Thanks for the quotes Gerard.
They got me to thinking about the unintended consequences that are born from such thinking. I remember growing up as a witness and how Satan and the demons seemed to be everywhere. Even completely benign things were not allowed because the reasoning was that if the thing, action, or thought was not from the Watchtower Corporation, then it had to be from the Devil, since he rules everything else.
This created an atmosphere in our home of paranoia, fear and a timid almost cowardly approach to life. Our only relief from such "evil" was meetings and field service. Basically, everything except those two activities were in Satans realm.
I used to be jealous of Christians in our neighborhood because they seemed to not live under a cloak of fear and dejection and yet were living moral, family oriented lives. No one freaked out over common sins. It was just acknowledged and dealt with. I could see that they lived a far more free and healthier lifestyle than we JW's did. I was too young to contemplate that it had to do with our acceptance of false teachings. I just figured we were freaks.
When I got baptized as a witness (age 23) I honestly told God that I was willing to be a moron and a loser to get life in the New System. I had enough of sin by that point and thought the Watchtower was the only way. However, I firmly believed from age 7 onward that Jehovah's Witnesses were idiots. I don't know why, I just did.
I now know the secret of those "normal" Christian neighbors I used to watch in my neighborhood. Instead of running around like dejected losers, they were being led by Christ in a Triumphal walk through the cheering streets of "Rome" with the objects of their conquest in chains behind them.
