the kingdom hall.

Then as part of my classics studies, I thought I'd pursue a lexicographical study of the words crux and stauros and I began to look up every single reference to crucifixion in classical sources, and I learned a lot things I never knew before. I summarized what I learned in a research paper for my class, which was pretting damning towards the JW claims. For instance, the Society claimed that Livy used the word crux to refer to a single stake but every single reference was completely vague about what shape the device was. They also cited Lucian in support of their understanding of stauros when in fact Lucian explicitly described the stauros as T-shaped. This bothered me a great deal. But I never talked about it with anyone other than my friend, who by this time was going to a non-denominational church. After the Watchtower meeting one day, the elders asked to see me in the library. When I got there, they asked me if I was conducting research to discredit the Society. I didn't want to talk about it, because I knew it would mean nothing but trouble. So I said that I wasn't. For indeed the purpose of the research wasn't, as they had implied, to discredit the Society. It was to find out the truth.

It was soon after that when I left. I never disassociated myself and I never was disfellowshipped (or whatever the equivalent is for an unbaptised publisher) as far as I know. What happened was this: first the kingdom hall moved away. The elders picked a new hall many miles away in a hard-to-get-to place that involved a long drive. I went to that hall just once. So I continued to meet at the old hall with a different congregation. But I never officially joined that congregation. Then my mom moved away and my sister and I moved in together. I needed to be near the university, so we moved to a new neighborhood far away from either congregation. One day two sisters came to the door to welcome us to the new congregation. My sister never wanted to be a JW and so she told them that there must be some mistake, they have the wrong address. And that was that. The next time the JWs came, they gave us their usual spiel at the door like they would to any other householder. So I don't know if we were censured in absentia. But the only JWs that were family for me were my mom and my aunt and uncle. They never heard anything and my mom left a few years later. My aunt and uncle meanwhile are very lenient about family who fall out of the "truth". My aunt's son went into the military and her daughter is lesbian, but they are all still family and there never was any shunning.

So anyway, that's pretty much the story of that. The one good thing I definitely credit the JWs for was exposing me to the Bible and stimilating my interest in religion. The negatives in my childhood far outweigh that however (e.g. giving up simply childish pleasures like birthdays and holidays, having to preach as a young kid, being teased for being a JW and doing things I hated, wearing those awful uncomfortable clothes to boring meetings three times a week, being told I couldn't learn to believe certain things as my mind matured, being discouraged from education, feeling like I couldn't plan for my life and that the world was coming to an end soon, fearing my non-JW family would soon be killed by God, etc.).

Leolaia

She and her mother studied with a sister that I know personally, they did not get baptized.

I did not get baptized, but my mom certainly did. Also FlyingHighNow, I think it was her, went to that same congregation where I went to my first meeting, but IIRC she moved there after I had moved away (or was it vice versa?).

What's with the name Leolaia anyway? And what's with the avatar? (Doctor who fan?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Emperor_Leo

Osamu Tezuka manga and anime about Kimba and Kitty grown up, or Leo and Laia (Lyre) as they are called in the movie.

Well, yeah, I'm a Whovian and the avatar predates JWN and now I'm stuck with it because JWD avatars are for the time being, permanent. But I like Sally Sparrow's character a lot, and Carey Mulligan is simply an awesome actor (I just saw her the other day on the cover of Vogue).

Leolaia

I was mainly interested in how Leolaia developed her interest and knowledge regarding all things Jewish and Early Christianity.

Well, the rest of that story is simply doing a lot of reading and study over the past 20+ years, keeping up with the academic literature and studying and researching the original texts. The main thing I have learned is that THERE IS NO END TO WHAT YOU CAN LEARN. I am always a student in this area; I do recoil somewhat anytime calls me an "expert" or whatever because I do not think of myself like that. I am always learning new things about ancient Jewish and Christian literature. But I certainly have definite ideas and knowledge bases about early Judaism and Christianity. And I love being able to share this with other people, rather than keeping it bottled up inside like I used to.

Lady Lee

Leolaia

Thanks so much for that. What a wonder you are!

Leolaia: Where is your story?

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