The Great Apostate: Life in the cult of Jehovah's Witnesses by Neil Gardner

Author:Neil Gardner [Gardner, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: Neil Gardner
Published: 2018-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

It Must Be Me

There comes a time in the life of most Jehovah’s Witnesses when you can’t keep believing the lie. You have tried so hard to be a “Good Witness”. Often for your entire life but then one little thing just pushes you over the edge and down you fall, your hopes and dreams along with you, into a black hole of despair and regret. There is still one tiny thread to hold on to and it is this, “but where else will you go to?” that is the stock phrase for all cult members. It allows you to stay in a terrible, toxic and claustrophobic cult even when you have become convinced that it is absolute crap!

From an early age, I was taught that all other religions were crooked, that they were not just wrong but that their worship actually angered Jehovah! We would drive past them on the way home from the Kingdom Hall,“Oh there’s the once a week brigade” we’d say. We would laugh at Christians who couldn’t argue their points, shake our heads knowingly when outgunned by someone who could and walk away saying “Satan has that poor man trapped”. Whatever doubts we held about our own beliefs, we could always pretend that the other options were worse.

For Jehovah’s Witnesses the whole point of faith and the cult itself, is the pursuit of truth. Not just truth but “The Truth” and so long as they can attach that name to whatever it is they currently believe then they are satisfied. I, for one, was determined to find the truth and place it under house arrest forever knowing exactly what it was and where it would be. Of course, real life is more complicated than this, truth is complicated and fluid. It’s fluid for the Leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses too so much so that they are very happy to alter what they believe if the alternative will cost them money or force them to admit that previous leaders were idiots but I digress.

We would often spend evenings at each others houses complaining bitterly about “Elder X” or “Sister Y”. These conversations would carefully broach the dangerous waters of Lake - Is This Religion Bullshit? but, only just, as we were always nervous that talking would label any one of us a “Doubter” or even worse an “Apostate”. Whatever was said the conversation would end up at the same point “Where else would you go to?”. The answer was obvious, nowhere. It’s obvious if you know nothing about other faiths except the lies and half truths fed to you by embittered liars in Brooklyn. If you knew more then the answer was equally obvious, ANYWHERE BUT HERE!

Once I left the Witnesses, I discovered that there are hundreds of faith and thousands of sub groups to chose from and almost all of them do more for others than the Jehovah’ Witnesses. When I was younger and asked what charitable work we did for people involved in disasters I was told -

“We give them valuable literature” they said.

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