Speak Up! Even if it costs everything

From being born into a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, baptized at 17 and living there for 35 years, gradually realizing that I didn’t belong there. I gradually moved out, walked quietly in the doors, tried to find a way where I could keep in touch with my family, but it was difficult.

On 25 October 2019, I appeared for the first time with my full name in the media, I ended up on the front page of Vårt Land. This is now almost three years ago. The reason was my reaction to the letter Jehovah’s Witnesses sent to the State Administrator, in which, in order to keep state aid, they declared that family ties are not affected by ostracism. They claimed that family life continues just as before. I couldn’t take it anymore.

Since then, I have been an outcast. Contact with my immediate family ended, as I always knew it would one day. The price of leaving religion had to be paid. The rules of the game were made clear to me from the time I was a child. All Jehovah’s Witnesses know the rules, from the time we are little children we know that family is something we have on loan, something that disappears if we are ostracized.

It took three years of letter writing, arguments and appeals to the administration. We eventually became many voices. A new law was passed in Parliament. Now, based on this law, the State Administrator’s investigation has concluded, and the Ministry of Children and Families has rejected the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ appeal. They no longer receive approximately $1.6 million a year from the Norwegian public, based precisely on their practice of ostracizing those who leave the faith, and especially the extreme mental pressure this is for children growing up.

Was it worth it for us who have now paid the price for speaking out?

What can you say? I do not know. I would like to see my mom and dad again. I would like to just be a completely normal son, not an unborn child they no longer recognize. I never wanted any of this. I never wrote the rulebook my life was supposed to follow. I was still a child when I accepted this world, a child raised in a parallel reality, where such things were normalized. Where the world outside was cold and evil, while the congregation represented safety and love. When I realized my error, there was no way out of Jehovah’s Witnesses safely with my family.

Is it my fault that it turned out like this? I ask myself this every day.

Who broke the bond between me and my parents? Between me and my siblings? Me? Because I couldn’t sit still, shut up and bow my head in shame? Did I burn all my bridges by opening my mouth? Was it my own cry that severed the family bond? Did I get what I deserved?

Is it my parents’ fault, those who believe that God requires this of them, who have been taught for a long life that they must choose between their own children and the god they worship, if they are pitted against each other? My parents probably know a grief at least as great as mine, they have lost their child. I am their child who speaks out in the media against the religion they have devoted their lives to. I am the one who is speaking against the god they have placed their hope in. Can you blame them when they do this?

Or is it the religious leaders? Is it the ones who have constructed this web of power and control? Is it the leaders of Jehovah’s Witnesses who interpret the Bible to the extent that one should cut off all contact with one’s apostate child? Is it those who punish their own members who do not follow the doctrine, telling them that this is a test of their loyalty to the religion they belong to, the god they worship? A doctrine and a form of worship where they are almost completely alone in the Christian world. What makes them interpret the scriptures so much more strictly than all the others who read the Bible? Is it because they have the Truth?

Is it perhaps God himself who is to blame? Is he an invisible power that demands blind loyalty who pits parents and children against each other? Is God the power that requires a father to choose between eternal life and contact with his lost child? As when he commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a test of loyalty, does he now demand that his worshipers today perform this burnt offering, kill their own child, figuratively speaking? Who is this god who demands such a thing?

Was it Jesus who created this conflict, when he said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” and further: “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. He who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me“?

This is the same Jesus who was otherwise so open and full of love, a rebel who skinned religious leaders when they made inhuman demands on their contemporaries. Was he not a person with deep concern for lost sheep, people in life crises? Was he the one who introduced this practice? Did he want this? Should I blame him for this?

I do not know. I have no answers. I just live my life.

You must assess it yourself, with your own conscience, with your own God. Look at your own children, and ask yourself the question, ‘What would I do? What kind of dad would I be like? Would I be a good role model? As a human here on earth, could someone convince me of this: that my children come at the back of the queue, behind a deity who demands his burnt offering, his confirmation?

My experiences have taken away my faith. I worship no God. But one thing I am sure of: if there is a God out there who will one day judge us humans, she will judge us based on how we treat our own children. I cannot think of a more important task that one has here on earth, as a human being.

Show me the god who demands that I no longer be a father to my children if I do not live up to his demands; and I will tell that god the same thing I am saying now, “You are not my God. You don’t speak for me. Get away from me.” Show me a religion that requires its members to reject their beloved children if they raise their voices, and I will label it an unhealthy, dangerous religion that harms the mental health of its own children.

Sometimes we must speak up, we must raise our voice. We must put our foot down and say that things are not okay. So let it be as it will be. Even if it costs everything.

– Jan Frode Nilsen