I saw Kevin yesterday.
We met almost twenty years ago. He's not overly blessed with a
questioning or insightful mind, but his humble nature and generally
positive outlook and wholesome sense of humor made sharing time with
him enjoyable. He's just a good fellow.
Kevin is a JW and works on the cleaning crew at the building were I work.
We never went to the same hall but saw each other when the brothers got
together to play basketball or at other social events. Occasionally he'd visit
my hall and we'd work together in service.
After going years without ever seeing each other, about two years ago we
happened to meet late one afternoon. It was good to see his friendly face
after so long a time. I walked over to say hello, to see what was new in his
life and tell him what was new in mine. His mood was very reserved and
somber and I soon found out why. He told me that he was disfellowshipped,
his way of saying that a conversation would then be uncomfortable, if not
impossible. By then I'd become mentally free of whatever control the
Society had held over me and couldn't care less how they labeled him. I just
wanted to renew an old friendship -- it made no difference to me what his
religious status was. I was sure that he wouldn't understand.
I understood his thinking, of course. We've seen and experienced it
before. The disfellowshipped adopt this persona of walking dead when it
comes to other JWs. He assumed I was a good JW and that I would toe
the company line and treat him like every other JW who saw him. He was
wrong on both points but my half-hearted attempt to break through his
resistant wall of self-doubt put upon him by the Society wasn't effective. I
decided not to push the issue and played along with his view of himself
although it pained me to do so. I saw no alternative.
About a year went by and I happened to see him again. He approached me
this time and his mood was noticeably more cheerful. "I'm back," he said.
He'd been reinstated. I never liked the term 'I'm back' especially when the
person makes all the meetings. There they are, right among us, although
they are ignored like lepers. They haven't gone anywhere, we just treated
them as though we knew, without a doubt, that they were outside of
Divine Favor and we were within it. I think I successfully concealed that
my emotions were mixed when he told me of his reinstatement -- happy
that he'd achieved a goal that was important to him but sad for him just
the same.
I'd love for Kevin to share my views of the Organization, but I think it
would do very little to improve his life, if it helped at all. He is in his mid-
forties, and following the lifelong obedience to the org. he has no
education beyond high school and has no ambition to get any. He is single
and out of loyalty to his god would not consider dating a "worldly"
woman. He has little to offer a sister materially and he has little ambition
to crack a whip in the congregation. For these reasons, few sisters give
him a second thought so he's probably going to be single for a long time.
He's content to "wait on Jehovah" to arrive astride a white stallion and
provide him with a better life, and SOON. Always soon -- right around the
corner. In the meantime, he's happy, working on a cleaning crew and
living with the satisfaction that his life is being spent in a way that makes
Jehovah happy somehow.
And you know what? It's hard for me to see my life as superior to his.
Who can say I'm any happier than him? Truth be told, people like Kevin,
like my mother, like all the other Dubs that I view as enslaved, might even
be happier than me, if happiness could be measured on a scale somehow.
It's possible that Kevin and I may live another forty years and then our
times on earth will pass. As death approaches, his faith will allow him to
embrace his end in the comfort that his sleep will be brief. He'll die,
comfortable and sure that he's lived a life of godly devotion. I'll be fairly
certain that he didn't. In unconsciousness, in what will pass as an instant,
he will awaken in a peaceful new world. I, on the other hand, will view
death, not as a brief respite from toil and trouble, but as the enemy his
bible says it is.
It's something I wonder about sometimes. What's so awful about his
belief system? Why is my knowing so much more than Kevin superior to
his not knowing? So what if he didn't go to school? So what if it never
dawns on him that he wasted so much time listening to strangers living in
Brooklyn as they imposed rules on how he should live? He had friends. He had
social activities. He had a secure belief that what he was doing was right.
He had a life free from the pain of ever knowing that had been played for a
sucker.
What did I go and do -- finding out the whole truth about the 'truth'?
Sometimes I can't help but think that it would have been better never to
have known the full story, to live out my life in blissful ignorance.
peace,
todd
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"Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. "
------------------ Laurence J. Peter