Sol Visits a Kingdom Hall, and Finds the Door Locked

It's a lovely warm evening this evening.  A gentle breeze from the south wafts into my car window.  I sit here with it about an inch and a half down as I wait quietly for some sign of life from the windowless brick building.

With square footage a little larger than my house, the building has real stone under brick arches in the shape of windows.  But like I said, there are no windows, an eccentricity brought about by who knows what, I've heard reasons like vandalism, cost, construction time, and that natural light during spiritual focus encourages lewd behavior.  I'm suspicious of that last one.  Looking in the door, it appears to have perhaps 50 chairs.  There are no truly large Kingdom Halls, no mega-churches in the Jehovah's Witness world.  This one would fit within half of the gymnasium my ecclesia (church) meets in.  But we have 2000 members or so.  In this Kingdom Hall, two congregations meet.

I have already checked the door a couple times.  I know two congregations meet here because their meeting times are posted on the wall next to the door.  But nothing posted about why nobody is here now.  Usually when one passes out flyers advertising a location and a time for an event, one shows up to the event, however, if despite the profuse and wasteful use of such methods, one never seems to expect anyone to show up for one's events, one may neglect to be vigilant if one's plans change.

I have heard of congregation consolidation previously, loss of members and reduction of costs leading to two and even three congregations meeting in the same Hall.  I had not seen it however, so I was excited to have something confirmed.  I am expecting to have quite a few things confirmed this evening, because if we go through the study I have been given in preparation for this evening's meeting (which I have already dutifully browsed) I already have material with which to work.

You see, Jehovah's Witnesses are constantly fed both the questions and the answers to anything they could possibly be inquisitive about and an infinite number of subjects they will never need to be inquisitive about because all the answers are provided.  But it's strange because these are questions I'd expect to see in Sunday School, asked of children who would then dutifully answer from the material already given.  But these people have studied "the Bible" (actually the Watchtower with the Bible as a reference) for years!  Why such simple closed ended questions?

The answer lies in the mind control.  Keep the mind from delving deeper.  Hide the extraneous information.  Instill an automatic program in the congregant's mind which says "here are all the answers, I don't need to go anywhere else."  Pretty quickly one trusts automatically and implicitly.  Any divergent material is automatically screened because the brain becomes unaccustomed to searching for answers and thinking up new questions.  Every question has an answer, and it must be in this material somewhere.  jw.org makes this even easier because you can search and you get the pre-approved answer.  No need to think on your own.  Not only are you expected to have read all the materials and answered all the elementary school level questions before you show up, but you're going to do it again once you get here, out loud and in the group.  Group dynamics are very important.  The simple presence of another person automatically quiets dissent in a controlled environment.

It's about 7:25 now.  I was told to be here at 7:15.  I was excited to come, to experience this new thing, but it has worn off.  A couple cars have driven into the parking lot and out the other side.  They both saw I was here, and they seem to know why no one else is.  They're not telling me though, and in this easily recognizable car that they'd know wasn't one normally seen in the parking lot.

An older Chevy pickup pulls in the parking lot and parks next to one of the two empty cars in the lot.  They're both Honda sedans.  What's that?  That guy's smoking a cigarette.  Either he's not a Witness or he's hiding it.  Nope, he's not dressed like a witness either.  No self-respecting undercover smoker would risk getting caught at the Kingdom Hall.  Smoking, oddly enough, is a disfellowshippable offense.  There's a whole bunch of stuff for which you'll "strong counsel" from an elder, but if you refuse to quit smoking, you're out.  He just threw the butt on the ground in front of the building.  There's no way he's a JW.

I get out and go ask him if the door is still locked.  On the way I offer up a prayer that whatever this man's need is, for God to provide it.  It is still locked.  He's got a hell of a cough.  I've heard worse, but in the morning.  This guy's coughing pretty regularly.  Lung cancer?  Is he here because he doesn't have long and he's looking for something?

