I'm a member at a different forum, where a number of people here also visit (Hi punkofnice!), but I like to roost in more than one nest. This is actually my story that I posted on their forum first, but it's as true now as it was then. Don't worry, I won't be offended if you don't read the whole thing and just give a nice "welcome to the forum". It's a lengthy read.
Hello, all! I've been a lurker here on your fine message boards for a few months now, and I'm just now getting around to posting. I didn't want to just intrude on topics I find interesting without first introducing myself, and letting everyone get to know me first, but I just never could quite get around to taking the time to tell my story. But I have a morning off of work, got my cup of coffee and here I am.
The below is long, and mostly about me and my experiences and abbreviated thoughts as a witness. If you just want the juicy details where I leave, I'll make disclaimer where it begins, if you just want to know what happened with the elders and organization after I realized it wasn't true, I'll mark that seperately. If you want to know more about me, my background, and my journey out, there is this whole long story. I'll try not to make it too boring.
I am a 26 years old male, disassociated/disfellowshipped, atheist, married to a wonderful girl who unfortunately has not found her way out yet. I've been out of the organization for probably three years, officially ousted for a bit over a year. Here's my story (I'll try to leave out the boring details).
Disclaimer: The Early years to pioneering, mostly thoughts on culture
Born into the truth, last of five kids, family of a middle class family. My parents "came into the truth" after having been married, they were converts. Anyone who grew up a witness can already approximate my childhood. I was homeschooled after 5th grade to avoid worldly influences, though my schooling was non-existent I went through a program known as "the new system school", so you can gather a bit about that from the name. I was given teachers edition text books and left in my room and told to do my schoolwork. I played videogames. I never had to produce any work, merely had to say how much time I spent each month in each subject. And meetings and field service counted as school time. Yeah...good ol' witness education. Though I will note that even at a tender age, I saw some of the inanity of things I was being taught. One of my "school books" I was supposed to read was "Life How did it get here by Evolution or creation" , a little blue book familiar to most here already. I loved science so I actually read that book when I was about 13. After completing it my only thought was "Wow, satan is brilliant to come up with a theory so complete that it's impossible for even god's people to come up with a good argument against it!" I assumed obviously that evolution was false, but the society's arguments of planes in junkyards, and scientists arguing with each other and the like to be poor arguments against it. In my later years as a pioneer I urged some of my fellow pioneers NOT to leave that book with educated people because the discussion upon their return would not be in their favor.
And so but when I was about 16 I got baptized, not really enthusiastic about it I did it because that's what witnesses do, and all my friends had already done it and I was starting to look suspiciously nonspiritual, so I went ahead and took the plunge. It's not that I didn't believe it or anything, I believed through and through it was the truth. But two of my sisters were disfellowshipped, my older brother had been publicly reproved, and his friends were largely disfellowshipped. The teenagers my age were all of the "good kids" my brothers generation were the "bad kids". But I mostly hung out with my older brother and his friends. I was kind of like one of the "bad kids" trying to be a "good kid". Other witnesses know what I'm talking about.
Side note, at 16 I also got my GED. It had become obvious that a highschool diploma was not in my future, so I went the GED route. Luckily I was an avid reader and student in my own way. I never did school work, but I had developed a love of classic literature, chess, and physics, so I wasn't entirely uneducated. So Without any kind of studying and having done little to no actual school work in the past five years, I still managed to pass my GED test with flying colors. Having gotten my GED, I had already come to the conclusion that a career is futile, money is vanity and a striving after the wind, and that pioneering was the only sensible thing to do with my life. So I did. At 17 I started pioneering with all of my friends.
Not much to report there, my group of pioneers were all young (17-21) with only a few actual adults thrown in, so pioneering was more of a social club than anything else. The congregations successful young spiritual elites. The generation of kids prior to us had all been a bunch of spiritually weak ne'erdowells almost all of which had been disfellowshipped or "left the truth". We were a sign of the congregations new spiritual health. We didn't do jack shit in service, or in the congregation. We were kids, we found meaningful interaction with the non-spiritual elite (ie those that wanted or needed encouragement or help in service) to be awkward, and not at all fun, so we kept that to a minimum. We went out in service mostly with only each other, spent most of that time "on break" at coffee houses, or driving way out to return visits we knew wouldn't be there. It was all gossip, love triangles, jokes, bonding moments of deep conversation about our spiritual goals, blah blah blah. Terribly great fun for a 17 year old witness, complete success story.
At 18 I moved with my parents to where the need was greater, a little country town in Kentucky. I was a pioneer, my dad was an elder, we were welcomed into a fast growing congregation, lots of people had moved here from all over to help where the need was greater. I found my young pioneer clique that existed here, I got a job working for a brother's cleaning company, and it was back to business as usual. I went to pioneer school around this time, two weeks of intensive study, of which little of it is intensive. In hindsight it's funny that it takes two years of technical college, involving lots of learning about history, politics and other electives just to fix cars, but to be leaders on the frontline of the spiritual army, in a war against super powered demonic forces in a battle for the sovereignty of the universe it's a two week course that mostly reviews information you've heard a thousand times before but with greater emphasis and self aggrandizement. Here a grim prophecy was made. The instructor told us that in every class, every single class without fail, one member is disfellowshipped soon after. Simple statistics, it was unavoidable. By then I had a reputation as a more liberal witness, a good heart and a hard worker, but fiercely intelligent in more secular avenues, and I didn't mind watching "lord of the rings" or listening to Nine Inch Nails. Looking around the class at the ninety year olds getting to go to pioneer school for a second time, the older ones that had simplified their lives to pioneer, and all the "good kids", I joked with the other pioneers that my odds weren't good. Probably the only successful prophecy anyone in the society ever made.
