Part 1: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/163998/1.ashx
Part 2: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/164136/1.ashx
Part 3: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/7/164163/1.ashx
Part 4: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/7/164402/1.ashx
Part 5: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/7/164488/1.ashx
My Story: Part 6 – Their World Is Not Enough
As a young witness of Jehovah, one is expected to pursue a full time career in the truth and to relegate to second place all interests, desires, hobbies and activities so that Kingdom interests are not crowded out.
Because I did not go out in field service for most of my witness youth, I did not cultivate or develop that “love of people” that I was supposed to have; that love that moves others to pioneer. Truth be known, I hated the ministry. I didn’t think we were warning anyone about the “end of this system of things” when we were offering Awake magazines that felt like a cheap copy of Readers Digest and a Watchtower magazine that no one could understand. Bethel Service was out of the question, but for a brief moment of time I actually contemplated it. There wasn’t even the hope of me becoming a ministerial servant – the average age of servants in our hall was 35 and besides, no elder would consider me for that privilege.
It was at this point that I began to question my future in the organization. I had spent three years studying engineering but my heart was not in it. I worked in the manufacturing sector which I hated with a passion.
I decided to take some free courses in Information Technology. Although I was a pro with computers I was not confident using Microsoft Office, so these courses improved my confidence and gave me a qualification which I could put to use.
My living arrangements, as mentioned in Part 5, were awkward to say the least. I literally shared a bedroom with another lodger, so privacy was extremely limited, and yes, I did have a separate bed. My roommate came from a disadvantaged background, took drugs, got drunk and did not have a stable job. We got on alright except for the time when he wanted to watch TV in our room till 4 in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. He was eventually kicked out by my long suffering landlord for squandering the rent money on partying.
Our other troublesome lodger was a middle-aged Muslim who we shall call Peter. This man had a strange past, but he was considered a friend of the family. Peter was not what you would call a devout Muslim as he developed rather an affinity for alcohol. He drank like a fish and each time my landlord would kick him out and then we would get a call from the hospital that Peter has been admitted, and as usual my landlord would go up there to collect him. It was a sad tale that would be repeated over and over again. I would sometimes see Peter on the bench outside Safeway supermarket, slumped over holding a can of beer. He had been warned again and again by my landlord to stop drinking, but to no avail. It wasn’t easy sharing a bedroom with a loser and a house with a drunk, but somehow this would be my home for the next three years. My landlord and landlady were the kindest most generous people you could wish to meet – they put the brothers and sisters at the hall to shame.
After obtaining my qualifications in I.T., I managed to get a job working for the council and later on obtained a position working in Human Resources for the National Health Service.
I had a stable job, a stable home but I was miserable inside. The congregation seemed to deteriorate. It had a reputation for being cold and despite council from the Circuit and District Overseers; the brothers did not change their attitudes. If Laodicea was considered lukewarm then my congregation would not even have moved the mercury in a thermometer.
"Look After Widows…In Their Tribulation"
The elderly were treated badly in my congregation – they were not visited on a regular basis, if at all and were pretty much considered persona-non grata. I got to know these elderly ones and helped them whenever I could. I got to see first hand the sheer neglect that these ones suffered, especially when they were put in nursing homes and forgotten about. I always made an effort to see them.
I was on good terms with some of the elderly sisters in my congregation. One particular sister, who was like a grandmother to me, was born in 1914. Her parents were of the anointed. She was baptized at the London Tabernacle though she was not herself a member of the anointed. Her husband had committed suicide a few years ago. Although the congregation rallied round her, it soon dwindled to nothing. Life does go on as they say, but this sister was in her 80s and was not invited for dinner or taken out. Her story of neglect and loneliness was similar to every other elderly person that I got to know.
By this time I had pretty much accepted that I would never have friends my own age in the congregation. I had made friends with some of my work colleagues and began to hang out with them on odd occasions, but it didn’t feel right. Why couldn’t I have friends in the congregation, why did I have to look outside?
A Revelation
To my surprise, my landlord told me several months after I moved in with him that he was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was shocked – I had absolutely no idea. He never told me flat out he was baptized but he did tell me he gave talks and went to the meetings. Although I never knew the reason he stopped going, I figured he was bored by it.
