My Testimony, part two

God met me in my questions and stirred a new curiosity in me to look up stories of others who had also left the Jehovah’s Witness religion.  Online I read numerous eye-opening testimonies before coming across several references to a book, Awakening of a Jehovah’s Witness.  The author, Diane Wilson, describes a very familiar journey of internal conflict and then separation from the religion, with all the baggage that brought.

But she also went on to identify the religion as a cult, which I had never really considered before.  I read her descriptions of a cult, my mind whirling. 

It was a sect of people controlled almost entirely by a single individual or by an organization. I recalled the influence of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses. A cult always places rigid, demanding rules on the individual, and claims the leaders are the only channel of communication between God and humankind.

Yes, and yes on those two as well.

A cult places huge emphasis on total loyalty with zero tolerance for criticism and questions, claiming that if you are wavering it’s God you must doubt and Satan you must be following. 

I was stunned. Was it true? Were the Jehovah’s Witnesses really a cult?

I considered the facts. People are drawn to the tiny, friendly congregations for different reasons. Often, they are burned out on religious hypocrisy and looking for something different. These congregations welcome newcomers heartily giving them a sense of belonging.

These newcomers, impressed with the congregation’s sincerity and fervor, don’t recognize the brainwashing as it begins.  They study material, learning to parrot correct answers, never to study the Bible and seek answers for themselves. This material, using cherry picked verses from the J.W. translation of the Bible, is written to enforce doctrinal teachings and train on how to defend those teachings. The Bible, it’s taught, is too hard to grasp, too often “mis-interpreted.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe the lie that their actions, their works, are the key to pleasing God.

Their field service hours, knocking on doors in neighborhoods, are measured and rewarded. Although the encouragement they receive to live a morally clean lifestyle is not wrong, it’s taught without the important missing ingredient of a real and vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ. 

My mom and I both had the overwhelming feeling that we could never measure up.

With the best of intentions, my dad thought he was truly honoring God by living up to the rigid and strictly enforced standards. He failed to see, until it was too late, how the legalistic religion was slowly killing his wife as she had suffered from depression for the last couple of years of their marriage.

I had also questioned why Almighty God would allow His people to walk blindly for nearly 1900 years before finally choosing a couple of people, the “founding fathers” of the Jehovah’s Witness faith, to explain His doctrine to.  After He had already sent Christ to die for their sins, why would He have waited? It didn’t make sense to me. 

Many of the matters they claimed to hear clearly from Jesus Christ Himself were shifting. Important doctrines and prophecies–teachings that deeply affected the lives of their followers–continued to change as the years passed and events failed to unfold as they had predicted.

After I read Diane’s book, I got a glimpse behind the scenes of the organization from a book entitled Crisis of Conscience: The story of the struggle between loyalty to God and loyalty to one’s religion. The author–who had served nine years on the Governing Body’s executive council–could no longer live with the corruption he witnessed. He resigned and wrote an exposé on the organization’s greed and misconduct and reading it became the final straw in my decision.

I was finally able to accept that the religion of my childhood was a cult. 

Finally free to release decades of guilt, the next step I needed to take involved my middle school friend.  

My friend was no stranger to tragedy–her brother was killed by a drunk driver when we were young. We reconnected when she reached out and we began meeting for playdates with our little ones.  There was only one problem. 

She could not stop talking about Jesus! 

She was doing a Bible study and was so excited about what she was learning that she would not stop talking about it. I remember at one point thinking, “If she says the name Jesus Christ one more time I am going to scream!”

Strange, but I believe this inner resistance had its origin in a couple of places.  For one, I believe that the enemy of my soul, Satan, didn’t want me to recognize the very life-giving truth that is crucial to the Gospel, of the importance of Jesus Christ.  And second, as a Jehovah’s Witness, the emphasis was always about Jehovah God the Father.  Jesus was a minor in the play and talking about Him still seemed wrong. 

Weren’t we supposed to focus on God the Father?

I had so many questions that I decided to push past the resistance and try a Christian church.  I also decided to say yes, the next time my friend invited me to join her for one of her Bible studies. 

Wow, do I remember those first few weeks in Bible study. Not just discussing the Bible with women once a week, but also my time alone reading it. It was one light bulb moment of clarity after another.

It was bittersweet, realizing how wrong the doctrine I had been taught was, especially knowing the ultimate motivation: power and greed at the top level in the J.W. organization. Bittersweet, as I thought of my mom and how she really wanted to live a life that pleased God but felt incapable and had lost hope.

The words I read seemed to jump off the page at me.

Words that warmed my heart, explaining the story of love that God had for the world. I could not get enough of what I was reading.  I talked about it with everyone I knew, building bridges with some and creating division in others who weren’t ready to hear what I had to say. 

Thankfully my dad had left our former religion as well by this time. We were thankful to find a church teaching biblical truth, with services that were full of truth and life and the Holy Spirit’s movement in our hearts, so different than what we were used to. 

God used my first Bible study, Breaking Free by Beth Moore, to set a love for Scripture solidly in my heart. This study was Beth’s personal testimony and life’s message. Her story included events the devil could have used to make her bitter towards God, much like mine.  But at the place where she was most ashamed, where she had turned to the wrong things, she made a choice.  Instead of continuing to run away from God, she chose to come closer. 

A surrender that God was able to turn into a powerful gift for teaching His Word.

I knew that if God could transform her from the person she described, heal her and use her in ministry, He could and would do it with me.

And I said God, if you can do it for her, I believe You can do it for me. 

I am yours. 

