** The spiritual heart of my first novel, Dancing with the Devil, centers around this topic. **
Those who know me understand that I was raised a Jehovah's Witness. Still have the psychological scars to prove it.
Anyway, this Facebook group is priceless. I could blow up this fantasy cover up and hang it over my sofa.
Remember ... this group isn't just for gays, per se, but is accepting of anyone abused by this secretive cult. Ex J-Dubs who get together for fellowship, like the BBQ they are planning. Naturally I can't go (with another round of chemo looming) but I'll be there in spirit.
Countdown to the Vital Voices group show at the Lex Leonard Gallery in downtown Jersey City. "Dancing..." off the page October 3rd & 4th
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"It's difficult to sum up When Romeo Wakes, the opening salvo in Taylor Siluwé's debut short story anthology. A string of adjectives easily spring to mind - shocking, surprising, sexy, surreal, gripping, frightening, brutal, numbing... Oh, and deeply poignant.
When Romeo Wakes makes a statement: Siluwé's work is something different, a revelation, a bit special."
Recently, events and rumors surrounding the Jehovah's Witnesses caused me to go back to this ex-JW board I'd once been addicted to. I checked out my profile and found the essay I'd written when my anger at all my wasted years was at its peak. I thought it was time to post it here. I'm not angry anymore, just so much wiser.
Although i was born and raised Jehovah's Witness, it was a slow process of realizing that something just wasn't quite right with it. It started when I was little when I realized that when Armageddon came, we were taught, only Jehovah's Witnesses were gonna be saved while all other people (some deeply religious, good-hearted people) were gonna be destroyed.
Even as a little boy, that notion didn't sit right with me.
It seemed a little arrogant that we were the only ones who interpreted this ancient text so accurately {a people who were staunchly against higher-education at one point} ... and everyone else was just, well, good-intentioned but doomed to die by Gods hand. and why would a loving God give us something, a roadmap to salvation, so cryptic that it would lead to countless interpretations making it impossible to be sure which is right?
Then I noticed other discrepancies with JW rhetoric:
-- they were once staunchly against organ transplants, believing it to be a odd form of cannibalism and therefore against God's law. So if you needed one during that phase of Witness evolution, you were just shit out of luck. Then the Governing Body {a small group of men who rule over 6 million JW's worldwide and 1Billion dollars net annual income } changed their mind completely, sixteen years later and now support this life saving development in medical technology. They are still against transfusions though.
-- they've wrongly predicted the end of this "wicked system of things" (in print) several times in their hundred some-odd year history (1914, 1925, 1975) ... and in the seventies, the WatchTower even printed how many of the faithful were "selling their homes" and devoting all their energies to full-time ministry, commenting how admirable it was for them to do this. However, when the end never came, in the '76 they ate their words:
"It may be that some who have been serving God have planned their lives according to a mistaken view of just what was to happen on a certain date or in a certain year. They may have, for this reason, put off or neglected things that they otherwise would have cared for. But they have missed the point of the Bibles warnings concerning the end of this system of things, thinking that Bible chronology reveals the specific date." (Watchtower, July 15, 1976, p. 440)
I questioned the congregation ELDERS about about these miscalculations. Their response ... The TRUTH just keeps getting brighter! This rehearsed cop-out was even repeated on the podium one Sunday to a chorus of applause and nodding heads. I didn't believe it for a minute, but being born into a faith makes it difficult to question things too adamantly.
But a fluctuating viewpoint is not faith, it's possibly marketing, or PR, or Madison Avenue, but it's certainly not faith.
In hindsight, growing up JW was a fearful existence. Living under the threat that "Armageddon in near!" has a profound effect on how you live your life and how you plan for your future. Every violent thunderstorm had me wondering, 'Is this it?', as I peeked out the window expecting to see chariots of fire in the sky, with Angels surgically smiting all those who didn't go to the Kingdom Hall three times a weeks and door to door selling WatchTower & Awake magazines at every possible moment.
And then of course the coming out gay thing ... major drama there. My attraction for men trickled during my early teens, but rushed in like a tsunami in my late teens and washed all my religion away. Well not all of it. I retained enough to believe that God was gonna destroy me in the very near future because I liked dick too much. Because according to the ELDERS, I couldn't act on this sinful desire ever ever EVER.
Over the years I've learned that you can't take anything for granted. we have to unlearn what's been spoon fed to us ... do our own research ... come to our own conclusions. not that I'm anti-God or religion ... but we have to remember that the notion of Christ was imposed on our slave ancestors {who had their own beliefs which are now long forgotten} by their 'Christian' masters at the end of a whip. This undeniable fact alone screams for everyone to examine their beliefs, and to question anything that just doesn't seem quite right.
My mom is still a devout JW and will be till the day she leaves this earth. I've never told her how i feel about the faith I was raised to believe, and she still holds onto the hope that I will one day give up "that lifestyle", as she puts it.
I doubt I could ever rock her faith and wouldn't want to if I could ... because the one thing I know for sure is that people truly NEED to believe in something.
I understand that. I respect that.
Faith can be a wonderful thing. But blind faith is for fools and blue-haired old ladies who have no time to entertain the notion that their belief systems have been flawed all along.
Don't wait that long to start questioning things. ~~~
Watch this film. Details the history of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
JWs are nice people, but if their prophets are supposed to be infallible, then their religion is a sham.
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