As of today in the year 2024, it’s been nearly nine years since my wife and I left the cult, and so much has happened. I’m going to break this time down in different sections to tie up some loose ends and report on what life has been like after the cult. So let’s just jump right in.
A lot changed after I left. I had a lot to learn. Although I had realized by that point in 2015 that I was involved with something that was deeply psychologically unhealthy, there was still so much I didn’t know.
The FOG Continues To Lift
There were a lot of events that unfolded very quickly around that time, and I’ll run them down quickly.
First, not long after I was shunned I ran into my younger brother at a concert. I walked up and said hello to him and to his wife, and they both shunned me and my wife to our faces. I was still proud of being me, but they also got to be themselves and show who they were too. I would rather be shunned for doing the loving thing than loved for doing the shunning thing.
My dad died on April 11, 2016. I was not invited to his funeral or told when it was. I was invited to see him one last time at hospice, which I did because I wanted to show them what real love looked like, but they can’t see it, and I was shunned again as soon as I left his room. I will never subject myself to their abuse again.
There was a massive earthquake in Nepal around this time and, seeing the cult’s response for the first time with fresh eyes, I noticed that when they wrote about what happened on their own website they only mentioned that one of their spiritual sisters and her kids had died, and no one else. They didn’t even acknowledge the pain caused outside of their cult. I was so angry at how cold they were to the rest of humanity and how little love they actually possess. There just isn’t any real love among Jehovah’s Witnesses. At best they only care for people like themselves.
The Governing Body came out from behind the curtain and revealed themselves publicly to Jehovah’s Witnesses. These men are very odd. They don’t speak like normal people, they have odd mannerisms, they are certainly nothing special, just some old white men in New York that aren’t representative of the worldwide brotherhood that they claim to love. One of them was mysteriously dismissed and they started removing videos with him in it. And as time has gone by they have started changing rules and they don’t even pretend it is from Jehovah now. Instead they blatantly claim credit for new rules that are not now and never were Biblical.
In Australia there was a governmental inquiry into how institutions handle child sexual abuse internally. Of all of the groups that were examined, Jehovah’s Witnesses were not only the most resistant to any healthy changes, they had well over one thousand established claims that were never properly reported to the authorities, and they refused to participate in the program to provide help to those hurt in their organization until their charitable status was threatened in the country. I watched the trial live as it was streamed at the time, and they lied under oath, with one of their governing body members even saying that it would be presumptuous for them to claim that they were the only spokesperson that God is using today.
I learned that Jehovah’s Witnesses have what is called a “two witness rule”, and that due to that rule internally where they only act on accusations of child abuse that are established with a second witness to the abuse, countless predatory behavior was allowed to continue.
In 2001, once it was brought to the attention of the public, Watchtower terminated its association with the United Nations as a non-governmental organization. I wouldn’t have been allowed to join the YMCA to use their exercise classes or equipment because it was associated with Christendom, but they were members of the wild beast that they condemned from the book of Revelation.
I learned that when I was a kid and the cult went away from charging for their literature and went to a donation basis for it, it wasn’t some magical inspiration from Jehovah. I learned about the case involving well-known televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and how the government was after him and others to pay taxes on books that they sold. There never was any inspiration from Jehovah, they just didn’t want to pay taxes.
Not long after I left, the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses took over ownership of all of the Kingdom Halls and said that they forgave any mortgages that they were holding against the individual membership for those loans. That sounded like a good thing, at least for some congregations that still owed money on their Kingdom Hall buildings and property. However, they not only took over ownership of all of them, even those that were paid off, in a money grab, but they also took any funds that the congregations saved up for a future renovation, maintenance, or even a new building. They then basically laid the guilt on the brothers and sisters in those congregations to keep donating at least as much as they were previously for the mortgage, but now that donation would essentially be forever. So there was no real forgiveness of loans, they just took all of the money and assets.
I learned about how the cult got its start and who started it, from Charles Taze Russell, who was basically accused of infidelity in his recorded divorce proceedings and who was into pyramidology and had made several incorrect predictions of the end of the world, to Joseph Rutherford who had a mansion built for himself called Beth Sarim during the Great Depression. That historical building still exists today in San Diego, California. I also learned about Beth Shan, the Pleiades constellation, and Miracle Wheat, all things you can look up.
It was revealed to me that quote mining took place as part of the writing of the publications that I was told my whole life to believe were inspired by Jehovah. I learned that when a few dots are present in the writing, also known as an ellipsis, that a quote has been altered. At times they were altering quotes and leaving out crucial details that would have changed the meaning of the quote that they were trying to pretend supported whatever argument they were trying to make. “The Truth” was lying once again. It can be seen throughout Watchtower history, even changing their own quotes regarding their failed prediction of the end of the world in 1975.