Take my bitterness, my unforgiveness and turn it, for Your glory.  Teach me who You are, so that I can tell others. 

And what He taught me still blows me away. 

It is a story of grace and redemption that is always about what Christ did for us, not about what we do for Him. 

A remarkable true story that unfolds through the pages of Scripture and reveals a love that is so far beyond the reach of our imagination that it is beyond our comprehension.

Grace is, by definition, kindness we do not deserve. The battle starts right there. This undeserved grace is so good, so contrary to our very nature, that we struggle to accept and understand it. 

I cannot earn it; I cannot work for it.  If that was the case, there would have been no need for Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. He, the only sinless human, had to die on the cross as a once-for-all sacrifice for everyone who would believe throughout the ages.  Righteousness is the only way into heaven, but using the example Paul gave in Romans 4, like Abraham I simply believe and God counts me as righteous.  Guilt, condemnation, fear… are all gone. 

I am not perfect.

But I understand it is not my perfection that makes me righteous, it’s God’s forgiveness.   

Jesus was and is the true reflection of the Father.  He is what was prophesied about throughout the Old Testament. The New Testament is about His time on earth and His teachings, making Him the central focus of the Bible.  In no way, can His importance be subverted. 

He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. 

And central to His message was a new “way”, the promise of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that is often described as Christ in us, who lives through us in the same way that God the Father was living through Jesus while He walked on this earth.  The Holy Spirit brought understanding to the disciples, just as He did with me in my first few days seeking the Scriptures for answers and as He continues to do. 

It is in His pull that I was called and began to turn my heart to Him.   It is in His strength that I battled my doubts, and by His clarity that the things that were once hidden become clear. 

With that clarity I saw the plan that had been there all along. 

His goal is a loving relationship with me and my transformation, a transformation that is a light to others, as He places in me a love for others. 

My relationship with Him grew like any other.  By spending time with Him.  If I had wanted to get to know someone famous who had written an autobiography, I would begin by reading their book. God’s book, the Bible, has the power to discern hearts, so when I read it I began to see myself with a new clarity.

Transformation was happening. 

I was falling in love with the Jesus I met on the pages of Scripture, the image of the Father. 

I was being transformed into His likeness, slowly but steadily, with His heart for the world being reflected onto me as a mirror reflects a likeness.  And the more I fell in love with Him, the more I wanted to talk to Him, resulting in a prayer life that grew as well. 

I watched my mom struggle with her beliefs, while dealing with some of the hardest issues of life. Her faith offered no real help, just burdens. 

What would she have done had she known, really known, the One who wanted to share her burdens? 

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 CSB)

What would she have done had she learned to hear and trust the voice of her Shepherd?

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me… My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:14, 27 CSB)

I believe that if given a chance, she would have loved Jesus like I do.  And had she been built on the rock of Jesus’s love, she would have had a chance at a different life. 

A life that says it doesn’t matter what my past looks like, I am accepted and loved by God.

But due to a false gospel my mom felt her only choice was to walk away from it and fabricate her own happiness, which is always a dead-end solution. 

God did eventually help me forgive posthumously the man who took her life, but in time there was another matter that surfaced. I was not only holding on to bitterness towards the organization behind the religion, but also the people that turned their back on her in her time of need.  But just as I understood a greater truth about her husband-turned-murderer, I found the correct place to place my blame.

I believe that we are all part of a love story taking place in the heart of a great battle.  The Deceiver, as Satan is called in Revelation, has an evil plan to destroy us.  He and his demonic forces in the spiritual realm are behind every scheme to hide the truth of Jesus Christ and the freedom that comes from walking with Him. 

I was able to let go of the bitterness when I finally understood this.  The people who worship God in this way—Jehovah’s Witnesses—though misguided, genuinely believe they are doing what is right.  Although I believe some people are aware of the deception happening behind the scenes in the organization, I’ve chosen to leave their judgment in the hands of the God I trust.

My life in the twenty years since I met Jesus, while not easy, has been very rich.  I have learned to have a real sustaining relationship with Him. My first marriage lasted for twenty-four years only to finally dissolve.  But even going through an incredibly painful divorce, I was able to resist the temptation to drown my pain in alcohol.

I found contentment in my relationship with Jesus.  

I am so very thankful that God taught me to trust again and brought me an amazing husband, with whom I have now enjoyed seven amazing years of marriage.  God has brought me healing in my deepest hurts, and I am sure He will continue. 

What does it look like to have a relationship with Jesus?

Walking with Him, learning to feel the Spirit’s gentle nudge and hear the Spirit’s quiet whisper is a learning process.  I have learned to nurture my relationship with Him in different ways. Reading His Word, praying, spending time in worship with song or simply in gratitude, and feeling His peace as I take in the glory of His creation outdoors are all ways that make me feel closer to Him.

He gives me resilience in facing life’s difficulties. He gives me compassion for others knowing there is a deeper story behind what’s on the surface. Sometimes, He uses me to bring comfort and healing to others through the pages of Scripture and prayer, in the same way comfort and healing was brought to me. 

His responses vary. It may be a warmth in my heart, or a gentle whisper of words I desperately need to hear.  It may be a verse that pops in my mind, and I find myself amazed at how He spoke to me about something so intimate that only He could have known. 

It may be an answer to prayer. 

Even in the “no” and the “not yet” I have learned that He is worthy of my trust.

For more reasons that I can count, my heart is thankful that I faced this wound in my past, made that critical step of letting go of the false teachings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and allowed the truth of God’s Word to open my heart for a real relationship with Jesus Christ.