Chapter 39
I’m glad I don’t believe the way you do!
Your whole life becomes a blur. Weeks turn into months. Months turn into years.
Week after week of meetings. Five meetings a week, thousands of meetings, endless meetings. Jehovah this and Jehovah that. Hurry Jehovah is coming, no time to waste.
There was thousands of hours of knocking on people’s doors trying to tell people that Jehovah is coming. Please join our club. The world is coming to the end club. We are saved and you are screwed club. Please jump on the ark before it’s too late. Time is running out! Hurry there is no time to waste.
No time to be happy now. In the “new system” (another term for their paradise Earth) we can be happy then.
Don’t waste time trying to get a good education or a good job. Those things will not help you when Armageddon comes.
I knew some Jehovah’s Witnesses who never even fixed their teeth. Why should they? The “new system” will be here any day and Jehovah will take care of our teeth. Those Witnesses are now wearing dentures.
Millions of Witnesses with no savings and no retirement. Why should we save money? They will be throwing money in the streets soon.
If you are Jehovah’s Witness the future is the only place happiness can happen. I remember many times being out in field service with Witnesses who were telling me about what mansion they would be living in after Armageddon. Because once god killed the rich home owner, they could easily choose any vacant house they wanted.
Sometimes people at the doors were upset or rude because we knocked on their door trying to sell our religion to them. As we were walking away from the house we would laugh and talk about how the birds would be eating the flesh off their bones one day after Armageddon just as Bible prophesy had foretold. Of course their house would be up for grabs then.
Yes, in the paradise Earth we would all be happy then. After Jehovah finally makes his move.
Something strange happened to me while I was in field service in the late nineteen nineties. A moment that help me realize how weird and strange my life really was. I was going door to door in Tigard Oregon. I rang the doorbell to house, like I have done thousands of times before. How many people have I talked to after forty years of “spreading the good news” who knows?
This door was very different, at least the person behind it was. A pleasant looking blond haired man came to the door. He was in his late thirties and had a slight smile on his face. I launched into my three minute sermon. He just stood there smiling. So I pulled out the “Watchtower and Awake magazines” and show him some stupid article about who knows what. After rambling on for minutes I finally asked him, what he thought. He stood there for a moment then he got a bigger smile on his face and said. “I’m so grateful I don’t believe like you do.” I stood there not knowing what to say. Then he said it again. “I’m so glad I don’t believe like you do.” I had no idea what to say next. He said. “Wait here.” He turned and came back with one of our Watchtowers in his hand. He also had with him what looked like his twelve year old son. Then he opened the watchtower up and read from it. “Your magazine says here. This is your magazine isn’t it?” I nodded yes. “It says here and I quote your magazine. ‘In view of the end times we are living in, it might be wise to not to have children.” So, you see if I believed the same way you and your religion does, I would have never known the pleasure of my son here.” He put his hand on his sons head and smiled at us and said “Good bye.” I’m sure I had a dumb look on my face, I wanted to say something but had nothing to say. He stepped back and shut his door.
I thought to myself he was right. I walked back up his driveway shaking my head. I had spent 40 years of knocking on doors trying to find people who were looking for “The Truth.” Yet he had shown the truth to me. I saw hundreds of things in the organization after 40 years that made no sense what so ever or just wasn’t right but I think in that moment I knew.
I knew I was in a religion that had been wrong and wrong about a lot of things. If I had followed the suggestion in our magazines, I would have never known the pleasure of my children either. There was many years because of indoctrination where I didn’t want to have children at all because I felt the “end” was coming any day way back in the nineteen sixties. I also thought about all those at Bethel who had given up the possibility of having children and families because the end was coming any day thirty years ad forty years earlier.
For many years I thought the people who hadn’t believed what we were telling them for decades were nuts. I put myself for once behind the door I was knocking on. I put myself in the shoes of those we had been preaching to and came to the realization that we were the ones in the Jim Jones compound getting ready to drink the cool aid.
So now what?
My wife was of course raised in this thought system from an early age too. She was the perfect Stepford wife who was taught to never question anything. So when I tried to talk to her about some of the dozens of inconsistencies I had found over the years, she looked at me like a deer in head lights. This is the same look many Witnesses give you when they are asked a logical question about their beliefs.
I was having problems with anger. She was convinced the anger was my unsolved issues with my dead mother. I knew that wasn’t it. I felt like the guy in the movie Thx 1138 when he stopped taking the drugs that made him a drone. I was mad because I stopped taking the crazy pills.Just like in the movie The matrix which pill do you want to take the blue or red pill. Of course each pill will have it's problems.
She even recommended that I should see a psychiatrist. This is very usually and something that the society has looked down on for years. It’s something witnesses will avoid at all cost.
The society has said. “The Christian witnesses of Jehovah are the best oriented, happiest and most contended group of people on the face of the Earth.” So why on Earth would any good follower need the help of a mental health professional? The society tells about the evils of seeking help from outside their organization.
"As a rule, for a Christian to go to a worldly psychiatrist is an admission of defeat. It amounts to 'going down to Egypt for help' - Isaiah 31:1. ...Also, more and more psychiatrists are resorting to hypnosis which is a demonic form of worldly wisdom." Awake! 1960 March 8 p. 27
“Often when a Witness of Jehovah goes to a psychiatrist, the psychiatrist will try to persuade him that his troubles are caused by his religion, entirely overlooking the fact that the Christian witnesses of Jehovah are the best oriented, happiest and most contended group of people on the face of the Earth. They have the least need for psychiatrists. Also, more and more psychiatrists are resorting to hypnosis, which is a demonic form of worldly wisdom.” Awake! 1954
Why would the society not want their mentally distressed followers see a psychiatrist? Because they are concerned for the welfare and health of their disciples? No, they don’t care if you are about ready to blow your brains out, because your parents and Aunt Rose are going to die at Armageddon.
What are they worried about then? They state it very clearly. “The psychiatrist will try to persuade him that his troubles are caused by his religion”
Wow, they don’t even blink an eye do they?
Would if this is true? What if your whack job of a religion is creating the grief and distress in your life!
Cool aid anyone?