Every once in a while, comments are put on this website that require an answer on the front page. This is, I think, one of those times. You see, there are a lot of anonymous posts that happen here from my former brothers and sisters in the Watchtower Organization that seem to indicate that they believe that I am either a) angry over something bad that happened to me in the congregation, b) somebody who was never a real believer in the first place, c) estranged from Jehovah due to lack of prayer/study/desire or d) missing the point of faith by performing all the critical analysis I do here on this blog. I feel it is relevant to the purpose of this blog to answer their questions in a way the might provide answers to anybody else who finds themselves wondering the same things. For example, there is the following comment taken from this page.

Ryan, were you ever baptized? I’m just wondering what happened to you. Regardless of the whole JW thing, I sense a lot anger. Why? Is it because of the death of your brother?

I’d like to take the opportunity here to answer these questions. First, was I ever baptized? Yes. I was baptized in July of 1989 at a District Convention in Rochester MN. I had been raised a Witness since I was born in 1973 and was a member of the Theocratic Ministry School since age 5. I loved it as a kid and I loved it at the time I got baptized and until 2004 when I chose to leave because I felt it was the only intellectually honest route available to me. I still miss the congregation, the friends and the comforting feeling that I had a known hope for the future and a relationship with God.

Now, onto the remaining question(s). Am I angry? Yep. Absolutely and it is probably impossible to separate it from the JW situation but it is not because of the death of my brother. That is a very recent event and makes me incredibly sad and lonely and sick to my stomach, but not angry. I’ve never loved and looked up to anybody in the world more than Rhett. He was my best friend, life-long creative partner, role model and the best person I’ve ever known. He was my pioneer partner and a lover of Jehovah with his whole soul who still accepted my situation with grace and aplomb and never treated me differently despite the differences in beliefs. We showed each other the mutual respect of not judging each other for the difference. He was also a wonderful father of a beautiful son and loving husband to a beautiful wife. The world lost one of it’s most loving, gifted and magnificent people when his heart stopped beating on the 4th of July this year and I console myself with the happy knowledge that I was the luckiest person on earth where he was concerned because I knew him longer and better than anybody else. It was difficult being treated poorly by some of the JW’s at his funeral but I am not angry at them either because I know they feel they have to do what they did. At the funeral another former-Witness friend of mine in attendance was mad at them and I said, “Those people in there love us, they’ve just been instructed in a strange way of showing it.” Besides, most of the 1000+ JW’s there that day treated me with love and sympathy. So, why the anger?

I am angry on behalf of friends, family and loved ones in and out of the organization who are suffering because they either a) don’t believe (in either the Society or Jehovah) but have to pretend they do to avoid destroying their lives, b) believe and have to cut off those they love who do not or c) don’t believe and say so and lose everything. I am in category C but my father and remaining brother and sister are in B and I am aware of many who I love in category A. Devout believers in Jehovah and Jesus who left the organization because they did not believe it was really the representative of said persons hurt. Skeptics like myself who thought we had reasons to believe and discovered they were dishonest rationalizations hurt. Believers who lose those of us who don’t agree hurt. Everybody hurts, nobody wins, and I can do little or nothing about it. That makes me angry because people I love suffer.

I am also angry because I firmly believe in the honesty and integrity espoused by the Organization and because they break those rules of honesty and integrity in their own publications. To read in the Theocratic Ministry School Guidebook about how to use honest reasoning or to read in the Awake! about the importance of avoiding fallacies makes one particular upset when they find dishonest reasoning and fallacies in the Reasoning book, the Creation book, the God’s Word book and other publications. To spend 25 years of your life telling people how different your beliefs are, how they are based on reason, only to discover one day that they are simply blind faith, is a deep personal betrayal, a shocking painful thing to go through. To find, further, that no believers are able to answer your questions and that they consider your painful discovery to be willful rebellion is a further injury. I’m not angry at the individuals in the organization but I am angry that I was taught a falsehood, also taught the standards to detect a falsehood and then treated as a faulty person for applying those standards to those who taught me. That is hypocrisy and I believe I have a right to be angry at hypocrites making rules that have demolished my life.

