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Benefits of Being a Former Jehovah’s Witness

Benefits of Being a Former Jehovah’s Witness

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I was visited again this morning by a lovely Jehovah’s Witness. He seemed to be a very sweet person. I’m laughing like God(ess) was tickling me. In honor of that, this is a post about the benefits of no longer being a Jehovah’s Witness (beyond not having to go door-to-door on a blustery day like today).

I’d like to set the stage with a satirical treatment of the benefits of being a JW. An illuminating example is this post by the Theocratic Joker:

  1. Jehovah’s Witnesses can count the time they share their faith with nonbelievers door-to-door or with young children, thus proving to God, in actual hard numbers, how worthy they are to have everlasting life.
  2. Jehovah’s Witnesses are encouraged not to attend college, which promotes independent thinking and is controlled by demons. They are happy to get a good job as a janitor or a window washer.
  3. Jehovah’s Witnesses get to celebrate the birth of a child but not the anniversary of the birth. They also do not have to worry about birthdays, holidays and Christmas, all of which are pagan and controlled by demons.
  4. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not pass a collection plate at their meetings like the demonized churches do. Instead there are collections boxes in their Kingdom Halls and Assembly Halls, and they are often reminded from the platform and in their literature not to forget to contribute. They are also urged to put in their wills that when they die, their house, CD’s, jewelery, life insurance, and cash go directly to the Watchtower Society. The end is fast approaching so their families really have no need for money that should rightfully go to them.
  5. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate holidays so they do not have to be with their families during these special times to enjoy each other’s company and eat the cookies, turkey, ham, pies, and other such food.
  6. Because Jehovah’s Witnesses are the only true Christians on earth, we do not have the problems that other churches have with broken families, adultery, fornication, pedophiles, over drinking, and gossip.
  7. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not have to worry about giving food, shelter and clothing to the poor and needy in our community because we give them the Truth which will enable them to live forever in a paradise earth.
  8. Jehovah’s Witnesses are in close contact with God as he speaks to them through the Faithful and Discreet Slave and through the Watchtower.
  9. Jehovah’s Witnesses alone will live in Paradise where there will be no cars, TVs, computers, radios, theaters, washing machines, clothes dryers, refrigerators, stoves, airplanes, electric lights, or malls to buy or clothes. Just miles and miles of garden and lions to pet.
  10. Jehovah’s Witnesses go to a summer District Assembly vacation every year, at the same city every year and have a picnic at their seats during the sessions and then stay at the fine hotels that they are told to stay in.
  11. Jehovah’s Witnesses know the true meaning of the words soon, near, very soon, very near, so close, just around the corner, shortly, near future and rapidly approaching.
  12. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not have to worry about getting old or having a retirement plan. See No. 11 above.

Hopefully, now you can understand the many benefits of being a Jehovah’s Witness.

Now, for the benefits of no longer being a Jehovah’s Witness, I would love it if former JWs would post on that topic and link it in the comments. My dear friend Richard Francis started this ball rolling, and I think it’s a good idea to revisit this from time to time – so as to keep remembering what has been gained, and to feel the sense of gratitude that such remembering can give.

The first link is Richard’s list. Reading it made me very happy. The second link includes a few of the lists made by others responding in kind. In the third link, the benefits of leaving are implicit rather than listed, but you can see some heartening trends across all of these.

When I think of the benefits of being freed from “the organization,” it’s pretty overwhelming. Much of it is very difficult to describe to someone who has not been through that kind of experience. However, there are a few major categories into which the benefits tend to fall for me. I’m probably missing some, but here is the best I can do today:

