My life was just starting to change. At around eight or nine years old we just moved into a new house next door to Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was attending a new school when we were starting to become involved and we were going to meetings with my mom. Holidays were starting to become an issue because of our new faith and I had just about failed the third grade. Both of my parents were now officially baptized Jehovah’s Witnesses and that is when things really started to change.
There’s an illustration that Jehovah’s Witnesses like to give in their talks from the platform about a spring. This spring is used to illustrate what a parent / child relationship should be like. If you have a spring and you compress it or crush it down between your fingers and you suddenly let go of that spring, what’s going to happen? The spring is going to fly off uncontrollably in an unpredictable direction. But if you take that spring and you crush it down and then you gradually release that spring you can control the direction that that spring is released in. That’s how they view children, much like that spring, they have to be crushed. They’re to be held down and controlled. And even when they are let go is to be in a controlled manner and in the direction they choose. Children are viewed as objects to control, like a piece of property.
So what we’re going to do now is take a look at my childhood and see how I was crushed, just like that spring. We’re going to examine this first through the lens of education and what happened at school.
The very first thing that I faced at school was a huge challenge that all children of Jehovah’s Witnesses in America face – the dreaded Pledge of Allegiance or National Anthem. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in only pledging allegiance to God. They would never pledge allegiance to or express love for their country. They don’t believe in nationalism whatsoever. As children in school we began every day in school with the Pledge of Allegiance, or the National Anthem as I progressed and got to high school. Those were ceremonies that I could not partake in.
If it came down to children standing and reciting the pledge, I could stand and show respect. But I was not allowed to put my hand over my heart or say the pledge. If children were standing for the National Anthem and my standing for it would not stand out as different than I was to sit down. It’s not about having some specific moral stance so that you know this is how Jehovah’s Witnesses do it in some specific way. We were just not supposed to be like the majority. We had to be different, regardless of what others did.
My teachers for the most part were accepting of that boundary but there were some over the years that really didn’t like it. I can’t blame them now in retrospect, but as a kid that was all I knew. Some gave me a hard time. Some made me stand out in the hallway so I had to traipse in and out of the classroom in front of everybody. I had one teacher who got really upset and yelled at me and sent me to the counselors office. We had to have a talk with the counselor and then I guess they were afraid of lawsuits or something because of religious freedom so that teacher no longer gave me a hard time. But just put yourself in the position of a small child going to school knowing that every day you’re going to start out your day by having to take a stand for your faith. Every day you have to be different than the other kids, and the adults as well. As a child I did feel proud of my stance at a point because what other choice did I have but to make the best of a bad situation. But it was still awkward. There’s just no way around that.
Then there was the issue of holidays. In school there are going to be holiday parties and holiday activities. I wasn’t allowed to participate in any of those. So while kids were coloring their picture of a Christmas tree, I was given some alternative projects to color. While kids were learning Christmas songs, I was given something else to learn. One music teacher decided that she wanted me to bring in our song book from church, Sing Praises to Jehovah, for Jehovah’s Witnesses. I brought it in to her and my teacher looked through it and found a song for me to memorize. It was called A Prayer of Thanksgiving. I think she thought it had to do with Thanksgiving, the American holiday. Whatever the case I don’t remember her name but I’d like to thank her sarcastically for furthering my indoctrination and making me memorize one of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ songs.
I wasn’t able to even join the discussions with other kids after holidays. When kids come home or come back to school after being home for the holidays they are all excited, talking about gifts they got, they’re talking about the family things that they did. I never had anything to talk about because I didn’t have any of that in school. I never got any gifts, and I didn’t get to see my family for the holidays anymore.
We were not allowed to attend pep rallies, or at least we were highly discouraged – the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses has a great way of discouraging things without making direct rules. That way they can say “well we never said that” later and leave enough gray area for plausible deniability on their own part. But we all knew what they said, and pep rallies were one hundred percent discouraged. I did go to some on occasion. They were quite fun! I loved the pep rallies but it was one of those things where allegiance or glory were only to go to Jehovah God and not to be given to nationalism or pride in anything that we personally did or were involved with. So school spirit was seen as a bad thing. I and other witnesses would often go to the lunchroom and work on schoolwork during pep rallies as a punishment for not attending. We were monitored and they made sure we didn’t have fun or talk. I went to a few pep rallies over the years for big games. They were fun but there was always this twinge of shame in the back of my mind for attending.
I also wasn’t allowed to participate in any after school activities. There is a scripture that was drilled into us at 1Corinthians 15:33 that says “Do not be misled. Bad associations spoil useful habits”. And if you were not one of Jehovah’s Witnesses you were automatically labeled as “bad association”. Therefore I couldn’t spend time after school associating with other children. It really did impact my high school years because there were things that I wanted to do. For instance I majored in electronics in high school and I wanted to attend some robotics conventions or competitions, but I knew I couldn’t participate.
