Subject and Expectation:
In this fourth installment recounting his experiences growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, The Small Town Humanist begins to unveil the shocking events that led to his unjustified removal from the religion by means of a personal attack from the organization. Part Three (found here) went into detail of his years spent as a Ministerial Servant in the congregation and in The Watchtower.
Marital Separation
Upon returning home from New York, she immediately left to her parent’s house to pick up our dogs. While she was away, I made the phone call to Fred. He seemed like the logical one to contact with my news of stepping down because I was closer to him than the other two. I informed him of my decision to step down from being a Servant, emphasizing the main reason being to concentrate on my family. I gave him an abbreviated version of the reality that had become our marriage. I explained to him that it was all too much responsibility, that it demanded too much time away from my family, and that it was very evident to both her and I that our marriage was in dire straits.
Fred’s personality was a little odd. You could ask him a question or make a statement to him and sometimes it would take an awkward amount of time for him to respond…sitting there staring either at you blankly or off into space. When he did finally respond, they were often very short answers. This is what I got after telling him my news on the phone. The phone call did not last very long and we hung up. I knew well that this would not be the last that I was to hear from Fred and the body of Elders.
We got back from New York on a Sunday. She was upset that we had to miss the Sunday morning meeting because we were driving. I was not. I was sitting on the bed, waiting for her to get out of the shower. As she came out of the bathroom I asked her to please sit on the bed with me so that we could talk. I just started talking and it all came out; there was no more holding any of it in. Not only did I inform her that I hadn’t loved her in a very long time and that I was going to be moving into my Grandmother’s attic to be alone for awhile, but I also broke the news to her that I was stepping down from being a Ministerial Servant. She asked why. My response was simple…because our marriage was horrible and we needed to focus on whether it was salvageable or not, not to mention the work that both of us needed to do on ourselves personally. She just could not wrap her mind around how walking away from a spiritual position “assigned to me by God” would be anything but bad. This is simply who she was and how she always had been.
The life of an Elder and a Ministerial Servant is one of extreme service. Many hours are spent in spiritual matters that keeps them away from home. It is very common for this to cause deep seated marital issues due to the extreme amount of time spent at the Kingdom Hall, out in “field service” preaching, spiritual responsibilities, studying the Bible with as many interested ones as possible, coupled with the inevitable need to work to pay for the necessities of life. Most times, these marital troubles are camouflaged from the public by the fake façade that many put on to go along with the idea pushed by The Governing Body that a marriage spent in the service of Jehovah is nothing short of “the best life possible in this world.”
This is far from the truth. I can attest to this claim because this was the case with us. We were that couple. I also was very communicative with all of my fellow Servant brothers in our congregation and many surrounding congregations. We all vented to each other on a regular basis that they all were experiencing the same things. We were all covering it up because we surely couldn’t let any of the brothers and sisters see that a life of a young married couple buried in Jehovah’s work was anything less than perfect.
Stepping Down From Serving as a Ministerial Servant
A couple days after I had broken the news to Fred and then to my wife, I was at the house packing up my remaining necessities to move in with my Grandmother. My Grandmother also had a disease that was eating her alive and I seemed like the best option in our family with the circumstances allowing me to move in and care for her. I received a phone call as I was packing. It was the expected request from the Elders to pay me a visit. About an hour later all three of them showed up at our door. I invited them in politely and we sat in the living room. She went upstairs to give us privacy.
The whole conversation bothered me. It was as if they were not going to accept the fact that I was stepping down. As if they were not going to allow it. They spoke in a manner that exhibited stubbornness and I sensed anger in all three of them. I’m still not sure how to take their response, but it definitely was not a loving visit at all. There was almost zero concern as to the fact that I had decided to make such a drastic move because of the situation my family was in, and that I desired to work on myself. Almost nothing they said or asked referenced the troubles between my wife and I at all. They basically were there to try to talk me out of stepping down and moving out. It did not work and I figured out a way to politely end the conversation to get them out of the house because they obviously didn’t understand where our marriage was and they were not helping anything at all.
She came downstairs after they left and we discussed it. She expressed how unhappy she was that I removed myself from the position. She also seemed nowhere near as concerned as I was for the condition that our relationship was in. It was odd. It was like I was the only one that was concerned.
