Since I just signed up and posted a few times without doing
this yet, here is my story.
I think that I became a Jehovah’s Witness because of my
immaturity. I had some quirky personality traits, and I joined finding that I
fit in because, as I said to myself: “These people get me. A lot of them are
just like me.”
I was 18 at the time. My parents, who were home-staying-on-Sunday
Christians, dabbled in Watchtower-ism for a bit. My father was the one who was
more fascinated than my mother. In the summer of 1984 he passed on a Watchtower and Live Forever Book he got from the workmate who regularly witnessed
to him. I had my own interest in the Bible and was one of those people who,
upon reading Watchtower theology for the first time, claimed it “had a ring of
truth to it.”
To speed things up, I got to studying, was baptized after
only 6 months, and became a regular auxiliary pioneer as soon as I was able to
qualify. I was soon handling the microphones and having parts on assembly and
convention programs, and eventually became a ministerial servant and regular
pioneer.
But one day I woke up to find I just wasn’t the boy who
lapped up the idealistic dreams of yesterday. Being the very studious type, I
actually studied myself through everything ever published by the Watchtower
Bible and Tract Society (there was no CD-ROM library yet). I moved on to
reading the Church Fathers and learned critical methodology and, oddly, noticed
how everything just left me feeling high and dry.
I had begun giving public talks at my hall, and soon, to my
surprise, I had become one of the most requested ministerial servants among the
congregations in our circuit to give visiting talks at other Halls around my
state. As the requests kept coming in, a certain elder in my Hall grew more
jealous. Eventually he couldn’t hold it in, I suppose, because he eventually
devised a series of (shall we say) “complications” for me. Since that is
another story entirely, let me shorten it to this: the lies and plots of the
elder came to light, he had to step down, and the elder body had to formally apologize to me for what they had done (it was significant). Two days after the
apologies came (some of them had apologized to me in addition to the formal
apology), I left after giving my last public talk.
Yep, one day I was a Watchtower-brand Kool-Aid recommending
orator and the next they were reading my disassociation notice. It shook many
horribly, I came to learn, and some who were there to hear about my formal cutting
of ties with the Organization found it in themselves to get up and leave
themselves. About one-third of my circle of friends eventually left in the
months and years after I did.
I caught up a bit on my education, got a great job, started
a family, built a home, a new circle of friends, reconnected with non-JW family and am
still living a great and fulfilling life. Nobody’s is perfect, but it is far
better than what I had as a Witness.
But the point to all this is the lesson I learned about
myself.
You see, after I left I had decided I had enough with
religion. No more God, no more Bible, no more meetings. No, I don’t want to go
to your church, don’t want to talk about your religion, I am fine as I am.
I still think that is a pretty healthy set of convictions to
have. If they are yours, you can rest assured you will find me in your corner
should you ever need support.
However, the lesson I still needed to learn came from my
best friend Randall and his family. Randall was brought up an atheist. His
parents are both doctors, his older sister is a scientist, and he himself crunches numbers as an accountant for a living. They are very straight-forward people, very
loving, wonderful to be with, generally always happy and laughing, and they
were a great support for me after I left the JWs.
Randall was my school-boy pal. We had grown up together
since meeting on the first day of school in Kindergarten (it was snowing that
day, and we used magnifying glasses to try to see if we could see the patterns of
the snowflakes that landed in each other’s hair). Randall stuck around during
my JW days, even agreed to study. I got to preach to his family on a few
occasions, and they were more than happy to embrace me as one of them after I
left that religion behind.
One day I was visiting them when they were having a barbecue
in the backyard. The family always had wonderful in-depth conversations and
even lively debates with friends about all types of subjects: politics, global
warming, latest in medicine and science, even pop culture. It was great.
So when a friend among the invited group brought up the fact
that they had joined a mega-church in the area and had undergone something they believed
might have been a spiritual experience, I opened my mouth. Out came things like
“lack of evidence,” “credulity is no substitute for critical thinking,” “belief
in God is for the weak.” I used my best arguments, quoted this and that, and
was on a roll until I noticed no one else was chiming in. I think I even
stopped in mid-sentence when I realized I was just getting stares and silence,
especially from Randall and his family.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Randall’s mom, Eileen, spoke up. “You’re Jehovah’s Witness
is showing,” she said.
It hit me like a cartoon character getting bonked on the
head with an iron anvil. I had left the JW religion, but it hadn’t left me. No,
I wasn’t preaching religion anymore. But I was still acting and talking like I
had found “The Truth” and treating others like their choices were so “obviously
that of the blind and unthinking” populace that was definitely NOT as “enlightened” as me.
I sneaked out of the gathering once it got back to normal...like a dog with its tail between its legs. I eventually came around to
apologizing to Randall and his family. They were forgiving as always. Randall’s
mom said only one last thing about the situation, and never mention it again: “You’ve
always been the type to think that you’ve found the right way for everyone to
follow. When you were a boy it was fun to watch, and even interesting because
you were discovering things like science and mathematics and just life in general. You loved to follow rules and were very bright. But when you grew up you exchanged the Watchtower
for those things. You kept the childish attitude. We thought you would leave it
behind once you got out of that religion. But now you preach atheism like it’s
some fundamentalist Christian creed, and that’s not really what it’s all about. The
problem is not your latest belief, it’s how you see yourself and your personal choices in
comparison to that of others.”
She was right. I was talking to people about my newly-found
atheist convictions as if atheism was the newly adopted hate-gospel of the Westboro Baptist
Church. I immediately recalled that I found the Witness religion attractive
because it fed my need to feel like I was right and others were wrong, that
other people needed to be corrected, and to pat myself on
the back for my cleverness of always finding the “right way” to do things.
Randall and his family never once said anything against my
JW beliefs. I’ve never seen them criticize or argue with a person about
religion. They decline invitations to go to other churches and things, but
being from a Jewish background they have attended things like Bar-mitzvahs and
stuff, even though they are not active believers. They got Jewish family and it's what they do. They just go with the flow.
Today, though my convictions have indeed changed somewhat, I have
learned that I can’t blame the Jehovah’s Witnesses for everything in my past.
Do I still think they are cult-ish and got it all wrong? Yeah. I am certainly
glad I left. But I can see how my attitude needed some adjustment, and how I
may have brought some of the problems I experienced in my Kingdom Hall upon myself
(though definitely not all of it).
I woke up because my boyish self-centered idealism just didn’t
fit anymore, and though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, my need to grow up made me get up and leave. The “ring of truth” left me for a feeling that
something wasn’t quite right. I think something inside me knew I couldn’t become what
I needed to be if I stayed there. Who can?
Face it, when you believe you’ve found the only source of
truth and only right way to live, well you can’t say that is really a
humiliating experience. Just listen to and watch people like Governing Body
member, Stephen Lett. That’s not a very humble man. Declaring there is more evidence
for “1914” than for wind or electricity is not the type of thing that comes out of
the mouth of a modest and humble human being. I’ve never seen the attitude of
Witnesses reflected in Randall or his family.
I think I was one of those people that naturally fit in the
Watchtower, ready to call uniformity “unity” and compartmentalize everything in
life into “This Is Good” and “This Is Evil” and accepted having nothing in between
as a sign that all is done correctly since this made everything in the world
make sense, so neatly…from MY point of view, that is.
So yes, I left the Watchtower, many, many years ago. And a few years later the Watchtower left me.
