Expert: Ben Erdman - 11/5/2009

Question
I am really desperate for some good advice.

My story started when i was living in my homeland,England. I met a really honest lovely Norwegian girl and are relationship flourished. I got to know about her been brought up as a JW, which i didnt mind as my encounter with JW had not been bad, pretty fun actually, as a child playing games on the knocking. At this time she wasnt practicing, so it had no bad effect on me, only good because id never met a girl so honest.

Within the next few years we had two children.We were unmarried but a really solid relationship. Id seen too many marrage splits to believe it was a good idea. After this things started changing.

All of a sudden she had a strong desire to go back to Norway, saying she were home sick. As i love her so much i decided to give up my job which id worked so hard for, also our house, which we lost alot of money because she werent patience enough to wait for it to sell so it got repossed.At this time she were having alot of contact with her family and never relised that these conversation were involving studies, i just thought that she were finally becoming friends again with her family and understood her been homesick.

So we moved to Norway and within a month she were going to meetings, which i still didnt mind because im a pretty open minded person when i comes to religon. Then i saw the change in her personality, it wasnt overnight but gradually.I saw that she were acting a different way when she was around them. Then it came a big issue to get married.Then i noticed that the only friends she had were JW and she didnt want to socialise with non JW, same goes for our children. At This point i needed to find out more so i decided to have bible studies. It wasnt really the believes that shocked me it was the control they had on my wife.They would come round the house uninvited with there bible three times a week then would ring my wife all the time,inviting her to play days with the children and complimenting her all the time and general bigging her up. I questioned loads of points about JW beliefs. but the more i questioned the more we came detached, so i stopped that. I just get a really bad feeling about there control on people and dont know what to do about it. The more i fight the more trouble it causes between us. I just want the girl i fell in love with back..

Answer
Hello Craig and I am sorry about the situation you are in. It is a horrible thing to happen.

Most likely, the problem that you are undergoing with your wife is what you said. She is being controlled by the elders at her Kingdom Hall and most likely by her family also. What it boils down to is that the Watchtower Society actually teaches JW's to not socialize with non-Jw's. However, you are already her husband. Because of this, in my experience, the Society will not tell her to divorce you or anything like that. That being said, they will try to convince you to become a Jw(Jehovah's Witness). You are in a tough position. She will be told to raise your children to not celebrate holidays or birthdays or anything that children have great joy in. Not only that but your wife is told to absolutely not allow your children to receive blood transfusions even if they were about to die. I tell you all of this so you can realize how intense your situation really is. From reading what you wrote though, I think you have a good grasp of how bad things are. Although, they could be worse.

So, that being said. I am not sure where you are in your spiritual life. I don't know if you know Christ. Based off of what you said, I urge you to ground yourself in God's Holy Word. If I were in your shoes, I would be reading the bible as much as I could. Not only this but pray. The power of prayer is truly amazing and miraculous. If you do not have God's Spirit working in you, feeding you scriptural knowledge and providing the fruit of love for your wife at the same time, you most likely will never have a chance of rescueing her out from the JW organization. Through the process of you building a relationship with God through His Word and Holy Spirit, it is important for you to know why your wife listens to the Jw's over you. It is not because she loves them more. She simply has more reasons to choose the religion over the marriage. Please understand where she is coming from. She is pressured by her family. She already had some knowledge from previous years of what the bible said. And now she has the Jw's misusing scripture to pull her in. It is not your wife that is the problem, not by any means. It is important for you to know not only why the Jw's do what they do but why they believe what they believe. Your wife is told that Jehovah is only using the Jw's organization to speak to people in the last days. In other words, nowhere else can she find truth. She is told that everything that the Society and elders tell her is from God. Therefore it becomes about religion instead of just about God. That being said, I want to recommend a web site for you to go to and see how the organization is run, why your wife is being sucked into it and what you can do about it. Please see the following site:

http://www.4witness.org/jehovahs_witness/jw-reach-loved-ones.php


I think this site will have answers to all of your questions and teach you what you need to know. I cannot emphasize enough though that you need to pray. God can do something to her heart that no one could ever do. I will pray for your situation and I am here if you have any further questions.

God be with you,
Ben