Disconnected...

Please forgive spelling errors... this is copied right from a FB chat...

Mom: I saw your post as ex-JW. I already figured
it out but needed it confirmed. Good bye to the
son I've always loved. I still hope to have some
contact with my granddaughter. I've missed not
ever getting to know her.

Me: Can I ask you a question?

What is it?

Truthfully, I don't have any single question. There
are so many... but if I must start with one, how was
1914 determined?

I mean, I know how you think it was determined...
but you may be surprised how it actually was...

The best way to answer is give you this link
and let you research it yourself. (Link). I think
you've research a lot of negatives about what we
believe. How about looking at why we believe it.
Chapter 5 might answer your question you sent
to dad in an email. He actually researched your
question but it came from an older publication.
You can download this book if your really wanting
an answer and not just looking for more reason
to disbelieve. Apostates use some truth mixed
with a lot of lies. That's what makes them so
believable. Satan used the same tactic wth Eve.
Most of what he told her was true except that she
'positively will not die.'

(Link)
(Link)
jw.org

Everything I believe about what you believe comes
right from the societies own publications... I'm asking
you, mom, what you know about how your religion
was founded. I pick 1914 because it is the foundation of
Everything you believe about the provenance of
Jehovah's organization.

It is THAT important.

The Bible is our foundation. The kingdom and
the vindication of Jehovah's sovereignty is
the main theme of the Bible. If you want the
TRUTH read the book and check the scriptures.
I'm already convinced that the kingdom is real
and will soon rule over the earth. And have held
that conviction for over 55 years. I guess we've
said everything we need to say. Any future
conversation would be futile. You've sided with
Apostates so any contact in the future will be
only in case of an emergency. Just know that
we've always loved you and we always will.

I understand that this makes you very emotional.
However, all I'm asking for is an open and reasoned
discussion about what you believe. In the previous
message you have retreated into religious defense based
strictly on faith. All I would like to do is discuss
published, verifiable, and immutable fact.
Can we do that?

If your position is the truth, then you have nothing to fear.

I'm waiting to see the doctor. Now is not a good
 time. It's not fear that keeps me from having a
discussion on the subject it's that I already know
that you won't accept any scriptural evidence we might give.

I'm open to scriptural evidence that corresponds
with historical, and scientific evidence. The bible, as 

a historical document, should be well supported, 

should it not?

Are you going to check the evidence I provided
in the link You want me to hear your side but
you're not willing to offer me the same courtesy.
Why have a long debate? Listening to Apostasy
is a waste of time and would make me disloyal to
my God Jehovah. Goodbye Son

I'll read it. Sure. I've already read it in the search
for impartial truth, but I'm willing to again. Are you
willing to hear facts that are inconvenient, but no
less true?

You see, you're already of the opinion that I am closed
minded. You have no interest in what I have to say. You
assume that everything I am going to say is to break you
down. But my only interest in learning any of this was to
help the ones I love.

You can't fix what ain't broke. Time will tell
 which of us followed the right path.
 
They'll be calling me soon. Did you know
 of dad's fall off a roof Sept 2015? 3 fracture
 in the pelvis. Irreparable torn rotator cuff
 in left shoulder that's left his left arm mostly
 unusable. Only option he has to regain some
 use is reverse shoulder replacement. I will
 eventually need knee replacement. I have
 to use a cane most of the time. Thought you
 might be interested in our physical status.

Of course I'm interested.

Got to go

You didn't raise a heartless boy. Nor did you raise a fool.

 I'm sorry that you think so little of me that you would 

dismiss me without the benefit of doubt...

Branding Myself

I haven't really tried to hide from the fact that I'm an apostate. There's no sense in it at any rate. I am who I am, without apology, and those that have something to say about my views are as free to read my thoughts as anyone. They simply don't extend the effort.

When the convention program for 2016 was made public, there were several voices that decried the idea that inactive persons (faders) would be treated as disfellowshipped, with all the rights and privileges therewith. It raised a question in me, which was "and...?"

I waited dutifully for the punchline of that particular joke, but it never came. It's about as elementary-school-playground as you can get when it comes to a religion. They threatened to what... ignore me if I didn't talk to them? Pffftt!

We all know that there are three titles you can have as a former Witness; A) Inactive, B) Disfellowshipped, C) Disassociated. B and C may as well be the same thing as they are effectively no different. Heretofore, you could be an "A" without much repercussion. You were just encouraged to return as often as someone thought of you. Since the convention season came to a close, being an "A" is as bad as anything else.

In a way, they have decided to brand anyone who isn't active and productive in the fold. There is now a single status that a person can have among Jehovah's Witnesses that is not worth shunning, and I am not one of those.