Another side note. On the above comment about the "fiercely intelligent in more secular avenues", after having been out for a while I look back at how people viewed my being brilliant as laughable. I knew simple things like Newtons laws of motion, played chess, and read books like "Catcher in the rye". Even for my own age I wasn't particularly smart or educated. But I routinely dazzled elders and adults with my knowledge of physics or literature, using big words like "meta-fiction" or "string theory". It was simply a case of "in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king". Everyone around me was so horrendously uneducated and oblivious to the world outside their bubble that any kind of understanding in a non-society related field was considered genius level intellect.
It wasn't until I left and really started studying fields that were of interest too me, such as Molecular and evolutionary biology, ecology, philosophy, math, Formal Sentential Logic and the like that I realized how little I knew. It made me think of when I played chess against one of my friends as a teenager. He "knew" how to play chess, knew how the pieces moved, knew the goal of the game, but I studied chess, I bought chess magazines, played online. So when I got a couple pawns off of him early on, I started making safe trades of pieces, traded my queen for his, my knights for his bishops, and he complained that I was playing stupid. "Why are you just capturing pieces if I'm just going to capture them right back?" He was legitimately annoyed and confused. But it was a dumb question, I was playing exactly how you're supposed to. When you have a material advantage, make safe trades so you arrive at a simplified end game where your material advantage is more apparent, plus my bishops against his knights would give me more versatility in an open position. After explaining it to him, he was impressed (and annoyed) with my advanced level play. It wasn't advanced, it was really beginner level stuff, and I knew that. I knew I was not a good chess player, I wasn't even ELO ranked 1000 on serious chess websites. I knew the difference between my ability and somebody who was actually good, but that difference would be completely lost on my friend. Because you don't know the depth of your ignorance or inability until you know at least a little bit of what is out there. As uneducated witnesses Newton's laws of motion were impressive, but in reality it's middle school science. Witnesses fail to realize the depth of their own ignorance of history, science, philosophy, theology, simply because they know only a tiny little bit of any of that, and are told with conviction that studying the society's material it is just like getting a college education. We were all like my friend, dazzled by the most mundane displays of knowledge.
During this time, serving where the need is greater, I started to feel like I was losing my mind. During my night time cleaning job, which was incredibly boring, I had little to do but think to myself. Very dangerous for a witness with an ounce of critical thinking. Extrapolating out from some of the teachings I knew I came to some bizarre conclusions and speculation. If we live forever, we will continue to learn and learn, I thought to myself. In six thousand years of imperfect thinking and studying, most of which had to be spent relearning with the previous generation learned, we've managed to fly to the moon, discover sub-atomic particles, DNA, harness incredible energy...what would we know and be able to do after a million years of perfect thinking and learning? A billion years? Fourteen Billion Years? A Trillion years? The answer seemed obvious and inescapable. We'd all be Gods. We could create our own universes. Maybe this was how Jehovah came about? An infinite regress of sentient beings becoming gods and spawning more sentient beings? It was an insane thought, and during the daytime hours I could put it out of my mind easily. But seriously....we couldn't just have picnics and petting zoos for a trillion years could we? I didn't know, and other bizarre thoughts based on our teachings would come to me at night while cleaning. During the day I began reading even more voraciously than normal. I bought even more books than usual on an incredibly broad range of topics, from body language and gestalt psychology, to french existentialism and organic chemistry. I didn't know why, or why I felt the need to read so much about so much, but I felt obsessed and needed to do it. I felt I needed an answer to a question, but I didn't know what the question was and it was driving me crazy. And why did I need an answer? I had the answer already, I knew the truth about life the universe and everything already, I knew more about the universe than the most scholarly of scholars, what need have I for some piddly words of a whiny nihilistic frenchmen? But I felt I did need them, badly. My sleeping and dreaming became highly erratic. My dreams were filled with monsters, and violence, and fear, and in my dreams I would wake up in my bed but still be dreaming, only to wake up later in my bed again. At times in my real life I felt I would be confronted by indescribable tentacled beasts from an HP Lovecraft story and be forced to wake up, and that my life itself was a dream. I needed more books.
