The true follower of Christ will not ask “If I embrace this truth, what will it cost me?” Rather he will say, “This is truth. God help me to walk in it, let come what may!” – A.W. Tozer

LIFE IN THE ORG

I must have been 5 or 6 years old. I was at my little friend’s house across the street from where I lived.

“You’re going to die in Armageddon,” I blurted out in cruel, childish innocence.

My friend’s father happened to overhear my statement. “Jesus loves everybody!” he said, “I think you had better go home now!”

This is such a long-ago memory that I can’t be sure of our exact words. But I do remember the feeling of confusion and rejection brought on by the neighbor’s reaction to my foolishness. I could not at that time possibly have understood that I had been taught regrettable religious lies by my family, who loved me dearly, and who themselves had been brought up with the same lies.

I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. My parents, grandparents, and great grandparents had all been Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was all I knew for 46 years of my life until, during the recent pandemic lockdowns, I finally woke up.

My mother taught me about Jehovah God from a dark red book called “You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth.” I loved that book, especially the illustrations. It had bright, technicolor paintings of “the New System”, as we called it then. I wanted with all my heart to be there in paradise with the lions and elephants. And I loved Jehovah, who promised that everyone who obeyed him by being part of his organization would get to live there.

Jehovah’s Witnesses put enormous emphasis on evangelism. From the time I was a small child, I went “from house to house and door to door” (lyrics to a song we sang) distributing Watchtower and Awake magazines, brochures, and books. We were taught that canvassing our communities with the “good news of the Kingdom” was the most important thing we could possibly do for Jehovah. A core early memory of mine was was walking down a street while in the door to door ministry in a tiny town in north Idaho with my grandma. I was looking at my little brown shoes when grandma told me that I had beautiful feet because those feet were carrying a life saving message. (Isaiah 52:7) That conversation never left me and contributed greatly to my spiritual formation.

I was taught that everyone outside of “Jehovah’s organization” would be destroyed by God’s fire balls and earthquakes in the battle of Armageddon. We had graphic pictures of that in the red book too. This was worrisome to me, because it seemed like the kids in my fourth grade class at school were mostly pretty nice. I didn’t want them to die like that. So I tried to tell them. I even wrote a note about it during class and passed it around the entire classroom. As you can imagine, that did not go over well with my teacher.

Although I wanted to get baptized probably from the age of 8 on, my parents wisely made me wait until I was 12, almost 13 before I was allowed. By that time, much of my excitement about it had worn off, but I was still thrilled to officially “symbolize my dedication to Jehovah” through water baptism at the 1988 international convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Vancouver B.C. It meant that I could finally auxiliary pioneer (spend a 60 hours per month in the door to door evangelizing ministry).

Nearly every summer during my teens, I spent several weeks staying with my grandparents in Moscow, Idaho, where we spent nearly every day all day in the door to door ministry. I dearly loved and respected my grandparents. Their devotion to God and his organization impressed me. The skillfulness with which they explained their faith to perfect strangers inspired me. They were my role models and I hoped to someday be as adept and devoted as they were.

After I graduated from high school, I immediately went into the full-time ministry, which for Witnesses entailed spending 90 hours per month evangelizing from door to door and on city streets. Soon, I was also serving in a Spanish-speaking congregation, having learned some Spanish in school. My pioneer partner also wanted to be a missionary and was saving up to go to Ecuador. Although I didn’t have the funds to go, I wanted very much to go there with her. I hoped I would eventually be invited to Gilead, a school for the training of missionaries. My motives for all of this were good – I loved God and I loved people. All I cared about was pleasing Jehovah and doing the highest good for the greatest number of people possible. I truly believed that baptizing people into my religion was the way to do that.

Instead of moving to Ecuador or going to Gilead, I met and married my husband. We had three beautiful boys, all of whom we raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses, just as we had been.

Through the years, I had many experiences as a Witness that should have given me pause about the organization in which I had been raised. I saw much domestic abuse, physical as well as verbal, among my Witness friends. I heard about a case of child molestation at the hands of a Witness man. I had many severely depressed friends, heard about suicides, and went through several of my own nervous breakdowns. All was not well in our “spiritual paradise”, as Witnesses are taught to call the organization. But even so, I could not conceive of ever leaving it. In my mind, there was absolutely no way that “the truth” was not really the truth.

