I am not sure if I am posting this in the correct forum. If not I am sure I will be told.
While, I have hit this site from time-to-time in the past, I have never really frequented it. Until recently. What has caused me to do this was the Dateline segment. What I have found is a great forum for me to interact others like me. I am looking forward to the day when I can meet some ex-JWs face-to-face.
I wish to post my experience, and hopefully not bore you fine people to death. However, telling people my story is somewhat theraputic for me, and maybe it might help someone out there.
My story with the Org. begins when I was adopted into a JW family. I was 6 months old at that time. I grew up typical for a JW I guess. My father was always an elder, he still is (more to come on that later). Always involved in the Circuit and District assemblies (mostly heading cleaning or food service). WHen I was 5 we moved to northern New Mexico. I had asthma really bad and rather than have me on constant meds my parents decided that leaving Los Angeles was a better idea. My grandparents had moved up there and started a lunch wagon in Taos, NM that was turning a good profit. They needed help, and my dad was happy to go where "the need was great."
While there, I started school and the usual ridicle that one recieves when you are different (no flag salute, no holidays, no birthdays). However, I took the ridicle, and smiled because they were not picking on me, but on Jehovah. I was really a model JW as a kid. Always in service, I placed magazines, and made return visits. I even had my own magazine route. Then my dad got another idea, this time to move to northern California. We moved to Red Bluff, CA.
It was there, starting junior high, that I met JW kids that were, well, underground. At the Hall they were model JWs, but outside of that realm they were something else. I wanting to be accepted took the first step to the "Dark Side." During this time, I smoked (cigarettes & tobacco), began listening to heavy metal, changed my appearance (to the best of my ability), and even began entertaining thoughts that the Org. was not the end-all-be-all of religion.
For the next three and a half years, I lived a double life. With the JW adults I was considered an exemplary kid. I voiced all the right attitudes, Bethel/MS/Elder goals, but deep inside I didn't really want it. Then at the age 15 I made my biggest mistake.
I decided to get baptized. Why? Because my dad was giving the baptism talk at this circuit assembly. I figured it would be good for my cover. I had been getting pressure, from my parents, certain Elders, and the Org. I had to find a way to get them off my back, and I figured this was the best way. Unfortunately, about 6 Months after I got baptized, one of the JW kids i bought my Pot from was arrested by the police, and in the subsequent Judicial Committee, promptly let the cat out of the bag on everyone that he had done any dirty deed with. I was summoned to the Committee meeting, and questioned. I confessed did the repentance thing (no tears though) and was privately reproved. Whether or not my father ahd any pull in this matter, I do not know. However, a number of persons, including the snitch, were publicly reproved. Evidently, the group was doing things that I didn't even know about.
What kind of worked out for me, was that my grandmother in New Mexico got sick and almost died. My grandfather couldn't run the lunch wagon by himself, so my mom talked my dad into moving back. Well, back we go to Taos, and I get a clean slate, sort of with a new congregation.
Well, certain skills that I had picked up in California got refined, and perfected in New Mexico. I continued my charade as a good JW. However, in school (high school now) it was totally different. Some of the skills I mastered, were shoplifting, selling Pot, and bookmaking. THese skills made it easy for me to maintain a cash flow, tht helped out during a time when money was short. I managed to tell my "clients" that if they saw me at their door to just be cool and not say anything. My cover was never blown by a "worldly" person.
Well, all of that changed right before I graduated from high school. My best friend, whom I thought would never confess (he had a "worldly" girlfriend that he was quite "familiar" with), blow the lid on me, and other teens in the Congregation. I was almost DF'd, but instead put on public reproof. I gave up the illicite activities, except for bookmaking (I just made too much money on that). A couple were DF'd, and my friend walked out with a private reproof. That accelerated my journey into the "Dark Side."
During this time, I was taking an "honors" level English class in school. The teacher was acually encouraging us to think for ourselves. To read and experience other philosophies. I looked into estern philosophy, but I found them to be lacking, in that they did not jive with the real world. However, at this time I was not ready to look into Christianity. After all the clergy in Christendom was corrupt and the laity hypocritical.
Then the teacher had us look at religious philosophy. She assigned us to look at religions that were different from what we practiced. The religions were assigned randomly and I got Protestant Christianity. I informed the teacher that I would be doing my paper on JWs, and she said no, pick a more "main stream" denomination. I was in a pickle. How do I find out about "Babylon the Great"? Well, I started watching a religious TV. THis show featured Dr. Walter Martin. Well It just so happened that when I started watching this program, that this Dr. Martin fellow was speaking on JWs. A subject he professed great knowledge of. Wanting to disprove his allegations against the Org. I looked into my dad's personal library, as well as the Congregation's library. When I was asked why I was doing this by my dad and the elders, I told them I was doing research for school ( a lie?).
To facilitate the researsh on Protestantism, I asked another teacher, who was well known as a Bible-thumper (and a Baptist) to help me out. Which she did. I was shocked by what I found. First the things this Dr. Martin fellow were true. The changed dates, the changed doctrines, etc. My faith in the Org. was shaken. On the other hand the things I was learning about Protestantism; reading about Luther, Calvin, Knox, Edwards, the Wesleys. The real truth behind the historic Christian doctrines, these began to resonate deep within me. I finishe d the report and got an A. However, my internal conflict was just beginning.
WHen I finally graduated from school, I began working, and left a lot of things hanging, specifically my research on the Org. I just wanted to work, and save enough money to get out of Taos, and move to Los Angeles.
That I did, and while here in L.A. I began to go out and ask questions of Christians. WHat I found was that for the most part they were great persons that knew nothing of what they believed. Disheartened, I placed all my doubts back in a box and went back to the JWs. Well, as things turned out, I got back in. I went whole hog into the JWs, and eventually moved back to New Mexico. While there I did everything that I was expected to do, I began to pioneer, and eventually the time came when I was up for MS when the CO came to visit. Unfortunately for me, there were forces at work. The father of the guy that "snitched" on us there in Taos, was still very upset that I got public reproof but his son got DF'd. He kept me from becoming a MS. At that point I said, "Forget it" and began my final drift into the "Dark Side."
I moved back to Los Angeles, and began a life of practical atheism. I lived my life like there was going to be a Day of Judgement. Then I hired a lady that was Christian. I began to ask her questions she could not answer. She introduced me to her father who at the time was an Assistant Pastor of a small pentecostal church in Glendale, CA. We talked many imes, and he helped me go from knowledge of Christianity to assent, or intellectual belief as to the truth of Christianity.
The final step in my juorney, came when he invited me to an evangelistic outreach. The speaker was a former gang memeber of some note, and it was at this outreach that I began to trust in the work of Jesus Christ. The journey was long and often harrowing, but it was worth it. Even at the expense of my parents, and my family, it was worth it. Because I have found many more fathers, and mothers, and family. I have seen many people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus, and I wouldn't change that for the world. I was able to teach these young Christians in classes. Able to help Christians to present what and why they believe in Christianity.
I have met many of the finest minds in Christian scholarship, and have come away with my faith strengthened, nowing that that Christianity is not what the JWs make it out to be. Yes, I lost my religion, but I found something so much better, God.
"That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight, losing my religion." REM
And thank God I lost my religion.
The Big Dawg