Learning that I had basically been lied to my whole life was very hard. It felt like I was pranked for decades, only this prank wasn’t funny at all. But for me, this was yet another beginning, as I now turned my attention to the book that everything in my life had been based on, the Bible itself.
Now before I address this I want to say that I respect everyone’s right to believe what they want, as long as they don’t hurt other people. With that said, the Bible was definitely used to hurt people in the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I had to take a very honest look at it. The following is what I learned, and it didn’t come easy. I didn’t want to see things differently. I didn’t want to lose faith that I had held so deeply for my whole life. I was attached to all of this, but I didn’t want to feel good, I wanted to look at the evidence and see what I felt was true or not. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If this wasn’t true, I wanted to know, even if it hurt. So on my journey I went.
While I woke up in large part because of the harsh, unloving, and mentally and emotionally damaging qualities of the cult itself, my wife had different issues. If she was telling her own story right now, she would tell you that it was actually the Bible itself that woke her up. While I was diving deep into learning about the organizational issues, she was trying to double down on her Bible reading so that she could prove the truth to herself through God’s Word.
Challenging My Beliefs
Now this is where I’m going to relate a part of my journey that could be somewhat uncomfortable for some of you. It’s not my goal to attack anyone’s faith. As I said, you have a right to feel or believe anything that you want to believe or look at the evidence however you want to look at it. I’m going to keep this somewhat brief because my goal isn’t to tear down your beliefs, but this is a part of my journey and ours don’t have to look the same. This is my story. This is real and I’m going to share it. This is the progression of everything for me.
So I’m going to be blunt. I’m going to be quick here and then we’ll move on to my life after the cult and what my life afterward has been like.
First of all, in Genesis, the plants are created before the light sources. That’s backwards, God. You need light before the plants so that they can survive. There is a literal talking snake but the creative days were supposed to be figurative. When Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden there was an angel placed to guard it with a flaming sword. Swords weren’t even invented back then. If all of the scientific evidence is right, and man has been here much longer than 5000 years, then there was no Adam and Eve according to Bible chronology, and thus no original sin and no real need for a redeemer. Therefore the whole narrative falls apart. So many cultures had very similar stories before the Bible was written. I had always been told that the Bible was the original. Let’s talk about the story of Noah’s Ark. There are too many species of animals to take them all, especially not in twos. But if you read on in scripture some were taken by sevens, it depended on whether an animal was defined as clean or unclean. So that’s even more animals to take on board. What about the dinosaurs? Where were they in any of this? How did all of the aquatic life not die, because if the waters really rose above the entire surface of the earth as stated, then the mixing of salt and fresh waters would have killed everything in the sea and destroyed their habitat. Afterward, where did all of that water go? It had to go somewhere and the last time I checked I’m not living underwater. Why did God kill all of his creation that wouldn’t fit on the ark? Isn’t that cruel? Why are we supposed to respect his creation when he doesn’t? Why is there no fossil record of kangaroos anywhere but Australia? Did Noah swing by there and drop them off at some point? How did they get there?
Another thing that bothered me was that Scripture where 40 something kids make fun of Elisha, saying, “go up you baldhead”. And then God sends two bears out of the woods to tear the kids to pieces. Really God? Was that really necessary? Let’s face it. The old testament God wasn’t very kind. He ordered his people to dash the children of a conquered nation on the rocks. At times they would conquer nations and take the virgins as their own. I’m pretty sure they weren’t taking them just because they wanted to give them a better life. Women were concubines and the kings with God’s favor had lots of concubines. There was so much violence, and all at God’s direction. It has been pointed out that God kills way more people in the Bible than Satan ever did, and for me that’s impossible to reconcile.
What really happened to Jephthah’s daughter? Why kill Uzzah? How can there be such a difference between the God of the old testament and Jesus, if Jesus was a reflection of his father? The gospels are entirely different in tone and action than everything preceding them.
The Messiah was supposed to come through the line of David. Joseph was indeed in that line but Mary wasn’t and apparently Joseph had no hand in the matter as far as the pregnancy went. Additionally, Mary was a virgin. So then, how was Jesus through that lineage? If it was so important and would prove that he was the Messiah, shouldn’t God make sure that Joseph was involved in some way, if you know what I mean?
How can it not be straightforward? Read the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus in Matthew 28:1-10 and open another Bible and read the account of the resurrection of Jesus in John 20:1- 18. Read those two accounts together side by side and compare them. They aren’t quite the same.