Although I would not have admitted it then, I believe things began to unravel for me during one of our annual memorial celebrations. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate communion the way Christians do it. Once a year, they gather to hear a talk about how Jesus died for our sins. During that talk, we are reminded that since only 144,000 anointed followers of Christ will go to heaven, that most of us will not need to drink the wine or eat the bread – the emblems, as they call them. Only the anointed get to partake. The rest of us observed by passing the bread and then the wine among us without partaking. We were taught that only the anointed know that they are anointed and that we were not to ask them questions about how they knew. They just knew, and if we had any question at all in our minds about whether or not we were anointed, we weren’t.

During one particular memorial of this kind, I had an extraordinary experience. At the time, I had no way to understand what was happening to me. Now I know that I was experiencing the presence of God through the Holy Spirit. I was given a vision inviting me to go heaven to be with Jesus. Embarrassingly, I could not hold back my tears. I just felt flooded with love and acceptance and I didn’t know what to do about it. I wasn’t supposed to feel this way. I was not supposed to be having this experience. It terrified me so much that I actually told God that if I was not really of the “anointed”, that I wanted him to take away the feelings. He did, so I assumed that I had merely had a psychotic break and that I should try to go back to normal.

However, over the years, I could not forget what had happened to me. I grew increasingly interested in finding out from “anointed” ones what kind of experiences they had had. I also grew increasingly impatient with some of the attitudes I observed towards Witnesses who claimed to be anointed. Instead of being believed, many were accused of being mentally ill. I dreaded that happening to me, especially since I had already had bouts of depression and knew that if I claimed to be anointed, it would likely be blamed on that. So, year after year, I would pass that bread and wine like everyone else, all the time wondering if it was wrong of me to reject it.

The only other time in my life that I remember feeling the way I did at that memorial was when I was a little child. It must have been during the time my mother had studied the red book with me. I was just becoming aware of God and learning to pray for real, not the recited prayers I was taught as a little one. I remember standing in my bedroom and suddenly being flooded with the presence of God. All I could think of was that I wanted him to hold me in his arms. I wanted to just crawl into his lap and stay there forever. I thank God for that experience and for the one I had at the memorial, because they eventually led me back to him. Unlike many others who had been raised as Witnesses, I knew there was more. I knew what it felt like to be in the presence of the Almighty.

Shortly before the recent pandemic, probably sometime in 2018 or 2019, I asked God to let me feel again the way I had felt about him as a child. With the exception of my experience during the memorial, it had been decades since I had felt the weight of his loving presence. He answered that prayer, but not in the way I expected. What I didn’t know then was that in order to get that back, I would need to come out of my beloved religion.

The organization of my childhood was simpler than it is now. There was no JW broadcasting, no JW.org, no digital Bibles or publications, no music videos. We just had our Bibles and our magazines. We had our meetings where my piano teacher played piano to accompany our singing of the “Kingdom Melodies.” But in 2014, everything began to change. Everything went digital and our governing body members overnight became celebrities after the launch of JW Broadcasting. I wanted to like this. I wanted to appreciate it. But something about it felt wrong. Something about it felt fake.

After several years, I got used to the new digital format. Although that niggling doubt in the back of my mind never completely left, I truly felt privileged to be able to remotely attend every annual meeting and every Gilead graduation, which in the past had been reserved for only a select few. I enjoyed the new music videos and getting to hear our beloved governing body members speak to us on a regular basis. But something changed in 2020.

WAKING UP

Most thought we would be back to our Kingdom Halls within a couple of weeks after we were shut down due to a novel virus. Somehow, though, I didn’t think so. I had seen enough of what it had done to China to know that this was going to be big. So when we first got the announcement that we would not be having in-person meetings, I cried and cried. I prayed for every single family in my congregation, asking God to protect them both physically and spiritually. Because our regular door to door ministry was also curtailed, we began to write letters to people in our communities instead. I wrote piles of them. I wanted people to know we hadn’t forgotten about them and that we still cared.

