Hi, everyone! I've been lurking here mostly and even posting on occasion (ooh!), but I've never really introduced myself. I guess it's time to remedy that.
Anyway, my name's Rochelle. I posted on H2O (and now here) as Sunchild, everyone's favorite Witness-turned-Wiccan. I'm 25 years old and live in Michigan. As for the rest... you'll find the very same bio I posted on the old H2O forum. It doesn't tell everything, but it gives my basic story, including the baffling case of why in the world I ever became a Jehovah's Witness.
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I think that I was looking for a surrogate family. I was seventeen, afraid to grow up, and having some... issues with my parents, especially my father, who never seemed satisfied with anything I did. I needed a place to belong. Additionally, I was convinced that all “good people” become good Christians. Y’see, since I lived in what you might call a little hick town, I knew little or nothing about other faiths aside from, at the most, their names and that Christianity was somehow superior. I also knew that I didn’t want to be the kind of so-called Christian that most of my friends and acquaintances were. I think everyone has met the type. On Friday, they go out, get drunk and get laid; on Saturday, they recover from the hangover and lie to their parents about why they’re sick; on Sunday, they go to their places of worship, and on Moday, they basically call you a heathen because you don’t go to church. I was determined not to be like that. Like all decent, moral, perfect people, I was going to become a “good Christian.”
At seventeen, needless to say, I was a little naive. But I was also quite studious and perceptive of certain things. I realized that holidays were of Pagan origin, so I looked for a religion that didn’t celebrate holidays. I’d picked up (mostly from my dad and Garner Ted Armstrong) that the human soul was not immortal, and that there was no such thing as hellfire. So, I went on a quest to find a Christian religion that didn’t celebrate holidays or believe Hell or immortal souls.
Long story short, that’s how I got hooked up with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And everything was dandy... at first.
When I first started my Bible study, the Witnesses seemed like a wonderful deal, like the ideal form of Christianity that I had been looking for. Okay, there were some teachings that seemed odd at first (like the idea that Jesus was really the archangel Michael), but I figured, “It’s not impossible, and everything else they’ve taught me makes sense. This has to be the truth; I can’t drop it over such a little thing.” I couldn’t live up to my father’s standards, but hey, at least I had God. I had found God’s truth, and I was determined to make God happy by being the most faithful Witness Jehovah had ever seen. And when I started going to meetings, everybody liked me -- the spirited new girl who “told it like it was.” And when I was eighteen, I got baptized.
It’s kind of hard to say exactly when things started going wrong. It might’ve been when, after my baptism, I started picking up on all of the unwritten rules and so-called “conscience matters” that could get you disfellowshipped or marked if your “conscience” led you to do something different from what was written in the Watchtower. No one was allowed to watch R rated movies, couldn’t watch soap operas, couldn’t visit another church, couldn’t give money to church-sponsored charities, couldn’t openly disagree with anything that the leaders taught.... The rules kept piling up and up, and I went along with them, even the ones that I thought were absurd. Like every faithful, dedicated Witness, I believed my disagreements with JW teachings were the result of a faulty conscience in need of adjustment and kept my mouth shut.
Over time, I did indeed beome the ideal Witness: frightened, tractable, guilt-ridden, convinced that my every original thought and desire was demonic, always afraid of saying something that wasn’t Society-approved, morbidly depressed and not really knowing why, but convinced it was all my fault for not living up to God’s standards. There were times when I wanted to kill myself because I felt so corrupt and worthless, and I didn’t find out until after I left the Organization that many, many Witnesses felt this way but, like me, hid it to protect the religion. That’s the thing we’re taught to do: suffer if you must, but no matter how miserable you are, YOU MUST PROTECT “JEHOVAH’S” ORGANIZATION. You are nothing; IT is everything. If you’re not a Witness, after all, you’re part of the world controlled by Satan, and you can’t risk stumbling the ones who might otherwise be saved from their enslavement to the Prince of Darkness and their coming destruction at Armageddon.
The more I look back on my past, the more insane it seems.
In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to leave the Witnesses, or else I’d either kill myelf or lose my sanity. I kept praying to die in my sleep so I wouldn’t be destroyed at Armageddon. When you’re only twenty-four, phyically healthy, and longing for your death, you know that something’s wrong. But even then, I thought it was me and not the Organization, and I planned on going back someday, once I was “mature” enough to stop wanting to think for myself.
Thanfully, that will never happen now. A few weeks after I walked away, I decided to look into those evil “apostate” Web sites that I’d been warned to not even think about. I expected to find a bunch of obvious lies about Witness doctrine and screwy ideas about the Scriptures. Instead, though, I found out the REAL reason why the leadership doesn’t want the rank and file looking into information posted by ex-Witnesses. The reason is because it tells the truth about the Watchtower’s past, the corruption, the lies, and how familes and lives have been destroyed by this religion. If I’d known then what I know now, I never would’ve gotten baptized.
I don’t regret the experience, though, even if I wouldn’t care to repeat it. If nothing else, I’ve made some interesting friends because of having done time in the Watchtower as well as learning to sympathize with people in other controlling religions. I’ve also learned from my experience that there’s no such thing as the “one true faith” or even the “one true God.” The only truth there is is the truth that you find for yourself.
*Rochelle.
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"Most men complacently accept 'knowledge' as 'truth'. They are sheep, ruled by fear."
-- Sydney Losstarot, "Vagrant Story."