There are scriptures in the Bible with clear direction on everything from not mixing certain materials and fabric to how long a woman was ceremonially unclean with the flow of blood, to warnings against bestiality in very specific language. Yet I’ve never found any scriptures specifically protecting children, the most vulnerable human beings, against sexual abuse. Where are the verses to specifically condemn child sexual abuse when so much else is spoken about at length in specific terms?
The Bible was voted on to see what books would be included. It was written by men and the accounts of Jesus were written well after the fact. Mark was written first and the original copies did not contain mentions of the virgin birth, or anyone seeing Jesus after his death. Though it appears the latter was added in some translations later, it seems like other things were added by later writers to make the story more appealing. Romans chapter 9 talks of God as a Potter, and starting at verse 20 it says, “But who are you, O man, to be answering back to God? Does the thing molded say to it’s molder, “Why did you make me this way?” What?! Does not the potter have authority over that clay to make from the same lump one vessel for an honorable use another for a dishonorable use?” Just think about those words. It kind of sounds a lot like that whole “free will” thing wasn’t quite so free. Was it really free if God can make one person a vessel for honorable use and another one for dishonorable use? How is that fair?
Another thing that always caught me was the book of Revelation. If our salvation as humans hangs in the balance of understanding the Bible, why put crazy riddles in it? God has been described as a superlative example of a loving father and the Bible is supposed to be his love letter to us. If that’s the case, then why couldn’t he make it more clear? Shouldn’t any good father know what his kids need in order to understand something? Shouldn’t he know our abilities and limitations as humans if he created us? And what kind of father gives his kids a book of riddles and then threatens them with death if they can’t solve the riddles?
The final thing that I’ll say is that there’s a lot of circular logic used when discussing the Bible. You can’t use the bible to prove the bible. That is circular logic.
So where am I now? I simply can’t have faith in the Bible, or the God in it. I just can’t. Now does that mean there is no God? Not necessarily. It absolutely could mean that there is no God. And at this point, I’m not seeing a lot of evidence of God. But I don’t claim to know everything anymore. I spent my entire life thinking I had the truth. I spent my entire life thinking that there was a God, that this book was his Word. But, as I’ve let myself examine those things with fresh eyes it just doesn’t add up. Now, there might be a God that loves us and wants to offer us everything we’ve ever dreamed of on this earth or maybe in heaven or some other planet. I don’t know. I can believe in possibilities. I can believe that I don’t know everything and maybe there is something else. There also might be a god that just walked away and that is indifferent. Or there could be a god that’s malevolent and hates us and wants bad things for us. We look around and see a lot of horrible things. I would always look at what I called creation for evidence of this loving god. I would talk about how the beauty of creation shows that there must be a god of love. But what I never bothered to look at was the absolute cruelty of the animal kingdom. The parasites and diseases, the critters that get inside of other critters and eat them from the inside out, they are just as much a part of that creation. There’s a yin and yang to a lot of life, good and a bad, and it bothers me to attribute the good to any god and the bad to some opposer to god. It’s too convenient to a story that sounds more like man made god in his image than God making man in His.
At this point I’d have to say that I’m an atheist. I’m open to possibilities and I’m open to the idea that there is a god out there. But I need much better evidence of the extraordinary things claimed in a book with talking snakes and Nephilim, to global floods and people coming back from the dead.
Now you might ask, “But what about all of those blessings that you just said you experienced and attributed to Jehovah?” Well here’s what I’ll say. I learned better things, I did better things, and better things happened in my life. I’ll compare it to playing basketball as a person that has never seen the game before. If I played a game of basketball but didn’t know how to play the game, it would be an ugly game for me wouldn’t it? But if I concentrated on my ball handling skills, I could dribble and improve. Then if I could work on my form, learn how to shoot, and figure out how to position my body on defense so as to limit the mobility of the player in front of me, I’d have a much easier time on the court. God didn’t help me – I helped me. I became what I needed and things changed. I finally reached out for better tools. I worked on my life. I did better things and therefore I got better results. If God was helping me and then I left God and basically became an atheist, why hasn’t my life spiraled again? It is because it wasn’t God in the first place. It’s interesting to me how we are taught to give God glory for everything good that happens but to blame ourselves for everything bad that happens. Or we’ll have some life saving medical procedure and thank a god for it, but not the doctor that has invested so much time into a system that has advanced so much to the point where our life can be saved or the quality of it can be improved.