That got me to thinking about what identity really is. If I say "identity", it immediately conjures the notion of who a person is, but that's not really correct. Identity is how other people know you, or who they think you are. Your drivers license, birth certificate, or security badge at work all tell other people who you are. How you know yourself, or what you know yourself to be is of little interest to the world. In similar fashion, the Society has decided on your identity, at least as much as it matters to them. You are either acceptable, or you are not.

But is that who you are?

Frankly, I don't have two shits to give for what the Society thinks I am. My identity will be whatever I cultivate and what I use to meet the world. I am the only person who gets to decide what labels I will wear. I decline to wear theirs. They have used hateful speech for generations to ostracize and obfuscate critical thinkers, dissenters, and self-assured people. Their first duty is to homogeny, and with that goal in mind, they crush any sense of autonomy or ability to trust their environment. As I have mentioned in previous posts, even the word "apostate" carries a different meaning for them than it does for the world at large. The are utterly dependent on their own language and etymology to define their reality, and with that, their ability to relate to the world around them is compromised. Every label they can bestow is only meaningful in their dialect. As such, those labels can carry no weight or recourse.

I call myself an apostate now, and I am proud of it. Not because I give the big middle finger to the Organization, but because I know what it actually means to be one. I have no real malice towards the Organization, and only pity for its members. What I do have is certain modicum of integrity. I did not change my faith for light or transient causes. There was no slight, or petty insult which led to my independence from the Truth. No. I underwent a revolution.

Everything I have endured, researched, and toiled over has been an upheaval to my very foundations. There is no part of me that wasn't rent in two by the process of discovery, or the truth it bore. As such, I declare that I am an apostate because I am first a survivor.

That's my brand.

The Stigma of a Rebel

When I was very young, the St. Ann, Missouri congregation was at its peak. We had about ninety publishers, with average attendance of about one hundred and twenty at any given meeting. Enthusiasm was high, fellowship was good, and there were a lot of young people to go around.

I remember some of the families from that golden age. There were big families and small. Single mothers brought their impressionable children who found kids their own age. Honestly, some of my clearest and fondest memories revolve around those people.

As a slightly older preteen, I recall some of those young people disappearing. For one reason or another, they simply went away. Among the parents of the congregation, there was often a little murmur about so-and-so's son or daughter. They fell in with 'bad association', manifest in one way or another. It became unfashionable to talk about them at all. They had rebelled against Jehovah and the Society.

For years, nothing was said about them. They faded from all memory, no pun intended. But sometimes you might find a face in a crowd that you only recognize after the moment has passed. Perhaps they don't see you either. And for the few times this has happened to me, I've been left wondering if the people they became were less than the people I knew.

I could at this moment give you a dozen names from my childhood, all of them people who were a bit older than me, who left the congregation. Since I've embraced my own apostasy, I have reconnected with a number of them and found that they are mostly happier now than they ever were. The implication that their rebellion had somehow left them broken and sad has been disproved time and again.

The irony is that to be taught that their rebellion had brought them pain required that their personal opinions not be taken into account. In fact, the only way to label them as rebels is to give them no opportunity to speak for themselves. As Witnesses, we were trained to know that divergent thoughts, regardless of cause or reasoning, left one dissatisfied. That just hasn't turned out to be true! Though you'd have to be willing to talk to a rebel to know that, and we were also trained not to associate with them.

Everything I ever knew about the rebel was anecdotal. There were at least two degrees of separation between what I was told they had done and what they had actually done; to which I apply the old bit of advice, "believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see."

I will admit that I took the bait. I was thoroughly convinced that those young people would damage my faith, and that it was better that they were gone. I would learn to repeat from the podium how bad associations spoiled useful habits. I fully adopted the stigma towards rebels as my own. Somehow, I even learned the piteous tone that accompanied inquiries into their welfare when talking to their parents. Everything about them was quietly lamented as a warning or a disingenuous sympathy.

Now I'm that rebel. I would like to think that I'm uninteresting enough that I don't come up in conversation. The fact that I haven't been actively disfellowshipped is probably proof enough. In any case, no one seems to be looking for me. No one seems to be prying into my affairs. These blogs are more than enough to establish my apostasy, though it is my hope to disassociate myself first.

I only know this about myself, I am not a bad person. I am kind and patient. I think critically about the world. I am courteous, generous, and polite. I am also happier. I was so afraid of being a rebel that I refused to pursue my happiness, rather enduring the pain of cognitive dissonance, social isolation, and emotional and spiritual abuse.