Coming Clean to My Wife
I was at a point now in my life where I needed something more. This life that I had led with this woman and the years I had spent since my younger teens devoted to concentrating on others was no longer working. I had never put myself first. My desires in life, my dreams of what I wanted my adult life to be, children, a nice home, a successful career…the same things that everyone else seemed to be allowed to concentrate on outside of my religion. I was raised to believe unconditionally that these desires were the epitome of selfishness. None of these things should ever make a person feel even the slightest amount of guilt because they desire it. Yet, this is exactly what it is like being a Jehovah’s Witness. Your dreams do not matter. Your time does not matter. Your future does not matter. The only thing that matters is the religion, God, and preaching. I had begun to realize that this is not a healthy or fair life to live.
So now came the time for me to be completely transparent with my wife about what had happened two years prior with Hayley if I truly wanted to grow and move forward with my life. Whether we were to divorce or not, it was a mistake that I made in my past and I needed to let go of it. She also deserved to know as my wife. I owed her the truth.
Flashback to the Man She Almost Married:
Towards the middle of our six-year marriage, my wife had done something that bothered me to the core. From the time I was a young child I had always been the strongest witness in our family. I was always the spiritually strong one that encouraged my whole family, even my parents that stopped going to meetings regularly during my teens. You could say that I never strayed at all, even during adolescence. I never did anything that I wasn’t supposed to with a girl, I never went to parties, I never drank, I never partook in anything that I wasn’t supposed to. My wife was not the same.
In the Jehovah’s Witness Religion, my wife was what is referred to as one that is “leading a double life.” Just as the term denotes, she exuded a facade that she was a spiritually strong sister in the congregation who loved Jehovah, yet she was having sex and had a few serious relationships with non-witnesses. One of those relationships was with a man named Eric. When I had proposed to her, she had broken off her engagement to Eric just a few months prior. Eric was what Witnesses call a “worldly person.” This is anyone in the world that is not a Jehovah’s Witness and they are looked at as something to avoid.
My wife and I graduated together in 1991 from the same high school. After graduation, she drifted from the religion and lived a “worldly life” for awhile. She broke off the engagement with Eric in late 1992 and began coming back to the Kingdom Hall regularly. We were engaged in 1993, and had our wedding in 1994. We were very open with each other about things. She once informed me that if it wasn’t for me, she quite possibly could’ve ended up marrying Eric.
One night in 1997 while laying in bed talking, she informed me that she had been talking with Eric recently, ”witnessing” to him. This means that she was preaching to him about the Bible and our religion. I asked her for details. She had been talking to him on the phone regularly for a few weeks and was very proud that she was making headway with him. She then informs me that she and her mother were going to visit Eric and stay overnight during the coming weekend with him. He lived a couple hours away and it was her intent to go there with the hopes of possibly converting him.
Regardless of the fact that I expressed how uncomfortable I was that she had been regularly communicating with him unbeknownst to me and how I did not think it was right at all for her to go stay with him, she did it anyway. I was just supposed to be ok with all of it because the whole thing was justified with religious intent.
Why did I feel the need to tell all of this? I chose to do this to make a point. In life, we all make stupid mistakes. I have always felt strongly that there are simply two types of mistakes. Premeditated and not premeditated. Ones that are momentary lapses in our judgment and ones that we actually give thought to and even plan out. Because when we commit these sorts of mistakes, there are plenty of opportunities to meditate on whether or not we want to go through with it. In my opinion, these are worse because they speak volumes of our character, who we are inside, what our deep seated values are and what we strive to exemplify. It is an outward display of who we are choosing to be in this life.
What she did with Eric never sat well with me at all. It also troubled me so much that she could be so bold as to use God and the religion as an excuse to try and justify the fact that she was a married woman that made the conscientious decision to go and spend the weekend with her ex fiancé.
My Wife’s Reaction and Telling the Elders
I proceeded with telling her everything; the whole story, just as I articulated it here in Part Three. I’m sure you can imagine how any woman would’ve reacted to the story that I told her. She was no different and I understood. I took my medicine. I waited for her to calm down a little bit and stop hitting me and then I proceeded to tell her that, in accord with how Jehovah’s Witnesses are trained and programmed to do, I had every intention of confessing to the Elders of my sin that I had committed two years prior. I told her that my intention was to seek their help in figuring out why I allowed myself to cave to the pressure, and to hopefully receive some scriptural encouragement to learn from the mistake and to take the needed time to concentrate on my own spirituality.
