Life after baptism - Choices and consequences

What happens after baptism?


It can actually be quite depressing for some. All the excitement from months of planning and talking will lead to you becoming a member of the organization known as Jehovah's Witnesses. Once the excitement wears off, it can be a bit of an anti-climax. Sort of like, was that it? No dove came down from the sky. The actual baptism questions where you are baptised in the name of the 'spirit directed organization' will be done. You get immersed, and lots of friends and family will be very happy.
Things like, ''At last, you have started on the course of true Christian maturity'', are phrases you may well hear a lot for a few days. Then, almost as fast as that special assembly day came, it's over and you are back to school or the workforce. You may even feel that nothing has changed! Perhaps you think that now, your prayers will really get through. After all, you are taught that only baptised people have the privilege of unrestricted access to God in prayer, and when you are baptised, you will too.

This can be a time when you feel that you have achieved some closeness to Jehovah. Although it can feel that not much has changed for you, There is one thing that has forever changed.

Accountability

When you were just a kid who's parents happened to be Jehovah" Witnesses, it was hopefully pretty easy going. Oh, you had to go to the meetings sure, and go witnessing, no doubt dreading the day you might knock on a school friends door. Maybe you even gave some talks in the Theocratic Ministry School. Over all though, even if you were 'a born in' and seen as having the best start in life, you were probably more interested in school than the actual religion.

When you reached the stage of being an unbaptized Publisher as they call it, you got to make an official report of the time you spent doing witnessing. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society is the legal entity and name of the printing corporation used by Jehovah's Witnesses. As a corporation that publishes such things as books, they like to know statistically, how may people are distributing their books as well as how much time is spent doing so.
They like to use these sorts of numbers to prove that they are doing the most 'preaching' in the whole world. They also think that in the days of the apostles of Jesus, the preachers wrote out field service reports too! [The Watchtower 1941] Although, there is no evidence of such a thing in the Bible.

During this time of being an unbaptized publisher, something that is marked by an announcement at the service meeting that ''so and so is now an unbaptised publisher'', comes the first small lesson in accountability. That is, having to answer for your actions to the organization and not just your parents. For, just as swiftly as you were made, you can be un-made. Should you do something they see as wrong, you can lose the 'privilege' of the new status and not be allowed to report. On top of that, it is entirely possible that the whole congregation will know. How embarrassing.

Something that may have got you a good telling off at home, such as looking at pornography or having a 'worldly' girlfriend at school will now also include a telling off by the Elders. So it may be that you get the first idea about having to answer to the organization for your deeds. But, likely, you won't even realize it.

Continuing on, this matter of accountability will stay with you. As a baptized 'brother' or 'sister' you will now be required and expected to uphold all the teachings and practices of the Jehovah's Witness faith. This encompasses quite a bit and I will endeavour to keep it plain and simple, but some of it cannot be passed over quickly.
Whereas before, you could pretty much do as you pleased, you will find more and more that things like spending time having fun will be seen as not the right use of your time and others may look down on you for being 'worldly'. You may be playing a heavy metal CD in your car and an elder will advise you to get rid of that 'Satanic music', even though you do not see it as 'debasing' music. Those party night drinks at venues or mates homes will start to be a cause for concern by the elders and your interest in getting financially secure will be seen as a sign that you are not spiritually mature, and could well be used to hold you back from progressing in 'the truth'. Should you want or decide to go to university you will be looked down on as week and Elders can be stood down for letting their children do this. Thus you will see as time goes by, how rules and regulations that are not in the bible can and will be used to keep you in line. You will soon realize that life as a 'good JW' is about lots and lots of witnessing, even pioneering, lots of meetings and study, lots of following the rules and very little time to what you wish. It all becomes about looking 'spiritual'.

There are two distinct things that can and will get you into trouble. One is, committing some 'sin', and the other is not agreeing with a teaching.

