Judicial committee, Round 2. I have to give it to the elders on this one. They fought well, albeit with unrefined technique. Pure strength of authority apparently seems to make up for a lack of sufficient evidence, just as the 300-pound fellow who believed you were checking out his girlfriend can beat the tar out of you even though you were merely looking at the clock behind her on the wall. Reason doesn't enter into that picture. The only goal is to show you who's boss.
They started off with asking us to explain how we felt about the Psalms we were asked to read. They used the gentle approach with my wife, asked her if we prayed about our sins after we did them, resolved not to repeat them anymore. Wife passed blame to me for not reporting it to elders, and for saying that as long as we prayed for forgiveness, we could receive it through Jesus Christ. They asked me how I felt about it afterwards, whether or not I prayed, or tried to stop it from happening. Whether or not I told anyone.
The fact is, I never recall initiating any sexual contact with my then fiancee. The sex was pretty much something I went along with. I wanted to do it, but was still too nervous to just get right into it on my own. She asked me to make the first move, repeatedly, when we did it. Also a fact omitted from the proceedings. Still, as the man, it would have been my duty to say no and hurt her feelings and make her run to the elders much sooner, thus probably resulting in her not wanting to marry me at all. Hence why I didn't make an issue of it. Inflicting guilt and shame upon someone who had already experienced 3 years in a DF'd state was not something on my agenda. I didn't report it to the elders because I believed they were part of a cult's leadership. Why not just report my sexual activities to Sun Myung Moon or contact that Heaven's Gate guy aboard his starship?
Wife expressed regret for not telling elders sooner. "Everything's falling apart because we rushed into marriage. If I just listened to Jehovah, I wouldn't be experiencing this," she said.
I was asked how it all got started. I told the truth, that I helped her to move to another place, then stayed for about an hour after that, then got up to leave. I gave her a hug, then she kissed me, then it snowballed. Session was adjourned for a brief 3-man huddle.
They brought us back in, and announced the sentence for wife--private reproof, with full restrictions. That is, she can only go out in field service, nothing else. The irony of that is, supposedly we have a reputation to maintain as 'illuminators' in a wicked, sinful world. So how can a fornicator be permitted to go out and teach the public if we're supposed to appear so righteous and clean? To me, it's no different than the stereotypical 'Christendom' preacher who is banging every cute woman in the church. If anyone at all knows about it, isn't it just as dirty?
They felt she was repentant because she came forward and was contrite of heart. She was dismissed from the proceedings. Then the gloves came off.
Apostasy charge was their focus. The first scripture they asked me to read was the one Don Cameron described as the most important scripture in the JW religion, Matthew 24:45. Perhaps I should've gone into my Pastor-Judge J.C.F. Russellford mode to answer their questions. That might've gotten me off with private reproof, too, then wifey and me could skip into the sunset, tossing Watchtowers left and right to interested passersby.
They asked me what that scripture was talking about. I told them that it was clearly a QUESTION. "Who really is the faithful and discreet slave?" Not "there will be a faithful and discreet slave that must be obeyed in order to be friends with Jesus". They asked me which doctrines I was troubled by, so I stuck with familiar territory--the failed chronological predictions. The elders believed such failed predictions were irrelevant, that the Society never claimed to be infallible, only gave glory to God and not themselves, and certainly isn't arrogant. Isaiah 60:20, 21 was read. Jehovah will take care of the problems in his organization, they said. Proverbs 4:18 was mentioned, and I countered that that verse was being taken out of context. Saying that might as well have been to deny Jesus altogether, to them. Good grief.
Again they returned to threats, "Do you want to be disfellowshipped?" I explained to them that I did not believe in outsourcing my conscience or my beliefs to any group of men, no matter what authority they may claim to have. I explained that the errors in chronology in themselves were not what I had issue with; it was the attitude behind them that was the problem. Certainly 1975 was a glaring example of that. After having already made serious errors in expecting the end in 1914 and 1925, why do it again? Why not just admit that you don't know? They seemed to believe that no errors were made regarding 1914, when even the Proclaimers book clearly states that people were expecting to go to heaven in that year, and the Watchtower itself made clear that the war in Europe was expected to lead into Armageddon. One elder became irritated at the mention of that fact.
He proceeded to ask me to read 2 Corinthians 1:20, 21, which says that 'he that anointed us is God'. "Who are you to decide who is anointed?" he asked. Obviously, I'm nobody. "Can you determine who is anointed?" "No," I said. The elder seemed pretty satisfied with his apparently devastating line of reasoning. However, as the fear of authority subsided, the giant logical fallacy in his reasoning became clear:
IF I CAN'T DETERMINE WHO IS ANOINTED, THEN NEITHER CAN YOU. OR ANYONE. And since that is the case, we must follow it to its logical conclusion. If we just blindly listen to and follow anyone who claims to be anointed, we are giving them a blank check for teaching falsehood that we become a party to. Sun Myung Moon claims to be the Anointed. Should we therefore blindly believe every word he says? The President of the LDS Church is looked to as a prophet by its adherents. Should we therefore believe him? After all, we can't verify who is anointed and who is not, remember? So we're bound to follow the authority of someone who claims to be anointed, simply because God is the one who makes the decision, the unverifiable decision.
