At the age of 60, my mother has suddenly declared to me that she has become a Jehovah’s witness. I knew she had been studying the bible for a while but I did not know it was under the guidance of the Jehovah’s Witness’s. She had never showed any religious leanings throughout her life. I am now very worried for her. To me, the Jehovah’s Witness’s are very cult like. Every time I speak with my mother on the phone it ends in her telling me things about the bible. I then get angry and upset on the inside. I am an atheist, but was bought up as a Roman Catholic due to my fathers side of the family. I am worried that I am going to lose my mother due to our complete clash of views. I am at a total loss as to what to do now. How can I get her to see sense?
Posted: November 1st 2010
Dave Hitt www
As someone who was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, I can assure you they are not cult like. They are a cult, a cult that uses all kinds of nasty tricks to keep their adherents in line.
Most of these tricks, though, are directed at those who leave the cult. As long as you don’t get involved with them you won’t be the target of their wrath, unless you ask too many questions and ask them the wrong way. If they see you as a threat they’ll encourage your mother to avoid contact with you, but you’ve got to really annoy them to get to that point.
She now has an entire congregation of instant best friends. They’re two-faced and rather mindless, but they’ve convinced her they love her and probably dote on her quite a bit. If she still has any non-witness friends do whatever you can to help her spend time with them.
If possible, convince her to avoid getting baptized, at least for a while (while you work on her.) Getting baptized is the final step of conversion, and it sets up people for the nastiness later on if they leave. (Unbaptized people who leave are more or less left alone.)
Your best bet is to feign an interest and ask some simple questions. Be careful of revealing your sources, though, because they’ll often write off anything on the web as “apostate” material, and therefore not even worth addressing. Tell her that since this is important to her you want to learn about it yourself, although you’re not interested in converting.
When asking questions it might be helpful to have one of her JW friends in the room. She can always fall back on the idea that she doesn’t know enough to debate the facts, but seeing a full fledged member hem and haw and sputter and spit might have a better effect than just dealing with her directly.
Here’s a few things you can hit them with.
Their entire theology is based on 1914. That’s the year Christ established his kingdom in heaven and cast Satan down to the earth. That date is based on some funky numbers extracted from bible prophesies, and counting from the destruction of Jerusalem in 607 BCE.
There’s one problem with that. Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 or 586, which destroys their entire theology.
They’ve also taught that “this generation will by no means pass away” until Armageddon came – meaning that before everyone born in 1914 died, Armageddon would come. Since there’s not too many of those folks left any longer, they’ve changed the definition of generation to mean “people who knew people from then.” Which is amazingly ridiculous.
In the July 9, 2009 edition of Awake!, one of their magazines, they featured an article “Is it wrong to change your religion.” It contained the sentence, “No one should be forced to worship in a way that he finds unacceptable or be made to choose between his beliefs and his family.” Ask them why, if this is the case, that anyone who leaves the JW immediately loses all their JW friends and family? (The friends and family can’t speak to them without risking being disfellowshiped, their word for excommunication, which means they would be shunned as well.)
They were outspoken critics of the UN, but were secretly a NGO member for many years. Why is that?
This is just barely scratching the surface.
One of the best places to contact ex-JWs is The Jehovah’s Witness Recovery Forum. (http://www.jehovahswitnessrecovery.com/) I strongly suggest you sign up and ask this question over there as well. It’s one of the friendliest and most helpful forums I’ve even been on, and you’ll get lots of useful advice.
I’m on there as Hittman – feel free to drop me a line there. Or grab my e-mail address from my website and drop me a line.
Posted: November 3rd 2010
logicel
Being angry and upset on the inside is not a pleasant feeling. And I suspect that such feelings can be perceived by your mother or can become so clear that she will perceive them. The only people who cults are able to recruit, that is, people who have not been indoctrinated from birth, are vulnerable people. Focus on why your mother is vulnerable. If you can identify what she needs, you can perhaps, with others, partake in fulfilling her needs.
In the meantime, you need to be cool, not supportive of her beliefs, but gently and firmly dispassionate regarding them. Ask her things about herself, how she is feeling, what she is doing. You can say that you are happy for her that she found something that she thinks is good for her, but that you do not see it that way and that you want to be honest with her. Be her anchor and hotline to reality, but remember she is in a vulnerable state, so always be gentle.
If you need help in this regard, keeping your anger at bay, try visualizing doing exactly that. See yourself speaking on the phone with her, hear what she says about the bible and her beliefs, and imagine what you say and how you feel, that you calm yourself down and are focused on being gentle and loving. This a bona fide technique that many find useful—you are priming your nerve pathways so they are ready to react in the way you want them in the heat of the moment, when you are actually speaking to your mother.
I wish you the very best.
Posted: November 2nd 2010
SmartLX www
Deconverting people is always difficult, and there’s no guaranteed way to do it. Fortunately for you, the JWs have one feature many religions and denominations don’t: a long list of unambiguously wrong predictions and embarrassing missed dates.
You know the cliche of the man on the street holding the sign that says “THE END IS NIGH” or “THE TIME IS AT HAND”? That’s based on Jehovah’s Witnesses in decades past. They would set a date for the endtimes, recruit people for a few years in an atmosphere of urgency and then revise the date. They finally gave up on this after about six missed Tribulations, and they now simply say God/Jesus is going to intervene “soon”. They’ve milked over a century of rhetoric from a constant idea: that it’s only a few years to the end. Only a few years now. Aaaaaany time now.
In other words, they’ve lost whatever theological credibility they might have had, and even other Christians mock them for this. That, from your perspective as you try to extricate your mother, is the good thing about the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Posted: November 1st 2010