A conversation with Telltale (ex-JW YouTuber forced to leave home at 18)

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hello viewers as you know I enjoy interviewing those who like me have a background with the Jehovah's Witness religion my guest today is no different he is however the host of a huge channel here on YouTube which I thoroughly am a fan of I'm delighted to introduce to the john cedars channel telltale yeah thanks for having me I appreciate that I'm glad to be here so tell tale your channel is quite a phenomenon in terms of how quickly it's grown particularly over the last few months you and I know that a heck of a lot of work goes into making videos and that doesn't get seen by everyone and but it can be very rewarding when it's the video itself is seen by lots of people so have you been been surprised or pleased by the way your channel has taken off I have I think that a lot of this whole YouTube thing is partly due like the my explosion if you'd caught thats partly due to the market to which i have appealed since day one like i started out trying to appeal to not just jehovah's witnesses but also atheists and some other markets in addition to that and i made friends with a lot of people in those markets and of course at the time there was kind of a vacuum that was taking place in the atheist youtuber market for one reason or another and just it was a perfect storm where eventually you know a lot of people just kind of came to my channel all at once that was the results so yeah I was pretty pleased with with the out come there and I'm really happy that I am where I am I'm so glad that eventually I had the opportunity to give Jehovah's Witnesses the coverage I honestly didn't think anybody was going to be interested in Jehovah's Witness content at first but I made it anyways because I liked talking about it and it just so happened to be my most popular videos were about Jehovah's Witnesses so yeah worked out in the end was there any particular because there's been times in the history of my channel where I've made a particular video or something in particular has happened and it's just kind of shifted things forward was there any particular thing that that you did that you can look back and think yeah maybe that played a part in things really oh yeah definitely definitely one of the main things I think that played a part was when I brought my daughter on I had her kind of talk about you know her she helped me debunk one of the Caleb and Sophia videos and people loved that you know they just thought it was the cutest thing and I it was perfect because at the time I was really trying to deprogram her because my mom had kind of convinced her that baptism with Jehovah's Witnesses was the only way that's what she should be doing and all that stuff I think she was like seven or something and I was really concerned so I was kind of getting her involved in my channel and and things like that and people loved it and she loved it and I loved it so it worked out perfect so I guess one thing that I'm a little bit sketchy on is your personal journey and your your history with the witnesses so maybe we can kind of hit rewind and and go back to the beginning of how you became embroiled in the religion to begin with sure sure so but I was born into it I'm thinking how far back do we want to go I was born right so yeah I was born into it both my parents were in the Air Force and that that's where they met and eventually they ended up studying with a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses and they ended up getting baptized both of them I have two brothers and a sister that my oldest brother and sister they were not born in it but my next oldest brother and I we were both born in it so yeah so time passes and they were my siblings are significantly older than I am so they all ended up moving out when I was about 12 and it was just me and my parents from that time on and I just threw myself into the religion I mean face first that's around the time I got baptized nobody else in the congregation was getting baptized I think I was the first or maybe maybe the second but I was setting a trend either way and so yeah I end up getting baptized and and really devoted myself to the whole thing and time passes I ended up moving to Atlanta Georgia for a little while this is a bit I've never really talked about on my channel but and it yeah it's exclusive I ended up moving to Atlanta Georgia for a little while with my older brother and Jehovah's Witness took me under his wing he was a plumber and he was teaching me plumbing so I didn't have to go to college and things like that and that was like my life goal was to become a plumber and eventually I ended up moving back to West Virginia and getting a worldly girlfriends this was when I was about 17 so years had passed and things had started kind of tuckered out a little bit on the Jehovah's Witness front so I ended up getting a worldly girlfriends and when I told her my aspirations for my life I want to be a plumber she was like why I mean you're 17 you can go to college you know and I was like I just thought there was something so noble about that pursuit now get me wrong plumbing is a fine job electricity electrician is a fine job these are all fine jobs to find a blower is an insane amount of money like it plumbing actually pays more money than I've ever made in my life so that you know there is a market for that but I could have gone to college that was an option at that age and and I had can been convinced that it was not the way to go so anyway long story short I end up so I was going to high school at the time and I had this worldly girlfriend as I mentioned and some some kids from the congregation were kind of watching me and ratting on me like telling the elders what I was doing I don't know why maybe they maybe they were asked to maybe they decided to but either way perfectly describes JW culture