His name is Fred.  He lives in South Fayetteville.  He seems nice enough, says he was impressed by the guys who visited him a couple times.  He keeps calling them "services" and this building a "church" though I've already explained to him that they call them "meetings" and "Kingdom Halls" respectively.  He says he's looking for a small church, and hasn't been in years.  He wanted to come on a Tuesday night because he wanted there to be less of a crowd.  I didn't have the heart to tell him that there's probably just as many people to the evening meeting as there is to the Sunday morning meeting.  And I've never heard of a "crowd" at a Kingdom Hall.

I offer to talk with him about God, but he's not interested in talking, he just wants to listen.  He says if they ask him to get up and talk, he won't do it.  He obviously has no idea what JWs are about.  He thinks they are just another church, and the culture says he needs to go to church, and he wants a small one, so this is his church.  It's more like a 7-11 than where he worships.

Before long, I have figured out that there is no meeting tonight because there is an Assembly on Saturday.  How that makes sense, I'll never know, but my ex-JayDub friend says if I was IN I would.  I guess if meeting attendance is required to be in good standing with God, you're happy to get a day off occasionally.  But they are required, at least to have a good standing in the congregation and by extension, with Jehovah.  It's another little mind control trick, using rewards and punishments for expected behavior.  You only get promoted if you put in the time.  If you don't put in the time, you get a talking to by a higher-up.

Well, I told him why I'm here, but curiously he doesn't ask why I might be learning about them if I don't intend to be one.  He really knows nothing about them.  I don't want to use the C word, that would be indelicate.  But he's not curious at all, not even when I say that I have been debating with my cousin for eight years or so.

We talk a while longer as he lights up another cigarette, he tells me he is on disability now but used to be in construction.  He's 67, but looks a bit more weathered than that.  His cough is disconcerting.  That's a nasty cough.  His kids are 10-15 years my senior.  He started younger than my dad did obviously.  No mention of a wife.  Just dogs.  This guy is lonely but doesn't seem much into talking.  He really only wants to listen.  If I had to venture a guess, I'd say TV takes up a lot of his time.  Just wants to listen to something interesting, no engagement, loneliness lulled to sleep by the constant hum of the tube.

The Holy Spirit prompts me to ask to pray for him, but I don't.  I'm wicked and I know it.  I have no redeeming qualities.  I know Jesus is going to be the only way I am Justified.  My feeble works are worthless, and I get plenty of opportunities to remind myself of it.  But I don't feel condemned.  God loves me and for some reason, this divine appointment happened.  This guy showed up to see Jehovah's Witnesses and somehow ended up with me.  However, this man has no interest in knowing pros and cons of the Watchtower Organization.  He's not inquisitive at all.  I find that disappointing.  If I'm investigating something new, I want the upsides AND the downsides.  But I'm a thinking person, an intellectual, educated and learn more every day.

He's getting ready to go, I've told him that no one is here after confirming it with the guy on the phone.  We shake hands, twice and he walks to his truck.

Oh well, I'm not mad.  Cousin Bill has been giving me the runaround for years.  It's frustrating, but I have come to believe he's a true believer.  He has made peace with it.  He's doing enough in his mind and he's justified himself before God.  His mind is not open to new information.  He's well and truly programmed.

Where do I go from here?  Home.  I could have been at home with my family.  My days are numbered on this earth and I have spent far too many of them trying to talk to this Bill and getting little real engagement.  There's no relationship here.  He just wants me to hear what he has to say.  But he won't listen to what I say.  I am not saved by intake of knowledge.  I am not saved by belonging to an organization.  I am not saved works or preaching.  I am saved by Jesus.  As much of a jackass as I am, only Jesus saves.  But Jehovah's Witnesses treat Jesus like Jehovah's red-headed step-son.

Have a good evening.  I wish this evening would have been more fruitful, but all I have gotten are confirmations.  If I decide to go to a Kingdom Hall again, it won't be for Cousin Bill.  It will be for Fred.  Someone needs to warn him about what he's getting into.  And he wasn't getting my hints tonight.

