At the time he told me about his conversion, it sounded normal to me.  I understood why he accepted The Truth and I wouldn't have given it a second thought.  I grew up the same way he did.  We were poor.  No one would have thought about college, and there wouldn't have been any encouragement to do so.  The Witnesses considered a college education to be propaganda from Satan, and we were discouraged from dreaming of anything beyond The Truth.  So when my father told me about his life and why he adopted the JW beliefs, I nodded my head in agreement and believed that it was indeed fortunate for him to convert.

But after I left the Witnesses and found my way through 6 years of college, I found myself reflecting on his story often.  He had climbed his way into the American middle class by then, and as someone who did likewise, I began looking back on his life with a different perspective. It no longer seemed fortunate for my father to have found The Truth.  It seemed quite depressing.  I ran away from home at the age of 16 (the best decision of my life) and haven't really talked to him since, but I know that he still hasn't been to a dentist.  My aunts can't understand why he won't get his teeth fixed and they have commented on it many times, and I finally told them that he's waiting for Armageddon.  There's no need for dental care in this wicked system of things when you believe the New Order will soon solve your problems.  He is old enough to draw Social Security and I know that he has never saved anything meaningful for retirement --- again an unnecessary issue if Armageddon is due to arrive soon.

So as you know from my previous blogs, my sister also left home when she was a teenager, but unlike me, she went back to The Truth many years later.  Not long ago we had a conversation about that and I commented on how, being a member of the lower class of society that she is, I understood why she found The Truth to be so attractive.  I can tell you that suggesting that she was "lower class" sounded much better in my head than in real life, and it just pissed her off.  Never mind that she dropped out of high school and will live the rest of her life below the poverty line.  She has no prospects for improving her living situation, and she is considered a member of the lower socio-economic class by all respected measurements, but she didn't hear it that way.  I didn't mean it to be offensive.  I simply stated that, given the dire circumstances of her life, I understood why she went back to The Truth.  I even drew a comparison of her life to our father and went so far as to say that I thought The Truth would give her something valuable and I was happy for her --- but that's not what she heard.

But in spite of her thinking that I was a complete jerk in my assesment of why she found the Truth attractive, I think my statement was in fact "the truth."  No matter how far I go back into my past, my Kingdom Hall memories are dominated by people like my father and my sister.  People who are poor.  People who are looking for answers.  People who wouldn't dare to dream of improving their lives in this system of things.  People who are stuck on the bottom rung of society.  Actually, that's not entirely true.  I remember an unusual married couple in my southern California congregation.  The woman was absolutely beautiful.  She had red hair but I can't remember a single thing about her husband.  Doesn't matter.  What I mostly remember was her being the most beautiful and best dressed woman in the Kingdom Hall, and I remember the rest of the congregation looking at her with a slight veil of suspicion. She didn't belong there.  She dressed too nicely.  She had more money than anyone else.  I think we all wondered what was wrong with her and secretively imagined that she would never make it into the New Order, being that she wasn't like the rest of us.  She wasn't poor.  She didn't need to dream about the New Order.  She didn't need Armageddon to rescue her from troubles.

The rest of my congregation?  We needed Armageddon.  We needed the fantasy.  We needed the JWs to tell us why we had so little.  We needed the structure and control of The Truth.  It was all connected.  There was no reason for college.  No reason for hopes.  No reason for dreams.  Armageddon would solve everything.  That was thirty-plus years ago, and from my perspective, nothing has changed.  The Truth still delivers the same story.

How sad that is.

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written by modi , July 14, 2009

Interesting reading the events of your life that you are so generous to post. Although you might have meant well, given how you feel about JWs, you might have come off in a way that you might not have realized was condescending. Not sure how old you are, but how often does one refer to another as being of "lower class" these days? Maybe she just thought you were being a bitchy queen (one of my best friends is gay and refers to himself that way when he goes off in a bad mood...not trying to insult you

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written by Tori , August 20, 2009

my mother joined the day my younger sister was diagnosed as mentally challenged and they recommended institutionalizing her. That day a witness came to the door. She told them that if they could explain to her why God would do this to her child she would join and never question again. I don't think she told me what they said, but it was good enough for her. She wanted an answer and they found one for her. I'm not sure it is always dependant on your social or economic status (though primarily I would agree it is) but what it comes down to is wanting to be "rescued" from what ever situation you are in. My mother felt rescued.

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written by scott , August 23, 2009

Hi all....thanks so much for the comments. It's nice to know that my family wasn't the only one who felt "rescued" by The Truth.

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