The forward The following story is my fifty year relationship with the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society otherwise known as the Jehovah Witnesses. It started when I was just two years old and ended just one week after 9/11, 2001 just three weeks before my fifty second birthday. I was basically raised in that thought system I became a full time minister in my late teens. I served in Salina, Kansas in that capacity for two years. From there I was asked to serve at the world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York for four years. Most of my story centers on my experiences serving there at the world headquarters. It was there in the heart of the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization, I saw the religion in a new light. Before I went there I was convinced that I was in god’s only true religion on Earth. In fact, the witnesses even call their faith “the truth.” For them it is “the truth” the only way. I found out later they are among thousands of other religions who feel the same way.
Maybe that is one of the problems on the Earth today is the “us and them” mentality. People can feel superior over others when they believe they have the only truth. People who feel superior over others can become quit dangerous at times. That is why my favorite bumper sticker is “Please god protect me from your people.” History has truly showed us how dangerous god’s people can be. I say god’s people are dangerous not in the sense that they would physically attack you. Thou with some religions you might have to worry about that, the witnesses however are pacifist. That is one of the many nice things I like about them. They may not physically attack you or go to war, however they have no problem taking your love ones from you, permanently. Just like “The Borg” from star trek, easy to be assimilated very difficult to leave. There are tens of thousands of people who have nothing to do with their parents, grandparents, husbands, wives, children and other relatives, since they have been assimilated into the Jehovah’s Witnesses mindset. If they can’t assimilate you too they will have little use for you. You will become part of the great masses that will soon be destroyed by their god in the great war of Armageddon. A good reason not to get close to you since you’ll be going away one anyway.
This book is a fun look at my strange life as a Jehovah’s Witness. Of course it wasn’t all fun. There are many things that were painful, hurtful and even sad. Yes, it will tell about all the things that any closed thought system could produce, emotional pain, alcoholism, insanity, death, and even suicide. Since I was a member for over fifty years, I know I help contribute to these problems. Yes, for many years I had no problem passing this nasty stuff down to other people, including my own children.
As a witness, I know I have contributed in at least two suicides that I know about. God only knows what other kinds of damage I help contribute too in my religious endeavor to impose my thought system on to other people.
It seems that no matter how strange someone’s believe system is, it can make perfect sense to them. I’m not letting myself of the hook and I’m not letting anyone else off the hook either. I’m not blaming the religion for my actions because no matter how brain washed a person can be they still have the opportunity to do the right thing the loving thing. So, everyone mentioned in the book are real people. The things they said and did really did happened. The names used in this book are the real people’s names. I’m not afraid of repercussions because I’m speaking the truth. Let the chips fall where they may.
Thou, I was a prisoner there for over fifty years, it wasn’t until 1995 I realized I was kindling myself. I had come to the realization that I had spent the better part of my life trying to convince myself and others that I had “the truth.” There was too many untruths. Things that didn’t add up. When any Witness is backed into a corner about things that are done that are not right or things that don’t make any sense at all, the first thing they tell you is “you need to have faith” or “trust in Jehovah, he’ll take care of it his in due time.” The signs were there for many years. For years I said to myself, god would take care of all this. Just like most Witnesses I spent years looking the other way. I just couldn't look at the real truth.
The real truth was I was in a religion that was just like all the others. There were lies, false prophecy, child abuse, favoritism and misuse of power. I saw at the world headquarters how all this was happening from the top down. The leaders of the organization put on a grand show of how meek they are. Their actions were anything but that. They loved power and used it harshly against their flock of sheep.
I had invest my entire life into a lie.
I felt like Alec Guinness at the very end of the movie “Bridge on the river Kwai.” I had spent my whole life trying to build a bridge only to realize the bridge really should have never been built at all. Yes in fact the bridge really needed to be blown up!
I didn’t have the courage to leave it, for many years. I knew if I could break free the cost would be immense. The cost could be my marriage, most of my relatives, all my friends and maybe my two children, not to mention finical ruin.
As it turned out, when the break did come, it did cost me all those things except for my two children. I got to keep them, because they made the break to freedom too.
I don’t expect this book to impede the Watchtower’s growth in anyway. Religions like this will keep growing and attracting people. They attract the spiritual orphans of the planet who need a new family. People who need to be told how they should live in order to please god. There are people who hope for god’s vengeance to destroy the vast majority of the Earth’s population. After which they and their righteous friends can live in a paradise Earth for eternity. There would be no sadness there. The Witnesses believe that their god Jehovah would erase even the memories of their dead love ones from their minds. How kind of him to do so.
Plus there is one thing that puts more people in religions than anything else on the planet and that is sex! As long as Catholics are having sex with Catholics, Muslims with Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses are having sex with Jehovah’s Witnesses their numbers will continue to grow. Yes, good old sex has created more religious people than anything else.
More chapters to come