Committing a sin

Nobody wants to 'commit a sin'. Nobody plans on sinning. But it does happen. There are course, varying degrees of sinning in the world of the Witnesses and they also get varying degrees of action. Even different bodies of elders can and do react to different things in different manners. As a baptised Witness, your conscience will play on you as you make 'spiritual' progress. Do not be surprised if you feel not good enough. The Christian faith relies on its followers feeling undeserving, ''miserable worms'' as the Apostle Paul called himself. When you got baptised, you may have hoped that getting baptised would help you be more spiritual minded. You may have hoped that it may even help you overcome some secret sins or doubts. It can be very distressing if you find that it did not work like that. Consequently, you will see that baptism itself is not the answer to getting more 'spiritual'. Things like pornography or alcohol abuse may well still be a problem and should others become aware of these things the elders will become involved. Depending on both the severity of the situation and your attitude they will decide whether to reprove you publicly or privately, and whether to discipline you.

One sin you may well have no idea about, and may well not even be an issue for many years involves marital relations with your future wife or husband. It is not unusual for these things to be spoken about at the congregation meetings and mentioned in the watchtower study or another publication. For that reason, and the fact that young people always know more about these subjects than older people think, I do not hesitate to mention them now. You must also be made aware that baptised, married Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed to engage in oral or anal sex within their marriage. The secret elders book, Shepherd the flock of God has a great deal to say on what can and can't be done in the marriage bed. In times past, the elders used to disfellowship for this, but nowadays they remove privileges such as serving as an elder or servant if it becomes known.

Should you commit a larger sort of sin, others may tell on you, but it is likely that your guilty conscience will prompt you to confess to the elders. It could be immorality, theft, gambling, drunkenness or some other problem. Should this happen, the Elders can form a judicial committee to investigate you. The aim of course, from their point of view is to keep the congregation clean. This means in layman's terms, 'will we kick them out or not'. That is, whether to disfellowship or not. Some elders you will learn, are very loving and caring. They may go great lengths to help you 'repent' and keep you as a Jehovah's Witness. Other elders are not so nice and see everything black and white, no reasons, no excuses, and can be quite harsh.

Not agreeing with a teaching

This, without a doubt is the most scary. Remember, you have not been baptised in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit [Matt 28:19]. You have been baptised as a member of the spirit directed organization. You have not been baptised as a Christian, you have been baptised to the Jehovah's Witness religion.
Once you accept the 'truth' as they call it and get baptised you must follow what they say and teach. You are not to hold to a different idea. If the Governing Body change a teaching you must also accept the new teaching even if you do not understand nor agree with it.

Why is that so important to the Witnesses? The key word is unity. They must maintain unity at all times or they risk becoming fragmented by differing beliefs or ideas. They loudly proclaim to the world that one of the proofs that they are the true religion is global unity. It is so important to them that even if the teaching is wrong all must follow it. This was very plainly demonstrated in 1954 when the legal counsel of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society was put on the witness stand in Scotland. The case was one where a certain man named Douglas Walsh was trying to get exempted from military service as an ordained minister. The questioning was regarding the fact that Jehovah's witnesses in the past had to believe a false prophecy or they would be disfellowshipped. The counsel answered an empahtic YES. They had held false ideas and they did disfellowship those that disagreed. The reason given was that 'we must have unity at all costs', 'even death'. [Why not google 'walsh trial'?]

So seriously do they take it that even today, no dissent is tolerated. You cannot change your mind and say 'I made a mistake' in getting baptised. You cannot stop believing a certain teaching. You cannot refuse to accept a new teaching.

Why, you may wonder, do I speak of this? It is because the teachings that you are growing up with or learning are not the same as those taught by Charles Taze Russell. The next president of the society rejected almost every teaching of his and replaced them with new ones. And when Joseph Rutherford passed away, the next president changed a bunch of things as well. Over the last 130 years, many changes have been made, sometimes even going backwards and forwards between the same teachings as if they can't make up their minds. Often times, a teaching needs to be changed, such as the one about the 'generation of 1914' still being alive when Armageddon comes, when prophesied events fail to happen. That particular teaching has changed 5 times in the last few years and if any Jehovah's Witness does not accept the latest teaching, it can lead to disfellowshiping as an 'apostate'.