isn't it do you find instructed to do it in some talks yep that's true you are you're you're instructed to do it so they were doing the right thing as they saw it so they ended up I guess you could say ratting on me and and telling the elders everything they saw me holding her hand and the whole nine yards you know scandalous but so anyways I end up just they set up a judicial committee to kind of figure out what I had been doing like what was going wrong here and I just came clean about the whole thing I I can't blame all of the issues that I've had in my life on Jehovah's Witnesses I I don't feel like I can do that in good conscience some of it was just my parents being my parents who they are but Jobos witnesses definitely did play a big part in it so I ended up going kind of over the deep end after leaving the religion for lack of a better term and I ended up getting into alcohol and things like that and you know the girlfriend thing and so when I went to the Judicial Committee I just told the that I you know everything that I'd done I just came clean about every sin that I have committed pretty much and which I had smoked a cigarette at the time and that was a pretty big deal obviously your viewers will know that that's a big deal that's not to Anam Jehovah's Witness that's the most uneventful thing you could possibly imagine but to a Jehovah's Witness that's all unbelievable cigarette yeah yeah exactly so I ended up side smoked a cigarette and I had been drinking alcohol of course I was 18 I think so you know against the law to have been drinking alcohol at the time and had a girlfriend all that good stuff so ended up telling the elders everything and I said I really want to continue being a part of this I don't want to leave the religion and I feel like my my life is kind of at a crossroads at this moment if you disfellowship me I might not come back I really want you guys to just you know give me another chance here it's probably the wrong thing to say in retrospect but anyways that's what I said and they end up that you know they sent me outside I'm just kind of standing out there waiting for them to deliberate and so they call me back inside and they say we're gonna we're gonna have to dispel OSHA pew now like I said in retrospect that that ended up being the best thing to ever happen to me little did I know but for the following two years so at that point my parents didn't I had nowhere to live that was it this is my 18th birthday my mom told me to leave the house and it you know I didn't have a house to go to after that where was I gonna go so ratings birthdays hopefully yes fellowshipped on my 18th birthday but it was that day that I was told to leave Wow so I knew this girl from school from high school and I ended up going to her house and crawling in her window at her house and her parents while her grandparents who she lived with they didn't know or any of this so I climb in a window and I lived in her bedroom for like two or three weeks because I had nowhere else go it was either that or living on the street so I end up I worked at Burger King at the time and I had worked there for like a year they'd been a while so I end up saving up enough money and I knew a guy who worked there with me who had a trailer and he offered to rent me a room so I ended up moving in with him for like a hundred and fifty bucks a month or something like that and so yeah I end up kind of getting back on my feet little by little I see thou from from the sounds of things from basa me it doesn't get much worse than that I mean I've obviously been myself jettisoned from the organization I was disassociated rather than this fellowship which is more or less the same thing but it had no real impact on my kind of day-to-day existence you were literally thrown out from your family home we are no care for the fact that you have nowhere to go that's true so in your case I think that you were more embroiled in that lifestyle because you'd been in it for a lot longer than I was I mean I think I was like 13 when I got baptized or something you got baptized pretty early didn't you 11 yeah okay and you were an elder for a while I mean you how I got disassociated when I was married but you know see you were still very young you you got kicked when I was 18 I haven't even yet been appointed a ministerial servant so 18 for me was still very very early in the journey I hadn't even started having my initial doubts at that point but it just astonishes me because you hear these horror stories of I mean you even see it in the artwork that Watchtower has in its publications of teenagers with their bags packed going out the door with parents in tears and you think gosh I really heard that that literal situation isn't happening but then of course he come across stories like yours where it has happened we're not yeah we're not by the time I left the organization I was I had a I was married I had my own house that I could go back to you had nowhere and so I think just just purely from the logistical kind of humanitarian point of view it is one of the most kind of disgraceful elements of of this policy yeah I can agree with that for sure so you were more embroiled in the lifestyle I like you said that was pretty early in the journey for you at 18 I feel like I was fully committed by that point or at at some point in my life I was fully committed to that religion completely of course I you know I had never been a ministerial servant or any of that good stuff I was carrying microphones and I was giving talks and things like that but you know it wasn't so much a loss of the lifestyle not so much as a loss of friends and family that was the issue for me where I think it was a loss of lifestyle with you where you know your your whole life had just been completely turned upside down everything is changing things like that well my dust my dog sent me an email on the ninth of the Judicial Committee saying from