She asked what it meant for us. I answered by telling her the truth. That is was my hopes to take some much-needed time alone for some personal growth and searching while also taking care of Gramma. That I absolutely needed it for my emotional well-being and that I wished for us not to rush into a divorce; that we should take some time and see if we could fix things and possibly heal. I could tell from the reaction on her face that something was brewing inside. I felt truly bad for her so I understood that she must have had a million emotions going on and didn’t pry.
Jehovah’s Witnesses view divorce in the most extreme way possible. They regularly highlight the fact that the Bible defines very few things that God “hates.” Divorce is one of them. For a JW couple to get a divorce without one of them getting disfellowshipped(kicked out of the congregation and shunned by everyone including family) is almost inconceivable. It simply does not happen very much at all. I have personally known of many situations where the husband was even violently abusive to his wife and the Elders encouraged the wife to stick it out and remember that she is to be in submission to her husband, by God’s commandment. That being said, there will definitely be no standing for a young couple getting a divorce without someone going down as the scapegoat.
There we were, the ideal young spiritually strong couple that was going to be living apart. This was not good at all.
I haven’t mentioned yet that my ex wife had spent years in the theater. Acting was one of her true passions. I have to hand it to her that she was actually pretty good at it too. I was only at Gramma’s house for a couple of days when the phone rang. It was Ray calling. He asked if I would please come to the Kingdom Hall to meet with the three of them to talk. I assumed the obvious; they wanted to see what was going on with us. It was obvious the she had informed them. I drove to the Hall the next evening after work to meet with them, just us four.
I saw all of their cars already there when I pulled in the parking lot. Ray. Joe. Fred. As I opened the door to the Kingdom Hall, this same door that I had gone through since I was a baby, I felt something that I had never felt before in my life. It was cold. Something was wrong but I didn’t recognize the feeling. As my body turned the corner from the foyer into the auditorium in seemingly slow motion, it was what I saw that spoke to me as to what I felt. All three of them had their chairs situated close together all facing one lonesome chair…my chair. This was a judicial meeting and I hadn’t yet realized it.
The Winds Pick Up and The Storm Begins
Still moving in slow motion I settled into the chair that would end speaking to me that I was indeed “being called to take the stand.” Witnesses call these meetings judicial meetings. They are very similar to a proceeding in a courthouse. They are conducted by the Body of Elders with a member of the congregation that has committed a serious sin…a sin worthy of possibly being disciplined by means of being disfellowshipped, or excommunicated. I knew this not only because I had grown up from birth in this religion, but also because I had been asked to sit in on a few judicial meetings with the Elders and others in the past, in order to observe. They were looking at me as a possible Elder someday and wanted me to be exposed to these private meetings that sometimes were a necessity, to “keep the congregation clean.”
This organization sincerely believes they are the only true religion on the planet. I have had it programmed in my brain since I achieved the ability to first form thoughts as an infant that if any Witness is disfellowshipped, then they would most likely be destroyed at Armageddon by God because they were labeled by God’s spirit-appointed Elders as no longer a member of his only true religion. I was a twenty seven year old man sitting before them who believed this theory just as adamantly as they did.
My whole body froze as they began to inform me of why I was seated in front of them. I had to concentrate hard to even hear the words that they were speaking because my head was in such a fog; this was my body’s reaction to the thought I had that I may be sitting here possibly facing excommunication. Then I managed to catch a few words…”ongoing affair, wife, serious sin.” As these few words registered in my head, that was all it took to cause something inside of me to snap. I stumbled through my next sentence fighting what seemed to be an anxiety attack happening to me and finding it hard to breathe. I asked them to please repeat what they had just said. Then I heard the sentence that lit a fire inside of me. “We’re here to discuss with you an ongoing affair that you had with a stripper that (my wife’s name) informed us of because it is a serious sin.” I was stunned. I could hardly speak. Why had she done this? This was completely untrue. How could she tell this lie that could very possibly ruin my whole life and take everything and everyone away from me? Was there an absence of a heart in her of which I was unaware?
