Dear John...

Dear [insert name of active Witness],

First and foremost, I want you to know that I love you. In fact, if not for that love, I would not be bothering to write this letter to you today. You've been a constant and influential part of my life, and have helped to shape me into the loving, moral, and discerning person that I am today.

During the 2016 convention season, the issue of loyalty saturated the program. Literally every symposium and independent talk covered the subject in exhaustive detail. It is quite clear that the Governing Body feels that focused dedication is required in these Last Days. The demand for exclusive devotion is palpable.

I had to ask myself what that meant for me.

Perhaps you'll remember Song 14 from Sing to Jehovah, All Things Made New, based on Revelation 21:1-5. It was always one of my favorites. Sometimes I'd just listen to the congregation sing it... In the chorus, we are given the promises of the end of suffering and death, which are then punctuated by the line, "For God has said 'I'm making all things new'; These words faithful are, and true'".

Faithful... and true. Faithful... and true. I don't think it's necessary to parse this and define the words. We know what it is to be faithful. We know what truth is, or at least the definition of "truth". Knowing what the 'truth' is can be a much more difficult matter.

To be faithful to something simply means we do not turn aside from it, and if it is intrinsically truthful, how could that be a difficult thing to do? We even call Jehovah's Organization "The Truth". But truth of what...?

C.T. Russel gave the Bible Students the first concrete time frame for the end of days. 1914. It was the proof that Jehovah's paradise was soon at hand. But it was a date that was derived by using measurements of the Grand Galleries of the Pyramids of Egypt. Read that sentence again if you must, but Russel actually published this in books he expected the Bible Students to read and accept.

Is that truth though? Not according to our Christian faith. Pastor Russel and all of his successors, right down to the modern day Governing Body, have used extra-biblical publications as their primary teaching tool; publications which have often had no basis in biblical text. "You must not add to the word that I am commanding you, neither must you take away from it, so as to keep the commandments of Jehovah your God that I am commanding you" (Deut 4:2). What, then, is there that we must discern as Christians that we cannot learn directly from the Bible?

That Jerusalem fell in 607 BCE? That's not true. The Bible doesn't provide a date. It does, however, say that Nebuchadnezzar would be in the twentieth year of his rule when it happened, which corresponds to 587 BCE. There is almost a literal mountain of archaeological and astronomical evidence which supports this. God's balance of the heavens is so precise that we can discern the dates of astronomical phenomena recorded by Mesopotamians, and none of them support 607 BCE? Did the Devil deceive them as a society? Did the Father of the Lie alter the heavens themselves to lead C.T. Russel astray? Neither is logical, and yet 607 BCE is the lynch pin of the Society's entire argument for end times starting in 1914, which is so arduously defended that we are expected to ignore empirical evidence to the contrary. It is "faithful and true"?

The Governing Body will have you expelled from the congregation if you disagree with this doctrine, yet they remain "faithful and true" to false information. The January 8, 1947 edition of Awake even called the practice of shunning, expelling, or disfellowshipping "pagan". However, the Society changed that stance in 1952. Were they "faithful and true" to their doctrine?

In 1954, then Vice President of the Society, Hayden Covington, testified in court that even if a doctrine was later proved false (as the second coming of Christ in 1874 had been), that dissent among Jehovah's Witnesses was grounds to be disfellowshipped. Being "faithful and true" to the truth is of very little interest to the Governing Body. Being "faithful and true" to the Truth, however, is paramount.

Blood donation and transfusion policy has undergone major revision, and under stricter guidelines of the past, many brothers and sisters died for their faith. Governing Body member Tony Morris openly bragged at the 2016 convention about a young brother who lost his life for refusing blood. In 2000, however, the Governing Body declared that Witnesses should decide upon blood transfusions as a matter of prayerful personal choice. The Society explicitly told the European Commission on Human Rights that they would no longer investigate or disfellowship members for accepting blood transfusions (Decision on Admissibility of Application 28626/95, p.22, pp.6; Information note no. 148, B. II. (a)). In other words, there is no sanction that the Society can or will issue on the matter. If abstaining from blood were a strict biblical command, did they remain "faithful and true" to it? It was either wrong then, or it's wrong now. Who bears the blood guilt for those who died under the old incorrect and unbiblical policy? Who bears the blood guilt for those yet to be judged under the new (and possibly still) incorrect and unbiblical policy?