now on we're not going to be told that they did impact me in a way but I just think for it's just such a cruel thing to do to a teenager it is it is so back to the story I was ended up you know I was living with this girl for a few weeks and I ended up moving into this guy's trailer lived there for I don't know maybe six months or so and you know he was a worldly person in in the truest sense of the term so he was into drugs and things like that and I ended up getting into that life a little bit and so I ended up I I found my way out of that life eventually after a couple of years and so time passes in a way in the way so just to kind of hate to kind of cut you off but no no what I find fascinating is that the is how self-defeating all of this is because you made it clear to the elders look if you guys get rid of me I could very well never come back I really want to believe this help me believe it they they had your mind at that point and if you'd have if they'd have made a different decision you could still be a Jehovah's Witness now all it would be but what amazes me is that instead of doing that they were so cruel is that not only disfellowship you but your family implement that decision to the point of talking you out and that had the effect of getting you in with quote-unquote the wrong crowd so that the things that you were originally disfellowshipped for only got added to they actually kind of helped in making your yep you're kind of rap sheet even longer if that makes sense yeah that's true what I find fascinating is the fact that they say they're doing this for the disfellowshipped person right they're saying we want to help them we want to to help them come back so if we talk to them they'll have no reason to come back well I thought the reason was supposed to be because I believed it I thought the reason was supposed to be because God you know Jehovah is here for me and and I want to come back to Java not because you're holding my family hostage that that completely changes the dynamic all of a sudden and they admit it it's not even like I would hide that if I were the governing body I would not come out and say that that's that's ridiculous so anyways yeah so I ended up getting into drugs a little bit a couple years later my my sister was still in it so all of my siblings were still in it right I think this was 2011 I was talking to my sister and her husband at the time a little bit they were like I said they're still in it but they were kind of not not great witnesses so I start talking to her husband and he's he's telling me like did you know that I think it was Joseph Rutherford built this mansion that he lived in and you know a deeded it to like Abraham and everybody and I was like really that's so crazy and I don't know I mean it seems like such a silly thing to have such a silly straw to have broke the camel's back but it was that was the one thing that got me thinking and I was like this is BS I don't I don't think I believe any of this and of course once I quite a good stroll though because the the Beth Sarim story I mean it's silly I know but that's the whole point how how could someone who is supposed to have been not just a member of the faithful and discreet slave but he's now considered to be the first or one members of the faithful and discreet slave and here he is deeding buildings too painful characters that's true who he believes are going to be resurrected before Armageddon and it has to raise a few question marks when you think it through yeah that's true especially because the the literature always talks about what a great guy he was and once you realized that he had like 30 cars or something during the Great Depression in the US and this giant mansion and everything he's just using these people's money and kind of putting it in the name of helping these Bible characters when they come back you know you just realized that he was not a fantastic person like they said and at that point I I said to myself okay they've been lying about that period I mean that's that's the bottom line they lied about that I know that now so what else did they lie about and that was kind of the door you know like I said I've been disfellowshipped for years at this point I I was fighting with the mother of my kid over whether or not my mom was gonna be allowed to take my kid to the meetings I wanted my mom to teach her about Jehovah's Witnesses for the first year or two of her life so I you know who's fighting the mom over this issue and that was the thing that that finally you know made me start questioning and of course once I rely I mean I'd grown up realizing that or Oracle something how is it that your mother was if you kind of went if you kind of went away I'm unclear about how he got from going off into this kind of life of debauchery quote-unquote to having a child with who's whose mother is a Jehovah's Witness okay so the the girl whose window I climbed in when I was 18 yeah I ended up getting married to her and it wasn't much long after that I ended up marrying her because I didn't want to be living this life of debauchery anymore I wanted to be in line with Jehovah's principles and all that stuff even though I was just fellowshipped already and all that other stuff I wanted to get my life to a point where I wasn't breaking any rules so I ended up getting married to her I think it was nine months after I got just fell yeah disfellowship so nine months after my 18th birthday is actually when I got married to her and then I end up having a kid exactly to the day nine months after we got married so that was interesting timing but so anyways yeah I ended up having Kylie as my fans will know her it's alpha 4-0 but anyways ended up having Kylie and yeah so my mom was kind of teaching her a little bit for the first year or two and I was okay with it but you know as time went on I since I've been growing up I had been told that all other religions are