Romanticizing Murder
Shortly after my baptism I remember going out with my father to different congregations and listening to him speak. He was a powerful speaker and his favorite topic was Armageddon. I could hear a marked difference in his delivery when he was talking about this versus any other topic.
He had a booming commanding voice and a strong command of modulation. He was a true firebrand and unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not have a southern protestant background even though he was born in the Mississippi delta. No, my father was raised on the south side of Chicago and had a built in sharpness to his cadence. He was a clinical orator.
He would record his talks in advance and meticulously listen, erase and re-record as needed. I remember understanding how good he was at a very young age. I also remembered thinking that I could never be that good and I never was.
I'll never forget my first talk. We practiced over and over to read about ten bible verses. He kept trying to get me to pause and look up at the audience, but I was too afraid. When I finally went up to do this reading, I had to stand on a stool to reach the microphone. I think I looked up once and lost my place and it took what felt like a lifetime for me to reconfigure my eyes on the tiny font.
When it was over the audience applauded. I don't think they do that any longer. To his credit, my father never made me feel bad about not being a good speaker and he was always willing to help me get better, however I just didn't have it in me. I hated the idea of public speaking and was terrified each time I did it. I did however enjoy going to hear him speak and seeing how much adoration he received from different congregations.
This probably doesn't really sound too bad so far right?
Here's the problem it wasn't just my father who loved the Armageddon talks; it was also the audiences. They seemed to love hearing my father romanticize the murder of billions of people. I remember he also enjoyed adlibbing. He would practice swapping out verbiage from his outline with things he came up with on his own and when it came to doomsday he was very good at finding new ways to scare an audience.
"Do you think that Jehovah will care that you have a nice car, or that you have a lot of money in the bank when he sends his angels to destroy this wicked system?"
This was one he used when he was sent to a more affluent congregation.
On the way home he would nudge me with his elbow and laugh that he needed to "shake up those rich folks". I often wonder if there were any in attendance who quietly resented his message, if they saw our ancient RV rattling into the parking lot before the meeting and thought, how dare he lecture us. I'll never know. The overwhelming response seemed to be thank you for reprimanding us we have no right to take care of our families and enjoy or current lives.
You see my father was a perfect disciple of the watchtower fallacy of a broken world not worth investing in. He hated the idea that people could be comfortable. I have at times since my awakening thought that he may have sabotaged our financial stability in order to keep in step with the theme of a "simple life". There was a time when he received a settlement from being injured on the job. From what I've been told this money was spent quickly on gifts to us his children and other frivolous pursuits.
I have also felt that his love affair with Armageddon might have been linked to a guilty conscience in relation to this pattern of behavior. I assumed that If ever he looked back and thought that he had not done all he could for his family, it could be mused that only a God lit fire could burn away that guilt.
Armageddon could be the greatest slate cleaning ever imagined. There is some evidence to this idea. As the years rolled on, I did notice a kind of desperation sinking in with my father in relation to the end. He began to speculate wildly about signs and prophecies. I should note that my father was in poor health for many of these years and his own mortality would have also played a significant role in the building hysteria.
The watchtower being a doomsday cult was no help. In the late 80's they produced "Revelation Its Grand Climax at hand", a book devoted to rationalize the fever dream of the prophet John. It a search window for Armageddon porn. The watchtower reviewed this book 4 separate times during what was then called the "book study". Contents included:
There was Kingdom News number 34 was supposed to provide crucial survival information as well.
I bring this up to show what my father was up against and what I was subsequently being taught. The watchtower doesn't plant a single seed. They are constantly bombarding their laity with a fantasy of deliverance. Armageddon validates the directive they are all following, which is to win this race you must not run a single step, as running is a lack of faith.
Every now and then I would press my father on why he believed certain things and he would point to the fact that he attends elder training schools where he received "special information." I wonder if at these schools they were gas lighting elders so that they would come back and gas light us.
This is another thing I'll never know. I didn't wake up until 6 years after he was gone. I never had the chance to truly pick his brain and now I'm here trying to piece together the puzzle of who he was.
