This is, of course, a recurrent topic that's made possible whenever a Kingdom Hall decides to march out on your neighborhood and street.
Today it happened again in my neighborhood as a drum up for the Memorial observance scheduled for Monday the 14th of April.
Why Christ's passion and death should be observed on a Monday of Holy Week I failed to ask this morning. Perhaps someone else might like to volunteer, but it seemed just another reason to be sceptical about the whole thing, though hardly ranking with changing ancient chronologies to get Jerusalem's Temple destruction 2520 years before 1914.
Anyway two gentlemen in white shirts and ties greeted me politely enough at my door and presented me with a flyer about an event which they described as momentous. They asked me if I had ever intended one and I assented. They asked me if I had ever taken instructions and said, "Oh yes I had indeed." Did I plan to attend this year's and I said, "No", because I thought that the last one I attended several years ago was not "momentous" recalling that the talk was blather about how the world situation was getting progressively worse and that the head of the governing board or whatever had something important to say or that the 144,000 were on the verge of setting forth on their mission to govern and somehow in passing coming up with dates in ancient history about Egypt and the Exodus that didn't seem to pass historical muster. I was underwhelmed.
I did observe a number of credulous people in attendance back then and the two men somewhat younger than I was reminded me of them. They didn't seem to be as intrusive as a previous salesmen, but certainly looked pained to fulfill their pre-memorial quotas. But I just couldn't leave it at that. When I asked me about my studies, I had to tell them that I just plain concluded that their doctrines just plain wrong and repeated three times.
Then they asked me if I had any questions.
I said that when I was taking instructions several years back I did indeed have some questions. I did not mention that I was desparately trying to come to terms with my ex fiancee's spring back to Jehovah Witness belief after her grown son had died, and how I had no reservations about asking questions directly or even walking into a Kingdom Hall and demanding answers. But I told them this much:
I asked and I didn't get answers. I was told to submit my questions in written form to the WatchTower question box, mailing address at the headquarters in NY and await a reply ( an activity for which my ex-fiance had asked me not to mention her name). I told them I decided not to do that. Rather, I sought and found a forum on line and posed my questions there.
I told these two individuals that I found a forum where a whole lot of people had the same questions I had and had to wade through the same fog that I had. But what's more, an awful lot of them were WITHIN their organization, elders COs, rank and file or officers of the WT&BTS. And, "You know what? I observe that you have an awful lot of people WITHIN your organization that are very unhappy with it. Now here's a question for you. Why should I be interested in joining an organization that causes so many people so much grief?"
Looking across the street I could see the other two person patrols knocking at neighbors' doors. My wife, a hospital chaplain whom I had met and married since the incidents described, peeked around the corner of our door to see what the ruckus was about. By coincidence we had been discussing a Bible related issue of our own, rather than Saturday chores and the knock at the door had caught me replacing a reference on the bookshelf. In a way she had managed to bail me out of any further elevated response to those who were doing their duty.
I am of two minds about this matter. One is that I was antagonistic toward people who are used as pawns in a struggle. But the other was the satisfaction of remembering some of the words I wanted to say at the moment. I wanted to emphasize an important part of what I had learned, the result of very much grief of my own.