It is this happening that can wreak the most havoc on families and in particular Witness marriages. So intrinsically linked are the beliefs and 'love' that many people only love another so long as they believe the identical set of teachings to the other. A mother may love her children, but if they dissent from the group mentality, the love is withdrawn and the child is shunned. A wife may love her husband so very much, but if he decides he can't agree with something said by the Governing Body or he decides that God is not using the Watchtower Society anymore, it can and does rip the marriage apart. Should what one thinks inside ones own head about God be reason for this tragedy? Even if you no longer want to be a Jehovah's Witness but still believe in Jesus and Jehovah, the Bible and all things good, you will be disfellowshiped as an apostate from the organization.

Thus, there are those amongst the ranks of the congregations who do not actually agree with everything they read in the Watchtower and do not agree with some teachings and the changes to them. But they will not admit this to another Jehovah's Witness. To do so may lead to the elders hearing about it. They will ask them to explain in the presence of at least two people because that is how many they need to prove that somebody has become 'apostate' from the organization.

What happens though to those who may decide that not only do they not agree anymore but decide to disassociate themselves in stead of waiting for the elders to disfellowship them? A number of years ago, if a person wrote a letter to the Society stating that they no longer wanted to be known as a Jehovah's Witness, they left, and although they no longer believed they were not shunned, as a rule. However, later on, the Watchtower society changed the 'status' of such ones who left so that they to were to be treated exactly the same as the disfellowshiped ones. The claim was made that those who left were in fact worse, they were automatic apostates and must be avoided at all costs.

Why were such ones who simply desired to move on from the Witnesses sought out for such treatment? After all, they did not try to stay in the congregation and draw others away or entice them into sin. One real reason is that people who left of their own accord, felt or discovered something that the other witnesses were not allowed to know and this shunning worked to keep them silenced.

Another way of leaving should that be the desire of any who are baptised and change their mind is 'fading'. This is where the publisher or perhaps an entire family will simply do less and less until nobody sort of notices them fade away. Hence the term 'fade'. Why would some do this? Could it be that the fear of being disfellowshiped or disassociation causing loved family members to shun them totally? I mentioned earlier the matter of learning fear as a Jehovah's Witness. Not fear of God, but fear of men, those who run the organization, those who run the congregations. Fear that if they do get caught not believing, that they will lose contact with every friend and witness family member they have ever known. Do you think that this is a loving, humane, way to treat family or friends that simply no longer think the exact same thing as everybody else?

The Awake! of July 2009 pg 29 had this to say: ''Nobody should be forced to worship in a way that he finds unacceptable or be made to chose between his beliefs and his family''

What do you make of this? On one hand, when discussing people changing beliefs to become a Jehovah's Witness, they have the above to say to those who oppose them. Yet when it comes to a person changing beliefs from being a Witness to perhaps another faith or no faith at all, they are forced to either shut up and stay or lose all their family. The denial of love of family is as good as a gun to the head. It can and has lead to people even committing suicide as a result. What hypocrisy! The matter of disfellowshiping and shunning as regards the Bible will be discussed in another article.

One danger for those who are baptised witnesses is social networking sites such as facebook and myspace. Both have come under a lot of negative talk by the Watchtower Society, mainly in talks at conventions and assemblies. The reason given is basically that Satan is there and those who use these sites are only after sex.

But it holds a special danger for Baptised witnesses who have doubts about the teachings or who have 'faded' from the congregation and seek to just be left alone and forgotten. Very often in fact, they are forgotten...sometimes for years until a 'good' witness sees something they may have posted about doubts or maybe even family pictures of some holiday like Halloween or birthdays. All of a sudden, they will get a visit from the elders enquiring about whether they still believe that Jehovah is using the Governing Body and Jehovah's Witnesses.

From where did such sudden interest come? Why, the elders may not have visited for a long long time. Now they seek to find out if the family has become apostate. Within a week, a family can go from being forgotten by all but immediate family who still happily see each other to being disfellowshipped and shunned by those same family members.

Much is made of the 'hurt' felt by the 'faithful' family members and how they need to show ultimate 'love' by having nothing to do with their family. It is hoped that the one who had to be removed as evil will miss them and come back. But, mostly, the practice does the opposite.

It is hoped that this article has given you a no nonsense insight into the realities of life as a baptised Jehovah's Witness. It IS designed to scare you. It IS designed to make you think very carefully about being baptised into the religion while still a young person. Your brains ability to assess situations and consequences for actions is far from mature. This means your life and lifestyle, please take your time.