My Long Journey of Faith

Rich and Suzanne

"For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Romans 8:38-39 (Ignatius Study Bible)
For thirty-five years I was active as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I was an appointed elder for over thirty years and a 'pioneer' for two years. I spent seven years at the organization's world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York — known as Bethel — where I was appointed a "Bethel Elder" and worked in the Service Department as secretary to Harley Miller, then the Service Department Overseer. I gave circuit- and district-convention talks to audiences as large as forty thousand people in Tiger Stadium (Detroit, Michigan) and the SilverDome (Pontiac, Michigan). After Bethel, I served for years as Accounts Overseer for circuit assemblies and News Service Overseer at district conventions. I even served on one occasion as temporary circuit overseer. All this simply to say that what follows cannot be dismissed as the complaint of an outsider who never understood the religion: my standing as one of Jehovah's Witnesses was, by any internal measure, unimpeachable. I have never been disfellowshipped.
I left because, after carefully analyzing the teachings and practices of the Organization — as the religion is known internally — I came to the inevitable conclusion that "the Truth," as Witnesses call their faith, was neither the authentic Christianity of the apostles it claimed to be, nor, in fact, the truth. It was simply another man-made "restorationist" sect, of a kind with the Latter-day Saints (Mormons), the Seventh-day Adventists, the Worldwide Church of God, and others born of the same era and the same impulse. Rather than inheriting the deposit of faith entrusted by Christ to His apostles, the Watchtower had used human reasoning to construct doctrines that then had to be revised again and again as its interpretations shifted — sometimes of necessity, as a previous position became untenable.
I noticed, too, that the young people raised as Jehovah's Witnesses very often left the religion as adults — and that when they did, they almost always became agnostics or atheists. Their faith had been placed in an organization rather than in Jesus Christ, and once the organization failed them they were left, in effect, "inoculated" against faith itself. It was for them above all that I created this website.
Its purpose is to compare the Scriptural and historical worldview of the Catholic Church with that of Jehovah's Witnesses, and with that of materialistic atheism, and to show that the Catholic worldview best comports with the reality of our world and with the Church that Jesus Christ founded. It is written for Jehovah's Witnesses, former Jehovah's Witnesses, and any who may be considering becoming one. The arguments for the Catholic faith will interest Protestant and "non-denominational" readers as well; and the arguments for Christian theism are offered to those with no religious faith at all — and, with particular hope, to those dear souls among former Witnesses for whom the Watchtower "poisoned the well" with respect to the Catholic Church and the Christian faith.
  • Which worldview better comports with reality as we encounter it: atheism or Christianity?
  • Which religion comports better with the beliefs and practices of authentic early Christianity: Jehovah's Witnesses or the Catholic Church?
I invite your engagement with me on these questions. Please bear in mind that I do not have the perfect answer for every question — my memory is sadly lacking. In some cases I may have an answer but not the best wording for it. And even where I have no answer ready, that does not mean none exists, any more than a person's refusal to accept an answer makes the answer inadequate. I offer these observations simply as the fruits of my own years of investigation, in the hope that they may help others journeying along this path. An honest intellect and an open mind, without self-deceit, can only lead to a better outcome.
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The Watchtower vs The Catholic Church

Are Jehovah's Witnesses the restoration of first-century apostolic Christianity, as they claim — or a man-made religion, of the kind they themselves say the Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists are? Much of the answer turns on a handful of specific questions. Each is worth asking honestly, and each is examined in its own place on this site: The Catholic Church, which historians agree is the earliest identifiable expression of organized Christianity, stands accused by the Watchtower of being an apostate Church that polluted the faith with pagan practices the moment the apostles had died. That, too, is a claim that can be examined on the evidence — and these pages do exactly that.
I believe an honest investigation leads inevitably to the conclusion that Jehovah's Witnesses are a man-made religion born of fallible human interpretation and a superficial understanding of Scriptural and historical context, a natural product of its time and human reasoning similar to other 'restorationist' sects such as Latter Day Saints ("Mormons") and Seventh Day Adventists. I intend to show in these pages that Jehovah's Witnesses can be likened to your local postal carrier. Just as a postal carrier knows the addresses and associated names along a route, but knows little about the people living at those addresses, so Jehovah's Witnesses know all the Bible verses they can 'cherry-pick' to support their beliefs (as these inevitably change), but they are ignorant of the Scriptural and historical context of those verses. The postal carrier may believe that Mrs. Jones of 1547 Main Street is a senior because she receives mail from AARP, but he knows little else: he does not know, for example, that Mrs. Jones has been a widow for five years, has three adult children living in other states, and her late husband's name was Arthur. He does not know Mrs. Jones' actual age or her interests in life. (Okay, he may know she likes quilting because she receives monthly issues of "Quilting Today" magazine.) But you get the point: he knows only superficial things about the people to whom he delivers mail. He does not know them intimately, as if he were family. This is analogous to the understanding The Watchtower and the "Governing Body" of Jehovah's Witnesses have with respect to Scriptural and historical Christianity. In other words — and as I can testify, having worked at Bethel in the Service Department and in contact with the Writing Department during those years — the only correct understanding Jehovah's Witnesses have of Christianity are those beliefs that align with mainstream Christian doctrines, while those beliefs that are unique to Jehovah's Witnesses are contrary to Scriptural and historical truth.
Most Witnesses who have been to Bethel (Brooklyn) know of the Bethel Library and the Gilead Library. But few are aware that there was a third library, located near the Writing Department that was 'off-limits' to the Bethel Family and Gilead Students. This was a library containing hundreds of Christendom's commentaries, which were only to be read and used by the Writing Department. The Watchtower writing staff have always used Christendom's Biblical commentaries, simply picking and choosing those findings that align with the organization's current beliefs and practices. They have little to no genuine scholarship of their own.

Atheism vs Christianity

Beneath the question of which church is true lies a deeper one: which worldview better explains the world we actually live in — the Christian one, or the materialist one that says matter and energy are all there is? I have come to think the Christian picture fits the evidence far better, and not as a leap in the dark but for reasons that can be set out and examined.

That anything exists at all. Why is there something rather than nothing? A universe that began to exist, and that is finely balanced for life in ways that grow more striking the closer we look, sits far more easily with a Creator than with blind chance.

That the world makes sense to the mind. The cosmos is orderly, intelligible, and describable in mathematics — and we are the kind of creatures who can read it. On the Christian view that is exactly what we should expect; on a purely material one it is a happy accident in need of explaining away.

That right and wrong are real. Most of us know that cruelty is genuinely wrong, not merely unfashionable. But objective good and evil, along with real meaning and purpose, are hard to ground in a universe of mere particles. They point beyond matter to their source.

That God has acted in history. The Christian claim is not only philosophical but historical: that God revealed himself, supremely in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus — events with real evidence behind them, recorded in documents we have good reason to trust.

None of this is meant to belittle the honest doubter; I take the arguments against God seriously, and weigh them in these pages too. I simply find that, taken together, the world we meet — its existence, its order, its moral weight, and the figure of Christ at the center of history — is better accounted for by a reasonable Christian faith than by materialism. The pages in this section make the case.

Summary

Some will immediately accuse me here of begging the question, since I have already made the assumption that God exists and created the world (not to mention the exclusive adoption of Christianity as the true and proper relationship to God). But that is what I believe can be shown from the facts.

What I cannot show from the facts — but hope and pray — is that the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses will repent of their unwarranted arrogation of the authority given by Christ only to His Church in the First Century, and release those precious souls of Jehovah's Witnesses from a man-made religion to hear and respond to the Holy Spirit and the Bride of Christ, the Catholic Church. (Rev. 22:17)