Dubbies
Written by [SYN] “It Ain’t Funny, It True!”, [email protected]
28 February, 2003
The Governing Body – Balls of Steel, Doctrines of Cheap White Toilet Paper 3
A Day In The Life Of Ted Jaracz . 4
Introduction
Imagine being a fly on the wall at the Brooklyn, New York headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Surely you’ve seen them before, or at least heard about them. Many people have even been visited by the Witnesses, as they call themselves informally, or Dubs, as most ex-Witnesses call them. Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses simply cannot stand the amount of verbal effort required to say the full name of the members of this religion!
Rarely have two groups of people been so disparate from one another, with the possible exception of the Catholics and the Protestants. To their never-ending credit, even those two religious denominations can find ways of living with each other, but not so for Witnesses and ex-Witnesses, or XJWs for short. Why not?
There are several answers to this question, all of them good ones, but by far the most compelling answer will be presented in this essay by showing what life really is like at the headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. A lot of information about Jehovah’s Witnesses in general can be gleaned from a short visit to your nearest Bethel.
Ground Zero
If you’ve ever been to a boarding school, or lived in a college dorm, Bethel, as all headquarters of the Witnesses are known (there’s a Bethel, small or large, in many countries), you’ll have not even the tiniest inkling of what goes on in this mysterious building.
Certainly, there are many visitors and even the occasional silly tourist who, lacking anything better to do with his time, visits the world headquarters of the most annoying Organization on Earth. “Organization” is a very important word for Witnesses, as we’ll see later on in this essay!
These visitors are usually taken on an antiseptic guided tour of Bethel, and are shown the printing presses, and perhaps if they’re lucky they’ll get to eat lunch in the dining hall. The author has only been to his local branch of Bethel (the one in Krugersdorp, South Africa) twice. These visits took place while the author was still a full-blown Jehovah’s Witness, and as such were tainted with religious awe, which is not the situation right now, but we’ll get into that soon.
One of the first things you notice about the people in Bethel is that they are all dressed the same, especially amongst the women. One thing this author loves about (most) women is their lovely sense of style, and it is truly painful to see hundreds of women walking around inside a very drab building wearing what at first glance appear to be bags with flower prints on them. Closer inspection reveals that these dresses are in fact the “sensible dress” which is eschewed so much by the leaders in this Organization.
Very few people from the outside world who are not Witnesses themselves (or “Worldly” people, as they are called amongst Witnesses) are allowed into the innermost regions of Bethel. It’s not unknown for them to show you a jazzed-up sample dorm room during your visit, but this is just a publicity stunt. The real thing is much more interesting.
Bethelites, the unfortunates who live in Bethel, have every object in their room sanctioned by a phalanx of other Witnesses, composed of room cleaners, Elders, and, more often than you’d think, their room-mates. You’re simply not allowed to have certain objects in your room. Good examples of objects which are forbidden would be:
- Sex toys (Jehovah is certainly not partial to vibrators!)
- Mettalica CDs (a true story from a Bethelite I once knew)
- Money
- Any suit of a better fabric than polyester
- Smurf Toys
(Although not truly forbidden in Bethel, money is not something you’ll normally find in a Bethelite’s room or on his/her person, generally speaking.)
In a religion that is actually silly enough to actively forbid self-stimulation, which is a nice way of saying “jerking off”, there is simply nowhere for all that youthful sexual exuberance to go. While the wizards who did a little book recently published by the Society called, quite simply, “Youth”, do not say that squeaking the Ewok will make one go blind, they do mention the fact that Jehovah frowns upon it, even though Jehovah, to the author’s best knowledge, has never even brought up the topic in the Bible. This is very odd, since it was written almost entirely by men. Most people, and especially men, understand that there are certain things about the male physiology that just…happen, and there’s not much one can do about it. But how they explain this to the people who clean their rooms and their sheets the next morning is surely a problem faced by every non-married person in Bethelite, and quite possibly even the married ones! Worst of all, the people who clean your sheets often land up being the ones sitting across from you at the Bethel dinner table that night, normally accompanied by a sly grin on their faces as they tally up this month’s blackmail money that you’ll owe them before tonight is over. Some disillusioned Brothers have even been known to call them the “Willy Extortionists”. This is also the name of a very good New Orleans jazz quartet, but let me get back to the topic!