Sol Visits a Kingdom Hall

I have been having a long time on-and-off email discussion with my cousin from California.  He was raised a Jehovah's Witness.

During my "dark night of the soul" last April, Cousin Bill (name changed) showed up again, interestingly enough.  It reminded me of how missionaries talk about how they are out in the jungles of Papua New Guinea (or wherever) and after months or years of work with the natives, the Witnesses show up and start muddying the waters with the new believers.  Think about the similarities between "did God really say you would die if you ate the fruit?" and "does the Bible really teach Jesus is God?"

So there I was, going through a heavy spiritual attack, going through counseling, deliverance ministry, and healing prayer (some of the most spiritually amazing things I have personally witnessed) and here shows up Cousin Bill again.

So I began to engage with him as I was also reaffirming my own faith.  I'll admit, I had become a bit passive in my faith practice.  I had gotten too interested in politics, work, and life and when a spiritual attack revealed itself, I had my guard down.  But this attack, with the help of friends both near and far, sharpened my faith, challenged me to reinvestigate the evidence, and discover God anew.  This then led to my acceptance of a mission to move almost a thousand miles and join a new church plant project and that is what I have been working toward and preparing for for the last seven months.

But through all of it, Bill was still there.  Pretty quickly, I got the feeling (we'll call it the Holy Spirit) that nothing I was saying was having any impact and that I shouldn't be doing it.  Sure enough, the longer it went, the more testy it got.  I tried to have an open mind, tried to approach the material with fresh eyes as I had not seen it in a few years.  But the same tired misinterpretations and mind control techniques pop up over and over again.

So as a last ditch effort, I tried something new.  Rather than focusing on the theology, I focused on experience and the 'mind control cult' angle.  What was revealed to me at this point was just how deep the rabbit hole goes.  I was positively amazed when after he listened to a sermon I sent him, it was as if he didn't even hear half of it, the half which recounted a couple miraculous events that happened at my church.  Just so you understand the context, JWs don't believe miracles happen today, they're cessationists in that regard.  So when I report miracles, either that have happened to me or people I know (I personally know all the pastors at my current church) it just doesn't compute.  Either I'm wrong and deluded or the thought is stopped altogether.  This revealed to me just how deep the mind control goes.

Now I can only explain how it works in my head but I assume it works similarly in most people's without this subconscious thought control training.  When I come across a divergent piece of information, I can reject it outright as not comporting with my mental framework, but that doesn't mean it doesn't stick.  I might think to myself "how can I address this objection to such and such a framework that I hold?"  Or actually more often than you might think, I think "you know, that's a really good point, I wonder if it holds up to scrutiny" and so I will spend some time looking up the topic and/or thinking about it to see if it changes my life or if I end up rejecting it.  These are the traits of a critical mind.

With Bill however, (the odd Witness who considers himself a student of everything and flirts with the rules about what information he can investigate) when he encountered things like miracles, it was like instant amnesia.  I could ask point blank about what he would skip and it's like it never happened.  It just didn't register.

One of these traits is tied to a well known logical fallacy.  The ad hominem fallacy is one in which one may direct an attack at a person rather than the argument, but I think a more apt description here is sort of a reverse argument from authority.  In an argument from authority, the source is considered true just because of who the source is.  Here I say the source is considered always to be false, just because of what the source used to be.  As part of the Milieu Control aspect of mind control, a subject is directed to ignore anything that comes from an ex-member of the group.  With JWs, this bears out in the term "apostate."  JWs will not read anything they know to be apostate material, written by an apostate, a former JW.  They will not listen to them speak.  Apostates are to be shunned.  Ex-members are to be shunned even if they are your own family member.