The thing that was particularly disgusting was to hear one of the elders say, dismissing the chronological errors, "I could care less about 1914!" So long as his following the Governing Body gets him into the new system, false teachings are irrelevant. But you can't get into the kingdom by blindly following falsehoods instead of listening to Jesus himself. And why would God anoint people and demand that, in order to please him, we must believe and SPREAD false teachings until such time as decades later, said false teachings get reversed? When in the history of God's dealings with man has that policy EVER happened?
I can guarantee you that if any one person used the same justifications for spreading false teachings as the Society has, that person would be summarily disfellowshipped. And I also guarantee you that that elder wouldn't dare stand up at a meeting or an assembly or a convention and say to the audience, "I could care less about 1914!" Not if he valued his career.
And how is it that these chronological speculations are trivial matters? The timing of the presence and return of our Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrection itself, the establishment of God's Kingdom? THESE are minor matters to be spreading false teachings about? These are matters that are at the very core of the Christian belief system. And if we can excuse teaching falsehoods about those things, what else can we excuse teaching the wrong things about? The irony is that the apostle Paul had these same problems to address in the Thessalonian congregation, where people kept saying that 'the day of Jehovah is here'. Other Christians were saying the resurrection had already occurred. These were false teachings then, and they're false teachings now, because no human can know when the resurrection is happening, especially given that it would be entirely invisible since the people involved are already dead as to the flesh.
I tried to help them appreciate--like talking to a collective brick wall--that I'm not suggesting I'm absolutely right about everything, but that when you have a system that believes itself to be the source of all that is good and true, you have a dangerous situation, one where personal accountability is shifted to the shoulders of others. Of course, it doesn't matter if the organization has flaws, they said, it's still 'the truth' and the best thing there is out here. Apostates, on the other hand, just want to have sex and abandon God altogether. I was quick to point out to the elder who said that that "you can't make statements like that about every individual."
False logic came up during the chronology discussion, when I mentioned that people were selling them homes, ruining their lives on account of these predictions. "I don't know anyone who did that," the elder said. I don't know anyone who did that either, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen! Did this elder claim to know what decisions were made by all 1.2 million Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1975 era? The Society itself mentioned reports from around the world of people selling their property. I guess he's calling the Society a liar, then. The reasoning is that 'I'm not going to let that mistake about 1975 stop me from serving God,' when you're missing the point altogether. This was not the first or the last time the Society made a false prediction in God's name. Why would you continue to follow behind a group of men who clearly just hasn't learned their lesson? Why follow men who have made it abundantly clear that their opinions are more important than God's Word, which already established that the Father placed these matters of times and seasons in his own jurisdiction, not accessible even to the Son? You cannot serve God if you blindly follow men and continue as a spoon-fed child in your spirituality, with your 'maturity' measured by just how blindly you can obey a human authority instead of how loyally and bravely you can stand by God's Word even if it means you have to stand alone.
So...they dismissed me for a few moments, and I went to my wife and child. The Kingdom Hall was dark and empty, and seemed to hang open like a rotting tomb. Waiting for a new corpse. As I pondered the situation, I wondered what my wife would think of me. How do I tell her I'm going to be disfellowshipped after she just got off the hook? How do I bring her down like that?
The elders called us back in, and said that they wanted to meet with me, and me alone, on Sunday at high noon. Round 3. I'm actually surprised they haven't just disfellowshipped me. I have to wonder....why? Why drag this out further? They've heard these arguments before, they said, and primarily they wanted to know if I'd been talking to apostates. It's all a matter of perspective, they say. You can choose to focus only on the false predictions that have brought reproach on Jehovah's name and stumbled thousands of good people, the medical quackery that has led to the deaths of thousands of children, the regulation of sex inside people's marriages that has damaged families, the child molestation that has shattered the lives of thousands of innocent children and their families, the demands for absolute obedience to an authority that is capable of dishonesty and incapable of feeling accountable for its decisions. Sure, you could look at that. Or you could turn a blind eye to it and say, look! We all believe the same thing! We'd never kill each other in a war or pledge allegiance to a flag! We have 7 million people in 236 lands, who spent 1.5 billion hours preaching our doctrines, which, false or not, are still being preached worldwide! There's certainly nobody in our organization who does anything bad, unlike the rest of the world!
If we believe false religion is false for teaching doctrine that dishonors God, then we must acknowledge the dishonor Jehovah's Witnesses have brought on God's name by their own false teachings, which were not confined to any church building, but were spread all over the world as God's absolute truth. If there is no accountability for that, no consequence, then we can only expect it to continue to happen. It is impossible to believe that a God of truth would tolerate the way these people have treated the flock, not for one second.