One thing I do know is he was in love with this coming genocide. As he got older he would often tell me how he prayed that he would live to see his salvation. That he wanted to see God destroy the wicked. This is clearly an insane thing to believe, however you must consider the context.
As per usual, the watchtower drag net caught him at time when he had few prospects for a productive life. Understand that my father served in the military during a very turbulent period in world history. Somewhere between the Korean war and the Cuban missile crisis. He always told me that he was stationed in Germany awaiting orders regarding a potential Russian invasion. Oddly, my uncle told me a totally different story at his funeral. He told me that my father was in the Korean war and had done quiet a bit of killing and that he was never the same when he returned. When I asked my mother about this, she responded "I never heard that, I'm not sure." Needless to say that was not a satisfying response.
The truth here is again a moving target. My family has a lot of secrets, I think most Jehovah's Witness families do and I think I know why.
Jehovah's Witness must project a certain narrative about the world and their own lives. That it is a black and white moral battle ground. This is clearly going to clash with the mostly grey lives that all people live. So they scrub their own histories in order to project a self that was once lost but is now found.
When my father reminisced about a better time, it was always the 1950's. He loved the movies, the music and the ideals. Yet as I mentioned earlier, this was likely an awful time in his life. He was either an 18-19 year old man operating a machine gun in Korea, or he was deployed to a Germany with the task of preventing world war III looming over his tenure or both.
So why did he love that era so much? Because it fit the watchtower narrative of a world with declining morality. Rather than actually assessing his life and the world he lived in, my father invented a reality based the propaganda he had been fed about a time that never was.
The western world presented life post WWII as a moral utopia. Nuclear families, bubble gum pop songs and children walking home from school unmolested.
This may have actually existed for someone at some time, however it was nothing more than a billboard on the road back to Cicero for my father. A postcard with a beach and the sun beaming that he kept in his back pocket. The good ole days.
This is the Faustian bargain the watchtower uses to lure people away from themselves and into a place where they are literally courting death. This is the new personality. The rebuilt engine that powers each Jehovah's witness. My father drank away the horrors of his youth, however in sobriety he was able to embrace horrors greater than any he may have committed himself.
See below
He had a booming commanding voice and a strong command of modulation. He was a true firebrand and unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not have a southern protestant background even though he was born in the Mississippi delta. No, my father was raised on the south side of Chicago and had a built in sharpness to his cadence. He was a clinical orator.
He would record his talks in advance and meticulously listen, erase and re-record as needed. I remember understanding how good he was at a very young age. I also remembered thinking that I could never be that good and I never was.
I'll never forget my first talk. We practiced over and over to read about ten bible verses. He kept trying to get me to pause and look up at the audience, but I was too afraid. When I finally went up to do this reading, I had to stand on a stool to reach the microphone. I think I looked up once and lost my place and it took what felt like a lifetime for me to reconfigure my eyes on the tiny font.
When it was over the audience applauded. I don't think they do that any longer. To his credit, my father never made me feel bad about not being a good speaker and he was always willing to help me get better, however I just didn't have it in me. I hated the idea of public speaking and was terrified each time I did it. I did however enjoy going to hear him speak and seeing how much adoration he received from different congregations.
This probably doesn't really sound too bad so far right?
Here's the problem it wasn't just my father who loved the Armageddon talks; it was also the audiences. They seemed to love hearing my father romanticize the murder of billions of people. I remember he also enjoyed adlibbing. He would practice swapping out verbiage from his outline with things he came up with on his own and when it came to doomsday he was very good at finding new ways to scare an audience.
"Do you think that Jehovah will care that you have a nice car, or that you have a lot of money in the bank when he sends his angels to destroy this wicked system?"
This was one he used when he was sent to a more affluent congregation.
On the way home he would nudge me with his elbow and laugh that he needed to "shake up those rich folks". I often wonder if there were any in attendance who quietly resented his message, if they saw our ancient RV rattling into the parking lot before the meeting and thought, how dare he lecture us. I'll never know. The overwhelming response seemed to be thank you for reprimanding us we have no right to take care of our families and enjoy or current lives.
