10. Dear Amy: An Open Letter to a Friend on her Leaving the Worldwide Church of God
February 6, 1986
Dear Amy,
I'm glad you called today. I hope this letter won't be too tiresome, because it's going to be full of my own personal experiences and ideas, observations, and advice. Be true to your own self: accept what helps and makes sense, and set aside the rest--it may make sense later, or it may never help in your particular situation.
That's the best of what I can offer you: endeavour to create two new habits--one, listen to your innermost self, your "gut feeling," your intuition, what you know and feel good about; second, practice joy--have fun, enjoy yourself, be good to yourself, give yourself permission to be happy, refuse to punish yourself.
By making the choice to leave the church you have committed a positive moral act: remember, morality is based on freedom of choice, and by the time all choice has been taken out of a person's hands, their acts are neither moral nor immoral--all coercion produces non-moral acts. This is why Christianity has always taught Free Moral Agency as its primary principle: without it, nothing else really counts.
What you are doing is a courageous act: you are acting on your own principles, the things you personally believe in, instead of the things others try to make you believe or pretend to believe. You have felt cowardly, hypocritical, fearful, and guilty: you've carried around with you a growing dread, a sense of impending personal doom. Your worst fear has been that you would leave the church, and now you feel like a failure, a spiritual casualty.
You have failed nothing, certainly not yourself, and I highly doubt you've failed God. He seems to provide a safe way out of dangerous situations , and this church becomes very dangerous, spiritually. It kills your joy in God, turns your desire for worship and spiritual exploration & learning into a stifled, restless fear of failing to conform to an organization. Some of my best moments in the church were times of personal Bible study and discussions of ideas with friends, as well as encouraging others and being encouraged -- all things the church began to discourage, fearing heresy and "cliques," as well as fearing to encourage independent thought or judgement. My best moments would have been prevented by the church, if they could have. Read The Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses, but if you can't find it, read Orwell's 1984, which the book bases its theme upon. The idea of thought control & conformity should feel very familiar to you.
Ultimately, you have to recognize this choice to leave as a POSITIVE one, not a negative one, or you will again fall prey to guilt and be tempted to return. If ever you returned for what you felt was a positive reason, that might be different, though I am sure your positive reasons would again be twisted around into guilt.
Realize that you are not leaving the church, you are starting a new life: the sooner you stop defining your decision in terms of what is behind you, and start defining it in terms of what is ahead of you, the easier this transition will be.
And it is a difficult transition. You are changing your world-view, and it can make you feel lost, alone, confused, and shaky. Don't demand that you have an answer to everything right away. Set aside matters of religion and doctrine for awhile, and come back to them when you have sorted your life out and feel more stable. Leaving a church as strong in influence as the WWCOG is like losing a family member or a career. I know I found leaving Brad [my former husband] & leaving the church similar in difficulty -- as a matter of fact, John [my present husband] noticed I seemed to have more trouble missing the church...but then, you know how unhappy I was with Brad, and the church was what kept me with him towards the end -- although I kept trying to fool myself, since I didn't want to admit how I felt -- I preferred to kid myself.
It takes a special kind of mental firmness to stick to a decision like this -- all your mental habits & the patterns you have learned fight you, and your emotions wage war against you -- thus, the nightmares, tears, anger, embarrassment, shame, fear, guilt, depression -- but cheer up as much as you can: all this will pass. See it as a process of withdrawal from addiction, and don't let it spook you into making a decision you'll regret.
You have your mental & life freedoms back again: you can do anything! What would make you feel happy, worthwhile, and fulfilled? Inventory all the dreams the church has made you stifle, and re-evaluate them. The sooner you turn your focus to what you can do in the present and future, rather than what the past in the church was like, the sooner you'll feel in control again, and content.
By all means, drift awhile if you must, in order to weather this shock -- follow your instincts. But in this drifting, allow yourself to daydream: later, you can look at the recurrent themes of these dreams to see what you might do to make them come true.
I wonder if maybe it just isn't easier making a dramatic break, like I did with Brad [my former husband] & the church, and like you did by leaving [the city]. A new life altogether is easier, somehow, than trying to renegotiate a lot of the old life....
****
... It really looks like the real Amy is trying to wake up out of the slumber of indecision and fear she's lived in for the last decade. I see her wanting to change whatever dissatisfies her and robs her of joy, and set her face towards the things she has always wanted, and enjoy her own sense of accomplishment.