Soon, we started to hear news of a new vaccine being formulated. This was supposed to avert the worst of the danger and get us all right back to work and to church. Ever the medical sleuth, I decided to dive in and do as much research as I could about the virus and the potential for a successful vaccine. What I discovered could fill a book of its own. It had me very worried.

When it comes to medical treatments, the organization had never been overly controlling (except on the matter of blood transfusions, which is a whole other topic.) But for the most part, we had always been told that medical treatment was a matter of personal choice and that we should never try to manipulate one another in that very personal area. Sometimes we would have articles in our magazines about certain treatments, but the final choice on how to handle medical matters was always left up to us. That is how I assumed the pandemic would be handled – that the facts might be presented, but that we would be left alone to make our own decisions. My assumptions turned out to be incorrect.

Things began to feel ominous when we began having “governing body updates” once a month on JW Broadcasting. The niggling doubts I had had before about the direction the organization seemed to be headed turned into alarm bells as I became painfully aware of the fact that these updates were becoming more and more manipulative. The apparent purpose of the updates was to keep Witnesses informed about how the pandemic was affecting the organization and to instruct us on what the governing body felt was the best course of action regarding safety measures and medical treatment. This seemed like a radical departure from their normal stance on most types of medical decisions. And the videos used blatant forms of manipulation which were at the same time deceptive and persuasive to Witnesses who felt that the governing body was speaking for God. The outcome was that Jehovah’s Witnesses walked in lockstep when it came to their thinking and decisions regarding public health and personal medical decisions. Although the governing body claimed that Witnesses had personal choice on these matters, the truth is that there was no room for deviation. Those who fell out of step with the majority were often shamed or even excluded.

We were made to feel that if we didn’t fall in line with everything the governing body said, we were rebelling against God himself. If I had had no love for God, that wouldn’t have hurt so much. But I did, and it was excruciating. I had finally come to a place in my life where my conscience was at odds with direction coming from the organization. The problem was, I had always been taught that those men were the only ones in the world who had a direct line of communication to God and that to disobey them was to disobey God. How, after having that drilled into my mind for a lifetime, was I supposed to deal with the fact that these supposedly Godly men seemed to me to be manipulating in a way that was harming the people I loved the most?

Because of what I was seeing in the organization, I decided to engage in an act of rebellion. Though we were forbidden to look outside the organization for information on the Bible or the organization itself, I did it. I read a book written by an ex governing body member, Raymond Franz, who was kicked out of the organization in 1980 for holding a different opinion on certain theological matters. His book, Crisis of Conscience, is sort of a right of passage for ex JWs. Once you read Franz, for many there’s no going back. All is revealed, pandora’s box is open, you’ve taken the red pill.

Imagine dealing with the psychological pain of what I just described and at the same time being hit with the most painful disease you have ever faced. Right after I read Crisis of Conscience In the autumn of 2021, I came down with a severe case of Covid-19. Fortunately, I avoided the hospital. But probably because I already had an autoimmune disease, I became completely debilitated and non-functional. I stopped sleeping, could barely eat, and endured excruciating stomach pain and all-over body pain for many, many months. Probably the most painful aspect of the illness was that it caused severe depression and brain fog. I would have bouts of horrible physical pain and suicidal mental anguish. The level of suffering was utterly demonic. But it was through this suffering that I began to wake up to a greater spiritual reality.

Once I was well enough to think and read some of the time, I decided, as my dear friend Vivian describes it, to “take off my Watchtower goggles” and for the first time read the Bible without an agenda other than the desire to know God and to discover what he had really revealed through the pages of the scriptures. It didn’t take long for me to realize that there really didn’t seem to be any scriptural basis for many of the doctrines I had been taught. Even so, I had a lot of fear. I wondered if maybe I really was just a rebellious apostate. Maybe I was wrong and the organization was right.

