It is now almost six years since I left the witnesses. Many things have happened in the meantime. Mainly with myself. In the beginning, right after I found out that I had been raised in a cult and all the fairytales I’ve been told for so many years were just this- fairytales, I had the strong urge to do something. I felt, it was my obligation to tell the truth about Jehovah’s Witnesses. Especially because I’ve been an elder and worked in the German branch of the Watchtower Society for about ten years. So I started a blog (in german) and joined an association that is helping people who had left a cult. I gave an interview to one of the greatest newspapers in Germany and held talks in schools and colleges.
Every morning I started with looking for new posts on jwn and other sites like this. Also, I read every Watchtower and Awake Magazine and was eager to learn every news about the religion of my childhood, just to find another flaw, another stupidity, another fraud.
But lately I felt a bit exhausted. I had to acknowledge, that there was no progress in my cord clamping from this stupid religion. I realized, there has to be a final cut. But how to do it? Which cord has to be clamped?
It is the illusion of being someone special only because of having left a so called cult.
You are not a victim.
You have been a beneficiary.
The cult demands, but also compensates.
It gives you hope, meaning, a sense of being special, social integration and many other things.
As long, as you get more from the cult as you give, you will never leave it. (Therefore it is fruitless to argue with someone, who is happy in the cult. It is even kind of cruel, because you try to take something away from him, that he considers very valuable).
The biggest problem with leaving a cult is to cope with the loss of all the benefits the cult provided.
It is too easy to blame these stupid men from the GB or the elders in the congregations for what is wrong in the cult. Every witness is responsible for what he is doing. If a mother, a father, a son, a daughter or a friend decides to shun a loved one, than in first place not because someone told them so, but rather they are holding something more dearly than that person. Something the cult offers is more valuable to them, than their own flesh and blood.
The problem are not Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are just one more vendor on the religious market. The problem are these billions of uneducated people who flee with their problems and their fear of death in the arms of the most selfish metaphysical providers – religion.
There is nothing special in being a Jehovah’s Witness.
And there is nothing special in leaving this stupid cult.
Everything you might have experienced while a witness, you could have also experienced under different circumstances. There is no exclusivity.
Seeing the JW as what they are – a stupid but at the end of the line harmless cult, and seeing you, as what you are, just one of the millions of people who were betrayed by an offer that promised more benefits than efforts – this is the last step out of the cult.