garbage you know they're all be us they're all false they're all evil in one way or another Catholics and and Pentecostals Baptist Methodist Sullivan they're all wrong and they're all evil all that right and so when I realized that Jehovah's Witnesses were full of it I just defaulted to not believing anything like there was just nothing else to believe in I already didn't believe in all these others which a lot of the time well I think when when somebody has an issue with something that their church says they'll just go to another church it's no big deal or they'll you know if they don't agree with the Baptist ideals anymore they'll just turn Methodist something like that it's not as big of a deal because they're not being excommunicated usually when they leave so yeah I think that their excommunication of me my disfellowshipping that that is the reason why I'm not jehovah's witness now i could very well imagine a scenario in which I'm still jehovah's witness and i can tell you that there there's just no way that i would be in as good a position in my life as i am now if i had stayed in because it teaches you to not want money almost it teaches you that money is evil and things are evil you should give everything up and pioneer and throw everything you have into the you know into the religion well since leaving I've realized that that's not the only way I I can have an appreciation for things if I want and that's okay I mean right behind me you can see a you know a collection of retro games I love collecting retro games that's something that I would very well be talked about or talked to about if I were still drove as witness I would not be able to collect things like that you know that that serves no purpose for me since Armageddon is right around the corner so anyway that yeah that's that's the bottom line with my story I I'm just glad that I found a way just to clarify another point so the girl whose window you climbed into in you ended up getting married with that am i right in saying that she became a witness oh no because I used about you saying that those been a bit of difficulty with your child being indoctrinated is that right only from your mother trying to be yes yes it was purely from my mother the so my ex-wife now we're we aren't well technically we're still married we're we're really good friends she and I have separate lives that we aren't together anymore anyway she I guess she kind of believed in some kind of spirit some kind of force but she never really called it God growing up she was not hardcore religious it wasn't really like that for her so when I came into her life and and my mom was trying to teach Kiley about Jehovah's Witnesses my ex was unhappy about that she knew they were fundamentalist she knew they were extremists and she didn't want her daughter growing up that way eventually what ended up happening was so I realized that it was BS and I ended up moving away from it but her family my ex-wife's family they took me in and cared for me as if they were my own family they replaced the family that I lost and I I feel like it's something I didn't experience before them is having a family because it's like you've always got this this fear is sitting on the edge it's like the love here is conditional this is conditional it's conditional on the condition that you continue going to the meetings and continue doing this thing and that thing going in service the moment you stop that your your family takes their love back they they withhold it in hopes that you'll continue doing what they want you to do as far as I'm concerned that that is not love that's not how love is supposed to work and I learned that for the first time in my 20s from Kylie's grandparents and great-grandparents so not everybody has that experience and I I can't describe how lucky I am to have somebody like that who cares about me I actually recently told them I don't know like six months ago or something that I climbed in her window and lived in in her bedroom for like three weeks you know because I had nowhere else to go and they were like yeah I mean okay with it it's been 10 years and they trust me they know who I am you know but but it is funny they support me and everything so I am very lucky in that sense well one thing that I think people watching this maybe don't quite grasp who've never been Jehovah's Witnesses is the amount they may say well you talk about shunning but you know kind of get over it because you've managed to get out you you're both kind of living happy consented lives so okay it happened but you know move on and I certainly in my case I'm interested in hearing your side shunning is a punishment that continues to radiate against you for four years or even decades you you still feel its effects in your life in the things that aren't happening the moments that never get to happen because of relatives who aren't a part of your life in my own case Jessica my four-year-old daughter hasn't met her grandfather yet she has an aunt and two cousins who she's never met which I feel is very closely to do with the shunning so how how would you say that shunning impacts on you even though you've stopped believing on a day-to-day basis oh it's it definitely affects my life heavily so like I said my mom is trying to indoctrinate Kiley for for many years and in fact she still is I I kind of before I I tell this story I want to mention even if it weren't affecting my life it is affecting other people's lives right now Monday at 11:10 a.m. there's a pioneer out there okay 11:00 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time in the US there's a pioneer out there somewhere who is just getting out of the car going into a Tim Hortons or a Dunkin Donuts or something and thinking to himself I don't believe any of this this is garbage and I can't tell anybody I I have to keep doing this it isn't about my pain or or my anger at this thing or that thing or being shunned