Paul and Wilma were a sweet old couple from our congregation. Paul was a stocky man, often mustachioed, dark hair, and had forearm tattoo from his days before being a Witness. His laugh was raspy, his humor frequent, and his handshakes sincere. Always at his side was Wilma, a dainty slip of a thing who was soft-spoken and demure. They were undoubtedly the cutest old folks you ever did see.
While I don't know for sure what their individual back stories were, they had children and grand-children and were married for at least five decades. This I know only because I was present at their Golden anniversary party. It was held in an upper room of the community center (where I would later have my wedding reception) and around fifty of the "friends" were present.
There was the predictable cake and punch, a few other snacks, and some entertainment. A group of older gentlemen formed an ensemble band of harmonica players known as The Moonlighters. Now I can't quite recall if it was Paul who was so fond of harmonicas or if it was Wilma, but they both seemed to be enthralled. When they played the polka mainstay Roll Out the Barrels, I leaned that this song actually had some lyrics, and Melvia (one of the friends) was singing her bitter old ass off.
Now, as I write this, I recall that Paul was the harmonica enthusiast. The front-man for the band (if he could be called that) asked if anyone played. It was mentioned that Paul did, and he was immediately invited to come play with them... in the basement of a local church.
A wave of sniggering rippled through the group and the Moonlighters were clearly not in on the joke. The front-man restated his invitation with sincerity, which was politely declined.
These are the inside jokes of a group with no humility.
The insinuation that any Witness would willingly enter a church of Christendom was so thoroughly understood as absurd that our group thought it funny. What I now understand is that we collectively condescended to associate with these men. We respected them only as far as their music was concerned. The rest of their intrinsic value was measured against the standard of their knowledge and service to Watchtower directives. That being a sum total of zero, we were confident in our superiority.
I'm ashamed to say now that I thought it was funny. It is exactly the kind of egotistic exclusivity that I abhorred growing up, and I'd learned to do it with such subtle alacrity that I could not be bother to wonder what four elderly musicians must have thought of us.
We were assholes. Every one of us. We were so enamored of ourselves that we would openly mock (however gently) four guys we were willing to pay for entertainment. Dance, monkey. Dance.
It has been eleven years, two months, and this morning since I last set foot in a Kingdom Hall, and I have learned volumes about humanity and the art of being human in that time. English minister Charles Spurgeon once said in a sermon that "... when you observe that a man seeks the affection of those who can do
nothing for him, but for whom he must do everything, you know that he is
not seeking himself, but that pure benevolence sways his heart".
I've know this statement more frequently to read "You can tell much of a person's character by how they threat those who can do nothing for them".
So what did we as a group offer up that day? Contempt? Derision? Pity? It was certainly not benevolence. When young men made fun of the Apostle Paul, he called down a curse upon them and they were mauled by a bear. What we did was no better than the simple slings and arrows of those boys. We chuckled in the name of Jehovah because we somehow thought we were better. Mistakenly so...
I'm firmly of the opinion that our value as humans can be quantified by the measures we take to upbuild our fellow persons. Whether it is for mutual gain or strictly for charitable betterment, what effort we exert for those around us is the only thing of any true worth. An inside joke does not serve that purpose.
Watchtower goes through great pains to teach its followers that they have some leg-up on the religious competition. Year after year, they promise that Jehovah's own will be granted everlasting life soon, so long as they remain separate from the world. That has been drilled down to every conceivable facet of daily life.
The organization thrives on isolation and indoctrination. They clap for a boy dying of a preventable medical condition and laud his martyrdom. They laugh at guys who practice the harmonica in the basement of a church because they are somehow ungodly and doomed to destruction for their satanic ways. Really? How much more comical or tragic can it be? Ending the life of a child because of a non-scriptural mandate is somehow more palatable than having the friendship of (ostensibly) more godly men in a church?
I've smiled knowingly at people who were supposedly spiritually misguided,
laughed at them behind closed doors, and been taught that I was somehow
exalted. But personal exaltation is the very antithesis of Christianity.
It is so far from the love that Jesus taught us to have that I cannot
even rightly say I was ever a Christian. I cannot believe that I was
ever inured with the notion that a person's soul, salvation, or good
conscience were ever worth anything less than respect.
In that regard, I have laughed my last.