One day I took a walk and had a little talk with God. I very insistently told him that if I was wrong about the organization, I needed him to show me NOW, and I mean NOW. I told him that if I was wrong, that I was maybe making the biggest mistake of my life, and I didn’t want to do that. As soon as I got home, I decided to do my daily Bible reading. I wasn’t doing it to find any answers. It was my habit to read every day. I opened the Bible to where I had my ribbon, 2 Corinthians 11. When I came to verse 3, I started to suspect I was having a supernatural encounter. By the time I came to verses 13-15, I knew I had my answer. I had received a rhema word from God, though at the time I had no vocabulary to describe it. Here are the verses I read which spoke to my heart:

“But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a pure and sincere devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough…For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds…For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves! For you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face.” – 2 Corinthians 11:3-4,13-15, 19-20 (ESV)

All at once, I understood the implications of the word I had just received. The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses were false apostles. They were disguising themselves as angels of light. I began to cry my heart out. My whole world, my whole belief system, had come crashing down. And I knew that eventually, I was going to lose everything, including my parents, my friends, and my reputation. It was even possible that I could lose my marriage and my children, though I am happy to report that that has not happened and I hope it never will.

Through my studies, I saw clearly that all true Christians, not just the 144,000 “anointed ones,” are born again and would all see Christ and be with him forever. I eventually understood that Jesus is Lord and God and that I could actually talk to him, not just through him. I understood that the Father was my Abba Father and that I was his daughter. What joy to realize that Jesus really had been calling me all those years ago at the memorial! He really had been trying to get my attention, and I had told him no. I told my Lord no because of a man-made religion. It still hurts my heart to think that I did that.

After spending a few months alone with God and my Bible, I started attending the online Bible studies of David and Vivian Aspinall, an ex JW couple who have made it their mission to reach out to and help people who have been hurt by the Watchtower organization. I started to take communion at home while in Zoom meetings with those friends. It gave me such peace and joy! But at the same time, I was horribly conflicted about my relationship with my family, most of whom are Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was having to be more and more circumspect in my conversations with them to avoid having them discover my true beliefs. I knew that if they understand fully, they would disown me, and this caused massive internal conflict.

LEAVING

When I started to develop a strong desire to find a church to attend, I realized that I couldn’t go on pretending to be a “weak” and inactive JW. I needed to tell my parents the truth both for my mental health and simply out of obedience to God. I remember feeling stabbed to the heart when I read Jesus’ words at Matthew 10:37-39:

“He who loves Father or Mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Nabeel Qureshi, an ex Muslim Christian apologist, quoted the above text in his testimony as he explained how the scriptures convicted him of his need to tell his parents, knowing that they would likely disown him, about his decision to follow Christ and leave Islam. The religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses is similar to Islam in some ways. Muslims living in countries governed by strict Islamic regimes risk their actual lives by leaving the religion. Nabeel was an American Muslim, which fortunately exempted him from that risk, but he knew that he could lose his family. JWs also risk losing all of their family and friends, especially if their families have been in the organization for several generations as mine had. Nabeel described the agony that I, too, felt as I contemplated the massive loss that I would endure and the horrible pain my family would suffer if I were to tell them the truth. And as I listened to his story, I knew that in spite of what would happen, I had to reveal the truth.

The hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life was to make myself drop in the mailbox the letter to my parents revealing my decision to leave the Watchtower organization. As soon as it left my hands into that box and I knew I couldn’t retrieve it, a deep and and uncontrollable sob shook my body and I couldn’t stop crying for hours. It was like having a limb torn off.

About a month after I sent that letter, I became aware that my local elder body had been alerted to what I had written and wanted to have a meeting with me. This sent shock waves of panic through my body as I realized I had several choices – one was to meet with the elders and tell them in person why I no longer believed that the organization was the only path to God, another was to simply refuse to meet or communicate with the elder body, and the third was to send of a letter of disassociation that I had preprepared for an occasion such as this. Choice number one, although the most honorable and possibly beneficial to my friends, seemed physically and psychologically impossible at the time. Just telling my parents had made me feel as if I was having a heart attack. I didn’t feel capable of facing a judicial committee. Choice number two could have preserved for a time some of my relationships, although it would have drawn out that stressful period of transition as well as very likely ending in my eventual disfellowshipping en absentia. I chose to send my letter. I felt a deep need to completely disconnect myself from the organization that had almost stolen my salvation, had stolen my relationship with my family, and had destroyed my mental and spiritual health. And I wanted to taste the freedom of living my life without feeling the need to look over my shoulder wondering if an old JW friend had seen me walking into a church or having a meal with my disfellowshipped son.