or how it affects my life ultimately it's for everybody around me who's going through this and will who will continue to go through this 8.5 million Jehovah's Witnesses I think are out there until every one of them are out of that religion I will always have something to say about this religion but as far as my life it is affecting my life so it isn't about getting over it for all intents and purposes I've gotten over it it's for everybody else but it does still affect my life in many adverse ways my mom is still trying to indoctrinate my daughter my mom still won't talk to me now I've been lucky enough that all of my siblings are on the outside so I had an aunt and two cousins and three siblings and a mother and a father on the inside and others I think and now all of them every one of them is on the outside except my mom she's a last one so I'm lucky because not everybody gets that not everybody gets to talk to the to every family member that they ever had except for one now that that one person that sucks I'm not gonna get to talk to my mom again probably and it's it's almost worse in some ways than her having died because I know she's there and I also know she doesn't want a relationship with me it's not about the relationship we could have had if she had just lived longer it's that she doesn't want to know me and that's that's pretty painful kind of worse than death in a way because at least when someone dies you think well they loved me and you know we would we would have had we would have had a life together if you want if it weren't for the fact that they've died but when they're showing you is like that I liken it to Alzheimer's that they're no longer in for in full control of their minds and they're just kind of living out this existence not knowing that all of them thoughts are being shaped for them by an external influence and so to see your loved one kind of zombie like going through these motions and allowing this cults to dictate their feelings for you is a heartbreaking thing it's true on the other hand I you know there is always that hope that maybe my mom will come out of it or maybe my mom will continue being driven witness or decide and not decide to talk to me a lot sons it's not as worse it's not right because there's always the chance right so it's it's I don't know it's a rough situation it's not fun at all and I don't want anybody else to have to go through this because it really is not fun but I remember so my mom talks to me every now and then it's not often in fact she's cracked down recently where she won't even so she she has my daughter's phone number and she calls her every now and then but I feel like kylie is old enough now that she's not gonna she's probably not gonna be brainwashed into it again so I'm okay with her talking to her but my mom will not she will hang up the phone if Kylie walks downstairs with the phone she doesn't want to be anywhere in earshot of me basically she doesn't want to talk to me she was kind of forced into being on the phone while downstairs the other day she did not like it anyway a little more accommodating than I am because the other and I have a zero tolerance institute towards running so that if we have JW relatives come to visit because we have you know Deanna's parents live in the same building and they're JW's that we do have JW's come to the house and we will not allow them to see Jessica unless they agree to see at least Deanna as well if they if they say well we want to kind of separate Jessica from her parents and see their by their self absolutely not you're not allowed to do that we come as a package at the very least you need to have her mother with her and we will not allow you to normalize this behavior in front of our door so we don't want our daughter to grow up thinking that it's normal for this sort of thing to happen so the way you're more accommodating delivery you're exactly right with that and I did consider that I I thought about that really hard the problem is that Kylie has had a relationship with my mom since since she was born because I wanted her to be Jehovah's Witness at the time you know and so it's it's kind of hard to is hot late do you - Norma isn't it yeah it's hard to break it apart yeah but so I ended up going up to [Music] Connecticut where my mom lives and seeing my grandparents because they're not javis witness they've never been Jehovah's Witness and my mom told me I could stay with her surprisingly this is years ago it's probably a couple years ago so I end up of course you know she did some weird things like she wouldn't pray in front of me she wouldn't study in front of me she wouldn't do this thing or that thing whatever so I ended up staying in the living room I was sleeping in the living room on an air mattress she was sleeping in her bedroom and Kylie was in another bedroom so I'm asleep in the living room one morning and I hear I wake up to hear my mom talking like indoctrinating Kylie and she was looking at this magazine and she was saying look at these people these people worship a necklace can you believe that isn't that strange you know the whole nine yards she's saying you know it's such an honor to just be the sons that sons a chill down my spine just hearing you relate it really does yeah yeah yeah it's it's crazy so I'm laying there of course you didn't realize I'm awake I'm laying there hearing her indoctrinating my kid and I think Kylie was probably seven and so I stand up and I was like do you know the difference between Jehovah's Witnesses God and those people's God and Kylie said what and I said those people's God you can actually see and feel and know it's real and know that it has a physical presence in the universe Jehovah's Witnesses God you have no way of verifying that that's real and my mom did not like that I haven't really talked to her since then really but you know that that was where I drew the hard line that is where I said I