I now appreciate the beauty of each day and the life around me on another level. I can look at my life today as a miracle. I spent my whole life waiting for some point in the future when I would see miracles. Maybe after death or when the world ended or whatever. But now I can see the miracles that exist today. I’m so much more in tune with life around me. I realize that for me to be here today doing what I’m doing, there was such a statistically improbable scenario that the sperm and egg met that day that made my life happen. Just the fact that I survived to full term, that I was born without complications, that nothing catastrophic happened in my childhood, that I learned to drive and drove like an idiot as a teenager without disaster, that I didn’t take my own life in my darkest moments, and that I made it out of a cult, are all statistically significant. I’m not going to spend my time now dedicated to things that have no real proof attached to them. I can’t. Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t marvel at the complexity of everything. I was listening to a podcast one day where they talked about how scientists could put an atom in one room and another atom in another room. They can stimulate the one to vibrate at a certain frequency and the other one in the other room would vibrate at the same frequency. That is amazing stuff there. I can still appreciate things bigger than me like the universe, in fact I’d say that I appreciate them more. I don’t claim to know everything but a lack of answers doesn’t mean that the answer is God.
The Next Nine Years
So now that we’ve established the transition in my personal belief systems, let’s look at where my life has gone over these last nine years. There’s so much to say, and I can’t express the beauty of the life that I’ve lived over almost a decade out of the cult, but I’ll do my best to give you some highlights.
My wife and I are still together and just celebrated our twenty fourth anniversary. Today we get to be ourselves, and although there have been some growing pains after leaving the cult as we each had to go on individual journeys of finding ourselves, today we are finally in a place where we can both express ourselves in better ways. We have so many friends now that we can’t keep up, and that includes separate friends, in that she has some of her own from her own pursuits in life and I have the same.
Jenny always wanted to perform, possibly in plays or something of the sort, as a child. Of course, as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses that was highly discouraged and she never got to do so. However, after leaving the cult she discovered a local circus and took classes to become an aerialist, performing on the swinging ladders and the lyra. She has also been able to perform as an eight foot tall inflatable squid named “Inky” to entertain children, she’s done some clowning, she’s performed on stage with a talented local Elvis Presley act, and so much more.
We’ve gone to concerts. We hike weekly, sometimes twice a week, and anyone that follows me on Facebook knows how much I love sharing photos of the places that we explore. We play disc golf. When I was eighteen years old or so and I needed a new car for pioneering I had a choice between a four door Mazda Protege and a Ford Mustang. Of course I wanted the Mustang, but I bought the better service car. Today I own an old New Edge Mustang from 2002, not quite the Mustang that I wanted back in the 90s, but close enough and I have fun with it. It is loud and fast. Oh, and we continued our debt free journey and not only shook free of all of the tax debt that we had in the past, discussed previously, but we kept working hard and saving and paid our house off in February of 2021 to become completely debt free.
We quickly embraced the holidays. We don’t just have a Christmas tree in our house in December, we created a Christmas forest, with multiple trees. When we travel we try to buy an ornament, or something that can be used as one, to put on the trees. Although we may celebrate in an entirely secular manner, our trees hold our memories and we enjoy looking at them each year and the memories that they hold. Jenny loves to dress up for Halloween and we sometimes go to multiple parties. We have chosen family now that we get to celebrate Thanksgiving with, with so many invitations that we can’t make them all on that one day. Whatever the holiday, we have the freedom to decide for ourselves if we want to celebrate it and how we want to. There’s nothing holding us to any decision there, and we’re free to explore as we see fit.
I mentioned earlier that my dad died in 2016. That is the last time I ever heard from my mom. I probably haven’t heard from my brother or my sister that are Jehovah’s Witnesses since 2015, perhaps 2014. As mentioned previously, I do still have my closest younger brother to me in age, as we reconnected as part of my awakening process. I’ve also been able to reconnect a bit with some extended family that were never Jehovah’s Witnesses.
My wife has never heard from her JW family again, although we did see them last year. In 2023 we attended the 70th wedding anniversary of her grandparents. None of her family are in the cult other than her immediate family. That includes her four younger sisters, their three husbands, her niece and nephew, and her parents. They are active Jehovah’s Witnesses as far as we know. This anniversary party was held in a church basement, which is usually off limits to people in the cult, and we were determined to go support her grandparents, so we did. Both my wife and I are what they would call apostates, people that left their cult, the worst of the worst, especially because we speak out about their abuses. They aren’t supposed to be present where apostates are, yet her JW family showed up to the party and shunned us the whole time. The family noticed, and it wasn’t a good look for them. I was chosen at the last minute to take photos of the group, and I made them all interact with me as I took photos of them to include. I didn’t want to be petty and leave the Witnesses in the family out, though I could have. I did get a great photo of her father standing in front of a mural of the three crosses on the hill though. They can claim to be holier than us, but as a JW I would have never been caught in a church basement with known apostates.