  • Freedom: As many of the posts suggest, this is the overarching category. All of the others assume this one, which has two movements – 1) Liberating freedom from the anti-loving beliefs and practices dictated by the Watchtower leadership – from totalitarian control and fear and arbitrary divisions of thinking and bad argument and small-minded judgments to the corrupting complicity with all of the above – and more. 2) Authentic freedom to grow and thrive and be a real adult in all ways: spiritual, intellectual, emotional, existential. That would encompass such things as thinking things through for one’s self, learning to discern who to respect and admire, being politically concerned and active, giving to charities of one’s choosing, fruitful experimentation with diverse spiritual ideas and practices, sharing authentic friendships with anyone of your choosing, paying attention to (and trusting) one’s own gifts and calling, and much, much, much, MUCH more.
  • Love – as in a Deeper Capacity for, and Ability to: When you view other people only in terms of their possibly contaminating effect on you or their potential as a new convert or as points on your service report, when you view them as about to be murdered by God and as inferior to yourself, and when you are threatened by and suspicious of their ideas and feelings, it is pretty difficult to care and to be kind and to trust and to enter into dialogue and relationship with them. If agape love is reserved for the members of a small in-group, your capacity to love others is very restricted. And if there is no kindness even there, it’s a very stark and cold kind of existence. The love I used to know was always, always conditional – but the spirit is all about love, and the more there is love, the more love there can be. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love” (1 John 4:18). No-one is perfect in love because no-one is perfect, but when you can love others without restriction and prejudice, your capacity for love… increaseth (grin). Another benefit of this is that when you learn to love, you also learn that there is much that is lovable about yourself – and this helps to undo the habitual self-loathing that seemed to go along with the self-righteousness training.
  • Spirituality: My spiritual life is much more authentic, more real, more attuned, more… spiritual. I could expand on this, but I’d rather take on that subject matter in terms of specific topics. Suffice to say that there are substantial qualitative differences in the questions I ask, the kinds of answers I consider, and a different perspective even on such things as the role of “I” on the path to God. My thoughts about who and what God might be are radically changed, and that has made a huge difference. I’ve also benefited from a range of spiritual practices that had been denied to me.
  • Ethics: Yes, it’s related. There is a kind of immature ethics that can only define right and wrong in terms of what authority figures dictate or in terms of what results in rewards and punishments. Such an ethics keeps you in an infantile sort of relationship with others. A rule-based ethics can never account for the actual realities of people’s lives. Another kind of ethics is based on kinship networks and group loyalties, but is limited to those groups. As a post-JW, it becomes possible to develop meta-principles and relational thinking that try to take everyone’s interest into account, not just those of a few. When you do not fear to hear a wide range of thoughts and testimonies, you can ethically evolve beyond a reliance on projection, scapegoating and appeals to authority. It also allows you – if you choose – to consider the cultural and socio-political contexts of ethical claims.
  • Laughter, Joy, Celebration: Enjoyment of all kinds, with only the restrictions of my own sense of ethics. I can laugh, be happy, and celebrate whatever I want to – large or small, in a manner conventional or eclectic. I love this.
  • Creativity: I no longer have to feel that weird semi-ashamed veil that was thrown over everything to do with imagination and creativity. I can write, and dance, and sing, and paint, and imagine, and have reveries and insights and all the rest. I can be curious, and investigate, and think, and see new connections between unlike things, finding and constructing new meanings – those mysterious shimmery bits of radiance that I value so highly.
  • Communities: Plural. It is an amazing thing to be able to participate at will in communities -groups of people that share something in common – anything! What an idea! Reading groups, political action groups, online groups, groups based on ideas or hobbies or anything! Wow! You can meet and form relationships with all kinds of interesting people you’d never have met otherwise. This one is a very special benefit, partially because when I realized that I could actually do this, it helped to counteract what was an initial skepticism toward all communities (once burned, twice shy). More than that, the sometimes-overlapping circles of my friends now mean so much to me that I can really compare it against how it once was and see what a difference my friends have made. I am thankful for true friends and for the occasional gift of a real spiritual brother or sister (in a sense that makes a caricature of the words as I used to use them).