can't live with her indoctrinating Kylie anymore I told her I wanted her to leave job's witnesses out of it completely and she can have a relationship with her but she's doing that whole theocratic warfare bit where she is okay with lying to me about it telling me okay I won't talk to her about Jehovah and then doing it anyways because that's what Jabba's Witnesses are supposed to do right always justify the means yes yeah and that's a disgusting wrong policy in it in its own right so anyways that's where I drew the hard line I realized my mom was never going to she was never going to stop talking about Jehovah no matter how much she promised me she would and that's when I said she can't go to Connecticut anymore for the summer so sending out there for like a few weeks in the summer to hang out with my mom and my grandparents and things like that that's where I drew the hard line I think it's been a couple of years since she's been up there so yeah it honestly hasn't been easy to do that u-turn honestly has not been easy to put my foot down and say no but she still talks to her on the phone and I think Kylie realizes now that is complete garbage so I do remember a time when I think Kylie was seven years old she was telling me she wanted to get baptized it was like really why you know that's that's odd and she was saying well I just want to like get in a pool at the meeting that's all I want to do like that's peculiar yeah I said you know what that's fine you can do that but we're gonna do it at Mama's Church instead because because that one won't shun you if you realize they're folded but I was talking to my sister about this recently and apparently her daughter said the same thing she said she wanted to get in a pool at the meeting I think that's the tactic my mom is using she's just she's not even trying to convince them of it anymore she's like forget it I just want him baptized that's it so you think you think that your mother is is saying you know isn't it fun [Music] wouldn't you like to be like I suspect so of course to get baptized they have to believe it I mean they have to go through all this work and time and effort but that is the thing that she's using to rope the men I believe based on the fact that you know we've heard this story twice so everyone else is doing me why don't you yeah yeah yeah yeah it's that that peer pressure bit again you know crazy so obviously you mentioned that your siblings are out how would you describe the reaction because obviously you not have a massive youtube channel you have a massive audience so what's been the reaction to your activism work among your family members well my mom just found out actually about me just found out yeah fairly recently it's been about three months now but I ended up telling my brother and my my brothers and my sister when I first started the channel and they didn't put a whole lot of stock in it at first they thought it was kind of a cathartic thing and it ended up going somewhere so I ended up I ended up getting them involved a little bit like my sister runs my Facebook page now and and things like that but they're really supportive they're really supportive of everything I do and so my brother was just telling me about the the Jehovah's Witnesses expose by Leah Remini on her show and he was like I saw Jon Cedars on there and I was like oh awesome that's that's really great so he recognized you that that's pretty cool I think all my family watches you now so oh that's nice yeah yeah yeah yeah I watch your channel too they're impressed they're like wow you know somebody that that's famous I mean somebody that that's that's reasonably famous why Leah Remini show and and things like that so they were pretty impressed and I know somebody like that but anyway did your mother say three months ago when she found out well I ended up so my sister bless her heart has a big mouth sometimes I love you six bit anyway she ended up telling some people inadvertently that you know some family members that were never do have as witness and it ended up getting back to my mom so my mom and just falling to pieces as far as I know I mean of course I didn't talk to her about it really myself but she was really really unhappy about it and said you know possessed by Satan mentally diseased a whole bit and so I ended up messaging my mom and and just talking to her about it and I said you know I do have a pretty big channel and and I I do activism and it's not just anti Jehovah's Witness stuff I talk about science and I talk about extremism in all kinds of different ways and I feel like it's something to be proud of so I I sent her a link to like a science video that I did and I said that that way you don't have to get in any of the anti Jehovah's Witness stuff you could just look at my style and see my work and see what I do and I don't know if she ever watched it or not but she she stopped talking to me after that so she ended up this is like three months ago so she ends up coming to West Virginia for a visit because it was summertime and I told her Kylie couldn't go up there so she came down here to visit and and I dropped Kylie off with her and her Jehovah's Witness friend every day before well on my way to work picked her up after so I drop her off the first day I show up and my mom comes over and talks to me now remember this is the first time in like a year and a half two years that she talked to me and she tells me she loves me and that she's sorry that our relationships been strained and she wants to fix that and and that you know talking to I said talking to disfellowshipped family members isn't necessarily against the rules you'll get counseled for it but as far as I know yeah as long as it's different if it's a non-relative but if it's a relic you basically get guilt trip tool design with videos when it's not an actual disfellowshipping offence right so I said that like you you won't get Defoe disfellowship