Dear Randy:
I don't know if this is publishable on your website or just an opportunity to air my concerns on this sunny September afternoon, here in Oregon. Either way, I'll endeavor to get to the point.
Just a quick background for your readers: My wife Jill and I left the JW's in 1998 with our 2 teenage children after 17 years of involvement. We were converts; our kids were raised "in the truth". From 1990 to 1993 we were a 2-KH-key family, with Jill pioneering and me a servant. By 1995, with "generation" being re-translated to re-account for the years after 1975, I started to lose my faith in the WTS. In early 1999 we found Free Minds on the Internet, I got some counseling and we left "the truth" abruptly. I talked to 6 people on the way out, each saying they couldn't leave (without me even asking them to!) We were angry, but I didn't want to be DF'd, so we just left, saying nothing. We still live 2 doors away from the SO, many JWs live around the neighborhood. Many are pleasant, we are happy to talk to them.
Our children are glad to have left. In school my son had a particularly difficult time with his peers. My daughter balanced a "double life" and just dodged the issues that befall JW children. One startling experience after we left was the relief my son felt when I told him that we would have gone against WT policy and permit a blood transfusion if needed. That's a cruel notion to hold over a child - I had never thought how he truly felt at the time we made him carry his blood card. Still, we are out and making up for most things. Doing lots of reading and looking for joy in just living, no longer waiting for the JW train to come in.
This is my concern:
I call my Mum (never a jw) in the UK every Sunday. This past Sunday being no exception - it was the weekend after the terrorist attack on NYC and Washington. She told me that she was upset with the two JWs who call on her each week. Mum was disgusted that they were using the disaster to explain that we are in the very last days - almost to the point of "being pleased with themselves that the JW's are right". This upset Mum, as it would upset any loving person. The sisters that call on her are very devoted JW pioneers, I have known them for years, one has even stayed with us in the US. They are not bad people - just desperate for some proof to support their misdirected beliefs.
Later that evening I surfed a few JW spots on the 'net. I read that the WTS closed its doors so "strangers wouldn't come in". I read words like "thrilled" and "excited" being applied to news of this terrible disaster. I wondered how I would have reacted had this happened 10 years ago when we were all gung-ho JWs. I dread to think that I might have come off as "gloating", but I think I might have, as I too desperately wanted Armageddon to come right now.
Sadly, I don't think I would have put 2 and 2 together and see that the God of the JWs had something Evil planned for 99.9% of the whole world's population. I don't think I could have seen then that a God that would kill people the way the terrorists did on a global scale could be Evil. I don't think that I could have seen that the worship of such a God was Evil, that living in a world perpetrated by such a God would be Evil - that Armageddon (per JW lore) would be Evil.
But I do now. I now recall endless pictures (particularly in the older WT's) of the religious, government and business world falling apart, literally! This is hateful propaganda. But my concern is primarily what this may do to Witness children.
As your longer term readers have found out there are people within the WTS that KNOW they are NOT God's sole channel of truth. They have been back peddling on issues such as voting, non-whole blood transfusions and a series of cultish tendencies to prove their reasonableness to the UN and many nations of the earth to try to maintain their status as a legal religion. They also know that Dateline is going to do an expose on several cases of hiding pedophiles & rapists in the JW movement, and related shunning for whistle blowers. They KNOW they have legal problems ahead.
September 11th provided the WTS a golden opportunity to help the people of this nation and lend its strong young men to the bucket lines at the World Trade Center, or provide lodging and food, or anything that represents the Love of God that so many in the rest of the nation, even the world, have shown. But they haven't. If anyone with a loving heart in Bethel is reading this: PLEASE RECONSIDER, HELP THIS WORLD AND THIS NATION NOW. STEP UP AND BE COUNTED AMONG THOSE THAT LOVE THEIR FELLOW MAN. LEND YOUR RESOURCES TO THE CITY OF NEW YORK. Brag about it afterwards if you have to but just change your ways and help. You will be considered the better for it. It won't cost you much.
If you don't, this is what may happen. Your rank and file members believe every single word you utter and write. The children of the rank and file go to public schools around this country - many in very patriotic areas. If your members are lead once more to believe that this disaster is the result of some Bible based prophecy that only the "anointed" JWs know, those rank and file members will gloat over these ghastly events. Their children will be ridiculed at school. Even if the children are convinced of the JW Myth themselves they will suffer. They will believe they are suffering for righteousness' sake, that this is the real precursor to the beloved Armageddon. IT IS NOT. This too will pass. It will always pass. Things will get back to normal, and may even get better for our world. Maybe this is a wake up call for the global community; maybe those 5500 poor souls on September 11th gave their lives for something meaningful in the grander scheme of things.
We don't know. What we do know is that every generation has expected Bible prophecy to be manifested in its lifetime. It's part of history and human nature. But this time is no 1975 error, which was just silliness in comparison. This time there could be major repercussions (like it was during the World Wars). Watchtower leaders KNOW this is not the Truth - PLEASE DON'T PUT YOUR CHILDREN THROUGH IT.
PLEASE DO NOT ENCOURAGE YOUR MEMBERS TO PREACH DOOM AND GLOOM, "THRILLED" BY THE NOTION THAT ARMAGEDDON IS COMING FOR REAL THIS TIME.
I speak from personal experience. I inculcated in my son what was taught on the pages of the Watchtower. It made his school life miserable and had lasting effects. Please don't do the same to your child.
Blessed be all of us.
Very Best Regards
Glen James