I invited him to the Memorial the following year and he accepted. We attended a different congregation this time – I did not want him being treated coldly on account of myself. The following year, his wife went with him, despite the fact she was a member of the Salvation Army. They didn't comment much on the talk; I suspect now it is because they saw the formality of the service. My landlady had nothing against Jehovah’s Witnesses but she did tell me there were teachings that she didn't agree with. A brother in my hall would give them the magazines on a regular basis.
“Like the Arrows of a Might Man”
“We must aim them the target to reach.” These are the words to the Kingdom Melody “Children – Precious Gifts from God.” My congregation had a number of youths between the ages of 13-25. For some reason, the congregation was hemorrhaging its youth; literally about 75% of all young ones had left the congregation in a matter of two years. Because the congregation did not organize any social activities for the youth, except for the rare game of Rounders on a bank holiday, it was up to each of the young ones to organize their own social life. Unfortunately, the youth did not like each other either and began to go there own separate ways.
When the Young People Ask video “How Can I Make Real Friends” was released in 1999, our congregation made the effort to rent out a village hall, and got everyone to watch this video, but it did not have the desired effect. It was like learning how to cook without ever touching the ingredients. I would go as far to say that simply watching this video was about as useful as a chocolate teapot. It did not stop the young ones from leaving. You cannot force people to be friends simply by having them watch a video. It was very frustrating for me to watch as I knew that my situation would never change.
I finally got my driver’s license in that year and would you believe it – a brother in my hall who was shunning me suddenly noticed me and asked if I would like to go out for a meal with his friends. I was only too happy to accept – what had changed his mind? Now that I had my license, it seemed that I was a qualified taxi driver as he simply needed me to ferry his friends to and from the restaurant. I knew there had to be a catch.
Laodicea
The reputation of my cold, unloving congregation had reached far and wide. A local elder gave a talk counseling the congregation to widen out in their affection for one another. One comment I will never forget – a sister who is generally not very outspoken took the microphone and said how said it was that she had seen the visiting speaker and his family having lunch in the local Tesco’s – so much for the identifying hallmark of love that Jesus said we were supposed to love. Everyone went quiet at that – you could have heard a pin drop.
It eventually dawned on me that our hallmark of Christianity was not love, charity and Christian works but rather, the counting of time, wearing our badges at the convention and attending five meetings a week. I began to feel I was wasting my time in the congregation and considered moving to another location, but the math did not work out – I couldn’t afford to rent my own place, so I stayed where I was. My meeting attendance dropped and my service dwindled to almost nothing, yet no one seemed to notice or care. The extremely rare occasion I did get a shepherding call was because the elders had been told to do them, and it was always a couple of weeks before the visit of the Circuit Overseer. Such hypocrisy.
One time I phoned an elder and asked him flat out if I was being marked. I told him that so many people, including elders, were ignoring me it was hard to believe otherwise. He invited me round and we talked and just before I left to go home he handed me some printouts from the Watchtower CD-ROM. I didn’t read them until I got home. My heart sank when I read the information. It was an article about imputing false motives to others. He hadn’t listened to a word I said and had already made up his mind about me before I even walked in his door.
Moving Forward
At this time, I began to realize that I didn’t have a future in the organization. I prayed to Jehovah to give me a chance but my prayers went unanswered. From my experience, it seemed that there were only three possible answers to a prayer - Yes, No and Not Right Now. I couldn't wait forever for God to help me so I decided I would go to university and study English, but to do that I needed two A levels, so I signed up for evening classes at college. I was always interested in writing but never really put my mind to it. I remember shortly afterwards going to an assembly at Haysbridge and hearing this pathetic elder give counsel to those “adults who are even attending night school.” The one thing I really wanted to do and I felt like I was being kicked in the teeth; still I persevered and enjoyed my classes. I felt myself slipping away from the organization. I told myself, “this time next year I’ll have my A-levels and will be able to apply to university.”
Sometimes in life, however, things do not always work out the way we would want them to or in the way we expect them to.
A chance encounter, a chance remark, yet such things determine our fate in ways we cannot imagine…