Pride and Arrogance - A Father's Legacy - Post #1

Pride and Arrogance - A Father’s Legacy
Don Hale, this is for you.

Normally, I am not a fan of exposing the intimate problems of ones family or relationships on social media outlets. However, my current relationship with my father and mother demands a public outreach. As a shunned, disfellowshipped and previous member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion, an organization widely recognized as a cult, I am forbidden from having any relationship or conversations with any other believing members which includes all family members.

The reasons for my being shunned by this religion are not important here except to say that it was quite possibly the best thing that could have happened to me for now I am able to see what so many inside the organization are unable.

The lies.

No matter what source you use, the roles of fathers can be clearly defined. Even in the animal kingdom, the role of fathers is very clear. They are there to provide, lead and support. Its really that simple, yet in these three words lies a great amount of complication. From the moment a child is born the role of a father becomes significant. While in the initial phases of life, that child may not even recognize the man in the room, but soon there will become a time when that fathers role will become the most significant in that child’s life without respect to it being a male or female.

I too am a father and I can say with great confidence that being a father is the hardest job one could imagine and should not be undertaken without proper knowledge and preparation. I was certainly not prepared for it. In fact making the decision to have a child was not born from some deep consultative decision making process. It was just decided in a moment without much thought. In a moment when I thought that I could be, would be a much better father than mine had been to me. Giving little thought to the level of preparedness I needed, my first son was born not realizing much more is required than just deciding to be a better father than what I had growing up.

From the outside looking in, my father was a great man. So said many. He was a particularly handsome guy, held a steady job, we lived in a decent neighborhood and I don't ever recall any utilities being turned off or there not being enough food to eat. My Dad went to work each and every day, worked hard and it seemed as if we took vacations every year. There were things I noticed when I was in those early days when I was ranging in age from 8-14 years. I knew that my mom and dad had some problems, that he sometimes drank too much and that there were late night excursions to some local bar where he would flirt with those fairly unattractive women. I knew things were a little off when he would come home in the middle of the night smelling like beer and stale cigarettes, wake me up and make me talk to him about  little ‘guy stuff’. He was gone a lot during the week and often came home late at night, or sometimes he ‘worked’ nights, we didn't really care that much because he always made it up to us on Friday nights with Pizza and scary late night television shows. Saturday morning would continue the fun as he would sometimes watch cartoons with us and clown around acting out roles as Superman, Batman or sometimes even Wonder Woman.

But, I knew my dad has some issues. He was a man to be feared especially with that belt in hand, but he was for all his faults a fun dad. But all of that was about to change, as if over night. My mother had been since I was born raising my sister and I as Jehovahs Witnesses. It wasn't all bad. We had friends, participated in some school activities and had generally happy experiences. Even knocking on doors and giving presentations wasn't all that bad and I would dare say that we may have liked it a little bit. It was kinda fun. We got ice cream and lunch at McDonalds. What could be better?

At the time we thought that our little paradise could only get better if our beer drinking, cigarette smoking, pussy hunting but fun time father would become a witness. Oh how great our lives would be. So it was then that I, the most influential of the children began a relentless campaign to get my father to come to the ‘side of the truth’.

What a mistake that would turn out to be.

Before I continue you may recall that at the beginning of this article I spoke about my unwillingness to air my families dirty laundry on social media. Why do so now? To put it bluntly, its to get their attention There have been years of unresolved issues between my father and I that he is unwilling to address. My being disfellowshipped gives him a thick veil with which to hide behind. He has created a public persona based on a lie that vilifies me and gives no regard to my feelings or the things I had to deal with under his iron fisted monarchic rule. Things that in this day and time can be repaired through some simple conversations and an apology. This is an open letter, an acknowledgement that his public persona is false and here in lies an opportunity to leave a legacy different than the one I will remember when his days are long past.

As odd as this may seem I do not remember his baptism as well as I can remember all the physical abuses that came as a result of me not wanting to conform to all the ridiculous demands of a JW father hell bent on making his already well mannered family into Watchtower Society robots.  I vividly recall the announcement at the Kingdom Hall welcoming a new brother to the congregation, my father. I was proud because I thought I had saved his life but in reality I had made great strides towards destroying my own. He became very popular very quickly. A very good speaker and with a charisma I had not seen before in my dad, he quickly became a leader. People in the congregation looked up to him and very soon many were leaning upon him for his sage advice and his ability to apply scriptures to their situations. It was kinda cool having a father that was always being called on to offer prayer and to give talks from the platform, often delivering some of the lighter ‘special needs’ programs. I looked up to him and wanted to make sure I did nothing to make him look bad.

Then he became an elder.

Becoming an elder was like reaching celebrity status. You now have a following. You have ones that will now hang onto every word or piece of advice you offer. Being appointed to serve as an elder is akin to being promoted on your job. New title gives you a new air of respectability. You are SOMEBODY now. You can make decisions and you now have the right to make declarations and make demands on people without anyone really challenging you, at least not in public.  You are an elder now - God has given you authority to execute his commandments upon others and to carry out his orders knowing that most will be followed without question. A solid prescription for success in the Watchtower organization is to follow without question.  I never figured my father to be one of those types, but in retrospect I now see that he was. He put his thinking on hold in order to succeed and to be a SOMEBODY, to be an elder, to have followers. He wanted to be the chief administrator of the robot army.  One of the requirements for being and elder and maintaining that status was that your family had to act in lock step, they had to show that the robotic indoctrination had taken hold. My dad, the just appointed elder together with his newly christened authority thought he could practice and perfect the robotic indoctrination techniques on his family.

He was wrong. My mother would constantly remind him that although he was the head of the family, she was the neck that turned the head. What she meant was that he was not meant to make all decisions about the family’s future.  She was to be consulted. But because my fathers eldership relied heavily on how his family was perceived by others in the congregation and in order to protect his position of authority and the perception he carried amongst members of the congregation, he became a tyrant.

While my fathers tyranny had a negative effect on all members of the family, I would for many years suffer physical and emotional abuse far worse than anything inflicted upon my siblings.

****AUTHORS NOTE***** Over the next few weeks I will tell more of this story. Please follow my blog here or check back often for the next chapter in the saga…