01 Dec '19 23:473 edits_Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life_
by Amber Scorah (2019)
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-12-01/
"In Shanghai, a Jehovah’s Witness finds freedom — and space to question her beliefs"
--Amber Storah
"I had been raised as a Jehovah’s Witness — change had nothing to
do with me. That was God’s department. My role was to preach about
the end of the world, Armageddon, which I knew was imminent, and
to wait for the paradise on Earth that God promised would follow.
Of course, only God knew when the apocalypse would come, so it
helped to keep busy in the meantime. I had figured a good way to
pass the time until Armageddon would be to learn Mandarin and
go to China to preach."
"For the first time in my life I had some freedom. Unlike at home, there
were no meetings three times a week, no meet-ups every morning for preaching.
There were no rules against getting close to “worldly” people."
"When my students told me about their ancient culture, it made me feel arrogant.
Here I was, a white person, instructing them to trade in their thousands
of years of cultural wisdom in favor of my 120-year-old American religion.
Cracks in my faith began to form."
"Because we were forbidden from reading anything critical of our religion, I was
afraid of what Jonathan (a man in Los Angeles) might tell me. But I started listening.
After a year of this, I had begun to see that some things in my religion were simply untrue.
Yet I had built my whole life around these beliefs. Without them, who was I?
If I renounced my religion, I would be shunned by everyone, including my family and friends.
I had been a Witness my whole life. I didn’t know how to live without it."
"I made the decision to commit adultery without really making it. A kind of robotic
force propelled me to do it; not desire, not lust, nothing purposeful. It was more a passive action.
I needed a way to bring about my own apocalypse, because that was the only ending I understood.
In my religion, there was no other way out.
Years later, shunned by my family and friends, I became interested in understanding how
something that was so obviously false had so fully controlled me, a reasonably
intelligent human being. Had I been in a cult?"
"Even though I am no longer religious and do not feel bound by rules from an
ancient book, I still feel shame at times for ending my marriage the way I did.
My husband had admitted he didn’t love me, but I still felt bad for hurting him by
burning everything down.
Now I understood: The great irony was that I had needed to.
I had to commit this biblical sin [adultery] in order to find my God-given freedom.
To get out, I had to let someone in [life and body]."
--Amber Storah
by Amber Scorah (2019)
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-12-01/
"In Shanghai, a Jehovah’s Witness finds freedom — and space to question her beliefs"
--Amber Storah
"I had been raised as a Jehovah’s Witness — change had nothing to
do with me. That was God’s department. My role was to preach about
the end of the world, Armageddon, which I knew was imminent, and
to wait for the paradise on Earth that God promised would follow.
Of course, only God knew when the apocalypse would come, so it
helped to keep busy in the meantime. I had figured a good way to
pass the time until Armageddon would be to learn Mandarin and
go to China to preach."
"For the first time in my life I had some freedom. Unlike at home, there
were no meetings three times a week, no meet-ups every morning for preaching.
There were no rules against getting close to “worldly” people."
"When my students told me about their ancient culture, it made me feel arrogant.
Here I was, a white person, instructing them to trade in their thousands
of years of cultural wisdom in favor of my 120-year-old American religion.
Cracks in my faith began to form."
"Because we were forbidden from reading anything critical of our religion, I was
afraid of what Jonathan (a man in Los Angeles) might tell me. But I started listening.
After a year of this, I had begun to see that some things in my religion were simply untrue.
Yet I had built my whole life around these beliefs. Without them, who was I?
If I renounced my religion, I would be shunned by everyone, including my family and friends.
I had been a Witness my whole life. I didn’t know how to live without it."
"I made the decision to commit adultery without really making it. A kind of robotic
force propelled me to do it; not desire, not lust, nothing purposeful. It was more a passive action.
I needed a way to bring about my own apocalypse, because that was the only ending I understood.
In my religion, there was no other way out.
Years later, shunned by my family and friends, I became interested in understanding how
something that was so obviously false had so fully controlled me, a reasonably
intelligent human being. Had I been in a cult?"
"Even though I am no longer religious and do not feel bound by rules from an
ancient book, I still feel shame at times for ending my marriage the way I did.
My husband had admitted he didn’t love me, but I still felt bad for hurting him by
burning everything down.
Now I understood: The great irony was that I had needed to.
I had to commit this biblical sin [adultery] in order to find my God-given freedom.
To get out, I had to let someone in [life and body]."
--Amber Storah
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