Door-to-Door

Psalms 83:18 “May people know that you, whose name is Jehovah, You alone are the Most High over all the earth. (New World’s Translation, Bible)

In 1975, I was almost 6 years old and the world was coming to an end.

Since God is a Jehovah’s Witness, he reached out to his “Governing Body”, a group of 12 old white men huddled in the Witness headquarters located in Brooklyn Heights, New York and this information of impending doom eventually funneled its way down to us in the Bronx and the rest of the world.

Yes, at the ripe old age of 5 and a half Armageddon was nigh and God would be destroying the world as we knew it.

There would be no 1976.

As the worker bees in the organization, it was our duty young and old to go door to door and let everyone know of God’s plan. 99.9% of the world’s population wasn’t privy to this information, because 99.9% of the world’s population are worldly losers. But not us. You see, we had The Truth. We were a bunch of Noah’s running around before the flood advising the sinners there were only a few months left to repent of your sinful ways or you’d have no one to blame for your death but yourself. As Witnesses, we'd go door-to-door with a two minute or less prepared presentation. It's like an elevator pitch the only difference being you're waking people up at their home. On a Saturday morning.

At 8AM.

I didn't pray much. But I did pray that I wouldn't knock on someone's door that I knew. Not so much for the humiliation factor, but more for the "wait, YOU"RE a Witness? You do worse things in school than me!" factor.

Back in the pink song book days, when me, my brother, Troy and Timmy had Kingdom Hall microphone duties, when Brother Diesher sold over ripened fruit near the Westchester Square train station and we were all aghast when Barbara Brown bit the matzo at the Memorial - we distributed Watchtower and Awakes detailing the earth’s impending finale and the New System of the things that would shortly follow.

Peddling Watchtower and Awakes while reading books my father would give me like Malcolm X and They Came Before Columbus made for some interesting questions on the other side of the spectrum which the Witness elders rarely answered, much less entertained.

"Wasn't Egypt called Kush which means ‘black people’? And if Moses was a Jewish baby and was able to be raised as an Egyptian by Pharaoh’s daughter then wouldn't it stand to reason that the original Israelites were dark skinned people too?"

"Don't worry yourself with the frivolous concerns of race," they'd tell me. "It's the Word, you must concern yourself with. It's the WORD!"

Word?

My boy Troy's older brother, Sam Butter, preached of the Word. He was about 10 years older than us and his teenage friends didn’t share the same beliefs we had.

Then January 1, 1976 came.

"Yo, Butter what's good? We still here. Where's the fire and brimstone? What's going on? Where's the thunder and lightning at? They asked between rounds of raucous laughter.

And so it went.

Thousands of Witnesses would leave the religion in 1976. In frustration. In embarrassment.

In debt.

With the world coming to an end, Witnesses were out buying houses, boats and myriads of other things they couldn’t afford. Why not? Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall die! But then 1976 came and so many believers had lost face, faith and finances.

“But wait! There's new information!”

Whenever there was a prophesy that didn’t come to pass, there’d suddenly be “new information” at the ready the following Sunday. A collective “My bad” from the Governing Body. One of them read the tea leaves wrong; put the decimal point in the wrong place; forgot to carry the one.

“There will be no 1976.”

“But wait, there’s new information!”

“Don’t have your children take SATs. The world will be over and they should spend all their time preaching instead, converting heathens!”

“But wait! There's new information!”

“The world is only 6,000 years old. There were no dinosaurs!” - I think they still believe this one, actually.

I noticed at a young age that their image of God is petty. Sitting up there with a Trump like scowl, bullying his subjects and keeping score. That's not the type of God I'd like to subscribe to. Some petty, pouted mouth deity keeping everlasting score. You made me in your image and gave me free choice, there's gonna be some sinning happening. Also, you couldn’t pray directly to God, you had to have a mediator in Jesus and end all your prayers “In Jesus’ name, Amen,” or else your prayers wouldn’t be heard. Not sure if it’s like that in other religions.

Even their discipline practices seemed antiquated. When a person sins and is at their lowest - shouldn't that be the point where extra love and encouragement is shown to them? To be encouraged to "hang in there?" But instead a person is disfellowshipped and you have to pretend they no longer exist. People you grew up with, known for years, family members!

“I've known you for years but until you get your shit together I’m gonna pretend I don't know you. Because I love you."

Look, I'm a lazy writer, OK? None of this was researched, I haven't interviewed anyone that's been disfellowshipped to delve into their feelings and it's never happened to me personally, but as a human being with emotions common to other human beings, I think I might be onto something here. I wouldn't want to come back after being treated like that. 

There was a kid in my second-grade class whose parents were Witnesses. I’ll call him Robert Williams because that was his name. One Friday afternoon the teacher gave cookies to the class and instructed everyone to take a cookie and pass on the plate. Robert took two. The following Monday he was made to wear a huge poster board around his neck which read: Do not speak to me I am a liar and a theif with the word “thief” misspelled. Later on in the school year, Robert’s family was moving to Texas so the class threw a going away party for him. The following Monday he was back in class with no explanation as if nothing happened. So we all pretended he was in Texas anyway, barely talking to him then when we did speak to him pretending it was a long-distance call.

(This story really has nothing to do with anything I spoke of earlier other than this kid was the parents of Witnesses, I knew him and the crux of this blog is Witness related material. Make of that story as you wish. We were funny kids though.)

But there’s a flip side to this – what if the Witnesses are right and the 99.9% of everyone else is wrong?

I die, meet God and she's wearing a name badge that says "Jehovah".

"You know, Askia I tried to tell you but you didn't listen. You shouldn't have taken the 1975 thing so personally. Didn't you get the new information?"

That would totally suck. I pray that doesn't happen!

In Jesus' name.

Amen.