Luckily my obsessive reading, and neurotic behavior was extremely attractive to one girl I had met in my pioneer class. She fancied me some kind of prodigious genius. Again see above on what witnesses think qualifies as genius. I was headed for a nervous breakdown, she was madly in love with me. So I got married at 20, to the sweety I met in pioneer school. She was a year older than me. All very typical witness fare. Her love tempered my increasing madness, and though in the beginning I would still wake up in the middle of the night from violent dreams, only to realize that I was still in a monstrous dream, paranoid even when truly awake, the occurrences of this became less and less frequent with her in my bed. We got a little apartment attached to a nice old lady's house, we both worked part time for the same cleaning company for the same brother I had been working for for a couple of years now, and we pioneered together...sort of. It wasn't until then that we realized that we hated pioneering. But of course we couldn't admit that, not even to each other. She only pioneered because she was a good girl that wanted to please people in authority, and they wanted her to pioneer, would be proud of her for doing so. I only pioneered as a social function. It's easy to do those things when you're single and accountable to no one. Hell I just lied about my time at the end of each month, just pulled a number out of thin air, and I'm quite certain most of my friends did, wouldn't be in the least surprised if most pioneers do. But when you have a partner, lying about your time some how doesn't work. Your dishonesty is less palatable with an accomplice. She hated going out in service, I went out without her frequently. She got behind on her time very very quickly which only stressed her out more. My frustration grew, and before long we stopped pioneering. It was a huge burden lifted, and we were happy after that. But always with the goal of coming back to it after we get used to being married.
One morning about five AM I get a phone call. It's my dad, his voice is quiet and shaky, I know something must be wrong. He tells me I need to come back to Tennessee. My sister was in the hospital. He's a bit incoherent. Something about a van, found her, empty bottle of pills. I hang up and I'm on my way, my wife gets up to come with me, bless her heart.
A bit of background, an important piece. My sister about a decade my senior was a bright intelligent spiritual girl that would frequently baby sit me. In her day a pioneer loved by all. She got married at 18, as many a witness girls do. However All through out the courtship period, her boyfriend (a short but muscly arrogant man, of good standing in the congregation) would slap her, berate her, yell at her and be an abusive ass in general. Now as an 8 year old, I didn't really know jack shit about how to respond to this. Usually it was to cower in the closet and cry and hide there for hours. My parents either apathetic or unaware did nothing to stop the marriage. Years later they would claim they knew nothing about it, I have no reason to doubt them. Obviously this did not stop upon being married. He was arrogant beyond all imagination and demanded that he was the man and he should be served. I would sometimes stay with them while my parents were out of town, and sometimes he'd come out of the shower in a towel and start yelling that she hadn't made his breakfast yet, and slap her, and make some arbitrary demand or two before going about his business. Also he made no attempt to hide the boxes of "Magnum XXL" condoms in the house. Now Though I have never seen the package in question, he's got a modest stature of five foot five, and I can take a pretty good guess that XXL is entirely unnecessary, further evidenced by the three accidental children they had. I make mention of this only to show his unrealistically grandiloquent view of himself, and his status as a "Man". As a child I did nothing about this abuse, something I felt guilty about as a teenager, but by then it would seem that it had stopped.
I held that view until I was about nineteen years old when I returned back to my hometown for a visit with some old friends and visited my sister too. He was home and my sister and I were chatting in the kitchen about nothing in particular. He was sullen and watching TV on the couch with their oldest daughter (probably about ten years of age at the time). He's laying down, she's sitting at the other end by his feet. Then for no discernible reason he just starts kicking her in the arm and leg and side. Not jokingly, but with anger and malice in his eyes. I can just barely see it from the doorway to the kitchen. I recognized that look on his face, I would occasionally catch a glimpse of it when he would be at our parents house, and decide he needed to spank one of the girls (all three of their kids are girls). He would spank them or correct them by grabbing their arm and talking to them, but the look in his eyes, I knew it from when I was little. It was malice, some twisted view that he was entitled to inflict pain on a girl, that he was right in asserting his dominance by force, by fear. It made me uncomfortable in those instances, and made me both enraged and afraid at that moment when he was kicking my young niece. My sister yelled at him to stop and he did and went back to watching TV as if nothing had happened at all, he didn't say a word the entire time.
I told my sister to come with me and get a drink. I wish I could say that I thought rationally and told her to get the kids and bring them, or gotten a baseball bat and beat the shit out of him (That's rational, right?), in hind sight it just seemed irresponsible of me to leave those little girls with him right then. But unfortunately I only had the good sense to ask her to leave and have a coffee with me. I asked her about the situation and she said that he had always been like that, that it hadn't really ever stopped. I asked if she had talked to the elders and she told me that she has and they've gone to them for council. What did they tell you, I asked? She said that they told her that she needed to be more submissive, as the bible states. That he definitely shouldn't be acting violently, and he needs to work on that, but she can help by being the best wife possible, be submissive and understanding of him, and of his headship. And then they would leave her with him. I was a nineteen year old witness. I grieve that I nodded along with this "sound scriptural advice" and told her to call the elders ANY time that he did that. She cried alot, I held her, a younger brother now forced to be the older brother and not at all capable.