Knowing that, I had to reexamine what I thought I knew about the other rebels. Those 'bad examples' of Christian youth were probably fine examples of human beings. To my unexpected delight, they are. But that emphasizes a key discrepancy in the Society's knowledge base. The fundamental teaching about the people who leave the congregation is either flawed or intentionally false. I won't comment on the likelihood of either, but it does demand correction.

It all points back to the overreaching theme of being a Witness. What we knew was only what we were told. Those that held control over what we knew also controlled what we believed. So long as the only information that a person can obtain from Watchtower is a carefully crafted lie built on deliberate ignorance, then there's nothing to be gained from engaging them. In that respect, I no longer see the stigma of rebellion. The self awareness to take ownership of one's own knowledge (or lack thereof) isn't rebellion. It's maturity. It's wisdom. 

On the Topic of Loss

I've never spoken publicly on what I'm about to write. I've grown up to be a reasonably healthy adult, which is more than I can say for some. Not all have gone on to lead productive lives, or have healthy relationships with people who love them. We all have our journey, and this is one small part of mine...

When I was a preteen, I was abused by a family member. It was abrupt, violent, and painful. It was also not an isolated incident. To be perfectly forthright, I don't really remember too many details, except for the most pertinent. Even at that, the memories are clouded by the very deliberate efforts to bury the pain and embarrassment of it all. It was not until the perpetrator came to me to apologize that those memories became available to me. In my humble estimation, they were granted to me in the most spiteful way possible.

My attacker is also one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Rather than dig into the nauseatingly common references to the Australian Royal Commission, the Charity Commission, or any other references to Witness policies on pedophiles, I'd simply like to discuss the realities of my aftermath.

The most immediate and obvious effect was the loss of my innocence. Family was always a focus as I grew up. Our reunions were wonderful, joyous times. The were precious to me. Sadly, it was during one of these reunions that I was exposed to the brutal truth that even family could be willing to hurt me. That's a lesson that shouldn't even exist. It should be true that family can't or wont hurt you. It was unfortunate to learn that at such an age I could be so wrong.

I lost my faith in people as well. Someone who could be so loved, as he was by the rest of my family, was nothing more than a charlatan. Those who loved him were either complicit or ignorant. Either way, they were unworthy of trust. What I would find out later drove a spike of bitterness into an already aching wound.

But I moved on. I watched my associations at later reunions, gave up on activities I used to enjoy, and generally lost my taste for even being there. There were bright spots, of course; usually by way of my cousin Mandy. As an adult, I just gave up going altogether. It wasn't worth the spoiled weekend to stay as far away from him as I could. You never really stop looking over your shoulder after something like that.

As I aged, the memories became buried. I even stopped understanding why I didn't want to go. The aversion was palpable, but not quantifiable. The thought of even setting foot on those grounds was repulsive to me and I had long ceased understanding why. I had lost my family.

Time continued on and I had my own family. It was not all sunshine and roses, sadly, and we eventually separated. During that time, I spent a bit of time at the old family homestead with my daughter and parents. Quite unexpectedly, my attacker arrived for some unexplained reason. He talked with my parents for a while with their typical cordiality. Afterward, he caught up with me in the yard, away from curious ears.

It was almost as if a cloud followed him. Blurry at the edges, I couldn't quite grasp my unease. But I knew it was there nonetheless. It was then that he apologized to me. A very quick, disgusting, and painful highlight reel flashed before my eyes. I both understood my unease in an instant, and wanted to deny its foundation. But there it was. All out in the open after twenty years of silence. I had lost my comfort zone.

The explanation of why he was now apologizing was almost as distasteful as the act for which he apologized. He'd been found out due to another victim stepping forward. He had confessed his sin to the Elders and, as part of his penance, he was to seek forgiveness from his victim(s). I couldn't respond to that request at the time, but I was later encouraged to pray over the matter and seek Jehovah's direction. The matter would remain internal, as nearly all child abuse matters do with Witnesses.

What the elders did for him was to give him absolution. When they did that, they implied that all was right with Jehovah's organization. The scales of righteousness were in balance and there was no need to pursue the matter further. When they asked me to seek God's guidance in handling it as a Christian, they explicitly asked me to deal with it as a congregational matter. I had lost my hope and expectation of justice.

The world cares more about righting the wrongs of victims than the Society does. The elders, my attacker, and anyone else who had intimate knowledge of my ordeal, exhibited more concern for the soul of a predator than for those who should never have been prey. I received no counseling with an eye towards healing. I received no support. I received no backing to report it to secular authorities.

The aftermath was mine to bear. Alone. I had lost my God.

The bible is very clear about what happens to those who commit crimes of various types. With the exception of cities of refuge, people guilty of crimes, including rape, were to be punished. The law of God made sure that victims were vindicated. That is a practice that Watchtower has long since cast aside.