Why bother meeting with me again? "We're not here to convince you this is the truth," one of them said. Well why the heck are you here, then? Or, right. To punish and enslave. Almost forgot. It seemed pretty clear that they were convinced of my apostasy, so why are they meeting with me again? Do they just want an admission from me that I spoke to apostates? I've already made clear that this isn't God's organization, a term which, as I told them, is being overused and has become a god in itself.
The closing prayer...the elder giving seemed like he urgently needed to remind himself of who the faithful slave is. It actually sounded like genuine fear to me. It was very satisfying. I turned fear against those who prey on the fearful. You have to be the outcast in order to do that. It was very satisfying, indeed.
I was impressed. They seemed like heavyweights, but the logical fallacies and false dilemmas (Wat other organization can you go to? Who says there is one set organization that owns all truth?) were in their gloves. It was more about throwing the weight of their authority around than it was about anything relating to actual truth. Authority is just assumed as God's authority, bestowed by him upon these people. The reason why this logic is flawed is because it starts with an assumption, when the wise course in order to reach a sound conclusion is to make no assumptions at all and to gather evidence which will remove as many assumptions as possible and lead you to an inevitable result, whatever that result may be. Keeping a positive, cheery attitude about false doctrine doesn't make it less false. It just makes you feel better. Well, I don't feel better being lied to and being told to swallow poison for the sake of imaginary unity.
But the relief has come even more so at this point. My wife isn't going to be suffering through isolation again, unless people avoid her 'cause she's married to a satanic liar who twists the truth. I was quick to point out that such 'twisting the truth' is an illusion, as the Watchtower itself provides the evidence, which is easily verifiable as to whether or not statements have been taken out of context. These aren't lies, and no one can pretend that they're lies. The only other alternative is to simply minimize or ignore them. Easy enough. "Aaaawwwmmmmmmmm the slave class is God's chosen channel.....aaaaaaaawmmmmm.....I must never challenge the channel of communication Jehovah is using today.....aaawmmmm...." There. You see? Much better. Now get out there and sell more books, sucka!
So...while I don't particularly care for a third session with them, I also don't want to simply bow down and tell them I want to be DF'd. That would imply they had authority to do so. "You would have no authority unless it had been granted to you from above." I repeatedly explained to them, I don't care that the Society is imperfect. What I do care about is their attitude of being unquestionable, unassailable. This is an attitude that does not indicate humility. It indicates extreme hubris, especially from men who receive no direct information from above.
(sigh) Well, it's still hanging there. I don't really want to stay on the inside, because that requires me to recruit people. I'm accused of damaging my wife's faith by pointing out the flaws of the organization. I consider it damaging to anyone's faith that the errors of men are being presented as the truth of God. I consider it damaging to faith in God for people to be encouraged to put faith in an organization rather than merely Jesus Christ as the key to salvation. I consider it damaging to direct people to an organization instead of to the Lord. To a publication written for some religious group's agenda instead of the Bible itself. I consider it damaging to go along with any group of people because the guy in charge said so.
If they told us to kill people, would we go along with that, reasoning that Jehovah would reverse that instruction in his own due time? Or would we follow our own conscience and show respect for human life? I hope we never have to find out the answer to that one.
I'm ranting now. I've overdone it. But it seems that it's almost over anyway. In response to their question, "Do you want to be disfellowshipped?" I said, "On one hand, I'd like to be proven wrong, if possible. On the other hand, you elders have more important people to worry about, and I don't want to waste your time. So, I don't really know." Perhaps my sincerity redeemed me. After all, if my apostate ideas can't withstand scrutiny, I'm no better than them. I want to subject my new ideas to appropriate scrutiny and criticism as well, even though it's freaking irritating and probably nothing I haven't heard in a Watchtower article already anyway.
Well...thanks for your support. I feel a certain...relief, and yet...I wonder if indeed it really is possible to be reindoctrinated. If so, should I take the opportunity for the sake of my family? If I could fix all of this and get my wife to love me again, wouldn't that be worth it? No. No woman will want to live with a man who isn't really a man. I could have chosen the path of Kunta Kinte in the miniseries "Roots", who chose to stay with his family and be a slave, once he had a daughter, rather than attempt running away. But I have had enough of feeling like garbage because of hanging on the Society's every word. I will not take one more lash of that whip. I am a free man. Now, and forever.
I will show up at the Watchtower franchise facilities for the sake of my wife, but I do not and cannot support their doctrine and their policies. They will be watching. To see me break any Watchtower rule, celebrate a birthday, put up a Christmas tree, and especially they'll want to see if I remain loyal to my wife. Well, let them watch. I suppose it's easier than looking in the mirror. At least now, I am learning to be able to do that again. I don't like what I see, but I know that what I see is the real me.
Well...assuming I tolerate a third session, you will be kept informed of what happens. Take care, folks.
--Christopher