Thank you for taking the time to make contact via e-mail. I have received many such letters in the last few years. This tells me that the humanity within us makes us the same in our longing for a "better" life. It took me many years to stop and ask myself the most important question a sane person can ask:

 

 

My biggest problem (and you reference the same one in your communiqué) is the dissonance between wishing/hoping/faithing the illusion of the perfect life and the actual reality of today in a real world.

I might offer this point of view to think about. A magic trick is entertaining because it tickles our fancy for the mysterious. The trick contains a sort of "lie" or misdirection. We are told something which appears to be true while an important facet is hidden from us. When the illusion is produced we get a thrill of sorts; an emotional high which delights us.  But, all in all, we've participated in being fooled.

This is an obvious analogy, of course.

There are delightful emotions connected to being a Jehovah's Witness. In all honesty, however, our integrity depends on willingly being fooled--and--one step farther---fooling others in return.

You see, C____, there is a kind of pious fraud in fellowship. I fool you, you fool me, the others fool each other to make the illusion work and the magic happen and the emotional high produce the miracle of what is cynically termed THE TRUTH.

I have 7 children. All but two, my daughters Helena and Lillian, are fully grown with families of their own. I opted NOT to raise them (any of them) as good little JW's because I could see the evidence in other JW families of the destruction of their lives by trying to live a lie.

You indicate a similar strategy and I embrace your intelligent wisdom for doing so!  Persons (of any age) who willingly join (rather than grow up in) Jehovah's THE TRUTH, don't suffer the mental erosions quite the same way as the unwitting ones who really have no choice.

The average JW lives an awful life of fake happiness and genuine depression.

The pressures are unreal and the lifestyle doesn't work---yet, pretending that it does is what the game is all about.

Really smart people, like my friend Johnny, bifurcate themselves. One side is the fake JW and the other side is what is left of the real person.

It ruins their health and degrades the actual joy living to the point many such persons hit a wall and destroy themselves as individuals.

When it comes to the "story" Jehovah's Witnesses hold dear of a Paradise earth, resurrection, eternal happiness.....well, they may as well pretend they have millions in a trust fund in Switzerland which will come to them when they reach a "certain" age.  Any20pretense of a better tomorrow based on fantasy can boost one's outlook.  The only problem is, you can't ever cash the check!

The New World, Armageddon, Paradise are a fusion Ponzi scheme when you stop and think about it.

Each person who comes in to the Kingdom Hall is required to go out and recruit others so that there is always a throng of "happy" agreement that the myth is alive and imminent!

Reality is, Jehovah's Witnesses have been selling junk bonds to a Paradise which have no real world value beyond illusion.

As many people as come in to be baptized through the front door end up disfellowshipped and broken going out the back door.

They ruin people. They cut hurting human beings off from family, "friends" and hope. They let children die needlessly over Bronze Age injunctions blown out of all sanity.

I look at the happy Muslims with their denial of reality and their fervent passion for Allah and I see an echo of JW's in the self indulgent delusional thinking.

Religious thinking is a mental illness, in my opinion.

It is a lot like people who take mind-altering recreational drugs and tell you they won' t get addicted.

It is addictive. It is destructive. The costs are huge.  Everything feeds the habit.

You already know all this, of course.

You may well be one of the lucky ones who can escape not only the lie, hypocricy and fantasy of the Kingdom Hall---you may be able to wean yourself off the equally destructive m ythology or world view put in place by the theology.

That was my worst problem when I was no longer a JW.  I had to scour my mind and replace the propaganda with facts.  That is really, really tough because the conditioning is so strong.

I would start, if I may suggest, with a simple premise.  Either the Bible is the word of God and carefully preserved over the centuries---or---it is something quite different.

I'd recommend Bart Ehrman's book MISQUOTING JESUS.

Ehrman was a fundamentalist who wanted to study the original languages and become a bible scholar who could read the actual manuscripts.

What he discovered and what stopped him cold was the sudden discovery that there are NO original manuscripts of Bible books, no copies of originals and only fragments of copies of copies which differ from each other in thousands and thousands of instances.

It is not a dry book or a destructive book.  It is a factual book which tells an important facet of Bible belief which Christians are denied by their local congregations: there is no "there" there.

Fundamentalist churches (even JW's) place all their bets on BIBLE foundations.  ; Each church and denomination differs according to interpretations of those verses. Usually, there is some element of "magic" involved such as special revelation. Catholics have a Pope with a pipeline directly to God. Mormon's have their "prophets". JW's have their Governing Body and the Faithful and Discreet Slave doctrine.  The point being what?  IF THE BIBLE is not a reliable source of revelation IT DOESN'T MATTER what the interpretations of its contents are!

But, this may be more than a large bite for you to chew on.

I'd simply say to you it is a huge relief when you are able to come to realize that we don't need priests, prophets, intermediaries or gurus channeling "truth" to us.   It is a scam.

I wish you and your family all the best. It is very very difficult to give up the phoney social structure of "brothers and sisters" who pretend to love you and care about you.

Once they shun you---the pretense becomes clear enough. They'll cut you dead in a heartbeat they "love" you so much.

Living a life of rational thought, reason, facts and self-determination is almost impossible for former JW's or any cult survivor.  The dependency is enormous.  But, it can be done.

Let me know if I can help in any way. I hope I didn't sound like I was lecturing you. I didn't mean to.

I just identify with your situation with your children so much. I tremble to think how close I came to being swallowed up by religion and destroying my children along with it.

 

 

Terry

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