Family Matters

My Grandpa George "Shug" Machuga...

I feel a particular pain in even writing his name. It's partly the pain of loss because of what he meant to me. It's also partly the pain of realization that his faith would have precluded me if given the opportunity.

That uncomfortably juxtaposes certain things that I've written about him, all of which are still true of course, but they all carry the caveat that they were conditional, contingent on faith. My faith, not to put too fine a point on it.

It's genuinely difficult to even explore this topic, but the harsh reality is that being a Witness was a complete commitment to him. I have to respect that, if nothing else. However, I don't have to feel good about it, and I won't.

My cousin pointed out to me in a conversation about her shared faith that, if George were still alive, I'd already be dead to him. This is a true statement. I can say with out bias or reservation that he would certainly feel this way. As one of Jehovah's Witnesses, he would take my dissent and free thought as apostasy. It is, of course, and this I don't contest.

Shunning would follow, which is in part why I don't share my complete thoughts with other family members. This hallmark of cult activity is one that I've been exposed to over and over without batting an eyelash. For some reason though (and it's quite clear to me why, but too difficult to voice), I find the admission that he would turn his back on me to be impossible to stomach with quiet dignity. Even so, I cannot deny it would be absolute.

I remember the first time I was chastised for speaking, or attempting to speak, to a disfellowshipped person. His name was Bob Hauserman. He'd been disfellowshipped since before I had been born. If he's even still alive, I'm sure that he still is. He faithfully attended meetings with greater regularity than many who were in good standing. Exactly what his rift with the elders was, I'll never know.

On one Sunday, when I was about five years old, my family and I walked to the Kingdom Hall as our family car was not working and we only lived a few blocks away. We walked on one side of the street, and with no small sense of irony, Bob walked on the other. I didn't yet understand his status, but I knew his face. So I waved. He smiled back at me and said nothing. My mother explained, poorly, that I couldn't talk to him.

As I grew older, I began to understand what an abstraction that was. Nothing prevented me from actually speaking with him. There was no physical malady, magical force field, or kill-switch implant in my brain that would actually stop it from happening. It was the idea.

The lines painted on the roadway and the lights at intersections operate in the same way. They are only effective if they are observed and we respect the ideas they are meant to represent. The boundary between you and a traffic accident is imaginary. So is the divide that separates Witnesses from Apostates. Parents from children. Brother from sister. Me from my grandfather.

Unfortunately, I don't have any way to frame this except as a mental handicap. Being unable to recognize a viewpoint alone as one's proof of impossibility is called a 'intellectual scotoma'. Scotoma is a Greek word that means 'blind spot' or alteration in a area of one's field of vision. The concept of intellectual scotoma has been demonstrated by psychological experiments in which people under hypnosis receive the suggestion that common objects are impossibly heavy. Under this suggestion, they find themselves unable to move them even though there is no mechanical reason they cannot. Their brains, however, convinced of their physical inadequacy, counteract productive muscle movements to create the effect that is expected. Thus, the blind spot becomes the malady that prevents action, rather than anything tangible.

Whether this is a cognitive choice or not is something of a debate. However, the Effect cannot be overstated. I, a human being of descent from the bloodline of Machuga, am a real person. I am of the same temperament, mental acumen, and moral fabric as I have ever been. To have been blocked by the intellectual scotoma of religious indoctrination did not diminish me in any way. That I am less because of my philosophical disposition is an abstraction. A fault laden abstraction.

It cuts me to the bone that a man I love(d) so much could be so myopic as a matter of choice. But that is how he would be. Of that I have no doubt. To me, family matters in the same way it did when I was a child. I was taught to love freely and to forgive plentifully. I didn't learn that there were qualifying conditions until much later, and as such, I feel it was a bit of a bait-and-switch.

I learned to love the people I did without exception, and once I was completely comfortable that I was indispensable, as much as they were to me, I found out that I would have to keep that faith or risk losing everything I knew. I, ME, Aaron Machuga, was not the object of intrinsic value. It was my belief. My faith was the only thing to which the people that I loved would be enamored.

I was not part of the equation, except as a vehicle for that which they desired. In that respect, I am no more than a vessel. Spiritual tupperware.

I value myself more than that.

I value myself more than that.