What results is that you have huge amounts of unmitigated testosterone flying around (amongst other things), which further aggravates other problems which I’ll introduce in this essay. Eventually, the whole place just sort of turns into a kettle. Since this is a serious essay, the author digresses to include the obvious jokes that arise when kettles are compared to virile young men in Bethel.
Youngsters
Many Bethelites are very young, barely out of High School in most cases. They are taught from the minute they are born that Bethel Service is one of the greatest professions on Earth. Witness mothers, holding their newborns for the first time, are often to heard to say “You won’t be able to touch jugs again until you’re married, so enjoy it while you can, little guy! And you can also start thinking about the Full Time Ministry!”.
Bethel Service is placed up on a pedestal along with Pioneer Work, which is another name for selling Watchtower magazines for at least 90 hours a month. Pioneers of what, exactly, is never specified. Boredom, maybe. Fortunately for many Pioneers, the only way the Elders know how many hours they’ve done is by the amount of time the Pioneers themselves put on the time slip. As always in this religion, guilt is the most powerful motivating factor, and almost all Pioneers except for certain borderline cases actually spend 90 hours of their time each month walking around with a sweaty handful of Watchtowers, ready to pounce. Just between you and me, this is no way to live.
Youngsters who are just leaving High School are basically given three choices in life:
- Pioneer Work – spend 90 hours a month selling magazines for the Society.
- Bethel Service – spend 40 hours a week (often more) doing virtually anything at Bethel.
- Anything else, which is probably evil. This includes College, University, and Any Job.
That’s not a lot of leg-room for youngsters in our career conscious, feature-driven world. Elders have told the author before that Bethel is not a place where you go right after High School, and they only want quality Witnesses there. The author can in fact vouch for the fact that that statement bears a striking resemblance to a certain brown substance deposited every morning by bulls on their way to the pasture.
Although the Witnesses will go to great lengths to tell you that their whole religion is based exclusively on the Bible, the author fails to see where Pioneer Service and Bethel Service are to be found in the Bible.
Once you’ve gone through the “rigorous” Bethel Service application process, which involves divulging enormous amounts of very personal details about yourself to strangers in the Applications Department of Bethel (who no doubt get a good belly laugh from the question item “Have you ever engaged in fornication or otherwise sinned against Jehovah?”), you’ll arrive at Bethel, usually dropped off by teary-eyed Witness parents, so proud of their very Spiritually Strong Witness child.
Guess what – five minutes later, you’re cleaning toilets. Yes, in the house of Jehovah, the very first thing they make you do is clean the toilets. Apparently this measure was instituted by Rutherford, a long dead Governing Body member who is famous in his own special way in the XJW community, in a similar way that Hitler is very famous in his own special way in the Jewish community. It “builds character”, a vague phrase only employed by sergeants, strategic marketing managers, and boxing coaches.
So, once you’ve gotten up to your armpits in the highly aromatic remains of Bethel meals after they’ve gone through the stomachs of other, doubtlessly even more zealous Bethelites, you will finally be given something decent to do when the next batch of doe-eyed, innocent youngsters arrive for their rude and somewhat smelly introduction to life in God’s house. As per usual, the author was unable to find that Scripture that states that during your first day in God’s house, you will be forced to chase floaters. This becomes a common occurence in this essay, believe me! No, not the chasing of the floaters, but being unable to find a Biblical basis for the laws of the Witnesses! And I haven’t even written all of it yet! Hell, I’m just getting started!
Dorm Life In Bethel
During my career as a Witness, I met many Bethelites. Our Congregation had the dubious privilege of being situated very close to the Krugersdorp Bethel in South Africa, and thus a high percentage of it was composed of Bethelites. Thus I was exposed to the plight of many fine young people who had been ensnared in the trap of Full Time Service for Jehovah.
The catch with Full Time Service is this – there are very few jobs in the real world that have as a requirement “2 Years Or More Experience Serving In The House Of Jehovah”. What I’m trying to say is, you’re screwed if you try and look for a job in the real world after spending even just a few years at Bethel. Nightmare stories abound of young Brothers and Sisters who got married in Bethel, thought everything was going to be peachy, and then had to leave when the Sister got pregnant (kids are not allowed at Bethel, nor are pregnant women). Imagine their surprise when they discovered that real life is a meat grinder on wheels for Bethelites…because of this sorry situation, many people at Bethel simply cannot leave, as they would starve, and thus they become institutionalized and eventually Bethel becomes their entire life. Nor can they marry – the risk of having to leave Bethel is simply too great.
