Balkan Boy

One of my earliest memories is that of reading the book "My Book of Bible Stories", a gift from my aunt who had recently become a Witness. It was her example that prompted me to study, dedicate my life to Jehovah, and finally get baptized into at age 19. Before doing so, it was our delight to write a letter to the Catholic church explaining my disassociation due to their unscriptural practices. Life in "the truth" was overall very good to me; it was filled with meaningful work, friends, and trips to exciting places to attend conventions and assemblies. I served as Ministerial Servant for about eight years, and regular-pioneered for six. It especially brought a great meaning and sense of accomplishment for me to support a new Russian language group in my city, and to watch it grow into a full Congregation. We became a family in learning and using a new language, and going forth as missionaries as to a foreign land, although in our own neighborhoods. In December 2016, I happened to listen to a radio program from "Reveal" called "Secrets of the Watchtower". I would have turned it off immediately as I was afraid of demonic apostates, however I had been listening to this team of journalists now for over a year and had quite a bit of trust placed in them. I was shocked to learn that Watchtower was at that time in contempt of the Supreme Court of California, paying a fine of $4,000 per day for their months-long refusal to hand over their list of 23,000 known pedophiles in the US. I struggled with this knowledge, I thought it a foolish place for my hard-earned contributions to be ending up. I agreed though to wait on Jehovah as I trusted that everything would work out in the end. I excused this action to the complexities of the legal system. However, the pure chaste appearance I had of the organization was gone. And with it, the understanding that, at least on some issues, there was more to our organization than what was simply on jw.org. Two years later, the May 2019 study article on Child Sex Abuse came out. Reading paragraph 13 ("Do elders comply with secular laws about reporting an allegation of child abuse to the secular authorities? Yes.") I knew that this was at best a deception, at worst a bold faced lie. I had also watched some recordings of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. I was shocked, again, to learn that, sheltered among the 70,000 publishers in Australia were 1,006 accused pedophiles and 1,800 victims. Not a single one had been reported to secular authorities. On March 8th, 2020, International Women's Day, I stumbled across the video "Jehovah's Witnesses and Child Sexual Abuse: Why Is the Two-Witness Rule a Red Herring?" by Beroean Pickets. It proved to me what I was feeling - that Watchtower's position of not submitting to the secular authorities was, simply put, unscriptural, unloving, and un-Christian. The following day, I wrote a letter to my Body of Elders informing them that I could no longer hold a title in the organization or be a public representative for it due to these issues. I explained that (1) it was unfair for us as publishers to not be as truthfully informed on the matter as the public is, and (2) that the elders are forced to follow through on unscriptural policies. I became a conscientious objector to the religion that I held dear for decades. Today, I am experiencing immeasurable love, peace, and joy in the Christian freedom. I'm very pleased to do as much as I can to support honest and pure individuals abandon the heavy yoke of a high-control religion in favor of the refreshing and loving yoke of Jesus.