I recently found the sub-Reddit EXJW and noticed that most people are dealing with a relatively recent change. I haven’t yet seen someone give a perspective from a couple of decades out, so I put together my no-holds-barred 20+ year retrospective as an adult out in the world. Maybe you’ll find something useful here. Maybe I’m just entertaining myself with a walk down memory lane.

My observations:

  1. Armageddon did not come.
  2. I don’t have a pet giraffe.
  3. I didn’t move into that mansion I saw while out in service.
  4. I didn’t slide into a life of debauchery and depression.
  5. I have had a pretty cool life after leaving.In 1979 my mom started studying with JWs. I was eight. Mom studied with me and both of my brothers, but Dad insisted for a few years that we still go to the Lutheran church. As kids, we had nightmares of being caught in Dad’s church when the fireballs came at Armageddon.

This was a real fear. Mom showed us pictures of Lot’s wife and Sodom and Gomorrah in that orange Bible stories book and explained this was going to happen soon. I had incredible anxiety and shame when I had to tell friends and Sunday School teachers that we no longer celebrated holidays and we couldn’t go over to friends’ houses to play because they were worldly and ‘bad associations spoil useful habits’.

Mom taught us that if we didn’t take a stand like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego then we might not survive Armageddon which was going to be “any day now”. She showed that even though we were children, we needed to take a stand so God didn’t kill us like he did the children at Noah’s flood or Sodom and Gomorrah. She was seriously scared “we might not make it”. Nuclear proliferation, homosexuals, abortions, pedophiles, smurfs and old people born before 1914 were obvious signs the end was near in the late 70’s, early 80’s and I wasn’t ready to die yet.

Today, 40 years later, I see not much has changed. JWs still are still certain the end is near. JWs are still certain they have The Truth. JWs still feel persecuted by the world. JWs still feel they have more insight into the real nature of the world than world-class scientists and leaders.

I became a pioneer after high school because the end was so near. Like most of the other JW kids my age, I was soon married.

It was easy to justify because 1) Jehovah wasn’t going to catch me fornicating at Armageddon and 2) no matter who I married, we were going to be in the new system soon and we would all be perfect, so how compatible did we really need to be?

I found out a few weeks after the wedding, at the age of 19 (she was 21), that she had been molested for nearly fifteen years by her step-father, a “brother” who had also molested several other girls, crimes that were covered up by the organization and elders for years. My young wife would wake up at night crying because she thought I was her step-dad sneaking into her room. She started drinking, then having schizophrenic hallucinations. (She wasn’t yet diagnosed and I had no label for what was happening.) She tried to stab me with a knife thinking I was her step dad, asking me why I would do that to her. She would wander around the neighborhood in a fugue in the middle of the night and I would have to follow at a distance to make sure she didn’t hurt herself.

I was a ministerial servant at this point and was embarrassed and traumatized by her behavior and my own helplessness. A year later she ran off with a “worldly” guy.

I was coerced and guilted into a second marriage at 21 by an elder and a mother who … long story, but the guilt worked, I married an 18 y/o only to realize immediately that I did it for multiple wrong reasons.

I came to realize my first wife needed help, not my judgment & criticism. I was disfellowshipped at 24 after sleeping with my first wife while married to my second. I realized at the time there was no possible way of getting out of that nightmare life without hurting or disappointing someone. My poor second wife! It was all pretty dreadful and Stephen King-level surreal.

It took a few years to undo the trauma. I wish I could have found something like this subreddit community. You guys are awesome.

I had nightmares about meeting w the elder committee for about 5 years after I left. That those three elders, a car salesman, a janitor and a retired construction worker would interview young men and women and ask them questions about where they touch each other, kiss each other, whether there was “penetration”, if you took your pants off, whether there was an orgasm, if oral sex occurred, etc is insane.

That these elders – and lots of elders in the org – interact with young girls this way when those girls have been abused as sex toys by brothers who were never imprisoned or even publicly reproved, is criminally insane. My trauma was nothing compared the half dozen girls I found out had been molested in that one congregation or the hundreds (or more) a circuit overseer confided had been victimized across the U.S. twenty-five years back – and now I see is it has been even a bigger, global, persistent stain.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are not on anyone’s radar, and it took me a while to stop thinking I was somehow important. I think it was partly youthful naivety, but also a learned perspective from constantly being told I was part of a special club that would live forever, people who know better than leading scientists and Nobel laureates about things like human history or whether evolution is a lie. These things are pretty laughable after taking university courses, teaching and working with real scientists. Breakthroughs in geology and paleontology, genetics and biology are brilliant, amazing and benefit all of us, but not compatible with JW beliefs.