Obviously, this post is written for former JWs (and the people who love them). I don’t really think there are a great many benefits associated with being a Jehovah’s Witness. If you are a current JW then you are also welcome to post real benefits that you feel as well, if you wish to do so, and link those in the comments. I have nothing against you, but only against the cruelties of the leadership. There are so many paths to God, and maybe – somehow – this is yours. God has a way of using everything, and I have no doubts about how the cosmos handles complexity.

One of the huge benefits of not being a JW is that I am no longer required to hate spiritual paths that are not identical to the one to which I am called. Nor do I have to fear you – or judge you to be worldly and/or evil – simply for the reason that you are not part of an organization to which I belong. That’s a really, really big benefit from my perspective – but of course there are many, many, many people from many religious traditions who do not agree (may they be blessed).

Support Safire the Llama

Support Safire the Llama

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My friend Richard “Shining Thunder” Francis has been adopted by a llama (and, it seems, a lama). More on that below.

Richard is a former JW who has dedicated his life to an extraordinary calling of love and spirituality.

He has health problems of various kinds and, among other things, he is blind (Touchingly – to me – he refers to his body as “the donkey.”)

None of this has stopped him from writing several books, running a ministry and various radio shows, publishing the Lovelight Ezine, and sending out messages to the “Universal Love Digest.” I post these as blog entries for him – it’s a small way that I can support his work and show my gratitude for such books as Jehovah Goodbye: The New Theism of Love,
Jehovah lives in Brooklyn: Jehovah’s Witnesses as a model of Fundamentalism, Luminous Jewels of Love and Light, and Journey to the Center of the Soul: Mysticism Made Simple. After speaking for the first time, Richard sent me a couple of the books, and they helped me to organize my thoughts and feelings on a number of topics. You can buy the books, but Richard has also generously posted them as free downloadable ebooks.

I don’t agree with every little thing he says – but that’s ok. He has no interest in being a guru or controlling the thoughts and feelings of others.

The main site at Love Ministries is just one channel for his dedication to “The Way of Universal Love and the Ministry of Total Healing Spiritual, Emotional, and Physical.”

At Love Ministries, Inc. our goal is to help people. We do this genuinely to help other human beings solve problems and to live happier lives. Unlike many who call themselves “teachers” or even “masters,” we are not interested in ego-trips or in making lots of money. Our printed educational aids are distributed solely for what is roughly the cost of production and mailing, and we are not trying to make a profit or transform high spirituality into a mere business or a commodity. Please feel free to contact us with any issues that might relate to the heart, the body, the soul, the mind and anything else that might be of importance to you. We are here to be of service, for without service this world would have no Love.

Ok, so there’s the thing. Since he truly is only interested in love and service, Richard is always running everything on a shoestring.

If you like the site and the message, love donations are always very gratefully received.

If you’re not sure, you’ve got to read this post about Safire the llama/lama.

A Former Witness Writes

A Former Witness Writes

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I don’t know if you remember me but I had wrote you an email about how much I enjoyed your web site. Have you ever seen that video Witnesses of Jehovah? I ordered it. It had a lot of good information but I didn’t like the propaganda style making of the video. The music, the horror stories and them dramatizing the the little girl crying and sitting while saluting the flag (sitting during a flag salute is against Witness doctrine anyways). I grew up a Witness kid and it wasn’t that bad. I did love that animation Jesus story! Watch out Disney!!!! lol All they really had to do is present the facts in a fair balanced way, which they did with exception of those few things I mentioned. Keep in touch and keep up the fair and balanced work you are doing. The truth is there it’s just so hard to get through to them, it is a tremendous amount of mind control they are under. I feel for them because I was there once. Please continue on your crusade and if there is anything I can do to help please let me know.
Respectfully,
Ruben

Hi Ruben! Yeah, there were a lot of things that didn’t ring true in the video for me, but at least it’s a start. I actually enjoyed explaining why I didn’t salute the flag when I was a kid – actually, I still don’t salute the flag. There is something so creepy and nationalistic to me about it.

