Raised a Jehovah’s Witness, I knocked on doors from the time I was a preschooler until I was an adult.
When I was as young as four I went door to door with my dad. Often we “worked” streets near the house we rented in Sylmar, a suburb of Los Angeles. I was in awe of my dad. He had all the answers.
When we placed copies of The Watchtower and Awake! magazines, I took them out of my book bag and gave them to the householders. I beamed with joy. When my dad placed magazines and arranged for “call backs,” he reported his victories on his monthly time card, and I helped. I got to count my time too. In the Jehovah’s Witnesses, each month you know how good you were. You mark your time down and you get credit for it.
When I was 23 I confessed to the elders of my JW congregation that I had committed what Catholics would call a mortal sin. The JW elders kicked me out (disfellowshiped me) because I “wasn’t repentant enough,” because I didn’t cry in front of them when I confessed.
Being disfellowshiped from JWs is serious. I lost all the friends I grew up with, my whole support network. They would not talk to me at all. If I happened to greet one of them in passing, he would ignore me. Not even a hello was returned.
About ten years ago the leadership of the Watch Tower extended the shunning of the disfellowshiped to include all family members. Until then it was permissible for a disfellowshiped person to talk and associate with family and relatives. I remember when my dad came home from an assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was staying with him at the time, and he said, “Brad, the [Watch Tower Bible and Tract] Society now says that family cannot have anything to do with a disfellowshiped person. You have two weeks to leave my house.” I left the next day. I’ve seen my dad four times since then. He’s a good Jehovah’s Witness. He won’t see me again until the Society changes the rules.
One thing that stands out in my Christian conversion process, which ended with my conversion to the Catholic faith, is the pain. I have had to give up everything that was me to accept Christ and follow the Catholic tradition. I have come to love a Church that I hated and was totally bigoted against. When I was a Jehovah’s Witness I pitied Catholics as misguided fools, and I condemned priests as charlatans and flim-flam men who stole money from the people. But a girl I was dating defended the Church. I said things about the Church that she would easily refute. I was impressed with her defense of priests. She was the one that told me priests went to school for many years and that they dedicated their lives to God and owned very little. She described them as spiritual men, and this impressed me.
I was so thoroughly programed into the Watch Tower that, after I was kicked out of the Kingdom Hall, it took fifteen years to decide to go to a Christian church. I chose Calvary Chapel, but reluctantly. I wasn’t able to enter the building. The Society teaches that other religions are of Satan. For a Witness to enter a Christian church is to subject himself to the influence of the demons. An usher at Calvary Chapel had to come out and talk to me. He coaxed me inside and invited me to attend a Bible study at his house. I was immensely grateful, to him and to God, who knew I needed an interim step between my JW heritage and the Catholic Church. That interim step was Calvary Chapel, an Evangelical church.
The next step in my conversion process was something a lay Catholic did. Mike was one of the few Catholics who ever defended his faith to me. I had all my bigoted, misinformed reasons for knowing Catholics were wrong and I was right. After all, I thought, just consider the Inquisition, idol worshiping, superstitions, praying to saints, money grubbing. I knew I had the right answers, but Mike had his own answers–from the Bible and history–to support following the Catholic faith.
Why did Mike have answers that I rarely heard from Catholics in all my 36 years (and never while I was a Witness)? Before I met him, Mike had decided to quit getting the theological stuffing kicked out of himself by Fundamentalists, and he learned to defend his faith. He didn’t defend it perfectly, and sometimes he had to look up answers to tough questions, but at least he defended. If he could defend his faith against Fundamentalist challenges, he could–and did–defend it against JW challenges, including my residual biases.
After months of hanging around Catholics I got over enough of my bigotry (I concluded that much JW theology is from professional anti-Catholic bigots) to see that scholarship, theology, Scripture, history, logic, and reasoning support Catholic beliefs far more than any other religion. I am more than a tad disappointed that Catholics didn’t defend or explain their faith to me when I was knocking on their doors as a JW. All I ever got was, “Not interested. I’m a Catholic. Good-bye.”
Because of Catholics’ unwillingness to talk about their faith, I lost many years. I feel cheated out of the happiness in my life that I now enjoy in this holy, apostolic Church. I was there, at Catholic houses, and no one defended a single Catholic doctrine. Each Catholic, as a holder of the fullness of Christ’s promises, should pick out at least one doctrine and learn to defend it–not necessarily with the idea of converting someone, but to be able to explain why Catholics hold that particular belief.
People have asked me, “Why answer the door when you know that, once you start talking with JWs, they won’t go away?” Because no one should have to go through what I went through. It has been a long and painful journey; if I had known how painful, I might not have started. I want the people I was raised with to know the joy of the Church absent the lies they are fed in the Watch Tower’s magazines. JWs will get that opportunity only if Catholics share and defend at their doors.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are isolated because they choose to be and because they’re forced to be. (Keep in mind the shunning.) It’s extremely difficult for anyone to leave the JWs. Would you willingly leave your mother, father, children, siblings, and all your friends? Not unless you had another support system. The Watch Tower, if not a cult, is at least cultish.
Anyone coming out of the Witnesses will need to decompress and deprogram. I will need another ten years, I think, to deprogram completely from the effects of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Catholics would do door-to-door missionaries a service if they’d resolve to speak about their faith plainly.
It’s a matter of charity.