So when I talk to Bill and I know about all the workings of the organization, everything I say is automatically a lie or a deception by those wicked apostates who are only out there to make Jehovah's Organization look bad.  Bill quite literally cannot address a single one of the arguments because they come from apostates.  He won't (can't) look at a website written by an apostate.  He refuses to admit any information I got from apostates is true, no matter the obviousness of it.  It's from apostates, therefore it is not worth addressing.  It's like a phobia.  In fact, it's very much like a phobia.

As the owner of a critical mind on the other hand, I can tell you it works quite differently.  If anything, I consider material from apostates far more important than stuff from your garden variety atheist.  The atheist doesn't have much experience in what he's talking about.  The apostate has been on the inside, they know how it works, and they probably know how to hit harder because they know the soft spots.  These people must be taken seriously because they can do the most damage.  If it weren't for the mind control, JWs would address these like I do because they really are doing the most damage to their organization and it is precisely because they are being ignored that this damage is happening.  Rather than engage and oppose the opponent, they ignore, which as anybody knows, most often results in defeat.  These days, the numbers show that JWs are having their butts handed to them and I'd say it's mostly because the apostates have been recruited by God to do the job.  The sea change in the culture is helping too.

So if I've learned one thing throughout this experience, it's that it's not about doctrine.  It's not about theology.  It's not about beliefs.  It's not even about the Bible.  It's about mind control.  Every other thing is built around a system of control.  Naturally, to Bill, this is a totally bogus assertion.  Of course there is no mind control.  We have no person we're following.  There's no fear or oppression at our meetings.  Do you really think if it were that easy to spot it would still be working after all these years?  Do you think they're going to tell you what they're doing?  Do you think they're going to teach you to spot similar things in other organizations?  Of course not.  They're going to give you a bogus description of what a cult is and refute it.  That's called a Strawman Fallacy.

So rather than engage with Bill on theological issues, I decided I'd engage on only one, the one he's totally unprepared for.  Now you might ask "why would he go for that?"  Good point.  And if he were a garden variety Witness, you'd be right.  But he's not.  Remember, he's one of those intellectual types and he has an urgent burning need for me to hear his point of view.  I mean it's amazing the drive of this need.  After I broke off our continuing conversations, he started pestering me on Facebook, sniping any post or status he could worm around to addressing one of his doctrines.  So after doing my best to quash it and failing, I finally said that what I'd really like to talk about is how the Watchtower is (or isn't) a mind control cult.

Now here's where the great thing happened, he made me a deal.  He claims he'll talk about it if I go to a meeting so I can see that all this mind control stuff isn't actually going on.  The thing is, I've already seen videos of meetings.  I know what goes on there.  But in a sense, he has a point.  I haven't been to a JW meeting (though I've been to a Mormon church service, a hyper charismatic church service, and thousands of Seventh-Day Adventist church services).  And if you follow me on Twitter (@wiredforstereo) you know I like #newthings.  So I really couldn't turn it down, even if a deal wasn't involved.  I can't say the timing is good, but I think it's important to do this because then I can address the real issue, the mind control.

So what I'm asking here is for suggestions, possible questions to ask, things to look for, thoughts or insights.  I'd like to live blog it like I could at my church but I get the feeling that tapping away on a laptop during the meeting would be fiercely looked down upon so I don't want to do that. It's much easier to get away with that sort of thing when there's a thousand people in the room with you and there's a couple other people in the room taking notes on a computer too, but a Kingdom Hall is not like that at all.  First there are a lot fewer people and they're paying close attention to what's going on.  They've got third grade level pre-set questions to answer.  And any of you who have gone through third grade and also looked at the Watchtower materials know what I'm talking about.  Now why is a group of adults paying such close attention and answering such obvious closed-ended questions?  Need I say it, mind control.

I hope to be able to bring you some more information on this here in the future.  As I've mentioned to Bill, there are so many of these that the material has been well developed and it isn't even from apostates.  Many of them aren't even religious, there are business cults too.  But they all have the same family of controls and methods.

Pray for me if that's the sort of thing you're called to.  I want to do all this with gentleness and respect and I'm not always the best at it.  And finally I think I may have found the chink in the armor.