15. God and Women

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation

Warning:  Chapters 14 through 19 contain sexually explicit narratives, told in the language of the street as I learned to speak it.  I have made no effort to be politically correct in the telling of this story; and I seek neither approval of my choices nor the expiation of guilt.  I would remind my readers that upon leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses I had made a committment to myself to never let the judgments of other humans, traditions, and cultures get between me and my quest to understand existence, to discover reality, to know what IS, and to find or achieve meaning in my own existence.  I was not interested in adopting other people’s meanings; I was done with all that.  I was continually in shock at the pervasive human need to BELIEVE.  Belief came first, reality was always a distant second.  For a short while I was convinced that this was a phenomenon unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses, or maybe cults in general.  As time progressed I came to the same conclusions as scientists who coined the term CONFIRMATION BIAS.  Belief trumps reality–at all levels of all societies. At this point in my story, women and sex were very high on my list of unresolved internal conflicts.  I wanted to know who they were, how they thought, what they believed, how they viewed men, and why they had  sex (or not).  I also wanted to become better acqauinted with myself as a sexual being and how this  related to my larger quest for meaning.  I attacked this challenge with my usual gusto and determination, and relate events herein without regard to saving face or winning approval.  In doing so I understand that I am foregoing any chance of ever running for political office for the rest of my life.  The things I did , you do AFTER getting in office, and standard operating procedure when suspected of such activity is to deny, deny, deny.

When you are growing up, you are taught that there are certain things that are never discussed in polite society; politics, religion, money, and sex.  I have discussed all of them in considerable detail in this and my blog www.financialliteracysource.com, so let’s finish what we’ve started.  I do not wish to offend, so if you find the subject of sex, as learned by a middle-aged neophyte and related in an honest but not intentionally salacious manner, to be offensive, you may want to resume with this narrative with Chapter 20.  I offer my observations in the light of what I understood at the time the events took place.  Some of those conclusions evolved over time, as you will see.

The Three Great Questions

 At this point all the confusion in my life distilled down to three great questions:  (1)  Was there a God?  (2)  If there was a God, and the Bible was his Word, why was He such a lousy communicator?  (3)  If there was a God, was woman his practical joke on men?  It just seemed to me that male and female natures were custom designed to nurture disharmony and aggravation.   Bear in mind that at this point in time I did not have “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” to guide me. 

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Chapter 8. It All Falls Apart

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation. 

My star continued to rise, and soon I was requested to rewrite some of the lectures composed by some of the lesser talents in the Writing Department.  By this time I felt quite free about inserting much of my own philosophy in my writing.  After all it was all going to be reviewed and censored by others anyway.  So I lent my voice to the cacophony of dissent.  I wrote an article published in the Awake! magazine about the etymologies of words, and offered to write an article for the Watchtower   entitled “Are You a Thinking Christian?”  It bothered me that so much of the membership seemed to follow the route of least resistance and looked for a higher authority to tell them what to do when faced with the slightest conflict in their life.  They seemed incapable of abstracting principles from concrete situations and forming independent conclusions.  When I submitted my Abstract for the article, I received a letter in return from the Writing Department strongly admonishing me to build my article around prayer, meeting attendance, and regular door-to-door field service.  Only then did I realize the organization had a vested interest in the membership conforming to policy, and the last thing they needed was for them to become independent minded.  Later still I came to realize that the intended title of my article was in itself something of an oxymoron.  Not entirely however:   there were quite a few of us in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas who were attempting mightily to reconcile faith and intellectual integrity.  I never wrote the article.

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