Religion…. on Jehovah’s Witnesses…

“I am not afraid to die.”

I use to be, many, many years ago, in fact from very young, since I can remember until the age of 12, I believed implicitly that I would die horribly before my 12^th birthday. This, what turned out to be a completely erroneous belief was given to me by my father. You see I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness. They, therefore my father, believed that Armageddon would come in 1975. Those not in THE TRUTH were in for a horrible death and everlasting damnation. You see, although I was a quiet, sensitive kid, I did not like this Jehovah character, whom seemed rather meaner than my old man. I did not love this God of my fathers in my heart, so therefore I was doomed. Melodramatic? Childish? I was a child… To give an example of how strongly my father believed in his church, when my mother spoke of my High School education plans, my father would say we needn’t worry about that Armageddon would get here before I finished Primary school. I was in standard 5 in the supposedly fated year of 1975. Children are tough and I sort of coped with that okay. My worst problem was that I got beaten up just about every day at least once a day by my peers. Why? I was a Jehovah’s Witness, I did not stand when the National Anthem was played, I did not sing hymns or bow my head in assembly when the school principal prayed to his God. Mostly, I would not fight back. Hated school, hated the “meetings” and being forced to wear a suit and go from door to door selling the Watchtower and Awake magazines. My only salvation and indeed my thread to sanity was my animal collection. I had a variable zoo in my back garden. Every boy should have a dog, I had a few of those, but my passion was reptiles and amphibians. This was in the late 60’s and very little was known about snakes, so I collected and studied them carefully. I  had a lizard collection as well, some chameleons, two African Bull frogs and a few rabbits. My father had huge aviaries of wild finches to round of the menagerie.

My father was a violent man that had found salvation through this religion but he remained a violent man. His law was imposed and enforced by violent means; if dictatorial words and demands were not met he resorted to corporal punishment with enthusiasm. Ironically, as you will see, his instrument of punishment was an old, very thick leather army belt. I did not do much to get into trouble with him in the days before Armageddon didn’t come.  I got to standard 5, I was eleven years old and a real cry baby, bullied by my father, the school staff, they too had no time for little Jehovah’s, and my peers, shit even the girls use to beat me. I think after I was pretty certain that this Armageddon thing was a lot of shit, about mid 1975 I changed a little, the first indication of this was: One of the school bullies was bored one play time and decided to relieve that by bashing the little Jehovah boy. The little Jehovah’s boy had had enough and lost it completely. The boy, Kevin, was taken to hospital and they thought he would loose an eye. At the age of 11 I had enough anger in me to do that with my fists. Unfortunately I liked the results. I would not have known the expression, “Better to piss on someone than to be pissed on by someone.” But it fit. From that day on I did not win every fight I was in but my opponents knew that they had been in a fight and tended to pick on someone that would not give them so much trouble. This may seem like I had resolved some serious problems – not true. All I had done was create some momentous defects of character that would make my life a misery in years to come. In retrospect it is quite simple to diagnose these, shit, you don’t need a degree in psychology to see this.”

 

One day I looked in the mirror and say a man I did not like one bit, a violent, hate filled person, a dangerous man. I spent the next few years working to change that man to more of what he use to be like. Once on that path there is no turning back and no end to it.

I like the AA’s tradition which states, “We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.”

 

Nosce te ipsum

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