Flashing forward, sister, hospital, on my way. I get there, whole family is there, situation feels dire. Exact story is unknown. My parents get a call from her Husband (we'll call him N), saying that she disappeared. She just suddenly was gone and he was panicked and didn't know where she was or what to do. My parents drive down, my brother (who still lives close to her) they all start searching for her. She took the family van so they can at least try to spot the vehicle. The police don't care because she isn't technically a missing person yet (it only just happened). My parents spot the van in an empty "Food Lion" parking lot. She's inside catatonic with an empty bottle of pills (not sure what kind). They call an ambulance and she's rushed to the hospital. This is all I know at the time. The doctor won't let anyone see her yet and the tension in the guest waiting room is palpable. My parents hate N (they know of his abusiveness), N is panicked and on the verge of tears telling people randomly that she just ran away, he doesn't know why she would run away, his parents are consoling him. My brother and his wife are not fans of our parents, or N, and honestly by now I'm not a big fan of any of them. My poor wife had no idea the awkwardness she was walking into. Her family actually gets along and like each other. She's a trooper.
Eventually the doctor came in and said she was conscious wanted to see me. Of course I obliged, and hurried to her room. She was weak and watching TV, not really in a talkative mood. So I sat and watched TV with her, and held her hand, made some jokes about whatever show we were watching, I honestly have no idea now. Eventually I ask her what happened. She stays quiet for a long time, a tear or two comes out of her eye. Eventually she tells me. She was just at the end of her rope. Last night her and N had a fight about nothing in particular, dinner or some dumb shit. She wanted to leave, she was just angry and wanted to leave and calm down. He wouldn't let her, wrestled her to the ground and told her she wasn't allowed to leave, threw her on the couch and then just sat on her. She went limp and did as he said. Being a good submissive wife. Later when they went to bed, she got up and left. She couldn't take it anymore. For over a decade he had abused her and their children and she couldn't stop him and nobody would help her. She had to kill herself. She hated the prospect of it, leaving her little girls behind, but maybe they would be better off without her. Maybe she's making it worse by being alive. She took the van and some pills, cried and cried, found a parking lot and swallowed the whole thing. How utterly powerless we were.
I did what any good witness would do. I took my brother aside afterward and told him, I trust him. He knew the relevant elders to get a hold of, contacted them who met with me, my brother and his wife. We told them the whole thing, (they felt just awful about the whole thing, seeing as how they had been "counseling" the two of them for years) and they would deal with it. Afterward the doctor pulled me aside seeing as how I seemed to be the only one actively doing anything, and told me that they would only release her if they agreed to get couples therapy. The elders gladly volunteered as religious authorities to lead them in this couples therapy. Which for the doctor is good enough, what did he know? So after a few days at the hospital, I head back home, call my sister. She's kicked him out of the house for now, doesn't now what she's going to do. I keep calling to check in on her, the people at the hall don't know how to act around her, generally avoid her or just ask her if she's alright. Really drives her crazy, but on the other hand likes having it in the open. Liberating. A while passes and I ask her on the phone how the couples therapy is going. She sighs. The first week they sat and she got to vent about how terrible, abusive, and violent her husband is while they nodded along and N acts ashamed. Second week it's the same counsel as always. N, be loving, woman be more submissive. They ended by saying that they as elders in this situation they want to be careful not to overstep N's authority as head of his own household, and for that reason there would be no third meeting.
The end of this story? He moves back in with my sister, no disciplinary action is ever taken against him, she at the time said he was doing better. And honestly I have no idea now, because I don't exist as far as my family is concerned. So....yeah, there was that chapter. I was raised by women, my sister and her friends namely. So I tend to have a feminist bent to me, not big on misogyny. This whole episode did bother me. Alot. I was screaming at the injustice in my head, but my screams fell on my own deaf ears. The power of cult thinking.
DISCLAIMER: Here is the juicy bits where I come to my senses and leave.
So about this time, I start thinking about things. I wish I could say I was a sane and decent enough human being that after my experiences with the elders and my sister, I started to see the cracks in the organization and their teachings, but sadly I am not that noble. It was logic, always logic, I can't help it, I'm thinking far more than feeling. So I'm thinking about stuff. For instance, my wife and I were watching the documentary "March Of the Penguins". It's a look at the absolutely brutal life of antarctic penguins. The question popped into my head "Why would Jehovah design such a brutal ecology for these penguins?" The stock answer is simply, that the world is cursed and in the new system we will have a much more temperate climate all over the world. So it will be cold in the antarctic, but not so brutal. Having studied some ecology, and physics this answer was very unsatisfying. There was no practical way for that to be true without massive global climate shifts, and that would lead to mass extinctions of highly specialized species that thrive only in specific climates and ecosystems. This lead to the realization that the planet and it's ecosystems had to have been designed by god to exist as they are now. This includes predators such as lions and wolves hunting and feeding on the weak and injured, even though I was taught that in the future the lion would lay with the lamb. Predatory behavior keeps populations in check, and weeds the diseased out of the gene pool. The story of him changing the planet to make it temperate and also the natural behavior of creatures that are unsettling to us seemed strange. Why create life on the planet that can't exist on the planet as you truly intend it to be? But then also, what was the planet like before Adam and Eve Sinned? Was it a better planet then? I mean before they sinned he looked at his work and said it was good. So what was his idea of good? Having learned some about archeology, geology, and the history of natural life on the planet (of course ignoring all the messy bits about evolution and the like), I knew that predators always existed, the planet was never globally temperate, and for some reason extinction was an ongoing background process not caused by man. I was taught that because of sin, life on earth had become a life of never ending fear, and pain, wrought with famine, disease and violence, where every living thing treaded cautiously attempting to survive for just one more day. What about God's earth? That wasn't what he intended. So what was the planet like before man ruined it? The planet that he said was good? The planet that god saw was good was a planet of never ending fear, and pain, wrought with famine, disease and violence, where every living thing treaded cautiously attempting to survive for just one more day. It was the exact same, except without humans to articulate the condition. This thought disturbed me.