“Gretchen Guzman is no longer one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” That was the terse announcement that was made at the Kingdom Hall I had attended. It is the same exact announcement that is made when a JW is kicked out of the organization for committing adultery, or molesting a child, or for any number of other heinous acts. When that announcement is made, no one is ever informed as to the reasons for it. Friends who don’t already understand the circumstances are left wondering what in the world happened. Was I an adulteress? An alcoholic? An abuser? Who would know? There is no honorable way to leave the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses. You can slink away, trying to remain unnoticed, while telling white lie after white lie about why you’re slowing down in your meeting attendance, all the time avoiding talking about the truth that is burning in your breast. Or you can tell that truth and get the disgraceful public announcement.

The freedom was amazing. I remember walking through the grocery store parking lot and looking at every person I passed with new eyes. These were beautiful, valuable people! They weren’t other. They were human just like me. I loved them although I knew nothing about them. You truly don’t realize the extent of the psychological and social damage a high control group can do until you leave one and that damage starts to heal.

CHURCH

The first Sunday evening I walked into a church, a local Calvary Chapel called Revival Church, it was like stepping through a wall of fire. I had been taught from the time I could remember that “Christendom” was the greatest evil in the world because they were misrepresenting Jehovah and had introduced idolatry into their worship. Although I no longer believed those lies, I had a visceral panic reaction to that place. My mind was in a fog and my body was in a cold sweat. Fortunately, a kind man saw that I was new and came up to talk to me. As soon as he discovered a little of my history, he took my hand and prayed for me. This was new! About halfway through the Bible study my mind cleared enough that I was able to pay some attention and appreciate the depth of the teaching. But afterwards, the lights went down and the pastor began to pray…and sing! That was new too and it set off another set of alarm bells in my head. “This is emotionalism and manipulation!”, I thought. I had been over exposed to cessationist “discernment ministries” on the internet and it added to my fear. But in spite of that, I found myself enjoying the music and prayers. After the service, I found the man I had earlier spoken to on the phone about this church. He took my hand and prayed for me too. And then he took me to meet the Pastor. The more we talked, the more I shook. It was overwhelming to be able to speak so freely to a religious authority. It was strange to see him in a T shirt and jeans instead of a suit and tie. But I liked him. I was already very familiar with his teaching because of having watched his live streams online. I knew he loved God and that he loved the word. That was enough for me.

My introduction to church life was bumpy. Past indoctrination had left me unbelievably fearful. There were so many triggers – the big cross above the stage, the worship band (drums!), contemporary worship music, casual clothing in church, unfamiliar doctrines…It was all so strange and uncomfortable. At one point I went weeks without attending because I would get so triggered. But that felt wrong too. I didn’t like being isolated without any friends or family to lean on. And I knew that meeting with other Christians was important according to the Bible.

So I prayed for guidance. I asked God to show me what he wanted me to do. I’m pretty sure it was not much more than 5 to10 minutes after I said that prayer that my friend, the elder at the church who had prayed for me, showed up unexpectedly at my house. He said some encouraging words and prayed with me again. How could I deny that was an answer from God? I started going to church again the very next day. I also made arrangements to be water baptized, which took place a couple of weeks later on May 14, 2023. That was the day that I declared in front of the entire church that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.

CONCLUSION

There is so much more to tell. But I will leave the rest for future posts. But for now, I just want to tell you that if you are in a high control religious group or in any other negative situation and feeling lost, there is hope in Jesus Christ. Call out to him. Ask him to show you the truth. If you do, I feel sure he will, and you will be made to understand what it means that he himself is “the way the truth and the life” (John 14:6), and that he loves you far more than you could ever have imagined!