The ridiculous teenager is me. This story takes me back to 1969, when I was 15 years old. We were attending the International Assembly at Wembley Stadium, near London, the only time, I think, that Wembley was ever used for an assembly.
If you’ve ever read any of the stories I posted on JWD over the years, you’ll know that I was never one of those kids growing up in the truth who always “had doubts about it ” or was unhappy and miserable with the religion, just waiting for the chance to get out. I really, really believed in it all, with a passion.
The summer of 1969 saw me, I would guess, at the most zealous, “spiritual” and devout phase of my Witness-career. In fact, smug and self-righteous are much better words. Within 6 months of that assembly I would be baptised, sx months after that I would be a regular pioneer, having left school at the earliest opportunity, causing a minor furore in the process. (What persecution! How near we must be to the End!)
For this particular assembly I got into the habit of sitting away from my family and friends, so that I could “concentrate properly”, “really pay attention” and not miss a thing at Jehovah’s rich spiritual banquet. A great deal of it also, was I wanted people – the brothers and sisters – to see me , how devout and faithful I was, paying rapt attention, looking up all the scriptures and nodding along with the speaker.
Oh, yes. Nodding along, this was important. I was a big nodder at the time. Nodding was crucial to show everyone how much I appreciated the rich diet of timely truths we were being offered. Nodding, and occasionally looking around at others, almost inviting them to nod along too. “Such prophecy! How upbuilding! What marvellous teachings!”
In my imagination I pictured myself as cutting quite a dash among the brothers. “Do you see that young brother over there? What a fine example he is! We should all strive to be like him! Just look how he handles his bible! See how he nods!”
Nodding especially came into its own when applauding. You’ll all know how many opportunities there are per day for applauding at assemblies, twenty, maybe thirty? I was big on nodding and applauding. Nodding and applauding and looking around. What a fine Witness I was!
I even had (and now we’re getting to the point of this story) my own special style of applauding. I mean, I hadn’t worked this out beforehand or anything, it just came naturally to me. Rather than just clapping hands in the way any other person might, I employed an exaggerated, very slow, deliberate pounding of the hands together. I rather thought this showed how “heartfelt” my appreciation was. I would sit there nodding, banging my palms together, once maybe every 2 or 3 seconds, each time bringing my hands together from a wide arc, starting from the kind of position a goal-keeper adopts when facing a penalty. This was truly Theocratic clapping!
Remember, an awful lot of this was not just because I was so devout – there was also a large Pharisee element to all of this, the objective of being noticed; being seen to be so spiritual. You can imagine, then, how thrilled I was when, returning to my seat after a lunch-time break, one of the attendants came up to me and asked if he could have a word.
At the time, I kind-of had a fantasy that the brothers had some sort of scouting system in operation at assemblies where they would look for fine young brothers to invite to Bethel or Gilead or something. “This is it!” I thought, “ I’ve been discovered!”
The brother was somewhat nervous and hesitant. Looking back on this now, I can picture him as a youth, not very much older than I was, being put up to this task by his Attendant Supervisor.
“Thing is, brother, “ he began, “well - would you mind terribly - er, … that is … would it be possible, do you think, uhm…. Look, could you just clap properly?”
Utterly crestfallen, I managed “Yes, of course.”
Dumbfounded and subdued, I sat quietly through the rest of that session in my seat. But at the next break, moved away to another part of the stadium. I never went back, or even near, that section again. I spent the next 4 days avoiding that area.
I’ll admit, it did pretty much cure me of my self-righteous nodding and looking around phase. So, thanks for that, brother, whoever you were.
Can anybody match this for a bizarre piece of counsel?