I could be friendly with kids at school but I couldn’t really be friends with them. Instead I was encouraged, as all Jehovah’s Witnesses children were, to use the children as school as my own personal project and I was encouraged to preach to them. So it wasn’t enough to have to stand out at school for all of these other reasons, I was expected to also take my differences and flaunt them by telling everyone what I believed. Jehovah’s Witness children are encouraged to see the school, the classroom, and the classmates as a field ripe for the harvesting. So we were encouraged to bring our publications or a Bible to school and to read these things in the open so that maybe we would draw interest from children around us.
If you remember, I had said earlier that I almost failed the third grade. Well, in the fourth grade I made the honor roll all year. I achieved A’s and B’s in everything that I did, and in the fifth grade I made straight A’s. Looking back I think that the perfectionistic messages at the meetings were starting to get to me. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a very performance driven organization and their doctrines and their speech are very perfectionistic. Very all or nothing and black and white. Now correlation isn’t necessarily causation but in this case the correlation sure does add up to the sudden change in my academic prowess.
That obviously doesn’t mean that all Jehovah’s Witness kids excel academically, but there must have been something that I had inside of me that was triggered during that time. And honestly I have always struggled with perfectionism thereafter. I managed to stay on the honor roll for most of middle school and high school. I finished second in my class as the salutatorian with a 3.96 grade point average. I had one B in those four years, and everthing else was an A. I’m still bitter over that to some degree because I was supposed to take geometry class before algebra 2 but the advanced geometry class was full so I was put into the Advanced Algebra 2 class first and it is based on geometry. So I kind of came into that class behind the other students but I managed to catch up and squeak through it with a B instead of my usual A. I still kind of wish I could have gotten straight A’s through all of high school. Didn’t I say that I was a perfectionist?
While we’re on the subject let’s go ahead and look at the role of education in the cult. Jehovah’s Witnesses see education as a means to an end. A governmental requirement, if nothing else, and college is highly discouraged. The cult will boast of the academic achievements among their members at times, and yes there are lawyers and doctors among the ranks. But what they are never going to tell you is that those people became lawyers or doctors before they ever met Jehovah’s Witnesses. They like to leave that out because it makes it sound like, ”look at us. We have these educated people in our midst.” But the reality is that it’s just happenstance. It’s because they became Jehovah’s witnesses later.
According to Pew Research polls Jehovah’s Witnesses are the lowest educated religion with the lowest average income. They think that people go to college for personal glory and to become rich and famous. Jehovah’s Witnesses are essentially what you would call a doomsday cult. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that the world is going to end imminently. And as they would like to say, “why would you invest in the Titanic? It’s sinking. This world is a sinking ship. So why would you ever put more into it than you absolutely have to.” Some in the congregations have actually been counseled and shamed for going to college. Jehovah’s Witnesses technically have free will, but there’s a lot of undue influence and pressure put upon the members to conform.
I knew of a case where there was an elder in the congregation, one of the leaders of the congregation, with a daughter that went to college. She made that decision and he was removed as an elder in the congregation. They stripped him of his title and privileges – privileges as they call it, responsibilities or burdens is more accurate. They stripped him of this because he wasn’t setting a proper example due to the fact that he couldn’t control that sprin, and that daughter went off to college.
Jehovah’s Witnesses go back and forth a bit about college, which is part of their gaslighting to keep you off balance. They absolutely condemn a four year school, one of their leaders in the governing body stating that the better the school the more dangerous it is, but if you want to take a two year trade school or technical school it can be acceptable. But let’s let’s add the caveat here that extra education is ok so long as it is used to “further Kingdom interests”. Now I understand that if you’ve never been associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses you may not have any idea what “furthering Kingdom interests” means.
What it essentially boils down to is that Jehovah’s Witnesses really put a lot of pressure on young people to serve while they are young by giving more time and energy to the organization that they serve. They make it sound as though they want you to do so because you’re young and you’re vibrant. But at least in retrospect what I believe is that they actually just want you to do this while you’re young and at that critical stage of your life where you’re starting to gain some independence, so that they can maintain their grip on you. If you were to go off to college and learn things like critical thinking skills you might see them as a cult and leave.
There are several goals that they hold out for young people to grab onto and absorb. The main goal would be to become what is called a Pioneer. Pioneering is to devote X amount of hours per year to their door to door ministry work and when I was young it was a thousand hours annually. You would sign an agreement and commit to going out in what they call field service, knocking on doors, preaching to people at bus stops or gas stations, today they have cars in high traffic areas, basically going out and preaching to others to fulfill those hours. In my day it was basically ninety hours per month. Of course this is unpaid. It’s completely volunteer work and you have to be able to support yourself in it.
The also might encourage you to go to Bethel, particularly if you are male. Bethel at the time when I was young was Brooklyn Bethel. It has since moved to Warwick New York and it’s the world headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was primarily young men, but there were some young women who would go to Bethel, especially if they married a Bethelite. They would volunteer, they would live there, and they would serve there by performing duties. There were always printing presses to run and things to clean. They supported the organization at the central hub, at the headquarters of their worldwide work and essentially devoted their entire life at that point.
Another goal that was held out was Gilead school. Gilead is a school for missionaries and we all know what a missionary is. It was just a place to go and learn whatever they wanted you to learn so that you could go into other countries and start new congregations or further the preaching of what they saw as the good news of God’s kingdom.
