In my case, I was blessed that my family never got involved in the Watchtower and I only studied with Jehovah’s Witnesses and I was never baptized, so when I walked away, the Witnesses were not required by Watchtower policy to “shun” me.  However, because I have taken a public stance against the Jehovah’s Witness belief system and have even started my own website ministry (which includes my blogs here on this site), more and more I am finding my friends in the organization not speaking to me if they know of my current activities. 

Of course, those that do not know about my ministry still talk to me if they see me in public, and thankfully, I live in a big a city where I don’t run into them much anymore, so I am not as affected as I would be in a much smaller town or with family involved.  The hardest part about shunning for me was when I first left and had one friend who refused to let me in her home when I dropped by for a visit.  I could tell she and her husband were afraid of me as I had confided my differences of belief more to them than anyone else. So, although Jehovah’s Witnesses claim on their official watchtower.org website:

I can vouch from my own personal experience that this is not true and I know many others who can say the same thing.  It is simply a matter of leaving and showing that you cannot or will not go along with some of the beliefs of the organization, that can get you shunned, if anything for “fear” of “apostasy.”

My friend Tressa is another one who falls into this second category. She raised her 5 children into the Watchtower and I was there the day her daughter who had been disfellowshipped got reinstated into the organization and made the official phone call to tell her mom that she would not longer be speaking to her or letting her see her granddaughter. She was crushed as you can imagine, but she knew official Watchtower policy doesn’t allow family or friends to speak to those who officially left.  Since she first left when they disfellowshipped her because she divorced her abusive Jehovah’s Witness husband who had beat her up so badly she ended up in the hospital. After enduring years of abuse, she had no choice but to divorce him because she was afraid his abuse would kill her next time. But the JW policy doesn’t allow for divorce under any circumstances (except fornication), so she took the disfellowshipping to save her life.  This not only saved her physical life, it saved her spiritual life because she ended up studying the beliefs and learning the lies the Watchtower teaches about the person and work of Jesus Christ. When she saw Jesus for WHO He is, she accepted Him as her personal Lord and Savior and got free!  

As an Ex-Jehovah’s Witness who has found life and freedom outside the lies of the Watchtower, she is now viewed as a “threat” by her adult children who are still in the Watchtower organization.  Although we have seen one victory with her daughter who recently left and found Christ too, her four sons remain lost and blinded by the Watchtower.  Since Tressa is viewed as a “threat” to their spirituality, she doesn’t even get to see her grandchildren.  

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