Recently, some anonymous person commenting under the handle “MyHowThingsChange” has been copying the following snippet as comments on various posts on my blog:
“I am going to continue to write here, even though I presume none of you will read it. No matter my beliefs, I will not write anti-Witness garbage here, I still hate apostates, I will not personally attack anybody at any point, I will always respect the people I love”
The quote is from me, from this April 26, 2004 post right here:
I can only assume that based on the posts they’ve chosen to comment on, that they are intending to make some sort of none-too-subtle point that I have changed my feelings, that I now write “anti-Witness garbage”, that I am an “apostate”, that I personally attack people and that I don’t respect the people I love. I’d like to respond to these comments with some clarification and background.
First off, as a matter of accuracy, the post they are quoting was not originally written on this blog. It was written 4 years ago on my old LiveJournal page which was the center of my online social network of JW friends at the time. The point of the post was to explain to people at the time who were hearing rumors about me when I first started to escape from the Witnesses a little of what was happening, to encourage them to help my then wife Amanda and to ensure them that I had no plans to stink up the LiveJournal social network with arguing about beliefs. It was basically my way of trying to tell them that I would leave them alone, move off to another place that was out of their
sphere, which is precisely what I did when I started ryansutter.net instead.
As far as the content of the statement, I stand by the majority of it. I still love and respect my family and JW friends. I would give anything except my integrity to be back in their lives and I can’t wait to get more of them back into my life as the WTS loses it’s grip on them. Further, I don’t believe in personally attacking people. I don’t point fingers on my blog at former brothers or sisters, I don’t call them names or assault them, I’ve never attempted to pull anybody out of the organization or picketed conventions or anything like that. I never will. I believe we should all be free to believe what we believe without being insulted or badgered.
There are however, two things I said in that post that have changed. The comments about “apostates” and “anti-Witness garbage”. I freely admit that in the eyes of most JW’s I would be considered an apostate and that I have no problem with critically examining and debunking the teachings of the Watchtower Society. The reason for that change is simple… a gaining in knowledge. As a Witness I was taught that the so-called apostates were evil, manipulative, lying, twisted, Satanic people who hated their former brothers and sisters. They were dark-hearted and vile spewers of poison and were to be feared and loathed. Of course I wouldn’t want to turn into one of these disgusting creatures.
Of course, what I learned was that those people were a fiction invented by the Society itself as a way of keeping their followers from listening to former members. There is no more effective or despicable tactic in politics or religion than smearing the other side with a poison pen, “poisoning the well” is the term, and the Watchtower is incredibly bold in their use of the tactic. They identify everybody in the world who is not affiliated with their organization as “worldly”. They identify former members as vicious apostates. They tell their members that association, even natural human kindness and compassion such as the association of family, is wrong, dangerous, akin to eating “poisonous food from the table of demons”. That, my friends, is the real garbage. Slandering those who leave your religion, accusing them of being evil because they believe you are wrong and they can prove it, that’s garbage. Out here, in the so-called “worldly” sphere, I learned that it is possible for two people to disagree and yet still love each other, still be friends, still be family, still eat together, still grieve together. I don’t consider my JW family members to be vile, evil, lying, slandering, black-hearted, demonic, or any of those things that the Watchtower Society considers me to be. I do not require them to agree with me to be my family. It is truly immoral and reprehensible to vilify your former members, and I’m glad I learned where the true “garbage” was.
And, one final point. Hypocrisy. I will say this simply and directly. The Watchtower Society is one of the most hypocritical organizations on the face of the earth. What do they require all their members to do? To go door to door, invading the homes of strangers, spreading their mythological end-times nonsense and disrespecting the beliefs of others. However, when one former member writes what he believes on his own personal blog and it happens to disagree with their message, he is supposed to shut up, he is bad for doing so, he’s an apostate.
Well, Witnesses, don’t dish it out if you can’t take it. Armageddon is a myth, Jehovah is no more a real god than Odin or Zeus, Jesus never did anything that is written in the Gospels, The Flood never happened. These are beliefs of mine. Discuss them if you like, bring logic, citations, evidence, whatever, but don’t get offended, don’t consider these things to be personal attacks. They are discussions about what is True and what is False. I don’t hate you for believing in things I think are silly that were proven false centuries ago and I don’t see why you should fear me for failing to accept your dictates in the face of disconfirming evidence.
One final note. There is a such thing as “anti-Witness garbage” and I still refrain from it. It is when those who have been hurt by the Watchtower Society make baseless accusations against the organization. I’ve heard insane rants against the Society associating them with Masonic conspiracies, accusing them of using subliminal sexual messages, nutty stuff like that. I don’t go there, and I won’t, but I will proudly and openly discuss their fallacious beliefs any old time and I will keep grieving over my family and friends who are trapped in that cult. The only thing that’s really changed is that I’m not afraid of them anymore.