If you didn’t want to move elsewhere, another goal that they would offer would be to move where the need is greater in your own country, in my case the United States. It’s usually rural areas, but sometimes there are areas in big cities as well where they have a shortage of people there and they need brothers and sisters to come in and help run congregations and help those congregations grow.
So let’s look at how this impacted me. I personally turned down scholarships to good schools to pursue an engineering degree. I’m not sure, I might have taken the PSAT, I can’t remember. I never took the SAT itself. I didn’t because if you were to pursue college you were seen as unspiritual. You were seen as a person who was letting everyone down. You were letting God down. God was disappointed in you.
It’s really hard to express the pressure that is put on these young people at this critical moment of their lives to pursue a course that the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses wants you to pursue. This is at the expense of attaining any type of higher education. It’s really hard to express this if you’ve never been there. Of course I wanted to go to college. I would have loved the challenge of learning new things and putting all of the math I learned into use. I’m sure I would have excelled in those fields, but it’s the desire to feel good enough in an organization that strips you of your self-esteem and self-worth and leads you down a path to where your self-worth is only received through them, that makes one give up outside educational opportunities. The only way you can feel good is if you do what they want you to do. If you don’t they will make you miserable. That is a tough thing to face.
I do have to admit now as I am nearing 40 years old, I do have some regrets there. I had some teachers who were deeply disappointed in me for not going to college. I had counselors who were constantly telling me what I was capable of. And I had literature sent to me from colleges all over the country, wanting me to take a look at their school. Honestly, I don’t even know how they got my name or any information about me because I never even took the test. But somehow they wanted me to attend their college and I was very torn. It was nice to feel wanted.
This was while I was a senior in high school, majoring in electronics. The school told me that if I wanted to, because I was excelling academically, I could go work half a day at a place that was electronics focused. And that’s what I did. I went out, I hustled, I had to find my own place, but I found a company that was willing to hire me as a high school student to come in and fix electronics. I repaired microwaves and TVs and VCRs and I installed satellite dishes.
While I was working at that place in the strip mall, there was a pawn shop where I would go buy CDs at times. One day when I was in there, I was talking with the owner and he found out that I worked a few doors down repairing electronics and he had a business opportunity for me. At the time pagers were the big thing in mobile technology and he was going to open up a chain of stores both selling and repairing pagers. And so he offered me a store. He offered me my own store and he would send me off to schooling, somewhere in Pennsylvania if I remember correctly. Despite my excitement at this opportunity as well, I turned it down because I had to go pioneer and go knock on doors for a thousand hours.
And so that’s what I did, I pioneered. It was miserable. It was awful. I was the only brother who was pioneering at the time. Brothers and sisters at the congregation that I attended didn’t mix a lot. So I spent a lot of time working by myself going out knocking on doors, which is a very lonely proposition. I had to work several jobs. It’s not like I came from a wealthy family or a family that was even middle class so I didn’t have anything given to me. Any money that I needed had to come from me. I had no support. I had to furnish my own car that was getting driven all over the area, knocking on doors, calling back on people, trying to start Bible studies, and it cost me a lot of money.
Eventually I started getting into debt. I was working part time at night from five to nine, several nights a week telemarketing. I delivered newspapers every morning seven days a week. I also delivered a local trader publication on Thursday mornings, and I eventually just burned out. There are only so many hours in a day that a person can be working. I was getting up at three or four in the morning so that I could go deliver newspapers. Then I would be home around seven in the morning. I would take a shower. Then I got dressed in my suit and I would take off to be at the Kingdom Hall at nine in the morning. We would go out and knock on doors until around three sometimes four in the afternoon, and go home. I would then change clothes, go to work from five to nine at night telemarketing and that was my schedule pretty much every day. The only change was that on Tuesday and Thursday nights instead of going and working in telemarketing, I had meetings to attend, because there were meetings Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday.
So that was my life. That’s all I did, and it turned me into a very angry and frustrated person. My dad was not one to try to impart wisdom or really show that he cared very much but he came up to me one day in the congregation and said, “Mike, you know, everybody thinks you don’t like them. Everybody thinks you’re mad at them”. And I was. I was mad at the everyone and everything in the world around me because I was being incredibly inauthentic. I didn’t know that. I was pushed into this whole situation and groomed for this since I was a child, which all of these poor kids are. It is very frustrating to find yourself dominated by a life every day that you never sat down and chose for yourself, but instead one that was given to you and expected from you that you never saw as such because of the brainwashing that went on.
Next I’m going to go deep into what was happening at home during this time. Honestly these aren’t happy memories or pleasant things to face, but it was the reality of my life, and it’s the reality of what so many Jehovah’s Witness children face as their daily lives today. The names change, some circumstances change, but there are certain things that are consistent. And then after that I’m going to get into my life as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses as a young person itself. What going to meetings was like, what I was learning, and then what going out and knocking on doors was like. When I do that you’re really going to see everything tied together because that life as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses was the nucleus of everything and literally everything else revolved around it.