Real fear of the unreal
Growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, a lot of that “sheltering” continues, not so much because you aren’t among the “worldly” but more because you’ve had it drilled into your head that everything they do and say is going to contaminate you. Every conversation, every interaction with someone outside the organization brings with it so much fear, your obligation is to try to bring the “Word of God” to them and at the same time keep yourself “free from their unclean influence.” Always talking about your God, but never listening because a true Christian does not listen and learn about other religions. If it doesn’t come from Jehovah’s Earthly Organization, you don’t need to know about it. It seems strange now, I know most people would wonder how anyone could live in this world and yet cut themselves off from it at the same time, but this fear of being influenced to do something that would anger God was very real. More than the fear of people, there was a fear of apostate literature. Apostates were people who spent all their time and energy trying to turn you away from Jehovah. They wrote books of lies, and to be honest I was so scared of these people, had I ever met one I probably would have screamed and ran. A book is a book, but I was convinced reading one of these books was the way to invite demons into your life and I was deathly afraid of these people and their demon containing books. I had nightmares about someone sneaking one of these books into my stuff and having to fight off demons. I don’t think I was crazy, but this irrational fear was pretty out there, I can’t be the only one who took everything so literally.
