A Personal Testimony(anonymous)I was raised as a Jehovah Witnesses. I knew of no other way of living and of course thought that there was no other way! As a child and teenager I was not very proud of my religion and tried to hide it as much as I could. Somehow I felt that something was wrong with me because I could not feel the zeal that so many of my friends felt, yet no matter what I tried it was just never there. I did all that was expected of me though and that got me through. My mind processed information in a very analytical way and I couldn’t ever put it together ... but I somehow knew something wasn’t right. I married a nice young witness boy (as I was expected to do) that was also raised in the “truth”. We had our first child and life got busy. I had always sought after friendship and thought I had many friends, yet I began to see something that just didn’t fit. We stopped going to one of the five meetings (the “book study”) friend of mine had asked if I would like to go out with her on a book study night after the meeting to see a band play. I said yes and we made plans. She was late however and when I acquired as to why, she said “I had to listen to a 30 minute lecture from my mother on how I should stop associating with you until you return to the Book Study group.” It hit me ... all of my friendships all of my life had been reevaluated weekly. If you didn’t make it to the Sunday meeting you weren’t invited to the party that week, or you were left out of things until you towed the line again. I thought ...was that friendship???? That night made me never want to attend another meeting ever ... but I did and things just got worse. I began to see things differently. I kept telling my husband how the children seem to be neglected in the truth. There was no schooling provided for them on their level. I used to say that was like taking a first grader and putting them in a 12th grade class and insisting that they absorb all that goes on. How ridiculous. It was as if the children were in the way (that is until they were old enough to go out in service and pedal those magazines) ever centered around the children and that just wasn’t how I felt. I felt they were the most important thing in my life. I didn’t want our children to grow up this way. It seemed a never ending story to me ... my mom told me when I was a little girl that I would never go to school, when I started school she told me I would never graduate high school, when I graduated (norrowly escaping those years that they encouraged young ones to quit school and pioneer, you know “75” was just around the corner then), get married, when I married she told me I would never have children. ... and so on. I just couldn’t stand the rhetoric anymore. Everyone seemed so cold and unloving, yet they said there was just so much love at the Kingdom Hall, but I didn’t see it. A sister in the congregation that I respected very much once told me “Can’t you just be mature enough to over look the people and just love Jehovah’s organization?” I thought about that and responded, “I guess I’m just not mature enough then, I see the organization as the people, the organization reflects itself in the people - people are what it is all about - Jesus gave his life to save the people”. So I admitted defeat, accepted my immaturity and slowly stopped going to even more meetings. Not too long after that a young man that my sister had faniced for awile got publicaly reproved and was going through a very hard time. He was drinking and going out with young girls alone ... he was being a teenager. Everyone began shunning him of course and this added to his confusion. He asked that my sister sit down with him and talk as he still loved her so much. I recall a conversation that I had with my sister when she asked me should she talk to him. I said, “Please do, you owe it to your friendship!” She said, “but wouldn’t that be condoning what he was doing? I said no, sit down with him, maybe you can bring him around.” She admitted that he had confided in her the he had considered suicide in his confused state. I told her it could not hurt to sit down with him over coffee and listen. I had her convinced to do just that, but my father got a hold of her before she could talk with him and told her she needed to be firm and show him strong love by not even saying hello to him. A few weeks later this bright young man who I dearly loved killed himself with a gunshot to the head in his car. That was the straw that broke the camels back! Meanwhile a neighbor had come to wish me well when my first child was born and we struck up a friendship that I had never before experienced. I had found a friend that liked me no matter what I believed (even though it was “weird” to her) she accepted me and I had found a friend for life. I owe a great deal to this woman, I can never live up to the love and caring this woman showed to me in the years to come. It was really her friendship that eventually lead to my departure of the Watchtower, and I will be eternally grateful. By this friendship I came to know the outside world and it didn’t seem as hopeless as I had been taught. My belief structure in the “Watchtower” remained intact though, because in my mind there was just no escaping it. Over the next 5 years I had two more children and hadn’t been to a meeting in all that time. My mother and father and two sister were heart broken, and still tried to bring me back into the fold occasionally. My life had been a mess. We allowed our oldest child to celebrate holidays at school, but couldn’t do so at home because my parents would find out and we would be disfellowshiped. I just couldn’t bear that. So we ended up allowing our children to lie to their grandparents ... my oldest child was hopelessly confused constantly and we were all basically unhappy. We accepted our doom that we would die at armageddon because we just couldn’t go back to that Kingdom Hall ever again. Then finally we decided that we had to stand up and face the consequences so as to give our children some sort of stability. In Dec. ’93 we decided to celebrate Christmas. We, of course did so with a guilty conscience. My father found out and he immediately announced he must tell the elders and he made it perfectly clear that they would indeed stand by their faith and cut us off. We knew that and it brought us great pain. The waiting was so stressful that I began having migraine headaches every other day for 6 weeks ... waiting for the decision. But none came. We agonized over this terribly and finally in March of ’94 my brother-n-law saw how distraught I was over this that he told me that they had made a decision 2 months ago. (I had thought possibly that my father had neglected to inform the elders and thought he was going to try to let it pass.) But he hadn’t, my brother-n-law explained that my parents did not want me to know the decision. The elders had decided that since we had not been to a meeting in over 4 years that they would take no action unless we wanted to return. My parents felt that if I knew I would “go overboard” and do anything I wanted and this way they could continue some control over me and my family. I was heart broken ... I had taken such a step of courage and my parents looked at it as if I was “just a teenager and did not know what was good for me”. Since we were now out of the closet I decided to do something I had wanted to do for a long time. I had had a close friend that was disfellowshiped when I was 16. It had always haunted me how I never