This very long preamble only has one purpose: To scratch the surface of a long history of abuses to faith, rational thought, and family unity perpetrated by the Society and it's Governing Body.

As I mentioned at the outset, I love you. My heart is open to you and always will be. I cannot, however, associate with a people who demand my unwavering loyalty to a Truth that has no integrity. Job was lauded in the Bible as a man who was so assured of God's requirements that he could not be made to waver. Can the same be said of Jehovah's Witnesses? Your faith is dictated by men. Men who have not maintained even a single unshakable doctrine in their entire history, save one, and that is in the merit of Jesus' sacrifice. If God's word is "faithful and true", shouldn't his servants be as well?

It breaks my heart to say this, but I must request that you be respectful of my decision to remove you from my life. I love truth and hope sincerely that you seek it out for yourself as I have. Perhaps one day we can sit as [insert relationship here] and laugh as we once did. For now, I must be loyal to my conscience, and if I stand before God in judgement, please know that it is clear.

If you decide to turn away from your destructive lifestyle, know that I, and a very large community of awakened people, will be here to help you transition and cope with the intense emotions of breaking free from your abusers.

Faithfully and truly yours,

[insert name or signature]

The Man in the Mirror

Getting ready for the Kingdom Hall was a pain in the ass. I hated it. I delayed it as long as possible. It eroded my soul just a little more every time I did it because I was in the process of putting on a costume for the role I was playing three times a week.

As I've written before, my family was not clean. In the physical sense, we were downright filthy. I'll spare the worst of the details, but I have a memory of a thoroughly decayed apple on my dresser. Yeah. Gross.

As a natural byproduct of that disarray, having clean clothes to wear to the Kingdom Hall was often a struggle. As predictable as it was, no great effort was ever made to preserve our Sunday-best (and Tuesday and Thursday), or spare it from the horrors of the cluttered floor. It is no lie that we once sat at the Hall on a Sunday trying to locate the wafting aroma of cat urine, eventually discovering that it came from my brother's neck tie. You can't make this stuff up, people.

I've already covered in some detail the efforts that we went through to convey a sense of piety and righteousness. We knew all the right words. No one could rightly challenge us on our vocabulary alone. But dressing the part was another matter entirely.

The clothes dryer became my best friend. Wrinkled suits and shirts could be tumbled for a few minutes on high heat with dryer sheet for a seemingly fresh-from-the-cleaners smell. The suit jacket covered a multitude of stains upon shirts that needed washing. Socks, so long as they were dark, didn't need to be matching colors.

I last attended a Special Assembly Day when I was twenty-three. That was also the last time I dressed up and played the part. I looked in the mirror that day and realized that I didn't know who looked back. I knew who he should be, but it was an identity that didn't belong. It was a mask. A disguise. Hiding in plain sight, I wanted most to be unnoticed. My heart wept because I knew that for the sake of inclusion, I needed to remain anonymous. It was a life of deception right down to my clothes.

I once had a friend explain identity crises by using the example of clothes. Imagine you woke up this morning and found a closet full of clothes that you recognize and that fit you, but which are not yours. Day after day, you put them on and go to a job that you know how to do, but belongs to the person who owns your clothes. Your coworkers call you by a name that matches your ID, but is the name of the person whose clothes you wear.

After a day, it may be amusing. After a month, it could be vexing. After years, your soul has been crushed and you don't know who you are anymore.

In the theme that has been my life, the costume was just enough. Not flashy enough to be obvious, not trashy enough to be conspicuous. When weighed against other facets of my Christianity and daily life (because they were separate), the concept of mediocrity is consistent and insignificant. Taken together, there is very little in my life to which I have aspired or excelled. When you become a Jack-of-all-trades yet master-of-none, it's hard to know who you are. Are you everything without being anything? Is there anything that people correlate to you as a unique feature. Are you even you? Or are you just a half-hearted reflection of what people think you should be?

I've begun to contemplate in the last few months just how much of my life is a facade. I'm so accustomed to being hidden that I don't really know how to be open. It has led to countless heartbreaks, stresses, depressions, and maybe even the death of my marriage.