This woman that I had shared life with for almost six years was supposed to be my partner. She claimed to love God and devoted her life to being an honest Christian. I understood small lies and that everyone sort of does that but this was in another league. How could she do this to me knowing what the outcome would inevitably be? I simply couldn’t comprehend how she could even get the words out of her mouth to tell this lie, and then how she was able to go to sleep that night knowing full well that she had just sealed my fate to be disfellowshipped. As the conversation with the Elders ensued, I was still in my fog and my mind was racing. I imagined her lying in her bed, thoughts going through her head of me living everyday being shunned by every friend that I had and every family member that was a Witness. Did these thoughts not make her feel bad, knowing that I did not deserve this? Did she feel any remorse at all?
Then I snapped out of it suddenly and began to fight. I informed them that these claims made by my wife were absolutely not true and that I was completely willing to be candid with them and tell them what had happened with Hayley. There’s an interesting fact that some may not understand about confessing things in a judicial meeting as a Witness. When taking part in the act of confession in Catholicism, a parishioner confesses to sins as a generality. “I had impure thoughts,” “I cheated on a test,” “I had premarital sex with my boyfriend.” The confession is made, they are instructed to say some words and pray. Done. Not in the Jehovah’s Witness religion.
The Elders want to know every single detail of the sin and often never stop prying until every last detail is defined by the sinner. There is something very demeaning to the person and just plain creepy about this whole process. It really doesn’t matter if it is a case where a young child was molested or if it is a case of a woman being beaten violently. They will reason that the details help them to make a good judgment call as to whether or not you are repentant enough to have learned your lesson or if you need to be disfellowshipped to protect the congregation from your poisonous influence. The analogy that they use whenever talking on this subject of disfellowshipping from the platform to the congregation is that it is comparable to a bowl of fruit containing a rotten one among the fresh ones.
I guess its normal to compare the fragility of a human life to that of a piece of fruit.
My Reaction
As the conversation went on I grew more and more defensive. I came here with the intent of sitting down with these three men to hopefully receive some thoughtful, scriptural guidance for myself. This was the complete opposite of what I received. They were cold and harsh. It was like a tennis match; we went back and forth. They refused to budge and I refused to confess to something that was simply not true. They believed everything that she had told them. I held to the truth of what happened and owned my mistake. She must have put on the performance of a lifetime, worthy of an Oscar. She was a very dramatic crier as well and I later was informed that she had completely broke down to them, which I’m sure played on their emotions. I was also very aware that all three of these men were influenced by her physical appearance. On many occasions I had witnessed all three blushing when talking with her, smiling a lot and laughing, or slightly making some sort of physical contact with her when conversing.
All of these factors became clearer to me as the debate furthered. I had been a product of this religion, programmed from birth to understand every aspect of how it functioned and I was fully aware of how these judicial committees worked. I felt with every fiber of my being that this was going to be a war. There was no way that I was going to get out of this without a fight. I basically had two choices.
One: I could choose to just cave. Roll over and take the emotional pummeling that was sure to come. Succumb to their false reasons for attacking me and allow them to disfellowship me, publicly humiliating me to the entire community that surrounded my life…the congregation…my brothers and sisters…my family. I could allow her and her lies about me to surface after the gavel slammed on my life, ending every single entity of support that was at my disposal, justifying her lie and accepting the fact that it would forever follow me around that I had an ongoing affair with a stripper. This is simply how it works. When any small group of people are as close knit as Jehovah’s Witnesses are, claims of confidentiality can be made as much they want, but it simply does not stay as confidential. Everyone always finds out the juicy details in the end. I would also be known as being the responsible one for the demise of our marriage.
or…
Two: I could stand up for myself and for what is right and for the truth, defending it and myself at all costs. How completely ironic this whole situation was. I had been raised in a religion that refers to itself and its entire organization as being “The Truth” to be found by only a select few. The only “Truth” on this planet that God supports and directs. And yet, here I was, living through an unforgiving attack based solely on a horribly exaggerated lie told by one of its strongest members to three men that were “appointed by God’s Holy Spirit” to lead the congregation in that “truth.” I was forced into a corner by this lie and this attack and had to make a decision. A decision that would do wonders for my confidence and my inner strength to stand for what is right, but one that would also strip every friend and family member that I had from my life as if I had died, causing an indescribable loneliness and severe depression that I was completely unprepared for and lacking the skills to handle.
Well, so be it. Then a fight it shall be.
Continued here in Part Five: The Storm: Being Removed From the Jehovah’s Witness Religion
