Sovereign Spirit | One Woman's Path from Shameful Sheep to Spiritual Sovereignty | Chapter Six, Part Four

Sovereign Spirit
..One Woman's Path from Shameful Sheep to Spiritual Sovereignty

Chapter Six, Part Four

Now, you would think that I would have immediately applied this line of reasoning to the god worshipped by the people in the church I was regularly attending again. The Christian Jehovah and JW’s Jehovah are the same Jehovah, right? Well, my poor brainwashed mind couldn’t make the connection yet, and instead of leaving the church for the same reasons I’d just made my mind up to leave my JW beliefs behind, I dug my heels in deeper.

Maybe I was too happy having my family’s love back in my life to care. Maybe I was so much of a people pleaser that I couldn’t bear to hurt them all over again. Maybe I was lonely, feeling lost, and being a part of the community at church made me feel good. Maybe I thought if Jehovah’s Witnesses had it wrong, then the church had to have it right. Maybe my mind was so fucked I couldn’t see straight.

It was all of it.

I immersed myself back in the church after deciding not to be one of Jehovah’s Witnesses anymore, but I didn’t fall right in line with my old Christian beliefs from the beginning. I did write a disassociation letter to my former JW elders, and happened to call into the meeting on the night they announced me as “no longer one of Jehovah’s Witnesses” at the Kingdom Hall. I still carried my New World Translation with me to church along with my old NIV. Somehow, despite my research, I was still convinced it was the more correct translation. I’d compare the two often during sermons, looking for discrepancies that could be clues to more answers.

The biggest issue for me at this time was the question of who Jesus was. For Christians, Jesus is the God-man, a man who is man, but who is also God simultaneously. For Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus is an angel, the very first of God’s creations. If I was going to accept the teachings of the church and devote my life to my childhood religion, I had to reconcile this dispute for myself. I had to know who Jesus was.

Now, the Bible, as many know, can be quite a confusing book. You may read one verse, and come away with one impression. Read a verse two books later, and you'll come away with an entirely different impression. So was the case with the Jesus question.

I studied for hours on end, always coming away with no solid conclusion for who was right about who Jesus was. I prayed for answers constantly, hoping for epiphany to smack me in the face. I remember curling up into a ball on my bed one night, wrapped up in frustration after a study session, literally screaming out to God, begging him to show me the answer. (Apologies to my then-neighbors. They must have thought I was nuts. And I was.) I didn't understand why I couldn't hear Him. I didn't understand why everyone around me seemed to be so completely certain of who Jesus was, when I hadn't a clue.

"You just have to listen," they told me, "he speaks in the smallest whisper."

Well, I wasn't hearing a damn thing.

Unfortunately, I felt the pressure of the congregation weighing on me hard. Everyone who knew me in the church was praying for me to hear "the answer". People would come up to me all the time, and tell me they had been praying for me, for years, to come back to the church. I began to feel almost obligated to choose, once and for all, what I would believe, and stick to it, not for my sake, but because they had invested so much energy in me.

I was tired of not getting the answers I was searching for - exhausted, really - and began to conclude that there must be something wrong with me. God was perfect, wasn’t he, so I had to be the faulty piece of the puzzle. One church friend even told me I must not be able to hear God’s answer because I had too much “junk” in my life. Meaning, I was too sinful to hear God, I suppose.

After several months of studying and praying with no answer at all, I gave in. I gave up, in a sense. And I admitted that they must be right. Majority rules, right? So, I went along with them, decided Jesus was God, and not just an angel, and hoped time would prove to me that what I was telling everyone I believed as fact, was really true.

During this time, the pastors at the church, as well as some of the people who were my friends growing up in the church, encouraged me to return to my then-husband, and try to work things out. They told me I could be an example to him, and maybe even save him from Hell. This sent my mind into more anguish, as I felt the weight of sending him to Hell on my shoulders if I didn't go back. At the same time, I couldn't bear to go back to my husband. Too much damage had been done, and I knew there was no going back on his end either.

As I spent more time around my Christian peers, I began to notice how many of them were leading double lives. Respected young adults, who were becoming leaders in the church, were very different people outside the church walls. That bothered me. It made everything they said seem fake, and I couldn't respect them, nor could I trust what they said, as far as the Bible was concerned.

I remember hearing the pastor make some absurdly racist comments during one Sunday morning service. Not many in the congregation seemed to notice, but it stood out to me and was very telling of the kind of mindset the leadership of the church was under. Afterwards, I couldn't seem to make myself go listen to any more of his sermons. I still came to the small group Bible studies, but I was beginning to get really turned off by the church as a whole. I began attending a different, more contemporary church on Sundays, thinking maybe it would be different somewhere else.

It was around this time that some of the positive memories I had of being a JW resurfaced. I remembered how the services were full of people of different colors, never just white faces. I remembered that people really tried to love each other, and support each other, even if it was awkward. I remembered what I had learned about the church being so involved in the military, showing their support for war, even if it would mean Christians killing other Christians in other countries. I remembered that Jehovah, the JW's god, though he might destroy most of the planet, would never torture anyone for eternity in a place called Hell.

Then one day, a light bulb clicked on in my head. I’d researched Jehovah’s Witnesses history and doctrine in detail, and would never go back to them. Why shouldn’t I research Christianity just as thoroughly before I decide this is really where I need to be?

Don’t ask me why it didn’t occur to me sooner. I blame a lifetime of mental and emotional fuckery. I’m just thankful the idea did make it into my brain eventually, and I did not allow fear to stand in the way of following it through. I began my research, promising to keep an open mind, and heart, about whatever I might find.