Needless to say, this is a sad state of affairs.
It’s not as if Bethelites are living the high life, either. Bethelites, especially the younger ones, are normally poorer than church mice. Hell, church mice live like arms dealers compared to Bethelites! They are given a pittance every month, which normally just suffices to buy toothpaste and razor blades to shave their beards (or moustaches, in the case of the more hirsute Sisters), and that’s it. No way to earn extra income. Dependent on other servants of Jehovah to provide you food every day (well, at least the toilets are always clean). Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is the way the Society forces thousands to live, like monks, only monks get to wear cool hooded garments and sometimes become Kung Fu legends. You are not allowed to do Kung Fu if you’re a Witness. (It’s “violent.” (Or Yoga, which is “demonic”. Effectively, the only way to do any form of physical exercise in the Society is when you bend over to kiss the ass of the nearest Elder.))
Besides working themselves to the bone 40 hours or more a week simply to eat, the Bethelites have to do even more on top of that! Here is a what a Bethelite needs to do in order to simply qualify to continue staying at Bethel (you get kicked out if you don’t do all this stuff):
- Attend all 3 meetings every week at their assigned Kingdom Hall (1 or 2 hour meetings), often at night.
- Put in at least 10 hours of Field Service (book selling) every month.
- Go to an additional hour-long meeting every Monday night, where they study the same article that was studied the previous day again.
Is this beginning to sound ridiculous to you yet? Many Bethels are located in areas where public transport is non-existent (Krugersdorp being a prime example), so what often happens is that one out of about every 5 or 6 brothers will have a car that actually works, and these other Brothers and Sisters will have to bandy about to all the Meetings and Field Service arrangements in one car. I can’t count the number of times I saw these Brothers & Sisters faithfully putting a few coins into the hands of this car-owning Brother so that he could afford to put some gas in his jalopy. It really makes me want to cry. They were really nice people – being closer to my age, I made friends with many of them, so this really affected me, these people I looked up to and admired forced by their religion to live destitute lives.
Who thinks up all these crazy ideas and practices? There is another class of Bethelites, ones who live considerably better than your average young Bethelite. These are the members of the Governing Body.
The Governing Body – Balls of Steel, Doctrines of Cheap White Toilet Paper
The author is unable to explain why there is so much talk about excrement in this essay. One can’t help but compare the stuff written down and published by the Society to it. The first thing you see when you go the House of God (Bethel) is, you guessed it, excrement. Elders spew vast amounts of it for excruciatingly long periods of time whenever they start talking at any gathering of Witnesses, and even ordinary Witnesses are more than capable of generating enormous quantities of it unaided, given half a chance.
What really makes the author chuckle is this: what does it feel like to take a dump in the House of God?
Does God mind if you do that?
Does God get really mad at you if you accidentaly widdle on His floor?
Does God hate it when you leave the lid up?
What do you think about, while you’re having a nice, satisfying bowel movement in the House of God? Isn’t that blasphemy? Never having done this, the author wouldn’t know, to be honest!
All this talk of widdling has brought us to another topic: the Governing Body (I really don’t know why. Call it fate!)
Who are these mysterious men (never women!)? Who are these great fonts of unparallaled quantities of bull excrement of the finest texture and flavour imaginable? Who are these men who so selflessly create astonishing doctrinal cockups, at great risk to themselves and their small, spiritually mature Yorkshire Terriers? Who are these incredible men who can, in the words of the Spanish Brothers, create so much il mucho sienna (“Lots of brown stuff”)?
These mysterious figures are the Governing Body.
Governing Body members are quite unapproachable, even by Dubs. Sneering at the world in general, and especially at those bits of it which they do not control with an iron fist, these men stay away from the prying eyes of reporters and Witnesses alike. At least Bush goes and visits people, schools, institutions and so forth. He’s not that bad compared to the Governing Body. Even Bush would probably not be able to arrange some quiet time with the Governing Body.
