I thought I would give my personal experience on who I am, how I came into the world of Watchtower, why I left, etc. This would explain a lot about the answers I give and why they don't directly reflect my personal convictions (like a normal person--and I do mean that literally, kinda). I cannot put everything here, but I can start bit by bit.
When I was 17 years old, my mother was on her third marriage and kinda starting her fourth (as she was dating this surfer dude-like guy who wasn't even 5 years older than me). My mother was a very beautiful woman. My father was very handsome. (The surfer dude was kinda fat.) The two were the "black sheep" of each of their respective families when they had married one another. They also had a very wealthy and rocky marriage, divorced when I was 13, and took off to marry and divorce as many people as they could in a race against one another that seemed like a game show competition.
It was at this time that I got involved with the Jehovah's Witnesses. I had had an aunt named Faith who had been a Witness, and she used to comment here as well but she recently passed. She was a pistol. Anyway, she watched over me because my mother tried to steal a lot of money from hubby number three (he was loaded) to finance marriage to hubby number four (which never panned out). Concerned that I would learn of her (illegal) plan and spill the beans, my mother and older brother Seth* devised a plan to get me out of the home and out of their hair.--*I have changed names to protect the innocent, mostly me.
Confusing my aunt with the Mormons, Seth told my mother that since I was so good at following rules that I should be sent to live with my Aunt Faith, as "she was a Mormon" and they have a "college program or something like that." So off I went.
Auntie Faith was neither Mormon nor was there any "college program."
I began to study a book with some elders called You Can Live Forever In Paradise On Earth. I went through a couple of weeks worth when suddenly my father came through and pulled my family together for a meeting and told me to tell the elders something that they eventually told me was, and I quote: "A Devil-inspired lie, made to pull you away from the truth." I was told that "Satan was just trying to do everything in his power to stop me from studying and getting my family to start persecuting me because he knew this study meant my eternal life."
What was this "lie"? 17 year-old me had to tell them: "My parents want me tell you that I have to stop the study as we are Jews and I can't participate in this study program as you are Jehovah's Witnesses and as a Jew I can't get involved in a religion that leads to baptism." I had to memorize this little speech, by the way, so I still remember it.
That week's study I was shown pictures of the Temple mount in Jerusalem by the elder from the old Aid book, and that same elder was telling me that God put an "Allah Temple" there "to purposefully insult the Jews because they murdered Jesus!"
The expression that those words (and his horrific vocabulary) put on my face reminded me of the expression my younger brother Ethan had years later. I eventually was out of the Organization at that time and we were in his living room. Miriam, a P.E. teacher, had run in with a net. "What is that for?" he asked her.
"It's to catch poopies," she said. "When she gives birth, your wife is going to make poopies into the pool."
Being told I wasn't Jewish and that Jews murdered Jesus and that the Dome of the Rock was an "Allah Temple" made by God to insult us Jews was like watching my younger brother, Ethan, in shock. His wife was having natural childbirth in a pool of water that was situated in their living room surrounded by "guests" that they had invited for the event. I too was invited, but I didn't want to be there. (Definitely not.)
"Ethan! Ethan, are you okay with this?" I asked. He had an expression of shock on his face. Of course he had an expression of shock on his face. Not only was his wife giving birth in a kiddie swimming pool in their living room surrounded by relatives, friends, and strangers with a lesbian from the local synagogue picking up stray "poopies" with the net from Mr. Hartman's pool net from next door (I sure hope nobody told him what they did with it after they returned it), his expression was obviously in shock because 9 months prior to this, his wife Sara had stuck a pregnancy test in his face.
Have you ever had a pregnancy test stuck in your face? It's a stick that someone has just recently peed on. Who cares if it says you are about to have a child? Someone is putting a stick in your face that they have just peed on. That is what causes the expression of shock that today's fathers all have on their faces. Pee-stick face.
My father and father's of yesterday did not have pee-stick face back then. Back then they just killed a bunny rabbit to test if you were pregnant. Back then all doctors were Jewish, and there was this ancient Jewish ritual based on Yom Kippur's scapegoat that could also tell if a woman was pregnant. But instead of using two goats and tossing one over a ledge to purge you of all sins, you merely used two bunnies--and if during this Jewish voo-doo ritual you got this "signal" from HaShem, one of the bunnies would be tossed over the ledge as well and you would tell the patient that she was expecting. Hence the old saying: "The rabbit died."
Of course, since I was told I was not a Jew by those bastard elders who really knew nothing about me, my family, and Judaism, this family experience was almost lost to history save the fact that I ran off from those JWs when I was old enough...which was another story entirely. But I transgress.
Instead of watching Fishing for Poopies in my younger brother's living room, I could have insisted on remaining a Jehovah's Witness all those years ago, learning about how I wasn't Jewish (and all about "Allah Temples"). I could have been part of the new Roku JW generation who grew up with rubber-face Stephen Lett who looks like he's fished for too many (and caught some) poopies in his lifetime, and still waiting with my (gay) pioneer friend (who was in denial) for an end to this system of things that would never come. (More on that later.)
My father was murdered by the sons of his fourth marriage (allegedly) and my older brother Seth (allegedly) tried to kill my mother and is still on the run to this day (he was last seen disguising himself as a Chasidic Jew and arguing with a Catholic nun in a Catholic hospital and telling her why "Jesus is not the Messiah"). Mother is in the last stages of Alzheimer's in a special facility (but she was almost in a state prison cell for life for that money scheme). The rest of my family is pretty normal, for a bunch of "Jesus murders" (allegedly).
More to come. Just 6 days till Chanukah. So nice to be part of the normal world and not in a cult, right?