Love this reddit post from Trapjw, current elder.
I’ve received many PMs of those asking my story, and while I won’t tell the entire story now, I’ll tell the moment when it all began. This is long so I apologize. There will be other posts.
November 8, 2014 – I still remember that date. Everyone gathered at the Kingdom Hall for the United States Branch Visit that was to be streamed by video. There was a heightened level of excitement. People took off work, we made sure that all the elderly ones made it. Our Kingdom Hall was standing room only and we were well beyond the fire code capacity. Streaming was a relatively new thing so this felt extra special. What will be announced? Last year we had the new bible announced – we are certainly being asked to gather again for another historical moment, right?
I don’t remember how the program began, but I remember it being boring. The brothers and sisters begin to get up and go stand in the back and mill around. However it started to change once Samuel Herd took the stage.
The first few minutes of his talk was nothing memorable but soon it started to get a bit weird. Samuel Herd began to give counsel to the Bethelites about being on time for their assignments. Now I’ve been to Bethel many times and I never once witnessed anyone being excessively late. Why is this old man spending time focusing on lecturing a group of a few thousand about tardiness when over a million are watching? Why not commend the Bethelites for their service and their self sacrifice? These are people that are working for free and you’re scolding them in front of an audience of a million for being just two to three minutes late for a job they are doing for absolutely nothing. I thought it was bizarre and unappreciative of their sacrifice, yet his talk was essential in letting my guard down for the rest of the program.
Soon thereafter, Anthony Morris took the stage. As far as I recall he wasn’t used much on the video program that announced the revision of the NWT bible the previous year. Geoffrey Jackson had that moment. This was now Anthony Morris moment to shine. The limelight was his. Time to make his mark and announce himself to the entire country of United States exactly who he is. I didn’t know who he was, but he’s a Governing Body member and I’m sure he’s a great guy. I did enjoy Geoffrey Jackson the previous year. Anthony Morris is probably just like him. Or so I thought.
He starts out with a story of him watching birds outside his house. Just two minutes into this talk he somehow twists that story into the real life application of parents dumping their children on the congregation elders when they go to university. He makes a comment about it being ‘both’ parents responsibility for the spiritual well being of the family, later on a single parent remarked to me about this comment made her feel an extra burden since she didn’t have a husband to help her with that responsibility. A few minutes in and I already know I don’t like this guy. Just something about him struck me the wrong way.
About five minutes later the excitement begins. Anthony begins speaking about the importance of visiting Bethel. This time he does make a comment about single parents visiting with their children. Nice to see he remembers the single parents when its time to go to Bethel. He then poses the question – have you visited amusement parks but not Bethel? – ‘Explain that to God’. Oddly enough, the audience in the stream (Patterson Bethel) broke out in laughter, yet in our Kingdom Hall there wasn’t much laughing. The Bethelites took a certain giddiness in him lecturing those that weren’t serving at Bethel about going to amusement parts and taking vacations. Less than ten minutes into the talk and I’m already on the edge.
Now this is where the elder in me kicks in. I think – how I can do damage control over what this Governing Body member is saying? I could tell by the vibe in the audience it wasn’t going over well. He was certain to hurt feelings by those comments. He’s already guilt tripped the families with younger children in the audience that take decide to a week off to go camping rather than go visit Bethel.
The talk continues on. He encourages every family to ‘eat a meal a day together’ – very common sense advice for any family regardless if you believe in God or not. Great, we’re back on track. A little counsel on having family worship…nothing harmful. Phew. Same ole, same old
And then just like he flips the switch – ‘Are you a ministerial servant at age 23?’. Oh god. No. No. No. What are you doing? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?. Now you’ve alienated any brother that isn’t serving in an appointed capacity over 23. Even worse, those that are married you’ve now shamed them in front of their wife. I remember seeing a wife poke her husband right after that comment and give him a look. My heart sank for him. I couldn’t believe what Anthony Morris was doing. At least make a comment that at times personal situations may not allow us to serve as a MS or elder, but no, you make a blanket statement that everyone should be serving by 23. It’s my opinion that this part of his talk was more mentally and emotionally damaging than the ‘tight pants’ part. As an elder you should never, ever say anything that would make a husband portray a husband poorly in front of their wife. Common decency says so. Now we have someone that is allegedly one of only a handful of men out of eight billion that has been personally selected by God himself who has gone on public record stating that if someone isn’t a ministerial servant by 23 that he isn’t a spiritual man and isn’t deserving of marriage. Nearly 50 years of being a Jehovah Witness and it took less than 20 minutes for that to begin to crumble.
