“Brothers and Sisters. Please take your seats. The 2010 District Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses is about to begin.” - Not going anywhere for a while? Grab a Snickers.
I haven't posted a rant in a while, but for some reason I've had convention memories rattling around up here for a long time so I thought I'd let 'em out to play. Where to begin…
I always looked forward to the yearly district conventions with mixed feelings... on the one hand we got to go out of town, stay in a hotel, eat at restaurants, and hang out with friends. On the other hand, it was decided by my parents that during the convention days, we were to make sure that our time there was completely devoid of anything resembling fun.
"Hey mom, the Smiths* and Jones* are going to Camelot tonight after the session. Can we go?"
"I don't see how they can meditate on the wonderful day’s program in a place like that. Just read the new book or review the notes I forced you to take while we decide where to go eat."
*(Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.)
BAH!!! Imagine telling a 12-year-old that and actually expecting him to comply. I'm sitting there pretending to read the Mankind's Search For God book (a subject I'm sure most 12-year-olds find fascinating), and all I can think about is how my friends would be sneaking quarters into the gloriously violent arcade game Street Fighter II while their parents weren’t looking, while I'm stuck being interrogated by my parents over a basket of chicken fingers from the kids menu about what I found "encouraging". All I could hope for was that the meal would come with a cool plastic toy. Maybe they would let me watch TV or a movie when we got back to the hotel room... Nah. Not a chance in hell. My parents operated on the theory that a single worldly movie during the convention days would disrupt the flow of holy spirit to our family, and completely counteract 3 to 4 days of spiritual refreshment (aka, indoctrination), and might even lead to demon possession, even if the movie were G-rated. Yeah, Satan is THAT powerful. Besides, I needed to get to bed early so I wouldn't get sleepy during the session the next day and have to endure the torture of being poked and slapped for 6 hours. "Zzzzzzzz. Zzzzzz..." Poke-poke... "Wake up Benjamin, YOU need to hear this talk. Would you fall asleep if you knew Jesus was sitting next to you? Hm? Now sit up." No. I wouldn’t fall asleep, because “HOLY SH*T! Jesus is sitting next to me!” But he’s not. And this talk is boring. Would Jesus be boring?
I tried during the sessions to pay attention and stay awake, but sometimes… it felt like a feat of strength that would have been too great for even Sampson. In my younger years I played that game where you mark off how many times the speaker says ‘Jehovah’, ‘Jesus’, or ‘Holy Spirit’. Too bad the speakers never shouted anything random like “BUCKFUTTER!”. That would’ve kept me awake for sure. I remember one particular talk where a friend happened to be sitting with me, and the topic was something about our “duty as Christians”. So the speaker said “duty” a lot. Well, my friend and I decided to pretend the speaker said “doodie” instead of “duty” when we heard it. It made for funny sentences like, “Do you take your doodie seriously?” and “Our God-given doodie.” Now THAT was a great talk.
Naturally, as I got older, I got better at being interested in what was being said from the platform, but I still looked forward to the conventions for reasons that were entirely separate from the “spiritual food” being provided from the F&DS. Specifically: girls. My friends and I would get together and talk about various “hot sisters” that we could spot.
“Dude. I’m sitting in the same section as her!”
“Serious?”
“Yea. I seen her get up like three times. It was awesome. I think she looked at me once.”
“No way! Sweet.”
“Yea, her parents must be cool to let her get up that much.”
We were smooth too. We had mad flirting skills that no young sister could resist. And by ‘flirting’ I mean: Standing huddled in a group of 4 or 5 boys 20-25 feet away from another group of 4 or 5 girls and shooting awkward glances their direction and then almost wetting our pants when one of them catches us looking. Mad skills. And during all those years, I never once had the courage to ask a single girl for her number. What could I do with it anyway? If I were to call her I would run the risk of having her dad answer the phone and chewing me out, who would then demand to speak to my parents and chew them out telling them to keep their horny teenage son away from his pure and innocent forever-celibate daughter. Conversely, if she were to call me, I run the risk of being interrogated about just how some little Babylon-whore-temptress got my home number (Momma sez girls are the Devil), followed by the obligatory lecture about how Bethel (the JW equivalent of the Vatican) doesn’t accept married couples to serve there, and how it’s much harder to pioneer if you’re married, and how the ideal age to get married is sometime after 65 or whenever the Society retires you from your assignment of being a Circuit Overseer in rural Africa. I’d rather avoid all that. And on that note, since I’ve mentioned the word a couple times already, I should mention that routine interrogations are an intrinsic part of growing up as a hard-core Jehovah’s Witness. You just get used to it.
I used to DREAD the last day of the convention. Most people might look forward to it finally being over, but that was the day when I would get home only to have my parents turn in to BATF agents and start scouring my room for evidence of satanic contraband. “Did you hear the talk on video games? What did you think? That Sonic the Hedgehog sure is violent.” “Oh a Cure CD? Why do they paint themselves like dead people, hmmm? This Satanic rubbish is going in the trash.” And so that’s how it was. The most powerful force in the universe, God’s holy spirit, could somehow be completely negated by a R&B CD, or a comic book hidden in the closet.
I always found it fascinating that after each convention, the brothers and sisters would go on and on about how it was the “best convention ever”, “soooo good”, “soooo encouraging”, “excellent”, “the F&DS worked so hard on it”, “blahblahblahblah”. And when I was asked what I thought of the convention, of course, I gushed as well. “Oh wow, it was so great. Best ever. Sad it’s over. Encouraging. Uhhh… excellent. Uhhh… Praise Jah… did I miss anything? ” I just repeated all the platitudes that I heard everyone else repeat. There were times that I genuinely felt that way, but slowly I realized that, when asked that question “So, what did you think of the assembly?”, no one ever, and I mean, EVER said something like, “Meh. It was alright. Last year’s was better.” Or better yet, “No. I didn’t enjoy it at all.” What would happen if a brother said that? He would be summarily interrogated by his local congregation God Squad. I came to that realization in my late teens and it always stuck in my head after that, although it took me a long time to make the connection that that was evidence that we were being mind-controlled.
Speaking of mind control, it doesn’t take much intellect to recognize that no matter what the convention “theme”, it’s always the same re-packaged bullsh!t. Does anyone really expect that the talk entitled “Jehovah’s Happy People” is going to be any different from the talk last year called “How Happy Are Jehovah’s People!”? Or the one from the year before that called “People the Happy Jehovah are!”??? Every convention program is a silly word soup of typical JW bumper sticker slogans. “Remain in God’s Word” “Do Not be Overreached” “Stay Awake”. But if the year’s theme is “Jesus Our Leader” then every talk title is followed by “…Like Jesus Did” or some contrived variation on the theme. Is the convention theme something regarding the “Prince of Peace”? Then expect a talk on how Satan/entertainment/education/masturbation /thinking/etc. is a “threat” to Christian peace. Seriously… consider this year’s program, how many times have you heard a talk called “Become Hearers and Doers of God's Word”?
So for me… looking back, the conventions were nothing more than the JW replacement for annual worldly holidays. Something the Society provided us to break up the otherwise monotonous JW year. But rather than coming up with interesting traditions of their own, since anything fun must be directly from Satan, they just take the Sunday meeting (the funnest thing the society is allowed to sanction outside of singing kingdom melodies while wearing polo’s and khakis) and stretch it out over three days and ruin everyone’s weekend.
I’m so glad I never have to go to another one again.
Ben S