Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!

This happened on January 16th, 2011

I haven’t really had the chance to visit any strange religions since my move, so when the local for-.free newspaper had a notice that there would be a talk on who will go to heaven, I thought it sounds like something for me. I was hoping for some kooky sect, because I had missed one of them the other month. The info only had the time and address and nothing on who would be giving the talk or what organization it was. So I got up one Sunday morning and went on my way.

I walked and walked. The distance was much longer than it had looked like on my map. I was anxious that I would show up to late, like the last time I wanted to go to some weird thing here and I had been so late that I gave up half way.

This time I had planned enough time though and finally reached the house. Jehovah’s Witnesses. Didn’t see that coming In fact, I hesitated. Should I really enter? But I had already visited Islamists and Rosicrucians, so how bad could it be?

The parking lot was packed, but the people had already entered. I opened the door and came into a front room with the coat racks. I hung up my coat and continued. They were just beginning to sing as I entered. It was a large and simple room which looked like an American wooden church. There were no pictures, no cross, just an obscure Bible quote about God’s name being Jehovah.

Someone noticed I was new and handed me a bible and a songbook. I flipped through it. Wherever it should say God, it said Jehovah. Or sometimes Jehovah God. Which of course is etymologically totally weird.

The song was over and after a short generic prayer, a guest speaker somewhere from Eastern Germany gave a talk on the afterlife and how you have to be a Jehovah’s Witness to go to heaven. I had expected more of it. Then there was another song.

The next part of the service was a Watchtower reading. An elderly lady who sat in front of me offered to give me a copy, but I rather read through the raunchy bits of the Song of Solomon in the Bible. The article was intended for children and had twenty parts. One guy was the host and another older man read the paragraphs. After each part they would ask the people what they had learned and they’d repeat – sometimes verbatim – what had been said in the paragraph. The children did it too. It was about that you have to be earnest before you are baptized and what duties a grown up had as a Jehovah’s Witness. Something about pioneers, which of course sounded like the communist pioneers of Eastern Germany and something about full time duty.

They also discussed a picture of a boy reading a bible on the schoolyard, which everybody said was great because you wouldn’t be given cigarettes and could read the bible in every free second. So much for a social life. So they basically repeated everything two to three times and I read the weird bits in the Bible for amusement. Towards the end they had a special treat for everyone. It was a letter from the German leadership saying that in April a kind of service counted twice the amount of brownie points. I didn’t quite get what that was all about.

I could have gone straight out and no one would have stopped me. But now I already was there. So I lingered a bit and a man approached me and chatted with me. He was polite and said some interesting things about their faith – apparently the Jehovah’s Witnesses have no trinity and 1914 is a special date fort hem . He even wanted to give me a book but I knew I didn’t want to read it. He also told me some personal things, like that his father was a Nazi and that the Jehovah’s Witnesses had been persecuted by the Nazis and deported to concentration camps. He also told me that they are now an accepted church in Germany. Good for them. The service was really boring though, in hindsight.

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