I am angry that Witnesses claim some sort of monopoly on a book (the Bible) that was not written for them, by them or about them. That the authors and audience for the book are studiously ignored by the Organization and it’s real meaning is lost in their interpretation. There is beauty and value in knowing the Bible for what it really says and what that tells us about people and times long past, without us in the modern day twisting it words around to pretend it’s about us. That disrespects and devalues the actual book and the actual story it actually tells and the reality it actually reflects. As somebody who regularly reads and studies and cares deeply about the Bible, that makes me angry. The Bible is used to unite and guide the Organization but at the same time all the modern discoveries about it, where it really came from and what archaeology can tell us about what it actually means, are ignored by a group with an agenda they have constructed around it. Shame on them for treating the sacred wisdom of another culture in such a shoddy manner. That makes me angry. The Bible doesn’t belong only to believers and literalists who read the words but miss what they actually say about the people who authored them. I don’t need to think the Bible is entirely true or divinely inspired to think it’s worth studying. When archaeology reveals the truth about it, I prefer that and find it fascinating.

I am angry that my son will not ever be close to his grandfather because of religion.

I am angry that people keep presuming that I didn’t pray enough or have enough faith while ignoring the very real issues I state in black and white here on this blog. Speaking of which, this brings me to the other comment I want to comment on…

From this page.

Ryan, I just came across your Blog. I am a JW. It appears that you might be disfellowshiped or disassociated. Not really sure but it doesn’t matter.

My brother is disfellowshipped. I love him very much. I don’t know you or what happened to your brother but I know what it’s like to lose someone very close to you, someone that you love.

There is nothing I can say or anyone at this point to prove anything about Jehovah to you. If you truly are confused about Jehovah and whether or not Jehovah’s Witnesses is the true religion there is only one way to find out.

Prayer.

Pray to God. Whomever you think him to be. Ask him for an answer. Ask him to lead you to him. That is the only way. If ANY creator exists, and if you pray to find him, he will make himself known to you. If you are honest with yourself, and if in your heart you are truly searching and not merely interested in a display of words here on your blog, you will find everything you are looking for.

Prayer. Implicit in this statement is the assumption that I did not pray or that prayer can deal with the issues I have. First, I used to pray all the time. Fervently. I felt the “relationship” with God when I did too sometimes. I still keep open the hope that there is something greater to connect with, maybe even someone. However, let me be blunt. There is a major technical obstacle here. Even if I felt in my heart of hearts that I had a relationship with God, I would not be able to accept that the God I was connected to was the Judeo-Christian one without the issues I have addressed being answered. Furthermore, I could not be a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses and teach other people about creationism, the Flood, the Tower of Babel and the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts without hypocrisy on the basis of that faith because I know the truth about these things. Creationism is false. It is a lie. A desperate lie. There was a flood of some sort, probably multiple floods, but no global deluge. That is a myth. The Tower of Babel story, myth. 607? Wrong date, it was 587. The Gospels? Definitely not history, likely entirely myth. I could go on but my point is simply this: I know these things are false and it’s not an opinion matter, I know exactly why they are false. I have seen the contradictory evidence and also the positive evidence that supports the alternate explanations. I am aware of the internal contradictions and impossibilities and the weaknesses of the apologists arguments that attempt to rationalize these things. Prayer could possibly get me to place where I believed in something, but not somethings that’s simply not true. Prayer might make you feel there was a god, but evidence is required to figure out which one of the thousands of god’s on earth that one is or whether you are simply talking to yourself. Evidence does not do well for the Bible literalist view of things and I could never accept that view on current evidence because it is demonstrably false. I don’t know if there is a god somewhere, but I do know that if there is the Bible gives no more of an obviously valid path to him/her/it than any other book that makes the claim. As such, even if I ever believe internally in god again, it is up to the various witnesses of the various gods to tell me why their’s is that true god. If you can’t put up that information, then you a) have no right to judge me and b) really need to ask yourself if what you are doing is really right.

The first person of any faith to offer any sort of evidence that their god is true that can withstand critical scrutiny will have my full attention and interest.

So, that might tell you enough about me. I hope it does. Until next time….

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RyanSutter has content marketing with Arkayne Socialize.

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