I feel for most of the people who write to me, but I’ve gotten some serious hate mail too. I seem to really hit a chord with some of them that makes them explode with anger. My idea is simply to try to model simple acceptance and compassion – which I do sometimes better than others – but just to show that there might be other options for their lives than to be the “evil exJW” or to become a fanatic of some other religious outlook. By the way, there are some excellent resources out there now. There is an “Out of the Cocoon” newsletter on my links page put together by a terrific woman named Brenda Lee (she gets little anecdotes and stories from other exJWs that are interesting), and there is a wonderful guy named Richard Francis who runs the Love Ministries (He has some thought-provoking books for download – “Jehovah lives in Brooklyn” was the book that first impressed me) and a blog at http://www.loveministries.blogspot.com/.
I’ve been keeping up on JWs in the news through Silent Lambs (what IS it with religion and pedophilia?) and the Watchtower Information service. I’ve put together everything I can find on my links page. Some of the links have things I don’t particularly agree with, but I figure that each person has to sift through things themselves to the extent that they feel called to do so.

I pretty much steer clear of the biblical interpretation and doctrinal argument sites. Having studied religion academically for many years, I have only become convinced that it’s pretty useless to make arguments without an understanding of the culture of the time and an even deeper understanding of Hebrew and Greek. I have my own ideas, of course, but this is the area where people get really irrational and bizarre. And since we’ve pretty much lost the gift of dialogue and debate and communication in a spirit of caring, it doesn’t seem worth it to me to get much involved with that. This is all the more the case when I consider how late in the game came the idea of “inspiration from God,” especially with regard to the text, which was taken through a selection process responsible for things like the burning of libraries. Once you had to basically agree to a loyalty oath to get a government job, once there were defined contours of acceptable christianity that were inline with power and circumscribed by “heresies”, then all the joy and variety of the early christians was pretty much lost. And in the US, it’s obvious more than ever that JWs aren’t the only ones who have completely gotten off track with regard to the central messages. It seems to me that all gifts are necessary when they show the “gifts of the spirit” – and the flip side of that of course is that when they bear “fruit” that it destructive and anti-love, it’s time to reassess.

My feeling is that one first has to absorb the milk of loving kindness, forgiveness, compassion, love, empathy – and it is more the practice of these that leads to deeper wisdom than anything else. When you then return to the text, it just reads differently from an entirely new perspective. Or as the JWs say – you are ready for more substantial “food” and see through the glass less darkly. To me, this is a lifetime journey required of all of us, not the responsibility of a handful of men in Brooklyn (or Washington…or).

So I guess what I’m trying to say in this roundabout fashion is that I’m not at all on a crusade. Some people can find a right path for them in the center of the JWs – there are those with the “spirit” who are JWs, as there are in any religion, all religions. But I think JWS are left stranded in ways that those in other religions may not be – and at least I can offer some alternate ways to think about themselves, some practical nuggets to survive and thrive, point to some other resources, and reframe things enough that perhaps it is a little bridge to the next stage. That’s all I can really hope for – it’s little enough in the scheme of things. I had some wonderful teachers that collectively helped me just to take that couple of steps, to give myself permission to find a more authentic way of being that was actually truer to what I felt to be a calling, a reorientation (an attunement that is at the same time an atonement). If I can show someone that there is a bridge, that they are not alone in placing the next stepping stone in front of their feet, then I feel that I have done as I could do, with honor and ethics and care. We all need a reminder that our choice is less between God and the World (or Evil) than between love and nothing. I need that reminder too, and this also helps me to remember – to repent in the old sense of “turn again” – turning again to that principle, reorienting again to the direction of love.

What can you do to help – nothing that I can think of for me, but probably lots and lots and lots for yourself and others. Caring and kindness sure go an awfully long way!

R: I believe you misunderstood me when I said you were on a “crusade”. With what I’ve read on your website I know you are not out there to bash on Witnesses but to help those who need it, like you mentioned in your response. I do feel that your intentions are good and you are trying to help others. Keep up the good work.