More questions came into my head. Neurobiology. Things like anger, fear, hate, have specific regions in the brain, they are literal physical things that can be removed or altered. Full frontal lobe lobotomies completely change a persons thoughts, feelings, and behavior. But this meant that Jehovah had created our capacity for fear, for hate. It was completely unnecessary, and as a perfect loving god he shouldn't even have fear or hate in him to create it in us. But it seemed like a bizarre self destruct sequence should anyone disobey him. If we obeyed him and were "perfect" we'd never know fear or hate. But the instant we disobey him suddenly we are aware of shame, of fear, of hatred. Why would he program us to act in ways that are self destructive? Fear is not a requirement of free will. If we never felt anger, we would still have choice. It was completely illogical and contradictory that he had the ability to give us free will without all of these negative emotions, but instead gave us self destructive tendencies that would only manifest if we disobeyed him.
It was apparent that in his perfect wisdom and power he could have made a planet that was actually perfectly suited for life, instead of the spherical death trap we live on now, with it's tectonic plates floating on a lithosphere causing earthquakes and volcanos, erratic weather patterns leading to drought and floods, alternating between ice ages and thawed ages with continents that wander across the globe ensuring that if anything gets comfortable in an ecological system it will be yanked out from under them leading to likely extinction. He could have created life without violence and predators, given us all highly efficient photosynthetic cells so that we don't need to kill to live, but can just feast on light, or make us autotrophic in any number of ways. He could have made us so that we have no concept of anger, hate, or fear. And indeed his perfect love should have forced him to do so. But he didn't.
Cognitive dissonance set in. By the time I was 22 I knew that it wasn't true, I knew I hadn't been taught truth, but rather had just been part of another fundementalist religious sect. But my entire life centered around this religion, this belief. I couldn't accept that there was no resurrection, no paradise earth, no loving father in the sky watching over me and helping me. Some days I knew it wasn't true, and didn't believe in god. Some days I was able to put it out of my mind, think I was just being silly and of course the truth is the truth. As time went by the days I thought it was the truth were less and less, and the days I didn't believe it were more and more frequent. Until one night, my wife was watching a documentary about Samuel Clemens, AKA Mark Twain. Later in life after the death of his wife he was very outspoken about his views on God. It was listening to quotes of his about how god must be insane, or evil that I suddenly realized it had been some time since I actually had a day where I believed in god. It was a subtle change, not a sudden flash of insight or revelation. I just realized that it had been a while since I really believed it. I had clam chowder and a glass of blush for dinner.
The next night when my wife was out I cried and wailed like a little child on our couch. The realization of being completely alone, of my own mortality and worse yet the mortality of my loved ones, of life's cruel indifference and the absolute hopelessness of the human race. Perhaps I should have paid a bit more attention to those whiny nihilistic frenchmen, might have made the conversion a bit easier. I continued to go to the meetings, and out in service as I began to deal with my new reality. It didn't take long for the shock and horror to wear off, it was quickly replaced by an overwhelming sense of understanding of the enormity of the world and our universe, countless possibilities and doors opened to me intellectually. Suddenly all of those topics and views that were off limits to me were now there for me to play with. The great philosophers that I alway felt I had to avoid, Nietzsche, Hume, Spinoza, Aquinas, the sciences I had to avoid so much of biology, genetics, HISTORY so much history that had to be thrown out of hand because it contradicted the notion that four thousand years ago eight people got on a boat, everything died, and they stepped off and then five hundred years later all languages were created and people went their separate ways to start the countries that we see today! The Jefferson Bible, Origin of the species, Buddhist philosophy, POLITICS, political science and all it entails! The intellectual world was now my oyster and I very quickly forgot all about the nihilistic void I had fallen into. I needed answers, but this time I knew what the questions were. Before I had just been to afraid to ask them. It felt like I was seeing the world in High Definition, new clarity. The leaves on trees were greener and sharper, clouds better defined against the blue sky. It was all so marvelous.
During this time, I HATED meetings and loathed field service. I hated hearing people comment about god's great justice, now having a very different perspective on his commands to kill every man woman and child in Israel's rival countries. I cringed at hearing speakers talk about the follies of democracy according to quotes from Winston Churchill. In service I couldn't help but give glib answers in conversations in the car about how to best handle a situation of an elderly dying woman wanting to say a prayer with you, and how to tell her that god doesn't listen to her prayers, only ours. But I knew the consequences of coming out, so I simply went along with it for as long as I could....which wasn't long.
DISCLAIMER: This is the part where I come out and it becomes...unpleasant.
