I wrote this to randy walters last year and would like your views on it.
Dear Randall
I have a lot to say but won't bore with the details, a brief introduction would be appropriate. I suffered with depression for great part if my teenage life and so when I listened to the JWs I embraced it with open arms, in about a year of studying I was baptised. Like so many I had no idea of the life to come, I have so much to say most of which you know or have heard from other JWs. Despite all that has happen there is something that still plagues me even 21/2 year after leaving.
I was raised with a belief in a god, I had a little knowledge of the angels and the demons, and in the year that I started studying I was awoken with the strange sensation that I was being choked! similar to being in a headlock. I chalked this down to a demon attack and my study conductor comforted me with the notion that god would protect me and that all I have to do have call out his name and everything would all right and the demon would not come back. Some time after, I moved house and became a member of the local congregation. It wasn't long before I was attacked in my sleep, the pain is EXCRUCIATING (I use the word 'is' because it still happens). I said nothing to anybody out of fear, I guess I blamed myself, I thought, well, I'm in god's true organisation, so I must be the weak link. So I all but stopped watching TV and stopped listening to music for fear that I was allowing them in somehow. My mother was 7th day Adventist and you may know, they don't believe in images so that ruled her out. Later on I got the chance to go to Florida with a brother who had a fleshly brother out there. I was also attacked in my sleep there. The following year I went back,(having fallen in love with America), this time I stayed with an elder and his family and again I was attacked, while sleeping in his daughters bed. The following year I went back to the states and the same thing happened again at another brother's house. It destroyed my faith in a god who is concerned with us personally. I remember a night when the ordeal was so traumatic that on the way to work to work I cried thinking of the reasons why god would let this happen to someone that supposedly had given is life to him. What was perplexing was that the bible says that 'you won't be tested more than you can bear' that god 'will always make a way out for you', sickness or illness I can understand, temptation from the opposite sex to fornicate, temptation to steal or lie I can understand, but asleep in your bed!!! Where's my way out?? The attacks makes me paralysed and unable to speak to I can't 'call out his name'. Praying franticly hasn't helped or I think it doesn't because nothing happens for a good while, and don't even get me started on the dreams where they introduced themselves to me and synchronised the pain to make me believe that it was real.
For 7 years I truly believed that this was the truth, nothing else would have made a seventeen-year-old give up his education and his life, and this is was what I got. To say that I'm angry is an understatement, however I am no longer bitter about the whole situation, just mega confused. Interestingly enough, after recently finding out about the true date of Jerusalem's destruction, it not being 607BCE, and its implication for the Watchtower society, I have been in contact with the JWs again, to discuss what I have found. They can't see the big picture and even if they could, most of them are far to dependent to leave and now start thinking for themselves. I got a copy of their new book, which discusses Daniel, it’s the only publication from the JWs in my bedroom, and low and behold, another attack and smiling face that fades away. It would bitter irony if all this time that the one thing that I thought would protect me from the demons is the one thing that has given them a free pass to rain on my parade. My obvious question would be, why the HELL is this happening to ME??? I'm far too insignificant to warrant all this attention from the demons. At the height of my 'spirituality' the attacks were every night. The more hours I put in, the more I was punished. When I hit a low and wanted to get back with more studying, the more I was punished. Even when I thought that this was Satan's way of trying to put me off the truth, is still didn't make sense to me. When I finally told an elder one who had been a CO and a DO, even he said that in the 40 or so years that he had been in the truth he had never heard of this, especially in a 1st world country.
As it stands, I still have a belief in god, but with this still going on, what I'm to think? Is this to be my penance for 7 years of trying to serve god the best way I could? I have become disillusioned with the whole concept of god and religion. The sheer ambiguity of if all is just too much for me to bear, thinking that god has answered your prayer only for it to blow up in your face, its just happened with too much constancy to be coincidence. I haven't spoken to god in sooo long I can't remember, and yet in the 21/2 years since I left, I have lived my life as if god doesn't care about me, but my quality of life has increase a thousand fold. Mentally, I have so much clarity that you would think that god and myself are inseparable. I do feel closer to him now that I'm not affiliated with a religion and don't expect ANTHING from him. Would this be the definition of a paradox??
Tell me…. what do you think.