got to talk to her again and how cold I must have seemed to her. I know she had had to have suffered from that. So, I called her parents still living in my home town and got her number. I called her because I wanted to clear my conscience and apologize for treating her in such an unloving manner ... that I had since found out what friendship was supposed to be about and I hoped that she would forgive me. She did and came to town a few weeks later with another friend I had also known at the time. She brought me a gift - the King James Version of the Bible - I told her thanks, but no thanks. I had that life for many years and I wanted no part of it anymore. Besides, the God I knew wouldn’t hear my prayers or see anything I did as Christian. I did eventually accept her gift and tucked it away under a cabinet so I would not have to see it. I was throughly convinced that there was no God for me unless I was a Jehovah Witness. Try as they might they tried to convince me otherwise, but to no avail. We all kept in touch throughout the next year. To these two women I have the upmost respect and love as it is their patience with me and their courage of conviction that has enabled me to open my heart and mind. After our 2nd Guilty Christmas the friend that had come with her that first day called me up and said she was in town and thought she knew something that I would like to know. She told me of the “God’s Stone Witness” the Great Pyramid. I was flabbergasted. She told me of the 1925 return of the ancient worthies of old (Beth Sirem),Christ return in 1874, the prediction of 1914 and so on and so on ... I wanted to know where she knew of this and she told me she had read a book by David Reed. Well, I wanted that book ... I wanted that book right then. The very next morning I went and picked it up from her and read it that night. I was just devastated, but I couldn’t take this man’s word for it. So I told my husband that this was to begin a quest for the real “truth” and I was going to find it out or else. I told him if the Society had it I would accept that, but I was still not going back and if I found they didn’t I could lift from my heart this never ending guilt. So began a journey I would have never believed could ever come to pass. I began calling, ordering every book I could find and spent well over three hundred dollars. I read non-stop for 2 months. It was the hardest 2 months of my life as I tried to decipher what was going on in my head. For the first 3 weeks I seemed to be in a paradox that I couldn’t get out of. I believed the Society had prophesied falsely yet they claimed not to be a prophet. Yet they said you can’t question these beliefs, yet they claimed not to be a prophet ... this went round and round in my mind until I decided to write out each reference to being a prophet, every reference to not being a prophet and see if I could make sense. What I realized was that your mind could hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time and believe both of them. Why? I realized that in every thought pattern there were strong thoughts and week ones. You can believe both, but in the end the stronger wins out. Was the Watchtower a prophet. Yes! Though they claim not to be, by not allowing you to question their authority by claiming to be the sole channel of communication from God (the strongest thought of the two) in your mind the stronger thought wins out, and you can then accept the mistakes the Watchtower makes with out questioning their authority. I was finally out of my paradox. It was if a bomb had hit me. I could see so clearly. I then read everything I could find and still am doing so. The mind control exercised in this religion excuse me, cult, is so devastating! It is such a complete make-over of the mind that it is almost unbelievable. It has caused great pain in my life all which I thought had a purpose and to find out the deception has no purpose - well - it can make one question whether it is worth going on. Yet, to be free ... oh, the feeling. I feel as though I have never lived. I feel things I have never felt, and my mind feels fresh like a newborn. When I set out on this quest it had begun simply to find out the truth, but the more I read the more I started to want to pray (something I hadn’t even wanted to do in the “truth”).had perceived him to be and in realizing that Faith in the Lord Jesus as my savior was such a compassionate feeling to me I just had to find out more. There I was a person who didn’t even want a bible in my home yet I felt so compelled to pray and read the bible. So, one Sunday morning only a few weeks ago, I decided I would do the unthinkable - go to a church. Yes, you heard me right go to the devil’s playground (so I had been taught) dearest friend was a Catholic and I decided to visit her church. I enjoyed it though I was quite a bit lost. I did enjoy the sermon that day as he spoke of the love we should show to everyone around us, how Jesus had such compassion for us. It stuck in my mind that day and through all my confusion helped me get through the next few days. The next Sunday had approached and I decided to try another church as I had never been any of them and I wanted to see all of them. I got in my car not knowing where to go. I rode by several churches and they seemed to intimidating, so I rode around some more and came across a First Baptist Church with a sign that read “Visitor Information”. Hey, I thought at least I will know where to start, so I parked my car and walked into the office. The pastor was there and asked could he help me. I said yes, I would like some information about your church and explained to him that I had been a Jehovah Witness for 33 years. He asked would I like to join the Sunday School class going on at that time. So, I accepted and walked in to the unknowing. On the black board above the speaker was written “Spirituality verse Religion” Which is more important? The lesson went on to talk about legalism in the church and to avoid judging others that it was the spirit within us that it the most important and that man’s rule were just that “man’s rules”. I was so happy to hear such a lesson and when it ended I told the class that I had been a witness for 33 years and talk about RULES, well I knew them very well. I then for the first time in my life enjoyed a worship service more than I could ever tell you. The members have been very helpful and encouraging to me though it has only been a couple of weeks. I have to still hide all this from my parents and sisters for if they found out we actively disagree with the Society I feel they will take further steps to insure my silence by disfellowshipping me after all. I also feel that maybe I can drop hints and maybe open their eyes to the deception before they find out how we feel as I know one day it is inevitable they will find out. My husband is not as far along in his conclusions, but I don’t think him to be far off. He hasn’t had as much time to read as his work keeps him busy. I enjoy all your correspondences through e-mail and hope to be able to contribute one day in a more definite way. Right now however, I still have many questions to work through, yet I know now that I am on the right road to get the right answers. To close this testimony I shall say, if there is just one of you out there who might read this that has a question in his mind about the Watchtower, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Remember, the TRUTH will always stand the test! At 33 I have just begun to LIVE! |