Things happened. During this time period my best friend of many years had moved to my city and it was good times. Spent evenings playing videogames, having beers, talking about David Foster Wallace (rest in peace), goofing off, him, myself and my wife. In spite of (or because of) my newfound atheism, and secret rejection of the society it was a very pleasant time in my life. He however was having problems. He was in love with a sister, and they were getting very close. Unfortunately she was already married and he was friends with both of them, close friends. This was a great stress on him. She wasn't happy in her marriage, and he was very much in love with her, and they were texting each other constantly, talking on the phone, and it was becoming apparent to both of them what was going on, and her husband halfway new about it, but either couldn't believe it, or didn't know how to handle it, because he did nothing to stop it. We had various conversation on the topic, emotional, tearful (at least for him and my wife) conversations on it. But one night while we were driving some where I in jest told him to do what one couple did from our hall. One of our elders had his best friend and his wife sleeping with each other. When it was discovered she left him, they got divorced, the wife and friend were disfellowshipped, got married, and were reinstated a year later, and went to a neighboring congregation. He responded incredulously "That really worked? Really?" It was all in jest, and good fun, but well...about a month later he told me sorrowfully that he was getting disfellowshipped, and was moving away. He followed my instruction, cheated, got DFed, and got married. It was a hard time, both for me and my wife. We really loved him, he was my best friend, and one of the very few people that I felt understood me, and that I understood. We were thick as thieves, and he was getting the axe.
A bit of background on my chum. He was vagabond, never held down a job for more than a few months, mostly lived on the couches of friends and family even into his twenties. Also was prone to depression, and on medication for it. Without a support network I was a bit....worried about his ability to....not be a hobo. Also keep in mind, by this time I secretly don't even believe in this whole stupid disfellowshipping crap. But I had to keep up appearances, lest I end up in his shoes. So for a month or two I wrestled with my conscience, worried about him, missed him dearly. Then there was that fateful night.
One night my wife and I were laying in bed trying to go to sleep, but she was crying. She was telling me that I would have to be in the new system without her, that she was weak, she couldn't keep going. These spells were not infrequent, Her panic and depression that she was a bad witness, and that I would have to go on without her. My whole body was tense with rage, I was audibly clawing at the headboard. This stupid organization, what it takes from us, what it demands of us, what it does to us. The guilt, the fear, the pain, the separation. I couldn't take it anymore. I turned on the lights and looked at her in the eyes, I told her that what I was about to say was going to be hard to hear, but she needed to hear it. I told her that it was a lie, and that there was no god. That night is hard to talk about even now, and the following weeks moreso. I'm a choked up just recalling it, and under any other circumstance I would not recall it at all. In the years that have followed I have been subject to my own fair share of hatred, prejudice and ire. But none even remotely as painful as that which came from my wife. I honestly wasn't sure if I would be living on the street within the week. In all honesty, I'd rather not talk about it and skip ahead a bit.
Lets jump ahead a few months. It's been hard, nobody knows about my thoughts on the society and god in general except her and her family (her dad is an elder, but he is a legitimately good guy, so he handles it very discreetly, no action is taken except from the removal of my "privileges", and how he managed that without a full out witch hunt is beyond me even now). One day my wife and I were walking through the mall window shopping, I bought her a Pretzel from auntie Anne's and we were holding hands. It was the first time that I felt like things might be ok, this might be able to work. I stop going to meetings, she continues to go, though as I understand it she would sit in the back and cry the entire time every meeting. It was difficult for both of us, but working. We really do love each other. Our love if anything was solidified even more so. It was not based on a religious culture, and even though we may have just been horny kids when we got married, we were capable of a more adult relationship. I was an exceedingly good husband (especially during this time, because I was fueled by guilt), and she was an exceedingly loving wife (though at that time, showing it was a bit difficult). But I had faded, life had moved on, I was careful about what I said to who, was friendly and cordial to those I once called my brothers and sisters, and was still an accepted member of society. I went on vacation to Washington D.C. with our witness friends, went to Disney World with my inlaws, would still occasionally visit a witness get together, and everyone was just as friendly and cordial to me as I was them. I had built a wonderful glass facade, had my cake and was eating it too.
However, during this time something else began to bother me. For understandable reasons it had been a time of a bit of self absorption, but after things began to calm down a bit I thought of my friend. He was disfellowshipped, who knows what it must be like getting married under his circumstances, no friends or family, no money or education. My conscience weighed heavily on me, so I reached out to him. I had no idea his whereabouts, living situation, phone number anything. So I E-mailed him in hopes he at least had access to a computer somewhere and hadn't changed his e-mail address. I told him not to worry about me, or consequences of me contacting him. That the society's rules no longer applied to me, I had come to a different conclusion, that I didn't believe in god, but none of that was important. All I wanted to know was how he was doing, if he was ok. I let him know that I was always there for him, if he needed a place to crash, needed to talk, hell needed money, just let me know, I'm still there for him. A single act of compassion for my best friend, and my complete undoing.