I find that education makes people more loving in that they judge less and are better at identifying and proactively addressing real causes of problems. For example, my first wife had serious mental health issues as a result of her abuse. Myself and the elders gave her ultimatums, criticism, thoughts and prayers, but only when she saw a doctor and a therapist did the suicidal tendencies (attempts) go away. I’m proud that I was the one who introduced her and her sister to a therapist.

Two of my mom’s friends, both active JWs killed themselves after years of depression and other problems. In hindsight, they had textbook mental health symptoms, but the congregation saw evil choices and “Satanic influences”.

Evil is often ignorance and powerlessness masquerading as righteousness. Labelling something or someone as “evil” has, in my experience, been aligned with people who lack education. It is like saying a person with Alzheimer’s is possessed by a demon as a substitute for working on a cure. True compassion and humility is seeing something like schizophrenia before it has been labeled or understood and NOT condemning or judging the person. I was not that person as a Jehovah’s Witness.

That they are convinced they are good people makes them even more poisonous. That this is a global, persistent problem for Jehovah’s Witnesses is pretty sick.

The world has its rough edges. Life is really really tough for some people, especially without an education or when you’re from underprivileged corners of the world, but making sweeping generalizations about most people in the world being less happy is intellectually dishonest. I figured out how to be happy, healthy and productive.

Today, 40 years later, I see not much has changed. JWs still are still certain the end is near. JWs are still certain they have The Truth. JWs still feel persecuted by the world. JWs still feel they have more insight into the real nature of the world than world-class scientists and leaders.

Life is amazing! To be alive for one day is an immeasurable gift. But it took me years to unlearn early emotional reflexes. I believe JWs have a taught persecution complex that becomes self-fulfilling and self-destructive. And, our brains are naturally wired to think in relative values. For an ex-JW to suddenly see they are not going to live forever in paradise with a pet giraffe in North America feels like being cheated. You are NOT being cheated! You also will not have 72 virgins nor fly like superman nor are you going to be like Einstein and explore the universe and become a world-class pianist or move into that mansion you’ve been eyeing out in service in the nicer part of town after Armageddon comes. But you have something truly great. You have today and it is so valuable and lovely.

There are pretty solid, rational explanations for a lot of what we see in the world today… unfortunately like every scientific insight such as a cure for a disease or how to drop a robot on Mars or why climate change is scary, real proofs require observational data, math, often expensive equipment and a great deal of time. The majority of people do not have the skills or resources to digest a real proof regardless of which side of an argument they sit, so the masses have to choose to believe based on their experiences and community. This is a problem for which no one yet has a solution. If you want to unravel quantum mechanics or organic chemistry or any other modern magic for yourself, it’s gonna take a few years if ever.

My advice to anyone thinking about leaving: I’m not so naive to not see I’ve been lucky in my adult life. One of the things that made my departure easier is that my mom passed away while I was still in school, my father never converted and my brothers ran like hell. I didn’t have kids so I only lost my second child-bride, my in-laws and every friend I had when I left the org. It would be even worse if, at the time, I had been shunned by immediate and extended family. I understand the Physically-In-Mentally-Out (PIMO) thing. If that is you, my advice is to educate yourself fearlessly. The eighth-grade reading level of the Watchtower and Awake does not count.

Watch TED talks, browse Wikipedia, be intellectually honest, then use facts and statistics to sow reality within the JW community. Make it easier for people like younger me who can leave. Alleviate their trauma. Don’t judge. If you have not read about Leon Festinger’s research on cognitive dissonance, do it. It can relieve you of the burden of believing you can change everyone’s mind. It will show you the cognitive blind spots that make us human. Half of the population will never allow the little death that comes from finding their view of reality is deeply flawed.

My advice to those who figured out The Truth About The Truth (TTATT) and finally got out: don’t be too angry and use the emotion as motivation to learn and grow. Don’t be hard on yourself. It takes years to stop feeling guilty or ashamed or questioning whether you are a good person, even when you know that logic is on your side. Don’t hate yourself for being human. One of the truly wonderful things I’ve seen on this subreddit are all of the people recommending that you should find a professional therapist. YES! Seeing a therapist and having a smart, educated, neutral party listen and provide insights is so important.

Be awesome. Be a good person. Be honest. Be compassionate. Life can be wonderful.

Anonymous.