ARMAGEDDON IS COMING or They Have to Die…Really?

I was assured Armageddon is coming any minute and we need to be vigilant.  All who do not worship the God of my father are going to be destroyed he and the Watchtower repeatedly warned.

I spent my childhood looking at the people around me…people I went to school with…people I talked with at the door…people in the congregation…people shunned from the congregation.

I watched living people and superimposed over their faces I saw death, fire, and destruction.  Pictures from the Watchtower publications flooded my life.  The coming violence from God was always in front of me.

“They deserve to die?”  I kept asking myself.  “For believing differently?  For having a different God or a different approach to God? For being a powerful independent woman who does not need or want the Headship of a man? For having or desiring ‘different’ sexual experiences? Death is God’s Righteous decree for such people?

MY LIFE LOCKED IN THE TOWER

I was born in an independent-spirited girl-child body.  From my earliest memories I felt an intense connection to the Earth and the Feminine Principle. The Mother; the stones, trees, and animals speak loudly to me.

In my chosen life I am the Shamanic Priestess of my child-self’s vision.

I have always known about my Queerness; the queerness in my sexuality, in my gender experience, and in my relationship orientation.

I am the Queer GenderFluid Polyamorous LeatherDaddy my childheart longed to become.

And…

My father told me when I was 5 years old I deserve to die.

Death is God’s Righteous Decree for all disobedient females, both those females seeking dominance over a man and those females seeking to make their own decisions.

Serving the Feminine Principle or any other Gods is worshiping false gods; again, punishable by death.

Death is equally deserved for sexual sins of any kind…like the kinds of things some older kids had been doing with me for as long as my 5-year-old self can remember. Leviticus doesn’t offer many exceptions.

My father said …until God carries out the inevitable death sentence for such disgusting behaviors…He requires faithful Christians to shun a daughter who sins in these ways. He was telling me these things and at such a young age because he believed it would protect me and teach me what I need to know to be in alighnment with his God and his Organization. He didn’t know about the older kids…he didn’t know that he was telling me I had already committed sins he would stone or shun me over.

I didn’t tell him.

He also regularly reminded me. “Prove for yourself whether or not these things are True.”  God gave us free will and everyone is responsible before God.  Baptism in the Organization is a Personal Dedication to the Jehovah’s Witness path. You have to be old enough to get Baptized. Old enough to answer the 100 or so Doctrinal and procedural questions correctly.

I was regularly reminded to question even while questions were not safe.

So, I constantly questioned the assumptions of the Organization concerning my independent and dominant nature, my sexuality and gender alignment, and my relationship orientation.  I noticed the flavor of my relationship with Spirit and All That Is. I also noticed my resistance to this punishing God of the Witnesses.

I questioned but not out loud.

I grew up contained in an Organization constantly telling me I am aligned with Satan because I desire independence and I desire women.

I gave these principles my father laid before me deep meditation.  Disagreement meant losing everyone I knew and loved so I meditated long and hard.

 

With my father I had a life of intense spiritual focus.  I was taught his ethics and morals with great care and consistency.  I experienced the Organization’s version of the Love of God and my parent’s interpretation of those principles.

I was also taught God’s intention in creating the world was love.  Everyone and everything is loved by God equally.  To love the world as God loves the world was our primary charge as I understood it.  God wants the best for people, animals, and the earth.  He wants us to be happy and take care of each other.

My father gave me techniques for reaching and deeply moving people’s hearts.  He told me he believed these tools would stand me in good stead whether I chose his path or went some other way.

When I left I wanted to leap into the Celebration of Diversity I had heard so much about.

What I noticed was…

My father is not the only one uncomfortable with Celebrating Diversity.

I have experienced my Polyamorous and Kinky nature, my Gender Fluid body and Queer sexual orientation to be, to put it mildly, outside societal norms.