I never got a reply to that e-mail, figured he had changed his address, or no longer had access to the internet. I was saddened by this, tried to find him to no avail, but life went on. I still wondered about him, hoped he was in an ok place. Months later I get a phone call from my brother. He was calling to see if I was ok, making sure everything is on the up and up. He knew I wasn't going to meetings anymore, but my family doesn't really talk so I had never discussed it with him or anyone in my family. We chatted for a bit, friendly chat, and then he told me that my friend had gotten reinstated...about a month ago. I had heard nothing about it. Then my brother put his cards on the table. "So what's this I hear about you being an atheist?" My friend, best buddy in the world, thick as thieves had gotten the e-mail so long ago and sat on it. And upon his return showed it to everyone, my family, my old friends, everyone. I had to deal with my hysterical crying sister asking how somebody so smart could be so stupid, my parents saying nothing (they never do, we're not a particularly...close or open family). People were asking questions. The facade I had built was starting to crumble. All because of the one friend I trusted above all others.
Side bar: My brother is an otherwise reasonable intelligent fellow of which prior to my disfellowshipping/disassociation (same difference as far as anyone is concerned) I had debated on the merits of the society's biblically literalist interpretation of scripture. My conclusion was that you cannot reason with unreason. For instance, I find one of the easiest things to attack in a biblically literalist view is Noah's Ark. The sheer number of things wrong with that story is astounding. I argued with him on the basis of genetics, that if all animals were brought down to a single pair four thousand years ago, there would be a massive genetic bottleneck, there would be an extremely limited number of alleles in any given species population, and the only way out of that is by accepting darwinian evolution which can produce new alleles through random mutation and selection, and showed him a fascinating study on cheetah populations which did go through a genetic bottleneck somewhere around ten thousand years ago, and how we can tell that most species didn't go through a genetic bottleneck four thousand years ago. His reply? "Not Necessarily". That's it. I don't really press it, because I tend to play softball with my brother, I really don't want to crush him, merely let him know that there are issues with his belief system. Next I talk about the ecological absurdity of noah's ark. That if the entire biosphere of the planet earth were wiped out, and that all life radiated out from mt Ararat, that there is no way that there could be working balanced ecological systems spread out all over the earth, especially given the delicate balance of pollinating flowers and birds/insects that do the work for them if all the plant life had been disrupted as well. And furthermore animals such as bears, bison, elk and the like couldn't migrate across the sea to places like North America. His reply "Maybe the vikings brought bears to the US? It's possible.". I discussed the physics of having a water canopy surrounding the planet and how that would make the planet uninhabitable, and the rate of rainfall necessary to create a flood of that magnitude in 40 days (729 feet a day, the hardest rainfall on record being somewhere around 5 feet in one day, and it was an absurd downpour), and how destructive of a force that would be falling from outside our stratosphere. All of which easily dismissed with a furrowing of the brow, shrugging of the shoulders and a "maybe not" or "not necessarily" or a "maybe if" followed by an insane explanation. I will not go into the sentential logic explanation of why he is able to hold onto a fairy tail in face of empirical fact, but it has to do with him having axioms that are not empirically based, and thus act as litmus tests for empirical enthymemes that I'm introducing to his assumed airtight syllogisms. Or as "Answers In Genesis" Puts it: If the bible and reality are in conflict, trust the bible and not reality. Brainwashing is powerful, and it became apparent to me then that as reasonable as my brother was, reason had nothing to do with his beliefs. We discussed many other things, but I won't bore you with further details. If you've read even this far I consider it a miracle worthy of putting my beliefs in doubt.
Anywho...So my best friend betrayed me. Not only had he told all of my old friends and my family that I was an atheist, he also sent my e-mail to the body of elders at my hall (his old hall). The witch hunt was on. So the elders did what they are trained to do. Came to my house unannounced at night demanding that they speak to me. I told them now was not a good time, they insisted that I give them just a few minutes. I'm in my robe, my wife getting dressed (we are just about to go out to dinner on a date), I say fine, you have two minutes outside here on the porch. They ask if I still thought of myself as a witness, I said "no" they said "there will be consequences for this" and left. My wife has a panic attack, date night is off. She's calling her dad asking what's going on, and crying on the floor. I try to assure her that everything is going to be ok. Apparently my response didn't matter in the least, they had already interviewed my family, various friends, built up a case (all without my knowing of course) and my testimony was by that time irrelevant. They were already going to disfellowship me, they were just giving me the "kindness of turning myself in". Days after that thanksgiving came around. My wife and I had the tradition with her family that we'd all take off work and go to the movies, and then to "Cracker Barrel" restaurant for a big turkey dinner, then over to her parents house to play games and eat snacks. I never had much of a family growing up, my parents were....emotionally unavailable and spent little time with their kids. As a result we as siblings always had alot of emotional distance between us. We had an unspoken understanding, especially my sister and I, but never much of a familial bond. So I really liked this tradition. I knew already that this was going to be the last one. I don't think my wife really comprehended what was happening yet, and I doubt her dad was privy to what the other elders were doing. But I knew what was coming. So I soaked up every last stupid little minute of it. The dumb card games, the inside jokes, the warmth. The warmth.
