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From Elder to Shunned

Waking up and stepping down as an elder was like having your world turned upside down and dumped on the floor for everyone to see. It truly is an existential crisis. Everything that you have ever known and believed in, gone in an instant.

My waking up moment happened when I and another elder were asked to have a pre-judicial conversation with a brother in the hall. As I sat there, looking at this lovely man who I had known for over 15 years, I realised just how unloving we were being. We were adding undue stress on to this man for absolutely no reason, trying to make him match up against a set of standards that were truly unattainable.

As I drove home that night I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong. There was a little voice yelling at me, screaming that what we were doing was not right. After hours and hours of research later that night I knew that I was done. I had found out that I had been sold a lie since I was a child. I felt so sick inside. I now knew that voice that was yelling at me was my conscience telling me that shunning was a human rights violation. Through my research that night I had come across RTS – religious trauma syndrome. It made so many experiences in my life make sense. Dogmatic and controlling religious groups and belief systems cause stress and trauma. It causes trauma to those who stay and to those who wake up and are ultimately shunned because of it.

I had the very realistic fear and dread that I would lose my family and friends….my whole community. I knew I would be shunned for what I had found out. We are taught that following anyone except for the governing body will get you removed. You would be labelled an apostate, a fate worse than death.

After stepping down, my friends reached out to me wanting to help. Wanting to know why I had stopped serving as an elder. I tried not to talk, not to tell my truth, but eventually I confided in a few of them. This sadly was a mistake. They assured me that they wouldn’t say anything, that all of what we had spoken about was between us. A month later I received a phone call from the COBE. He wanted to arrange a time for him and another elder to come and have a shepherding call. Stupidly, I agreed.

My wife and I sat there as the two elders started off with warm and fluffy conversation. Then it turned very cold. They told me that they had heard that I had been talking to brothers in the congregation about things that are viewed as apostate. They said I was walking a fine line, that if I continued I could be removed. They told me to think of my wife and children. At this point my head was spinning. They kept asking me what I was thinking and up until this point I had said nothing. Finally I blurted out a heap of doubts I had, the fact I was starting to think that there is no God, well, at least the way we view him. All the silly stories like the flood and Adam and Eve. How shunning was a human rights violation. The fact that no matter what we do in the Jehovah's Witness faith, nothing is good enough.

I used the example from the gladiator movie. The scene where after cutting off the other fighter’s head Russell Crowe throws the swords into the crowd, raises his hands and yells “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?”

Because that’s how it felt like serving a God with all the rules and requirements in the Jehovah's Witness faith. A God that was always testing us, never truly satisfied.

At this point I was in tears. Everything was coming out in a flurry. What made it the worst was looking at their faces. They looked at me like I had leprosy. How could I have fallen so far? They got up and hugged my wife and me. Then they left in a state that can only be described as dejected and shattered. Both my wife and I cried for hours after they left. We felt like we were the scum of the earth.

Then the soft shunning started. Friends and family stopped hanging out, we were removed as friends from social media. All the while I was trying to process what was going on in my head. The feelings of guilt and fear were deafening! Leaving a high controlling religion completely screws you up. Depression was kicking in and came in hard.

For the first time in my life I felt like suicide was an option. This scared the shit out of me. I had gotten so low, I had been treated like a pariah by my old friends and extended family. My brain started to tell me that maybe hitting the off switch would make it all stop. Make all the outside noise, guilt and shame go away. I had never felt so worthless.

In all the Watchtower and Awake magazines I read as a kid, I had seen experiences like this. Except, it was switched around. In all of the ones written in the magazines people left, hit rock bottom - drugs, alcohol, depression - and then like the prodigal son, they returned to the Jehovah's Witnesses and lived happily ever after.

What I realised was that this was all set up to fall that way. We are an isolated community that has no friends other than Jehovah's Witnesses. We are made to fear education, critical thinking, worldly influences and independence. So when you leave it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Young ones who leave are completely unequipped to cope with an outside world they have no real experience in. Being in my early 40’s at the time I had enough experience but it still was one of the hardest challenges that I have endured.

I went and got therapy. This helped immensely. Being able to get real help for trauma that I have had since I was a child due to growing up in a cult was amazing. The feelings of no self-worth got better and I was able to see a way out.

I reached out to all of my old friends and family that were no longer Jehovah's Witnesses. I had shunned many of these, some for over a decade. I felt like such a hypocrite. They were all amazing! They welcomed me back into their lives, giving me and my family the support that we needed.

It’s been over 2 years since I stood down and left the Jehovah's Witnesses. I wouldn’t change my decision. It’s the best thing I have ever done. Getting out and living my life without the high control has been amazing. I now have friends that love me unconditionally. I no longer have to follow a book that has things in it that I vehemently disagree with, things that humanity has grown past.

Originally published August 2023

   Paul Grundy  2005 - 2024