The public image of Jehovah’s Witnesses is that of a mildly annoying group that are, for the most part, harmless.
If you have been following the Seven Skeletons story thus far though, I hope that this is not your current view of the religion. You should now see that inflicting pain on their members and generating fractured families is just a basic part of how they operate.
You can multiply my story by millions. Wherever you find the Witnesses there is a trail of trauma – for those still inside, those that dare to leave and even for those that still believe with all their heart. No one in the Watchtower world remains unscathed.
There are issues plaguing Jehovah’s Witnesses that my story doesn’t even get into. For example there is their well-documented child sexual abuse problem and their efforts to cover up the issue that only serve to enable the child abusers. Another example is their policy on not accepting blood transfusions, which, quite literally, kills people.
Governments around the world are starting to see the threat that this religion poses and are asking questions. The Witnesses are therefore battling for their tax-exempt lives in Australia, France, Norway and the United Kingdom, among others. In response to legal challenges, they have moved things around doctrinally, always on a superficial level, just to stay ahead of the regulations.
Will the Bahamian media and the Bahamian government begin to do similar due diligence and examine Jehovah’s Witnesses more closely? This remains to be seen.
What is clear is that classifying the stories of former members, like the one I’m telling now, as internal family disputes, or as outliers, is grossly missing the point. The problems with Jehovah’s Witnesses are clear and systemic and won’t go away. Pretending that they are another branch of Christianity, instead of the high control cult that they are, isn’t going to help anyone.
1.
In the year 2025, Jehovah’s Witnesses are a religion in transition. They are reeling from their most recent and perhaps greatest prophetic failure. For more than a century their long held belief has been that the generation that saw the first world war would not die before the coming of Christ and the end of the world.
This belief – the one that I grew up with – was both their reason for being and the source of their evangelical urgency. What has happened instead is that the people who they promised would ‘never die’ are all gone. Now in the aftermath, they are scrambling in real time to hold their religion together using the doctrinal equivalent of spit and duct tape before the rest of the faithful realize what’s going on.
What happens to a doomsday cult when the doom is postponed far into the future?
We are about to find out.
The only certainty is that the religion’s leadership want to retain their power. While they have recently made, what by their standards are radical changes – things like letting men grow beards and women wear pants in the ministry – they have given up nothing in real terms.
The religion is still claiming divine direction, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. They are still demanding the total subservience of their membership, even if none of the ever changing direction makes sense. The reality of the rank and file member is that they are still expected to follow the leadership totally or be cast out and shunned.
In short, Jehovah’s Witnesses are evolving before our eyes — but will remain a cult.
Or, put another way, they are still dangerous.
2
Being a Jehovah’s Witness is like being stuck in the Matrix. It’s like living in George Orwell’s 1984. The mental fog is so thick that you could slash at it with a machete for days and get nowhere.
If you have friends or family in your life who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, trying to pressure them into listening to the Seven Skeletons podcast or reading the articles is probably not the way. The indoctrination of the Witnesses thrives on perceived persecution — they see it as fighting the devil himself and it ironically makes the chains tighter. Trying to forcibly open someone’s eyes will likely have the opposite of the intended effect.
There is debate amongst ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses on what is the best way to wake up someone who is deeply indoctrinated. My personal opinion is that the shutters can only be opened from the inside because even when people leave the religion, I have seen many cases where they keep carrying the Witness world view and doctrine with them. Deprogramming is hard and painful work and can take a lifetime.
So what can you do?
Read, watch and educate yourself. Information will inoculate you and help you understand the threat they pose. If you know someone who is just studying with Jehovah’s Witnesses this is a good time to invite them to go on youtube or google and just do some simple searches.
To this end I’ve prepared a page of resources on Mentalslavery.com that can provide you with a starting point. The internet has given ex-members an excellent platform for exposing this cult and there is an ever growing amount of information out there that can help.
If you have friends and family who are already locked in the religion’s grasp please be gentle, please be kind. Don’t push them too hard if they aren’t ready. For the most part, Witnesses are good people who were either born into the religion, like me, and had no choice, or they were recruited at a very vulnerable point in their lives.
We who can see Witness’ false promises for the con job they are, just can’t pretend anymore that everything is all right.
* Resources for Recovering Jehovah’s Witnesses
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