It doesn't make me a bad person. Just an uncertain one. Though that doesn't mean I'm a good person either. I'm simply a person who is trying to recognize his reflection for who he is. I may not know me just yet, and perhaps I'll never know, but I can at least tell you what I am not.

I am not pretending anymore.

By This, All Will Know...

The tragedy of lost life cannot be overstated, particularly when it is cut short by the desperate and deliberate will of the departed. Suicide is a word that we are all familiar with, whether by association with one lost to it, or simply by our history as Witnesses. It is a poison that stains the souls of those who are left behind and mars the reputation of those who choose the path.

Among our apostate fold, mental health is a common complaint. We could debate the whither-tos and why-fors for ages to come, but it simply detracts from the importance and immediacy of those in need. We, the Lost Sheep, are followed by a dark cloud that swallow some whole, and only we can stand against it.

Most of those among us were baptized into Watchtower, often at a young age. The vast majority of us will have discussed questions out of the little green book which were meant to provide evidence of our understanding of God's requirements. We all answered a question regarding suicide, which was backed by Genesis 9:5.

Besides that, I will demand an accounting for your lifeblood. I will demand an accounting from every living creature; and from each man I will demand an accounting for the life of his brother.

While the scripture itself is not explicit about the issue of choosing to die, it heavily implies that our lives are not ours to end. It doesn't belong to us.

I call bullshit.

Our life is the one thing that is explicitly ours. It belongs to no one else. Be that as it may, we were somehow compelled to join a religion that would burden us with untold difficulties. We don't have the option of changing what happened to us, only to decide how we move forward.

In our past, we were marginalized, ignored, misled, and bullied. We preached and worshiped under a banner of love and acceptance, but practiced the exact opposite is every way that mattered. We were commanded to love each other, while having no devotion to its meaning. The very practice of calling oneself a Witness demanded exclusion, betrayal, and abandonment.

This is why it is so touching and remarkable that we, the Lost Sheep, so readily banded together yesterday when one of our own fell into the dark cloud. What cannot be described in words now is the ferocity of concert that occurred among the apostates to save one who was consumed by by their own desperation.

We, us, our international community of unfaithful cast a net out into the cloud to rescue a soul that was intent on giving up. We fished that person out of the blackness, and we crossed oceans to do it. Had we been Witnesses still, we'd have offered prayer, counsel, and finally reproof. We'd have condemned the injured for a malady they could not control, and we'd have called it 'loving'.

Jesus said that love was the mark of his disciples, but how can it be so if we do not exhaust every full measure at our disposal to rescue one who seeks misguided self-harm?

Many years ago, my older brother threatened suicide after a particularly bitter battle for custody of his children. I remember standing in line at a tailor's shop when I got a call from my mother. She tearfully asked if I'd heard from him, which I had not, so she explained what was going on. Of course he would not answer his own phone and I was nowhere close to the last place he was seen.

So I did what I could.

I placed no less than a dozen phone calls in a matter of minutes. I even dug up numbers of long lost acquaintances in the remote hopes that one of them might have heard from him. The most useful call went to his cell phone carrier. I reached a young man named Balthazar (yes, I remember his name) and stated that "this is the most important phone call" he was going to take that day.

While he was at first hesitant to provide information, and understandably so, I persisted and was able to have them located the cell tower my brother's phone was connected to. It narrowed our search down to a few square miles in which we could direct police to search, and we ourselves could look. Within that area, there was only one place that had any meaning to us as brothers.

A park. Mort Jacobs Park.

We played there endlessly as kids. Every person we grew up with knew it. Every Witness I knew also knew it. It was a place of so many happy memories. A perfect place to retreat in an hour of distress.

His girlfriend at the time was the one to go, and there she found him. Still safe. Still distraught.

You see, there's no measure that is too far or obstacle insurmountable when it comes to the safety of one we love. Prayer and counsel have their place, but they are not the real, tangible, measurable means by which we intervene for a person in need

You, the community of apostates, did everything in your power to catch one who fell. I am humbled and honored to be counted among you because you truly have love for each other. More so than we were ever taught to have otherwise. You are a body of people who rescued your own. You did it with love, determination, and sheer force of will. We were told that apostates are evil. What a lie that is.

These events of the last 24 hours prove that you are exceptional people. By this, all will know, because of the love you have for each other.