The last three quarters of my time as a Witness (just a short 11 years compared to others) was torturous because after I had read the Bible over and over and over again, I was convinced that the only hope held out to me could be the heavenly hope. When discussing this with an elder who claimed to be of the anointed, he stated that such feelings ‘should just be ignored.’ After getting word of it, another elder came over to my home and yelled at me for over an hour on how I could have the audacity to even consider something like this. “Why wouldn’t Jehovah choose me over you? I’ve been in the truth longer than you and I’m an elder and you are not!”
I was 29 when I left the Witnesses. I understand now today why I felt the heavenly hope was the only logical choice for me—the majority of Christians have been feeling that way for centuries from their own reading of the Scriptures—but with the “new light” that has come from the Watchtower, this has left me thinking.
We recently had a discussion on Catholicism versus Jehovah’s Witnesses, and yesterday I saw a television program on the history of Halloween where Joan of Arc was brought up. Joan of Arc is now the patron saint of France. Those clerics who burned her to a stake as a witch surely goofed (it was criminal actually). There is also the incident of Galileo, and how John Paul II confessed that his religion had been wrong in how it treated him.
While the Watchtower may make once in a while make reference to some of its actions as being “regrettable,” with all this “new light” that is constantly coming out, why does the Watchtower never try to make up for all the “Joan of Arcs” they “burned at the stake”? I know of many cases where people thought the “generation” doctrine would not be fulfilled before the 20 th century was over, and they were labeled apostates. Others, like myself, felt they truly had a heavenly calling, and they were mistreated, “marked” as troublemakers, just out for attention, or worse psychologically disturbed.
Okay, let’s just say for a moment that the “new light” scenario is true-- the Witnesses belie the claim of such a phenomenon as happening to them because they never go back to try to repair what they’ve ruined. Bridges are often burned in their track and are left smoldering, and the Organization doesn’t even attempt to look over its shoulder to acknowledge them. If this “new light” is from a benevolent God, why aren’t the Witnesses’ “Joan of Arcs” being “sainted,” so to speak? Where are the public apologies to the “Galileos”?
It may be “new light” to them, but it seems to be worse than an “easy out” for the Watchtower. I’m trying to put my finger on it but don’t know exactly what it is that I am seeing in all of this. Outside of calling it “evil,” there is something else there too…maybe I’m mistaken but the lack of concern for the victims of their “new light” is, for lack of a better word, disgraceful earmark of theirs. Any comments and insight from your fine folks out there?