What truly grates about these il mucho sienna cowboys who call themselves the Governing Body is the fact that they exert the ultimate power in the Society. Basically, what they say, goes, like it or not. Unavailable, untouchable, and above all, to be obeyed at all costs – imagine what that would be like, being one of their number. Being the ultimate imperialist. Emperors of the Witness world, that’s these guys!
Of course, it all started out innocuously enough. In the late 19 th Century, there was a guy called Charles Taze Russell. Most Witnesses know his name, but precious little else. His drinking buddies probably called him Pastor Tazey. He had a cool idea – Miracle Wheat. Russell said that this wheat would grow like no other wheat before. Setting an example for future prophecies, it turned out that his Miracle Wheat didn’t grow quite as fast as he claimed. Several farmers who grew it reported that it’s performance on the field was somewhat lacking, or, to quote them: “Your @#$@#$&*@@ Miracle Wheat bankrupted my entire extended family! My mother-in-law hates my guts! Stick your Miracle Wheat where the sun doth not cast it’s rays!”
Having failed in the field of Agriculture, Pastor Russell entered a far more forgiving field, that of Pastoring, or Religion, as it is known today. Back in those days, a Pastor was a dude who would wave a cross over you at certain critical moments of your life, such as birth, death, and exorcism. Priests as they appear in Warcraft were virtually unknown during those times, primarily because Blizzard Software hadn’t been founded yet.
Into this slow-moving Victorian maelstrom of weird theology stepped Russell. Russell was a man with an original doctrinal idea, and a beard. Witnesses are allowed to have neither original doctrinal ideas nor beards today, which strikes the author as slightly odd, but probably forgiveable, since beards never looked good on the Sisters anyway. Despite having his home burned down by disappointed farmers (OK, I made that up :P), Russell persevered and formed his very own religion, which he called the Bible Students. Gathering lots of people to his cause, he eventually landed up at the head of quite a sizeable religious organization.
Then came Rutherford, at a later period of time (the author is too lazy to look up the exact date). With the coming of Rutherford, many split from the newly-formed Organization. Starting a tradition which continues to the present day, Rutherford stated that a paltry gathering of Witnesses at Cedar Point, Ohio, a town famous for its potato crop and prophecy-fulfilling Biblical events, was the centrepoint for the beginning of the end of the world. And not just any old end of the world, either. No, this time God would separate the sheep from the goats, the (non-Miracle) wheat from the chaff, and God save your ass if you were put in the “chaff” class by a Witness! He also gave the Bible Students a new name. Many companies today change their names when they are bought out or change corporate direction, but surely God wouldn’t need a name as clunky as “Jehovah’s Witnesses”?
Another very important thing that happened at around this time, and had in fact happened during World War I, was that the Invisible Kingdom of God was established. It’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes, only it’s actually believed by 6 million people, which says something about the power of cults if you ask me!
The next time the words “end of the world” were uttered, many people drank Kool Aid and died shortly afterwards, but that was all still in the future. Today there are laws to prevent that sort of thing.
Unfortunately nothing could stop this diabolical, quite deranged man, who possessed in equal quantities prophetic vision and prophetic inaccuracy. One of his most enduring accomplishments, at least in the minds of cynical XJWs, is the building of Beth-Sarim. Beth-Sarim means “pimp-daddy-o’s-house” in Hebrew, and this was certainly what it was. According to accounts from many now blissfully dead Bethelites, Beth-Sarim was the haven for Rutherford’s disastrous alcoholicism, and quite possibly a small harem of willing Sisters. Originally intended as a dwelling place for the ancient prophets such as Moses and Bathsheba, who apparently would be reincarnated “any day now”, Rutherford instead spent most of his time in this pimpin’ house by himself! (No mention is made of how the Society intends to find the Great Prophets after Armageddon. It’s one of those things you never thing about till it’s too late…)
So, steered by the awesome strategic managerial synergy of Rutherford and his “boys”, Knorr and that other guy, the Watchtower began going from strength to strength, going up several points on the Cult Richter scale in the process, to the great alarm of all proponents of mental freedom.
All of which brings us to the sorry mess of today. You have a Society composed of over 6 million people, who combined have managed to create a single mildly-active Witness website. Of course, this is unremarkable, because Witnesses are not supposed to use the Internet, because, according to standard Society doctrine, it is demonized. Cisco and 3Com strenously disagree with this, having stated before that their routers and cables are fully debugged and cannot be harbouring spirits from the netherworld, but the Society persists in it’s opinions nonetheless. All of this is controlled by a bunch of just over half a dozen guys who have to take naps in between important meetings!
