My Message For The People Who Have Chosen to Shun Me

You were my family and community, my home. You were members of the same doomsday, fundamentalist cult I was.

photo credit: my partner ❤

I don’t need to name you. You know who you are. But for those who are confused, I would like to bring light to your faces — to talk to you and anyone interested about your decision to exclude me from your lives. To “shun” me.

Who are you? You are my mother, my brother, my step-father. You are also my ‘second family’, and my closest friends. You are the people that watched me grow up, or grew up along side me.

You were my family and community, my home. You were members of the same doomsday, fundamentalist cult I was raised in.

But you don’t love me anymore, because I disagree with how the Jehovah’s Witnesses handle child abuse, and many other things, and I am no longer afraid to keep those truths to myself. I speak freely about the abuse I endured, so you refuse to speak to me — on principle.

We both stand firmly on our principles. I am unwilling to be silent about this dangerous cult, and you are unwilling to disobey their commands to shun anyone who questions their authority.

For many years I have excused your cruelty as a result of the mind-control you are under. I believed that, since you were under such powerful influences, I could justify your behavior — knowing you loved me deep down, but were too afraid to question your mental captors. There is no prison like that of which we can build from our own minds, and I know you were promised a lot.

You are waiting on paradise. You know that your god will soon put an end to this ‘wicked world’, and restore the earth to perfection. You are certain that all the people who you lost in death (and were also Jehovah’s Witnesses in good standing) will be resurrected! You are so looking forward to “everlasting life in a paradise on Earth” with all the other Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a world with no pain (or non-believers) you’ve been promised for all your hard work preaching. You’ve given up so much of your lives for this work, believing you could exchange those hours for eternity.

The difference between sick people and healthy loving people is what they’re willing to trade for that ‘paradise’, or any reward. As my oldest (not a cult member) brother said, he would rather spend one lifetime loving his imperfect kids, than a perfect eternity without his kids.

And this is the heart of the choice that we’re all making here. To those of you who have chosen the cult, who have pushed me away from the bedside of my dying grandmother, who have made me unwelcome at my childhood friend’s funeral, who would choose eternity over love, family, and loyalty: good riddance.

My heart has not grown cold, I have not forgotten our shared history, but I refuse to allow you to influence my life now. I wish there was a better way than cutting you out like a cancer, and then radiating my body in hopes you never return, but science nor faith has taken us that far yet.

I want to be healthy, and that means removing this weighty tumor that is your conditional ‘love’. That means letting go of the idea of you getting well, and realizing I can’t cure you. The cult is not the sickness, it’s just the perfect medium to grow your diseased thinking.

You are responsible for your choices, just like I am. I chose to live fully, to embrace the love in this world, and fight for a better future — even if I don’t live to see it. You chose to live as if you were already dead, to reject everything you deem ‘imperfect’, and see no future for humanity — aside from your own tiny group of true believers.

I’m happy with my choices, and if a day of judgment ever comes, I won’t be interested in an afterlife where people are rewarded for behaviour like yours anyway.