This is an excellent point.

I have a sister-in-law who is almost 50 and periodically goes through severe bouts of depression because she left 30 years ago after having premarital sex (got married and ended up having three kids) and she thinks Armageddon is going to come any day and she'll be destroyed.

A brother-in-law recently got divorced and is re-living his teen-age years. One week he's regaling me with stories of all the women he gets, and the next week he's refusing to come to the family Christmas party because it's a pagan holiday. He once refused to speak to his sister for six months because she criticized the society. I probably know a dozen people in this "one foot in, one foot out" state. Depression is an enormous issue for practicing and lapsed JWs.

It sounds like you left much more recently than I. Did you ever hear about the sex abuse scandals, or the UN/NGO scandal?

What prompted you to escape DeuceKicker? How tough was leaving?

Very few True Believers (in any religion, I’d imagine) have a single a-ha moment. I ended up having a combination of different things, none of which would have been enough on their own to make me leave.

I was always a smart kid. I think there was always a bit of cognitive dissonance about some of the kookier teachings. I could memorize the arguments, but there were times when deep down I knew they weren’t very sound. It’s like you’re repeating the company line, and this voice in the back of your head wants to say, “But…. But…” and you just squelch it. You don’t let the thought fully form and you’re left with this uncomfortable buzzing in your head for a while.

For example, JWs don’t celebrate birthdays. Birthdays are only mentioned twice in the Bible, and on both occasions, people get killed. Also, they’re forms of creature worship—setting someone up above others. But we were allowed to celebrate wedding anniversaries. They were pretty much the only thing we were allowed to celebrate. So you tell yourself it’s not the same thing, because wedding anniversaries are not mentioned in the Bible, but there’s this voice in your head trying to say,”But if birthdays are creature worship, aren’t anniversaries?”

Then there were the failed predictions of the world’s end. I was a third-generation Witness, so I heard plenty of stories from my grandmother. Any JW who gives them any thought has to feel some internal discomfort over the numerous failed dates.

I also became involved with a girl who was physically abused by her mother. She had gone to the elders but they didn’t do anything. They also told her not to tell other people or she could be guilty of slander, which could get her DFd. The girl had three older sisters, all had run away from home because of the abuse, but that didn’t seem to matter to the elders.

I had no idea, but apparently this was common. There was a group of JW girls at her High School that would all cry on each other’s shoulders because they were getting the crap beat out of them and nobody would do anything. I don’t think this is necessarily a JW thing. It’s probably just a bit of a coincidence that all these abuse victims knew and confided in each other in this relatively small area. But the common denominator of their stories is that they never received any help from the elders. It was either ignored or they were told it was their fault for being headstrong and rebellious. And AFAIK, all were threatened with DFing if they told anyone.

JWs are in love with their self-perceived reputation as “The happiest people on earth.” They don’t take each other to worldly courts or go to the police. They don’t air their dirty laundry to the public or internally, so as not to bring reproach on God’s Holy name. In talking to other JWs, you eventually hear dozens of stories where bizarrely legalistic reasoning is used, and common sense seems to be absent.

One day this girl came to the meeting wearing big sunglasses and wouldn’t take them off. She told me it was to cover a black eye. I was young ministerial servant, a bit full of himself, and doggone it, I was going to put a stop to this! The elders quoted some scripture about disciplining your child with the rod. I was thinking, “She’s not disciplining her, she’s beating her up because she came home in a bad mood.” I was told in no uncertain terms to drop it, that the elders had handled it.

Probably the biggest reason I left is the Internet. I used to go on AOL and Prodigy chat rooms, arguing with the atheists. We weren’t really supposed to, because the Internet was the Devil’s tool to deceive you, but I had done a year of Regular Pioneering and got burned out, so it was a more exciting way to count time.

I mixed it up with Catholics, Baptists, a few Jews and Muslims, or went to the JW chat rooms and we took on all comers. Atheists were my favorites. Debating other religions eventually came down to one or two key verses on any subject, and how you interpreted them. But atheists were so obviously wrong! I could debate them using either the Bible or science—take your pick.

In the mid 1980s we got a book called Life: How Did it Get here? By Evolution or by Creation? JWs aren’t allowed to read anything from other religions, so I didn’t realize it was a rehash of all the standard creationist stuff, including quote-mining, bad science, backward logic, and strawman arguments. I thought it was the direct result of God’s inspiration upon his Faithful and Discrete Slave. Armed with this scholarly masterpiece, I was unstoppable. In hindsight, it was the typical creationist method of argument: You can’t prove I’m wrong beyond any doubt, so I’m right.

And these atheists were so terrible at debate. They’d actually admit that they couldn’t prove something. Or that they weren’t 100% certain about details. Rookies.

Eventually they’d get frustrated at how soundly I was trouncing them in the debate and start hurling insults about my intelligence and reasoning ability. That was OK, Jesus said we’d have to endure persecution because of our faith.

There was one guy who would go around in circles with me, who never seemed to get flustered. He seemed a bit condescending at times, but at least he wasn’t abusive. One day I was telling him about all the famous scientists who admitted that evolution was false; guys like Einstein, Gould, and even Darwin himself. He asked me the source for my quotes (the JW book) and he said it was full of misquotes. Of course he’d say that, he was blinded by the Great Deceiver.

The next day I saw him again and tried to pick up the conversation. He said, “I won’t quibble,” and ignored me after that.

WTF? You won’t quibble? You won’t quibble!?! I felt like a little kid being dismissed.

Maybe he was dismissing me, or maybe he just needed to use the bathroom. Either way, “I won’t quibble” stuck with me much longer than it should have. I kept thinking about our conversation, wondering what I could have said differently.

