Just Asking

How long did it take for you to feel comfortable asking questions after you left Jehovah's Witnesses?

Cue the knee-jerk PIMI reply, “Jehovah’s Witnesses are free to ask questions about any Biblical subject. We also reach out to friends and neighbors to answer their questions about the Bible.”

During my 30 years of association with Jehovah’s Witnesses, that was not my experience.

In fact, whenever I heard a speaker make a statement from the platform that sounded odder than the typical Watchtower canon,  I quickly learned that I had 2 options. Either I could nod along or inquire W.T.A.F. are you even talking about Very Carefully.

For instance, an elder in my hometown congregation firmly believed that unbaptized kids of Witnesses became “worldly people” at the age of 12 because 12 is the “age of decision.” Another elder in a different congregation insisted that 30 is the age that we will all revert back to in paradise since Jesus was baptized at 30. His oft-stated opinion (never substantiated) was that a man reaches the peak of his physical and mental abilities at age 30. 

As a JW, I grew accustomed to doctrine or policy that was rarely grounded in any rational analysis. I accepted the lack of transparency about the methods or data that the Governing Body or elders used to reach conclusions on issues that impacted my life and the lives of millions of other Witnesses. Either the Governing Body or local elders or both usually had strong edicts about dealing with abusers and their victims, declaring what type of medical treatment that we were allowed to receive from my doctors, and, of course, in limiting who we could date or marry, etc. 

And I accepted (much too easily) that yesterday’s truth or new light could be discarded at any time: 

• People alive in 1914 will see Armageddon! This was preached continually to those studying out of the Truth book or the You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth tome. But, by the 1990s, this “truth” became more and more ridiculous.

• 1975 marked the end of the 6000th year of human existence! I am pretty sure that this JW conclusion was never subjected to peer review from scientists or archaeologists. Did the Governing Body ever renege on this baseless claim after carbon dating of human remains debunked the nonsense?

Growing up in that environment, I understood that when a rogue speaker pontificated about his obscure Biblical interpretation, I, as a devout JW woman, knew better than to ask him how he reached this conclusion. 

If I had asked the speaker to show me the  sources that a 12-year-old unbaptized kid should be viewed differently than an 11-year-old unbaptized kid; or even worse, if I had asked why any kid too young to sign a contract or obtain a driver’s license should be making a decision that was supposed to bind her to the organization for life, I could be labeled as a "Jezebel influence" in the congregation. I could expect the elder to direct me to the scriptures where Miriam was stricken with leprosy for daring to criticize her younger brother Moses’ leadership (maybe she told him to ask for directions instead of wandering in the wilderness for 40 years en route to the Promised Land) or maybe I would be directed to read one one of the many Pauline, Women- Shut- Up Biblical epistles. 

More importantly, if I asked any elder to explain his obscure interpretation of Scripture, there would be fallout that would negatively impact the man in charge of me-my father or husband. The JW men in my life  were required to prove that they were presiding over their household in a fine manner. They couldn’t do that if they had a mouthy daughter or wife with the unmitigated gall to demand that A Man explain himself. 

The conditioning against questioning was even present when I was alone. If I were scrolling through my news feed, and I ran across a headline about the Australian Royal Commission’s investigation into the JW’s institutional response to child sex abuse, I hesitated to click the link and read the article. It seemed too risky. As I weighed the pros and cons of reading the information from a reputable but non-JW source I would become as agitated as Eminem-my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.

I was literally afraid to read words on a screen while I was alone in my home. Why was it so unnerving to seek answers to my questions, logical questions such as: 

• Why was 144,000 a literal number when most of Revelation was signs and symbols?

• Why were mental gymnastics necessary to land on the pivotal date of 607 B. C. ?

• Why did God bless men who raped the women that they owned?  See Abraham and Hagar; Jacob and Bilhah and Zilpah.

• Why did God kill Lot’s wife for looking back at her home, while he ignored Lot’s daughters decision to get their dad drunk and have sex with him?

As a JW kid, I learned very early that “studying the Bible” did not mean engaging in robust dialogue about whether a passage was allegorical or historical. No, our Bible study meant reading Watchtower literature, marking key phrases with a highlighter and later regurgitating simplistic, repetitive responses when the literature was reviewed at meetings. That seemed a lot like a teacher telling you to conduct a science experiment and to summarize your results, while also warning you sternly that the only correct result is H2O. In fact, getting any other answer besides H2O will get you kicked out of your science class.

How would those parameters impact how you conducted your research? How open-minded or objective would you be about your scientific method? Would you skew facts or take short cuts to get to the Only acceptable answer?

As a JW, any and all research and questions Must lead you to the conclusion that Jehovah’s Witnesses are the only true religion;  that The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (who else thought this title sounded like a manifesto in a sci-fi novel?) is inspired by God; and the Governing Body was chosen by God to interpret doctrine and policy. Deviate from those fundamental, prescribed conclusions, and you risk being labeled (gasp!) an apostate.

I learned to be terrified of using non-JW resources to answer my questions because the consequence of getting an unacceptable answer was severe. Ask Barbara Anderson or Raymond Franz.  Did you experience the same trepidation that I did when you decided to read Crisis of Conscience or when you clicked on the Silent Lambs web page for the first time?

My faith deconstruction led me to examine the full scope of the belief system that I had been force fed since infancy. Could those beliefs be reconciled with well-substantiated historical or scientific facts? If not, how and when the outlier doctrines developed and who were the developers; what was their agenda?

As it turns out, faith deconstruction is a lot like pulling a loose thread on a wool sweater. One question led to another question until nearly all of the JW doctrine and policy that had been drilled into me since infancy unraveled into a pool of yarn. And the possibility that seeking knowledge could expose the JW catechism that I had built my life around as baseless, that was the real fear that made me suppress my questions for most of my life. 

Luckily, during my faith deconstruction, I refused to swap one unsupported doctrinal belief for another unsupported doctrinal belief. I did not, for instance, trade the prospect of petting a lion in the New World (when did we stop saying New Order?) with dancing with Jesus on heavenly streets paved with gold. A fairy tale is a fairy tale, after all.

And here is the most difficult part. Asking questions about verboten subjects often meant exchanging the unwavering conviction of indoctrination with everyday uncertainty. There are questions that cannot be answered definitively. 

For me, that’s o.k. I would rather have questions I can’t answer than answers that I can’t question.