Sovereign Spirit | One Woman's Path from Shameful Sheep to Spiritual Sovereignty | Chapter Six, Part Three

Sovereign Spirit
..One Woman's Path from Shameful Sheep to Spiritual Sovereignty

Chapter Six, Part Three

Once I was on my own, I began to fear Jehovah even more. There is never any promise that you’ll make it to paradise earth when you become a Witness. You have to continually work to prove yourself worthy so that Jehovah might remember you when the time comes for paradise. I had broken my marriage vows, which meant I had broken a vow to Jehovah as well. I was worried I may have offended him so much that my chances of making it through Armageddon were slim to none.

Soon after I moved out, the elders in my congregation contacted me. They wanted to meet with me to give me some “encouragement.” I met with them once and was given several Watchtower publications and scriptures to look up and consider. They strongly encouraged me to return to my husband’s home, but my mind had already been made up, and I wasn’t going back. After that meeting, I was afraid of the confrontation with the elders that I knew would continue if I went to meetings at the Kingdom Hall, so I stopped going all together. They stopped by my new apartment a few weeks later, and I didn’t answer the door. A week or two after that, they sent a sister close to my age whose husband was an elder to call on me. I didn’t answer for her either, and after that, I suppose they decided to give up on me.

Not attending meetings three times a week granted me so much free time! It afforded me a lot of time to think, and in many ways I felt free, but I still lived with so much fear, knowing I was displeasing Jehovah.

My family, of course, had never stopped praying that I would see things differently and return to the church, so they were thrilled with the news that I’d left my husband. They thought maybe this would be the answer to their prayers. They were very supportive of me during this time, and it felt good to have them by my side again. I had missed them, and I could see hope in their eyes that maybe I wouldn’t go to Hell after all when I died. With all of the pain in my life at the time, it felt really good to be making my family so happy with me. They were my solace, and I knew I never wanted to lose them again the way I had before.

At the request of one of my cousins, I attended my old church one Sunday morning. My cousin was performing in the service that morning through interpretive dance, and she wanted me to come watch. For some reason, even though I still believed all the JW beliefs, and knew I shouldn’t dare step foot inside a church, (I’d be instantly destroyed were Armageddon to begin while I happened to be inside, Watchtower said) I decided to go. My cousin had been through a lot that year, and I wanted to show my support.

As I walked through the church doors that morning, anxiety resting heavy on my shoulders, but a stubborn will pushing me forward, a flood of memories washed over me. As I made my way to find a seat and sat through the service, I took note of all the faces around me. Here were the faces of the doomed, or so I believed. The living dead. Here were the faces I hadn’t seen for six years - my old friends, teachers, counselors, and pastors - people I had come to trust so much during my most formative years as a teenager. People I had missed so much. People who I feared Jehovah would kill one day very soon.

At the end of the service, I was swarmed with hugs. I hoped they didn’t think I was “back” but didn’t mention it. After coming from an atmosphere where I’d felt unloved, abandoned, and alone for many years, it just felt good to feel welcomed… missed.. like I mattered.

Little by little, I began to give in to more requests from friends and family to attend various church services. It wasn’t long before I was going all the time. I can’t explain why, really, except that I was afraid and alone, and I found comfort in being around people who seemed to care about me. But my beliefs did not yet deviate from that of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The more I attended church, the more I saw that God seemed to be "working" in the lives of the people in attendance. People with lifelong struggles with addiction and other problems were coming forward, claiming to be set free from those issues. This intrigued me because, as a JW, you are taught that God only works within the JW organization. Jehovah’s Spirit does not work outside of it. But, to me, it seemed that it was. How else could all of these miracles be happening? This triggered some new thinking. If God’s Spirit was working there, what else could Jehovah’s Witnesses be getting wrong?

Prayers for answers began. This was it. I wanted the truth. I was tired of feeling like I was in the dark. I was tired of being confused. I wanted the plain, simple truth about Jehovah's Witnesses. No more, no less.

I prayed tirelessly. And I researched endlessly.

I should have done all this research six years prior, but I was told, as a new JW Bible student, that looking up information on the internet about Jehovah’s Witnesses, would lead to false information.

"Apostates are out there, telling lies about Jehovah and His people. If you listen to them, you'll be led astray. Jehovah doesn't even want us to look at such false information. Our publications have all the accurate information about our beliefs,” they told me.

So, I naïvely listened, following instructions without thinking them through, like I’d been raised to do all my life.

When I began to research Jehovah’s Witnesses more thoroughly, not caring anymore about apostates, my desperation for answers pushing beyond any fear, I found all the reasons I'd ever need to set myself free from their belief system.

To begin, there were the false prophesies. By my count, according to my research, Jehovah’s Witnesses have prophesied the end of the world at least fourteen times. We are all still here, Jehovah’s Witness or not, so obviously there were a few false prophesies. The Bible itself specifically states that anyone who makes a prophecy which does not come to fruition is indeed a false prophet. Clearly, this means that Jehovah’s organization, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society are false prophets. By default, this also means the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses could not possibly be God’s one, true channel of communication to humans on Earth, as they claimed.

Then there was the fact that despite all the warnings and teachings Jehovah’s Witnesses are given from Watchtower about not being involved in politics of any kind, not voting, not even taking a political view within your own mind, it turns out that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society was listed as an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) under the United Nations. This was a stunning hypocrisy on the part of Watchtower, and would have been cause enough to leave all on its own, given the implications.

Then I came across some information concerning the kinds of men who were responsible for re-translating the scriptures to create the New World Translation, which is Jehovah’s Witnesses own version of the Bible. I was taught that trained, scholarly men went back to the original texts and comprehensively translated them from scratch. In reality, the New World translators had little, if any schooling in Greek and Hebrew. How can you claim to translate the Bible if you don’t know Greek and Hebrew thoroughly and have vast, detailed knowledge of the culture and times in which these manuscripts were written? Another red flag.

Jehovah’s Witnesses view blood as something sacred, something that must not be tampered with. Their view stems from a single verse in the Old Testament which says that you must not eat blood. Because of this verse, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not accept blood transfusions. They equate it to eating the blood because the blood goes into your body to keep you alive, the way a feeding tube would, in their view. Although, I have seen many a JW forking bloody steak into their mouths, and no one seemed to have any problem with eating blood there.

The more I researched, the more instances I read of parents refusing life-saving blood transfusions for their children, or teenagers being threatened with disfellowshipping if they decided to save their life with a blood transfusion. People were losing their lives for no good reason, and children who had no choice or say in their healthcare were dying. Innocent little ones were having their lives cut short because their parents were either afraid of Jehovah or losing their status in the congregation. I began to see how dangerous religion can be.

There were heaps of other problems with Jehovah’s Witness doctrines and practices hiding behind the forbidden walls of books and the internet, and since I left the cult, even more has come out about the dangers of living under the tyranny of this religion, namely the child sex abuse cases which are coming to light all over the world. Watchtower and its elders have been systematically hiding pedophiles in their congregations for decades. Many are learning the truth about “The Truth” and are finding their way out of this dark religion.

Beyond these newly discovered facts about Jehovah’s Witnesses, there was something more. Something more personal. The more I enjoyed reuniting with my family and reacquainting myself with a few old church friends, the more I realized the simple fact that I could not give my worship or my life in service to a god who would one day destroy these people. My love for them outweighed my fear of what might happen to me if I didn’t believe a certain way. Once I accepted this within my own heart, morally accepting it not from some outside source, but from my own conscience, my fear of Jehovah dissolved almost overnight, and my faith in all things JW quickly faded away in the days and weeks that followed.