You see my father was a perfect disciple of the watchtower fallacy of a broken world not worth investing in. He hated the idea that people could be comfortable. I have at times since my awakening thought that he may have sabotaged our financial stability in order to keep in step with the theme of a "simple life". There was a time when he received a settlement from being injured on the job. From what I've been told this money was spent quickly on gifts to us his children and other frivolous pursuits.
I have also felt that his love affair with Armageddon might have been linked to a guilty conscience in relation to this pattern of behavior. I assumed that If ever he looked back and thought that he had not done all he could for his family, it could be mused that only a God lit fire could burn away that guilt.
Armageddon could be the greatest slate cleaning ever imagined. There is some evidence to this idea. As the years rolled on, I did notice a kind of desperation sinking in with my father in relation to the end. He began to speculate wildly about signs and prophecies. I should note that my father was in poor health for many of these years and his own mortality would have also played a significant role in the building hysteria.
The watchtower being a doomsday cult was no help. In the late 80's they produced "Revelation Its Grand Climax at hand", a book devoted to rationalize the fever dream of the prophet John. It a search window for Armageddon porn. The watchtower reviewed this book 4 separate times during what was then called the "book study". Contents included:
- Grasshoppers with human heads
- Angel Lions
- Angel Bulls
- Horses drowning in the blood of dead humans
- 7 headed dragons
- 7 headed Tiger leopards
- Humans being killed by raining rocks
There was Kingdom News number 34 was supposed to provide crucial survival information as well.
Every now and then I would press my father on why he believed certain things and he would point to the fact that he attends elder training schools where he received "special information." I wonder if at these schools they were gas lighting elders so that they would come back and gas light us.
This is another thing I'll never know. I didn't wake up until 6 years after he was gone. I never had the chance to truly pick his brain and now I'm here trying to piece together the puzzle of who he was.
One thing I do know is he was in love with this coming genocide. As he got older he would often tell me how he prayed that he would live to see his salvation. That he wanted to see God destroy the wicked. This is clearly an insane thing to believe, however you must consider the context.
As per usual, the watchtower drag net caught him at time when he had few prospects for a productive life. Understand that my father served in the military during a very turbulent period in world history. Somewhere between the Korean war and the Cuban missile crisis. He always told me that he was stationed in Germany awaiting orders regarding a potential Russian invasion. Oddly, my uncle told me a totally different story at his funeral. He told me that my father was in the Korean war and had done quiet a bit of killing and that he was never the same when he returned. When I asked my mother about this, she responded "I never heard that, I'm not sure." Needless to say that was not a satisfying response.
The truth here is again a moving target. My family has a lot of secrets, I think most Jehovah's Witness families do and I think I know why.
Jehovah's Witness must project a certain narrative about the world and their own lives. That it is a black and white moral battle ground. This is clearly going to clash with the mostly grey lives that all people live. So they scrub their own histories in order to project a self that was once lost but is now found.
When my father reminisced about a better time, it was always the 1950's. He loved the movies, the music and the ideals. Yet as I mentioned earlier, this was likely an awful time in his life. He was either an 18-19 year old man operating a machine gun in Korea, or he was deployed to a Germany with the task of preventing world war III looming over his tenure or both.
So why did he love that era so much? Because it fit the watchtower narrative of a world with declining morality. Rather than actually assessing his life and the world he lived in, my father invented a reality based the propaganda he had been fed about a time that never was.
The western world presented life post WWII as a moral utopia. Nuclear families, bubble gum pop songs and children walking home from school unmolested.
This may have actually existed for someone at some time, however it was nothing more than a billboard on the road back to Cicero for my father. A postcard with a beach and the sun beaming that he kept in his back pocket. The good ole days.
This is the Faustian bargain the watchtower uses to lure people away from themselves and into a place where they are literally courting death. This is the new personality. The rebuilt engine that powers each Jehovah's witness. My father drank away the horrors of his youth, however in sobriety he was able to embrace horrors greater than any he may have committed himself.
See below
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