Now, I don't want to downplay the importance of redemption. I believe that it's important that all human error have an opportunity to be righted. The simple truth is that often redemption takes the form of settling one's debts. Absolution relieves the burden, but not the obligation. Absolution is what elders offer to pedophiles. In doing so, they leave the injured without succor.

 

With that, they have lost me.

But... Why?

An acquaintance recently had a discussion with me about her daughter coming out as gay. It seems to be rather commonplace these days. The whiplash effect of having homosexuality sanctioned by the Supreme Court of the US has left the conservatives of the nation with a stinging slap to the face. The inundation of sexual identity celebration is likely to die down somewhere in the next two to ten years.

As she related this story to me, it was clear that she was distressed by the news. She, herself, claimed to be very 'conservative' and was having a tough time dealing with it. I chose not to point out the fact that she is prone to heavy drinking, smoking, toking, and ill-advised sexual dalliances. So claiming to be conservative solely on the basis of a child's sexuality is really a disservice to conservatism.

I've sometimes spoken about my parents' flippant approach to Christianity. Some things were iron clad. Other things were not. There wasn't enough dedication, however, to even garner my respect. The conversation I had with the acquaintance reminded me why.

Most people in the world have no clue why they feel as they do on any given topic. Religion, politics, even the cars they drive, are all a conglomeration of opinions that have a source, but little to no cognitive reasoning behind them. As the outcasts of (a) religion, most of us are quite aware of why we don't want to be Jehovah's Witnesses any longer. But we were forced into this awareness by the nature of our departure.

Catholics, Baptists, Shinto, Muslim, Hindu, Zoarastrians... they all had the opportunity to walk away unscathed and unjustified. There were no committees to meet with. There were no publications geared toward their reindoctrination. There were no family members appearing on a convention part heroically, however woefully, claiming to put God above Family.

Anyone but a Jehovah's Witness could leave their faith with no more explanation that 'it didn't feel right.' To that end, the world at large has never been held to the lens of introspection. WHAT feels wrong? WHY don't I agree? Questions that no one has ever been demanded to ask of themselves.

The result of that is that it's nearly impossible to have an informed conversation with a person and hope for a reasoned response. You'll get passion. You'll get dedication. But you'll rarely get enlightenment.

This is the point where I admit that I am less my Father's son than I once thought myself to be. Dad, having been an elder, was know for being the one who listened. I don't believe he like the responsibility of shepherding the flock. I also don't believe he liked having to apply the letter of the law in committee when he clearly had empathy for the stricken, but more conservative elders were prepared to issue judgement.

Dad, for all his faults, did teach me to listen. When speaking to someone in need, I assume myself to start from a position of ignorance. I cannot help if I do not understand.

Elders, generally, begin with the premise of known quantity. There is a Watchtower policy that must be upheld. To that end, a person under suspicion must then be weighed and measured to see if they can be absolved. They are in fact guilty first, and it is incumbent upon the accused to save themselves. Kind of reminds me of the Gestapo, but with less torture.

There is an important truth that I learned many years ago. Having a destination in mind is a good start, but knowing where you're starting from is just as important to getting there. Shepherding and, in the case of my acquaintance, parenting is very much the same way. Providing direction to a child is only useful if you can understand where they are coming from. To do that, it's important to have the humility to cast off, or at least examine, preconceived notions.

Humanity is plagued with blind acceptance. Much of what we cling to is indoctrination of belief, tradition, or opinion held by those who raised us. Unfortunately, reflection with an eye towards critical examination of those things is often discouraged. Why doesn't my acquaintance want her daughter to be a lesbian? She doesn't know. She doesn't know because she doesn't ask. She doesn't ask because she was taught not to. She was taught not to because her parents were taught not to.

It is a persistent paradigm that serves only one purpose. To weed out undesirables. If you can blindly follow, welcome. If you cannot, then expect to be an outcast. Thus, the nature of religion, as an "agreed upon" form of worship, with attendant the rites and beliefs, is a form of society. As humans, we are prone to social congregation, which brings a number of benefits. As a result, it can be hard to let go of prejudices, even unfounded ones, because it can brand us as undesirable, even if we don't engage in the prohibited practice. Loss of society is too much for most, and forced loss of society is cripplingly traumatic, as any who have been disfellowshipped can attest.

I'm sure that when my dad sat in committee and listed to the confession of a sinner, he tried to place himself in their shoes. He empathized as best he could. However, he was still going to be there with the yardstick of the Watchtower to measure the repentance of an injured person.

I can't do it. I can't sit among the ashes with a person and tell them that what or who they are is wrong. That's not my place. I only know that because I wondered why I should think that it ever was.

On Having the Last Laugh

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.

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]