I called various elders on the phone (not the jack asses that came to my door), elders that I thought of as friends and people I trusted, I protested to any of them that would answer that I meant harm to no one, and that they need to just let me be in peace. I told them that I wasn't angry, I wasn't some apostate trying to lead people astray, all I did was disagree and I bear no ill will to anyone. None of them knew what the hell I was talking about. So they called the providing overseer and he did a three way call between me, him, and the elder in charge of my case. Futilely I demanded a meeting with the two elders. One last hail mary plea to sanity and compassion to preserve the life my wife and I had carved out. In the meeting with the elders they referred to me as "Usurper of God" and told me how the congregation must be kept clean. I protested that the congregation has plenty of unbelieving mates that go unmolested and that are not shunned, they replied "Those individuals never got baptized. You broke your promise to Jehovah, and there are consequences for your actions." I told them that they have no idea what they are doing to my wife. That we can't vacation with her family because of this meddling, no more dinner with her friends, that she will forever have to be choosing between me and the congregation. They said "Don't look at us, that's your fault. You should have thought about that before you tried to deny Jehovah and usurp his authority." They were belligerent and angry. I was no longer a human being to be empathized with in their eyes, I was the enemy. I was satan incarnate, I was something that needed to be destroyed for them to be happy.
And so it was. I was disfellowshipped, my wife went through yet another period of depression and crying at the meetings. My family and friends no longer acknowledge my existence, and this past thanksgiving I spent with my wife alone. Just as I said, my wife has had to choose between me and the congregation. But god damn it if that woman doesn't love me, because for all intents and purposes she chose me. She doesn't talk about the meetings, or "the truth" or anything like that with me. She doesn't go out in service any more and she doesn't really go to meetings often either. Every once and a while she might catch one if her dad calls and asks her to go, but otherwise it just seems implied that when it's a meeting night, she's staying home with me. Wednesday she tried to go to the meeting, got herself all dressed up, got her books together, I told her I love her and to drive safe (which is what I have always said when she's off to the meetings alone), and she was off. About twenty minutes later she calls me crying, saying she doesn't know where to go, so I tell her to just come home. This happens sometimes, and then she comes home all teary eyed, I tell her it'll be ok, she puts on some jam jams, and we get in bed with our french bulldog and watch whatever inane reality television program is on at the time. She still thinks it's the truth, but she doesn't really go to meetings or in service or study. But I know better than to try and convince her, push her over the edge and tell her it's a lie again. You can't defeat unreason with reason. But you might be able to break through it with love.
And that is my situation now, and really my goal and testament. You know I still work for that same elder for the same cleaning company I worked at when I moved to where the need was greater (don't worry, I'm trying to save up some money for college)? I'm a boss there now, and all of my co-workers are witnesses. And you know what? They love me there. Not just because I'm profitable, hard working, and bright. But because no matter what I give them the consideration that they under different circumstances would definitely not give me. One key aspect of my personality ever since I was young, was my stubbornness and my spitefulness. They expect me to be wicked, angry, depressed, filled with rage, a drunkard that will cheat on my wife. So like Spinoza I will do just the opposite. I will do my damnedest to be the exemplary of the virtues they value, but do not understand. They have read the words of christ, but such beauty was lost on them. Thomas Jefferson held it in highest esteem and ghandi understood christ, and I am trying to. I will work towards being that compassion, that love, that endurance. I will be an exemplary of the virtues they have not seen, and cannot understand. I will strive for knowledge where ever it leads me like Socrates, and Darwin, and will seek true knowledge and understanding, and not just pitiful third hand revelation from uneducated crotchety old men revised six times over as gospel. I will not only be what they strive to be, I will be something greater for them to see.
Do not think me naive, I recognize the gross futility of my actions. I understand that those that shun me will hate me because they are told to and because I exist, but I will not give them the satisfaction of having a reason to hate me. And those that know me in spite of the command not to can see that there can be good outside of the society. But ultimately my goal is one thing, one thing that I find insurmountably difficult. When the society collapses, and is no more (and it will happen) and people I once knew, people I called friend and family, when it's all over and they are able and willing to talk to me again, I want to not hate them. That is my test, that is what I'm working towards, and it is hard. It is damn hard. To have somebody you know come into YOUR house and refuse to make eye contact with you even though you once called them friend, because they are told to hate you, and then to not hate them? It's damn hard. But I want to be able to accept them, and show them that life can be lived without that cult. When the time comes. And so I will bide my time. I will make myself the best human being that I can be. I will continue to study science, philosophy, logic, ethics, mathematics, literature and the arts, I will continue to meditate on the lessons from lives far greater than my own and will try to cultivate the fruitages of my spirit, the virtues that I have decided upon. And when the time comes hopefully it will have been enough.
Well that's my story. Anyone that actually read that whole thing, I'll buy you a beer, or coffee, you deserve it. I've actually been writing for about four hours now (edit: six hours), so hopefully it's not a total bore. I look forward to being a part of your community here, it seems pleasant. Even though this is the first any of you have heard of me, I already have come to know and appreciate many of you. There are all things I've wanted to post and conversations to have, and musings to ponder aloud on, but I didn't want to be rude. I wanted to introduce myself first. So uh....Hi, everyone. My name is Jonathan H, it's nice to meet you.