When my father heard he might have cancer, he was worried. It would take a few weeks for the results of the tests to arrive and he would know either way. When the doorbell rang, he opened the front door, and two Jehovah's Witnesses stood before him. He was open to their message and he invited them in, and they told him about their faith. When my mother heard this, she was not happy. My father’s fear of death was big enough to neglect his wife's wishes, though, and the conversations continued.
For the next few weeks, the Witnesses came by a few times, explaining the tenets of their faith. Still, my mother was opposed to it. Then one morning, my father got back the results of the screening. It turned out he didn't have cancer after all. His fear of death subsided, and he wanted the Jehovah thing to be over. But by then, my mother had gotten interested somehow, and the Witnesses continued to come to our house to talk about their religion, but now with her.
Before we knew it, a weekly meeting was organized for my brothers and me, in which a Witness, whose name was Jan, assisted by his wife, explained what God wanted. It felt weird, someone wanting to convert my brothers and me.
The meetings were on Wednesday afternoons when traditionally all primary schools are closed in Holland. All children in the village played outside. In the middle of our game of football or hide-and-seek, I had to stop and go home. I didn't tell my friends why I had to leave, because I felt ashamed.
The meetings remained awkward, but still, I was interested. I must have been ten, maybe eleven. One night I was lying in bed, thinking about everything that had transpired. I wondered: “Could this be true? Was this what God meant when he wrote the Bible?” But I reasoned:” There are many Christian denominations. What’s the chance that out of all those different interpretations, the Jehovah's Witnesses have the right one?” I concluded that chances were slim.
I began to feel something was wrong.
We began to attend a weekly Bible study. It was in someone’s living room, and we were sitting in rows of chairs. It was hard to sit still and listen to things that were of no interest to me. My mother was really into it, though. I could see on her face that it made her happy.
After some time, she began to proselytize, going from door to door in our village. My friends from school began to hear stories, or maybe even met my mother when she rang the doorbell at their house. They began to talk about it behind my back, during recess at school, and later began to chide me. I had always been one of the more popular boys in our class, and now that began to change.
We began to attend Sunday morning meetings as well, in Kingdom Hall, as they call their church. I felt trapped. They sang anodyne songs. My mother loved music and played the piano and cello. She must have heard that the songs were mediocre, but she sang with full dedication.
My father was not happy with the situation. Suddenly the life of our little family had changed beyond recognition. I only can wonder what he must have thought and felt. After all, it was he who had invited the Jehovah’s Witness into our house. He went along, though and attended the meetings with us, probably to keep an eye on what was going on. He could see they were good people, but he loved reading literature and was fond of history and ideas. Those were not interests any of the members shared. Their interest was Jehovah and how to serve him.
Once a year all Jehovah's Witnesses from our part of Holland gathered in a huge convention center. They were all happy, because for once they were among themselves, far from the world that mocked and shunned them.
At one of these, my mother was baptized. There was a little swimming pool at the end of the huge hall. My mother wore her swimming suit and a cap to keep her hair dry. She descended into the pool, was submerged, and rose from the waters a Jehovah's Witness.
When I was fifteen, I decided not to go to Kingdom Hall anymore. My mother cried, which made me feel bad. Writing now, so many years later, I still feel pain in my heart because I was not able to give her what would have made her happy.
Later in life, I began to understand what my mother was searching for, and partly found, in embracing a faith whose members are shunned and are made fun of. Even today, it hurts me when people mock Jehovah's Witnesses or call them a cult. Are you kidding me? What people call a religion is just a cult that made it big.
She had been brought up in fear of hell, in the Dutch Reformed Church, a strict form of Protestantism. She once told me that one of her earliest memories was when she was three. She was sitting in the kitchen, near the woodstove. The maid opened the door of the stove and the little girl saw the dancing flames of the woodfire. The maid then said to her:” If you don’t behave, you will burn in hell for all of eternity” and pointed to the flames. This had engendered in her a terrible fear that still plagued her as a grownup. In the faith of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, there is no hell, and embracing the new religion absolved her from this terror.
If I could lay my hands on that maid, I would kill her.
A few years before this all started, my parents had come from another part of the country to settle here because of my father's work. They had moved to the one detached house in the street. Across the street, a row of modest row homes stood. When talking to the other housewives in the street or inviting them over for coffee, she always was seen as the lady from the expensive detached house. The invitations were never reciprocated. She once told me that she would have rather lived in one of the row homes, where you could talk with your neighbor across the hedgerow, and would be one of them.
It was hard to get accustomed to her new life, with her husband away at work during the day, without her friends from back home, and with three boisterous little boys, running around and causing mayhem, fighting each other all the time. Then her parents died in quick succession.
And then the doorbell rang.
Ik heb de J hoog zitten. Uitstekend hedrag in 40_45. Ben altyd gastvry v ze. Maar me laten bekeren is er niet by.
I recall the moment I decided wanting to stop going to the Jehovah's Witnesses.
There have been some gatherings of Jehovah's Witnesses in the Netherlands in stadiums. One of them must have been when I was around 12 years old because I am almost sure the following happened in a stadium.
There was a man delivering a sermon. It was the last sermon before lunch and he wrapped up with this story;
Some time earlier he gave a sermon also just before lunch. When he finished he stepped away and left, another man said the prayer before lunch. He walked back to the spot where he and his family were sitting and in doing so, walked past some people who were already standing in line for food. He looked at those people and condescended to them 'Ik zie dat jullie honger voor voedsel groter is dan jullie honger voor het geloof' (translated: 'I see your hunger for food is greater than your hunger for the faith'). Then he continued walking towards his family to await the end of prayer.
At that moment I realised that this arrogant man was allowed to give this sermon by Jehovah's Witnesses (it seems logical their sermons are screened before they're allowed to be given, especially if they're given in a stadium with over 10.000 attendees) and they apparently did not mind that people could have al kinds of justifiable reasons they were there early in line (diabetic, some other medical reason, lots of kids who want to eat and react badly to having to wait for food). But even if they had no reason beyond 'I am hungry', who was this man to show off his 'better than you' attitude? A man who apparently had no problem chiding other people for not having the faith while he himself was walking around during prayer. Why was he not paying attention to the prayer of the other man? Why was he not reading Philippians 2 verse 3 and 4?
Had I been a grownup standing in that line, I would immediately have left never to return to Jehovah's Witnesses. I was not a grownup however, I was 12 or maybe 13 but I remember that not long after this, I told my mother I did not want to go to Jehovah's Witnesses anymore. Yes, she cried, because after Henk and our brother, now her youngest son also left the Jehovah's Witnesses. I also remember she was angry at me, something that happened very seldom. That was an experience that I still feel as well. She wasn't angry for very long fortunately.
I won't deny there were factors. Not believing was an important one. Kids at school who recently discovered I was a member of Jehovah's Witnesses and making fun of it was another. But this man was the catalyst of my leaving.
Tjeerd.