My friends, it simply doesn’t get worse than that! Or does it?
One of the most ironic things about this whole SNAFU which Witnesses find themselves in today is this – Rutherford died of cancer of the colon. Yep, you heard that right. Chew on that a bit, and you’ll see why it’s so funny.
Having gained a large troop of lawyers, the Society has now mellowed in it’s extreme old age. Gone are the days of random prophetic announcements. Now all new doctrines are delivered as innocently as possible, usually in some obscurely worded paragraph buried at the wrong end of a Watchtower Article. Quite possibly one of the longest lasting cults in the world, the Society now simply ambles along on sheer momentum. Very few new converts are being made today. What worked in the days when people thought Miracle Wheat was a kick-ass idea is just not that great for gaining new disciples today. Also, the “invisible” nature of much of the concrete theological underpinnings of this cult does not lend the Society any credibility.
So, to end off this essay which I’ve sat up until 2AM typing (it’s amazing what one can do when inspired by the Holy Spirit!), here is a diary entry from the “venerable” Ted Jaracz. Enjoy!
A Day In The Life Of Ted Jaracz
5.00AM Rudely awakened when Ben-Shehulemiah, my Yorkshire terrier, licked my nose. Nose may need surgery.
5.14AM Commence widdling.
6.14AM End widdling. Or is there still a drop or two left? It’s so hard to tell these days…damn 1990’s…
7.14AM Breakfast with the “boys”. Note: Should think of new name for the “boys”, all of them served in World War I. Pressing topic of this week’s orgy in the sauna room brought up again at breakfast, they know I hate it when they do that! Toast soggy, must import new chef from France.
7.30AM Commence browsing through Active Topics on jehovahs-witness.com and jehovahswitnessonline.com, much faster than asking the twits in the Writing Department what’s happening in the mornings. Note: Must get new hairstyle, all the Photoshops they’re doing of me on those sites are distinctly unflattering etc.
8.30AM Chaffeured to Patterson in new-fangled, flashy, hoity-toity, ass-burger “car”. Hey, it’s not like I could walk. I doubt I’d make it to the front door, in fact.
10.30AM Nap.
11.30AM Taken for a guided tour of the new farming facilities. The “boys” have really been doing some great work here, in that slow, semi-conscious way of theirs. Note: Must tell the “boys” to cut down the amount of bulls on the farm. There’s far too much excrement lying around here. It’s almost starting to look like Headquarters!
12.00AM Lunch at Patterson. I love the way everybody stands up when I walk in a room. It’s like I’m a giant rat or something. Must focus on restraining myself from pinching the bums of particularly shapely Sisters and then pretending to be myopic and looking for my glasses when I get caught. That didn’t work in the 80’s, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna work now! But hey, that one Sister reminded me of this other Sister I once showed how to hoe in the old days on the farm…ah, memories…
12.30PM Nap.
1.30PM Rushed about in infernal “car” again. God, the pressure!
2.30PM Another meeting with the “boys”. All GB members present, but 3 only technically, as the doctors have not yet issued coroner’s certificates. At least it’s easy for me to get my way all the time. I’m the sharpest of the lot at Bible Trivia Games, and the winner gets to make policy decisions, and if he’s very lucky introduce New Light. That’s what you get when you live with your mother for 50 years!
3.30PM Take Ben-Shehulemiah for a walk. Note: His pettycoat is getting ragged. Must instruct aide to order new petty coat.
4.00PM Nap.
5.00PM Dinner. What are all the Sisters doing with their hair these days? I really like it when they grow it down to their asses and then twizzle it all up in a beehive. You don’t see many of those these days.
7.00PM “Lead” Watchtower Study. The Bethelites are super smart – I just have to wave my hands and mumble, and they think I’m being profound. Wonderful.
8.00PM Commence widdling.
9.00PM End widdling. Bed. Tie Ben-Shehulemiah to far bedpost to prevent more sandpaper-tongue-on-nose incidents tomorrow. Made sure Teddy is comfie. Goodnight, diary.
Best regards,
[SYN]