Months later I went downtown to the public library (didn’t want to get caught reading evolutionist books if a JW saw me at the local library). I had looked at the bibliography in the back of the JW creation book and wrote down a bunch of quotes and their sources.

Obviously the guy was right. The quotes were horribly out of context. For example, Darwin had a chapter in his book fielding typical objections to his theory, and defending his position. They quoted the objection as if it were Darwin’s admission that the theory was false, but omitted his rebuttal. Same with Gould and a dozen others.

A few weeks later I returned to the library and checked out a book by Ray Franz, Crisis of Conscience. He was a former member of the Governing Body who had left the religion. He was the ultimate apostate. His uncle was the President of the Society for decades, who personally wrote much of their doctrine and set most of their policies.

I remember it was a dreary, windy day, and as I was leaving the library I could almost feel the demons surrounding me. It was like a scene from The Omen, with the leaves skittering along the sidewalk, and a catholic boys chorus chanting in the background. I was surprised I didn't see a large Crow, or a big dog with red eyes.

By the time you’re ready to read that book, you’re pretty much already gone, but when I finished I knew I could never go back.

The whole process took a few years.

Woah. Thanks for taking the time to write that out, I appreciate it. I had no idea the JWs are so messed up, I just assumed they were like normal somewhat fundie Christians, just with non-doctrinal beliefs.

EDIT

Actually I guess I knew they were pretty mental because of the whole 'let someone die before letting them have blood' stuff but I didn't know how culty they are.

What's really messed up is that they handled claims of sexual abuse the same way or worse than they handled claims of physical abuse.

According to the Bible, a matter is established at the mouths of two witnesses. JW leadership interprets that to mean that there must be two witnesses to an act of sexual abuse.

Two outside witnesses. During the act. If a girl claims a man abused her, and he admits it, that doesn't count. He needs to have molested her in front of at least two other people.

In the early-2000s this became a minor scandal, with NBC's Nightline and England's BBC doing stories about how JWs covered up for child molesters.

The details are a bit fuzzy now, but in the Nightline story, a girl accused a man in her congregation of molesting her. She was told to keep quiet. She didn't and was disfellowshipped for slander against her spiritual brother. Before she was disfellowshipped (I think) she testified in court about the molestation. 200 members of their congregation attended court (most congregations in the US are about 150-250 members). Every single one of them sat on the side of the defendant, to support him. Several testified as character witnesses for him. This teen-aged girl had nobody on her side except an ex-elder from out of state who resigned his position and became a crusader for this cause.

Soon after, a woman was disfellowshipped for slandering the organization (or maybe it was apostasy, not sure). She and her husband had been members for something like 30 years. She wrote a series of articles for the JW magazines about sexual abuse, and how it was wrong, blah blah blah. (It was a minor scandal to learn that she had written the articles. Women are not allowed to teach, and it was always assumed that men wrote all articles.) During her research, she learned that hundreds (thousands?) of letters had come into headquarters, either from people reporting sexual abuse, or elders asking how to handle it. There was a systematic cover-up by the leadership.

I had heard the usual rumblings and rumors about the sexual abuse cover ups, but I didn't really look into it until after I left, feeling like it was the usual worldly propaganda.

I read a little about the UN thing recently, but I don't know too much about it. Perhaps you could enlighten me?

I'll give a quick summary because it's kind of a non-issue now, and probably of no interest to non-JWs.

The society has always condemned the UN, saying it was the scarlet-colored wild beast of Revelation.

In the 1990s they joined the UN as a non-governmental organization (NGO). The application said something like, 'the applicant agrees to uphold the values and charter of the United Nations.' I think they did this to gain access to the UN Library, though there was also evidence that JW higher-ups also enjoyed free chartered flights on UN planes from the US to Europe or Africa or somewhere.

When this was discovered, the society denied it. There were scanned letters from them saying they were not and had never been an NGO. There were also scanned letters from the UN saying they definitely were an NGO, including the Society's Secretary's signature on the application. At one point, if you looked on the UN site, you'd see Watchtower Bible and Tract Society on their list of NGOs. The next day it was gone.

The JW leadership later claimed there was massive confusion and disorganization at the UN, that the requirements had changed, and when they learned of the new requirements they immediately quit.

There were also claims that in the 90s, while they were an NGO, the Society greatly softened their stance on the UN and curtailed their condemnation of it as a tool of Satan in their magazines. (I never looked into that.)

The irony of this is that, for years, JWs in many countries (especially Africa) endured beatings, death, prison, and exile because they wouldn't purchase 25-cent party cards (which did not mean they joined the party) and all the while the leadership was riding the back of the Scarlet-Colored Wild Beast.

Just wanted to thank DeuceKicker and CoachKirby for their time in this thread, I've learned a lot. Thanks guys!

+1

One of the best threads in RGT in a very long time.

Agreed. As I posted above, it's been a great insightful read

5 star thread for sure. I'm loving every post.

I must also say that I've been following this thread for a couple days and really enjoy it.
The one thing that I can't stand out of all of it is how your family cut you off for leaving. I can't imagine how much pain that must have on you. It's hard to even type what I think about it because I can't imagine ever doing that.

There's a recent novel by Japan's greatest living writer, Haruki Murakami, called "1Q84", where the protagonist is a Japanese girl who is raised a Jehovah's Witness and runs away from her family as a teenager. It's a very long and strange story about a fictional Japanese cult, but it draws some interesting comparisons with the JW religion.

Great thread. I started reading it on my phone at the cinema waiting for the movie to start and when it did I was a bit annoyed I couldn't keep reading.

Very good read, but! "There is not a single religion out there that I have found that hasn't retarded human civilization in one way or another, there isn't one religion who doesn't have people ready to kill the non-believers around them, there isn't one religion that deals exclusively in logic and reason over myth and superstition." The Buddhist in me is not amused!