So let’s get to that last part about being outspoken. I have absolutely owned my story. I’m doing it here, but I have gone on to do so many other things, and I want to list some of them here, because it is important to see that you can make something good out of all of this. You can own your story, or your story can own you. I’ve chosen to own mine. I have a rich life outside of the JW and exJW part of my life, but I’ve also taken that part of my story and used it for good.
First, what you’re reading or perhaps listening to has helped people to wake up or get healthier after leaving the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I know that for a fact because it has been downloaded about 60,000 times and it has been translated into Spanish as well. In English it was first known as the podcast called This JW Life. After it was removed from YouTube due to a trademark claim that I can only assume was initiated by Watchtower or a representative, it is now being released under a new name, “Becoming Jehovah”. In Spanish this is now known as the podcast Esta Vida Como Testigo De Jehova. A wonderful person reached out to help translate This JW Life into Spanish to help my story reach more people, as I designed this to help people to process their own stories, and now thanks to him it can be done in a second language. Thank you S.G. for your tremendous help as the translation of all of this was a monumental task. Also, thank you for being the Spanish version of me and for speaking my story forth in a community that will understand and that has also lived it even though we can’t speak the same language. What an amazing gift you have given to me and to others as well.
After I was done with my original podcast, This JW Life, I went on to help other people to tell their personal stories on my current podcast called Shunned. The Shunned Podcast is not just a podcast but also a YouTube channel featuring my work. As of April of 2024 I’ve produced over 170 episodes, which have been clicked on 1.3 million times, most of them long form real life stories of former Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ve also interviewed people from other high control groups like Scientology, the FLDS, Amish, Mennonites, Moonies (Unification Church), and more small groups that have impacted the lives of individuals that were courageous enough to share. We can learn so much from one another.
You’ll also notice on the Shunned Podcast YouTube channel that I have provided other content as well. I have spoken at a local university in their psychology class about propaganda, where I was able to share some of my story. I was invited to speak at the inaugural conference called “When Rights and Religions Collide”, held in New York City. I’ve presented a few times in person and online for the International Cultic Studies Association. I developed an exJW cart to take out to the JW carts in person and in public for several reasons, among them to show former members of the cult that you can take your power and your voice back. You don’t have to be afraid of them, and we can speak up and help educate the public about them as well. I have other projects too, some that I don’t talk about openly that reach active Jehovah’s Witnesses in a way that gives them a chance to be exposed to new information. Finally, you’ll find helpful coaching videos there on topics like gaslighting, perfectionism, and my 100th episode featured 100 things that you need to know in order to heal from the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
That brings me to my greatest work. Today I’m a cult recovery coach (see ExJwHelp.com), helping individuals one on one to heal and move on from their cult experience. I get to see individuals make friends, feel better in their own skin, learn skills that they need in order to have a quality life, and to do the most important thing of all by giving themselves a chance to learn to love themselves. We were all taught to treat ourselves poorly, to beat ourselves and lead ourselves like a slave, as the Witnesses like to quote from scripture. There’s a beautiful life to be had and everyone deserves a chance to live it. There’s only one life that we can prove that we have, and it is this one. Everyone is an atheist to someone out there that believes in a different god, or a different teaching of a life not yet realized. But we all have one thing in common. We are all here today. We were all hurt. It wasn’t us but it was environmental, and that means that we can change. The cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses took our past, but they don’t get to take our future if we’re willing to put in the time and effort to participate in active recovery. I love what I do today and the people that I get to work with daily.
Today you’ll find me, and likely my wife Jenny by my side, out on the disc golf course, out on a trail, connecting with friends, and being happy. Our life today is night and day from the one that we both outgrew. Where we go today the people of our past can’t come. They are stuck. We hope that someday they wake up too for themselves, to give themselves a chance at the real life, the best life ever, the only one that actually exists with any proof, and that they don’t waste this one. With that said, they aren’t our responsibility, and they are on their own path that they are solely responsible for. If they ever wake up, we’ll be here to greet them. However, life moves on.
Jehovah’s Witnesses like to use the scripture at Exodus 3:13,14 to define who Jehovah is. After Moses asked God what his name was, Jehovah defined his name as “I will become what I choose to become”. Today, outside of the prison of Watchtower, I’m free to be who I want to be. I get to choose who I am, to explore life and to see what fits me and what doesn’t. I also get to forge my own path as I see fit. I became Jehovah by letting go of him and of the oppressive cult that bears Witness to that name. I take that 8 year old that started this journey with me everywhere I go today, and I’ve made it safe for him to have fun and to be himself. I am me, integrating all of my life experiences, and I am happy.