Thursday, May 29, 2008

The Jehovah Witnesses' Giant Mistake


To be honest, nothing terribly interesting has happened to me lately, so I figured this would be a good time to revisit my wife's spirtitual life. I understand this blog is supposed to be about me, but since we've agreed to live together forever, I might as well start co-opting her life for blog fodder. It's the least she can do.

So, for those who have been following along (I call you Thirdsies), you know that my wife's grip on her native christianity is tentative at best. Ironically, this was helped along by actually studying the bible -- or at least the Jehovah Witnesses' version of it.

The JW's have been studying with her for years now and even got her (and me) to attend their Kingdom Hall for Saturday service (an event lovingly recreated in words for you right here). And while they definitley helped her challenge her fear of hell, their years-long recruitment campaign started to wear thin when they realized they weren't making the progress they had anticipated. So, like most organized religions, they resorted to their last and best line of defense -- the fire sale.

That's right, they brought out the big guns and jumped right to Revelations a.k.a. the crazy shit at the end of the bible. It's filled with multiheaded lions, apocalyptic events, robots that turn into camaros -- it's a show.

Not to mention, they threw in this nugget: "Based on the bible, people live to their 80s. You are in your mid thirties, so your life is almost half over. And it's time to make a choice." Now what the JWs didn't know is that by erasing the concept of hell, they had affectively given away their best bargaining chip. With all the pressure to buy off the plate, my wife had no real reason to commit.

Somewhere during their "end times" spiel, they started regaling my wife with stories about giants who were the offspring of angels and humans. When my wife asked how the angels mated with humans (considering the fact, well maybe not FACT, but the idea that angels have no gender) the JWs said the angels heard so much about this "sex" thing that they took human form and started boffing Jewish women. Turns out, none of the angels wanted to be bottoms and they ALL chose to grow penises.

Apparently, that is where my wife got off the bus. She had had enough and she told them so. Ok, not immediately.

It took some time and lots of hand-wringing, but eventually my wife had to work up the nerve to tell the JWs that she was no longer interested. Seriously, it was like she was breaking up with a boyfriend, a boyfriend who looks like a 50-ish year-old Carribean woman.

But they brought it on themselves -- not just with the fornicating angels and their over-sized offspring -- but by implicating that my wife had to join up now or never. My wife would turn down a free mortagage payment if the person offering it pressured her to "act now." It's a good thing she was pregnant when we got married, otherwise I'm pretty sure my bended-knee proposal would have been nicely rebuffed with a "can I get back to you on that?"

Anyway, I say all because as a heathen, it's hard to know where other peoples's bullshit meters are. Mine tends to go off when mortal folks say they know everything about the afterlife. My wife's? 12-foot-tall angel/man hybrids.

Go figure.