Now the fun starts. 1 Timothy 2:9- ‘this is what Jehovah thinks’. How does this apply to our dress and grooming? He goes off on colored socks. Huh? Socks? He says if we’re wearing colored socks that pants should be long enough to cover them.Next up: SPANX. We’ve moved on from socks to SPANX. No one has idea what he is talking about. Does he mean spandex? People start to give one another the look of confusion. As this moment it’s relatively amusing watching some old guy talk about his fashion pet peeves. It’s funny, not as a ‘laugh with them’ but ‘laugh at them’ way. There was a brief moment where I felt bad for Anthony Morris.
But in a matter of seconds that all changes. ‘Metrosexual – better known as tight pants’. He makes a dad joke. Old people are lapping it up. Anyone under the age of 50 starts to wince. Then the bomb drops.
The homosexuals that are designing these clothes, they like you in tight pants.
My jaw dropped. I was in utter disbelief. In just a matter of moments I went from thinking to how I could salvage the hurt feelings of those in the congregation, to thinking how can I salvage my own feelings? I’m an elder and it took not even a half hour to start to destroy all those years of indoctrination. One of the the Governing Body members is a conspiracy theorist.
The rest of the talk was a blur. Horribly I had to conclude with prayer which was the most difficult assignment I’ve ever had to do. I felt like vomiting. Before he concluded his talk I thought to myself: Is this ‘the truth’? If it’s not, wait, that means there is no more resurrection? I won’t able to see my grandparents again? I went home that night, told my family I was going on a walk, and went to the park and cried my eyes out for an hour realizing that the hope of everlasting life or resurrection was no more.
What made the talk so damaging? Why did a talk by an older man cause the most amount of people to leave the religion since the 1975 failed prophecy? How did just a few brief moments cause tens of thousands to lose their faith? Why was it so damaging to me personally? I’ve though about this for years.
Before 2013 the Governing Body was just a group of men in New York who were responsible for things we didn’t really know about. Once a year we’d see a picture of them in a Watchtower sitting around in some office that looks like it was designed in the 80s. They looked like a great group of men. We all know that elderly brother full of love and never a discouraging or unkind word comes out of his mouth. I pictured the Governing Body to be full of those men. I never met any individually and couldn’t even give you the name of one of them. I do remember one of them giving a talk at my District Convention several times and no one blinked an eye when he took the stage – it was just some guy from Bethel.
But once they became more visible we began to look at them in a different light. I believe that the biggest mistake that Watchtower has ever made is putting the Governing Body in front of the camera. It gave us insight into who they really are. They weren’t the sweet old wise men we imagined them to be, they were lunatics that were out of touch with reality. They are creepy men that wear pinky rings, gold watches, have weird facial ticks, and have not an iota of love, kindness, or humility in their soul. To have the confidence to put these men in front of the camera opened my mind to just how the Watchtower organization does not have any God or superhuman being behind it. Would the creator of the universe really allow someone like Anthony Morris to say the things he did before the entire country of the United States? Does our creator really care about what color socks we wear? From this moment the dominos began to fall…
Yet I am still an elder. Why you may ask? How can you do this?
To be continued…
Reasons We Left The Watchtower 
I remember that meeting well, because I’d given birth to a preemie weeks earlier and was stressed beyond belief. (My preemie’s birth was what accelerated my exit from the cult.) My family hadn’t been able to afford a visit to an amusement park OR Bethel, and now I had fresh guilt about that. UGH. So happy to be free of this BS!