Certainly, I think this is better for [your daughter] Jeanine, that she not grow up being indoctrinated by the church into accepting a subordinate status just because she's a female. I would never want that influence to stunt my daughter's growth, and I hope to fight those forces in the world wherever they strike: I'm glad I no longer subscribe to a religion that inculcates this idea.
You have a whole new life ahead of you, full of possibilities: you can work at whatever you choose without stickiness about holidays; you can marry whomever you choose and whenever you choose; you can travel, have friends, make decisions based on your own best interests: it will probably hit you after awhile all that has opened up to you. It will take some thinking before it hits you.
All I can say is, accept the insecurity of your feelings as part of what you must go through, and treat this time as one in which you can fantasize about where you'd like to be. Leave it to later before you decide how to implement these dreams. But do make plans eventually: ...
****
Now at this point I'll drop all this, or it'll become a bit much and beside the point I'm trying to make, which is the power you have to choose what you are going to do from now on. Take it slow, get used to the idea of all the ramifications, then see.
Feel free to call or write when you like, or if I can be of any help.
I must try to get some sleep in, now, or I'll never get over my cold. It was good to hear from you: I was glad to hear the news of your decision -- I felt it had been a long time coming, and I thought you were leading up to it at Christmas, but I felt uneasy about getting into it with you prematurely and making you feel guilty. See, now it's taken another month for the time to be ripe! But I'm glad for you. This is a good, positive step towards hope in an unlimited future, unlike the confined space the church offers. Frankly, I felt it had become like one of those rooms in the horror stories, where the walls slowly move in on you, eventually to crush the life out of you -- I feel I've seen you escape to safety, and it makes me very relieved.
Say hello to Jeanine for me. Hope to hear from you soon. Good luck! Take it easy, and be good to yourself.
Love,
Jesse
P.S. -- Now I'm going to try to take some of my own advice, and look at the things I've been putting off that would enrich my own enjoyment of life -- like making that gingerbread house, or reading a good book, or writing, or finishing [that painting]...I'm legendary at putting things off, which I've got to stop: just getting into the "advice-giving" mode gives me pause, when I think of what I should tell myself to do.
I hope I haven't said anything to miff you -- you know I only care about your best interests. 'Bye again, my thoughts are with you. Jesse.
10.1. Notes on My Letter to Amy
"AMY" AND "JEANINE" ARE NOT THE REAL NAMES of my friend and her daughter; I have also changed the name of my ex-husband (although I have seen no reason to change the name of John, my husband now), and the city my friend and I attended church in. While I have corrected two or three blatant grammatical errors in the original, and have omitted some three pages of strictly private communication, I have not otherwise changed the wording of the letter.
The letter was written on February 6, 1986, after "Amy" had told me, over the telephone, that she had just left the church. She was in another city, and away from anyone who could understand what she was going through, so, even though I had been unable to put words on paper about the WWCOG before this (I had been trying to write something about it for about a year and a half at that point), I sat at the telephone table and wrote her this letter, and mailed it immediately.
Not only did she find it helpful then, but she has kept it in her purse these last four years (it's still there), and refers to it when some memory of the church claws at her. I thought that I had better include this letter with the article, because, although the article has not yet passed the test of usefulness, the letter has. For you, dear Reader, I hope both will be of help.
[Jesse Ancona, August 1990.]
10.2. The Terror of Prophecy
The fear that the Worldwide Church of God engenders does not disappear overnight, and even after several years is not always completely gone. "Amy" and I have discussed this, and help each other, even now, with the rough bits, though most of it is behind us now. Still, when we see certain news events spoken of by the WWCOG's interpretation of biblical prophecy, we can feel a rush of uncertainty and fear all over again. I am indebted to a historian who unwittingly provided an answer to this: many alliances and wars follow patterns that have repeated themselves throughout history, and it is easy to predict that they will repeat themselves once more. This is no more "prophetic" than predicting an eclipse, though it has the same dramatic effect as the former once had.
"Amy" and I have been neither "cursed by God" nor "blessed by Satan." Amy has found a satisfying career where she can help others and continue to grow, and I have changed careers, and continue learning. My home and family is very happy, and we have been very fortunate through many difficulties, so I feel blessed by God indeed. Amy feels the same.
By the way, I did read many good books, and wrote some short stories and essays, a novella, a long poem cycle, and several miscellaneous poems. I finished that painting just two years ago now, and am quite satisfied with it. Unfortunately, I never got around to the gingerbread house.
