In the beginning…
I was so happy when the nice young man and his nice mom came to the house. The young man sat with my mom in the living room. I did not know what was going on in there and I did not care. Though I did adore the nice man. The nice lady was there just to see me. She sat with me at the kitchen table and we looked at the big golden yellow book she brought along, just for me. The book of bible stories. We looked at pictures of volcanoes in a fiery red sea. That is what the earth looked like at the beginning of time, before Jehovah got the bright idea to create a paradise and humans (who he knew would inevitably disobey him and destroy his paradise because he is all knowing and all powerful). Paradise was full of beautiful plants, waterfalls, rivers, and every animal you can imagine. Polar bears, toucans, gazelles- you name it-all in the same place! You could even pet lions! Then there were pictures of Adam and his wife, Eve. They looked so happy and they were until the wanted to get smart. A little snake controlled by Satan told them all about knowledge and they wanted it. Then God got mad and banished them from the beautiful garden he had created just for them.
The stories got grimmer, the pictures got more horrific and, honestly, a little scary for my 3-year-old psyche. Then we came to the story about Noah and the great flood.
“Do you think the ark Noah built floated or sank?” The nice lady asked.
“Um… floated!” little Erin said.
“That’s right!” the nice lady exclaimed, as she turned the page. “And all the bad people died because they didn’t listen to Noah. They laughed at him.”
How foolish they were to laugh at him!
On the page my innocent eyes gazed at scenes of horror. An evil look cat on a log in a river of water that was clearly moving very fast. Why did that cat have to die? Did that cat do something evil? Maybe he looks mean because he is bad.
My eyes roamed the page to the next scene of horror, a group of people and animals on a rock, surrounded by rising flood waters that would undoubtedly engulf them very soon. There was a man pumping his fist in rage, a head face down in water as an arm grasped the rock, a woman on hands and knees, looking desperate and exhausted, climbing up the rock. Another man caught up in the violent current, arms raised, mouth gaping, a look of terror on his face. And a woman holding a baby. A BABY. Damn, This Jehovah guy was not messing around. He even punishes babies! But, for what? What did the baby do? It’s A BABY.
The baby had red hair, just like me.
This were the first images I associated with my mom’s new faith. My first impression of Jehovah, the God of love (1 John 4:8). And these images were followed by many more, not only in My Book of Bible Stories but in a slew of other propaganda that my family was forced to study relentlessly, three times a week; one hour on Tuesdays, two hours on Thursdays, and two more brutal hours on Sundays. Along with that we began preaching work on Saturdays. And of course, we had to take time to study for each “meeting,” which is what Jehovah’s Witnesses call these grueling hours of worship. The embarrassment of my older siblings when they knocked on doors to find classmates on the other side- how humiliating. At this point I was too small to speak in what JW’s refer to as ‘field service’ but I went along because who is going to slam the door on a child? The two eldest found it so intolerable that they ended up moving in with my dad when my mom remarried to an alcoholic ministerial servant, someone who is just below a step away from being a leader, or ‘elder’, in the congregation. There will surely be more on that later.
For now, I think we must ask ourselves, what kind of people, in their right minds, give and encourage young children books depicting such horror? Why was a 3-year-old looking at pictures of death and destruction? What kind of organization publishes this shit? The Watchtower Society. (The emphasis on right minds is because these people are not generally bad people but are so fully indoctrinated that they cannot see how inappropriate these publications are for toddlers and preschoolers.)
These images and what followed kicked off roughly 24 years of unfounded fear and anxiety. The horrifying images of Armageddon in the Watchtower’s publications did exactly what they were supposed to do; keep me coming back; keep me completely indoctrinated. Keep me believing that if I did not follow their rules, I would be one of those people, with complete horror in their eyes, in one of those terrifying images with burning buildings and fireballs falling from the sky. Along with my father, my sister, my brother, my grandparents, my cousins, all the kids at school, my aunts and uncles- anyone who did not bow to their authority.
Thinking of this now just makes me want to vomit.