for talking to me as long as we don't talk about spiritual stuff and things like that and and it seemed like we were about to mend our relationship for like a day and so anyways I when I sent her a copy of one of my science videos to watch and she was talking to me and things like that night things seemed to be looking up it was like she snapped out of it and and she's willing to talk to me for a day and then shortly after that just the very next day she said you're not you don't love Jehovah and I can't can't have any part in your life all over again it's just a complete 180 and and it was really confusing like where did all that come from and that's where that's where I I drew another hard line I said you know what you you are failing me as a mother at this point I I know it's because of the whole brainwashing thing I understand that you're not really in control of your own mind but don't put me on this emotional rollercoaster either be in my life or don't you know so that that that was a really sucky situation for a little while there luckily I did have family members who understood the situation to talk to I had my sister and my brothers to talk to and they've been really supportive and they know the kinds of things she does they they they see that from her they know that's her mo kind in many cases and and then of course I had Kylie's grandparents to kind of help me through it but that kind of emotional rollercoaster is really hard to deal with and it's not necessarily the result of Jehovah's Witnesses the roller coaster isn't the shunning bit that's definitely the fault of Jehovah's Witnesses but this is one of those things where it's not just Jehovah's Witnesses fault it's also my parents being who they are that that's been a little bit of a struggle on me so obviously I mean you mentioned the some of your videos touch on science I think that's one of the great things about your channel is that you don't focus necessarily just on Jehovah's Witnesses if you deal with other groups as well you deal with like you say science and more and more broadly with atheism you and I are both atheists and at the risk of pissing off a percentage of my audience I'm going to sort of talk to you a little bit about that one of the things that I keep hearing from particularly from Christians who stumble on my work is that they'll say oh well the reason why you're an atheist now is because you were never really a Christian and you just happen to be raised in in a non-christian cult if you'd have been raised as a Christian you would be problem and if you'd have only read the Bible properly you probably wouldn't be an atheist so how would you respond to that that's a rough one I do hear that a lot it's almost a little bit like Pascal's wager that the thing is how can you how can you know which religion is correct either you know how many religions are there there are thousands three thousand four thousand religions out there somebody is always going to be able to tell you you know you weren't raised in the correct religion somebody out there is going to be able to say that now as far as which religion is correct I don't know I'm willing to accept that one of them might be many of them are mutually exclusive I'm willing to listen to an argument but if it's not convincing to me if I see some kind of a logical fallacy and use or something I'm tossing it out like all the rest simple as that I think Richard Dawkins famously said something like we are all atheists with respect to every God out there except for one I'm just I went one God further you know that may have been Michael Shermer not a hundred percent sure on that but you know it's it's an apt saying I just went one God further I just stopped believing in Jehovah I stopped believing in Yahweh simple as that it's a really good argument as well it's actually I kind of do a variation on that I'm just I don't always get involved in arguments but every now and then I'm feeling cheeky you know right so something I'm increasingly saying is why Jesus why not Lord Vishnu you know how did you come to the realization that Lord Vishnu or one of the other members of the Hindu Pantheon doesn't exist what was your what was your process for eliminating the existence of all of these gods you know why why just Christianity it's quite obvious to me that it's okay that your religion is at least partly due to the fact of you being born in a certain consonant or in a certain culture and that's one of the most interesting things I think about some of these arguments yeah that's that's very true it's heavily dependent on where you're born and you know you don't have to be born into it to become a Christian you know a lot of people say I wasn't born into it you know so that's not the reason it can't be the reason because I wasn't born into I wasn't born a Christian I was an atheist I grew up an atheist but you know who are you around the most especially in the u.s. I think 70 what 72 percent of the u.s. is Christian or somewhere in there I know I got that statistic wrong just bear with me and 44 percent that Noah's Ark is a real literal story so obviously you were born in a telling us of the nose walk story didn't happen this is I'm sorry to break it to you anyway so obviously whether you were born in it or not that's who you're around the most you know that's that that you have the highest chances of becoming a Christian if you're in the US then so what's next for the tell-tale Channel well like I said I won't stop doing this as long as there's air in my lungs because there's somebody out there who's who needs it there's somebody out there who will always need it somebody said to me recently that they felt like I was repeating myself I don't really feel like that I talked about all kinds of different subjects I talked about all you know I talked about extremism general I talked about Mormonism and jehovah's witnesses of course catholicism and just everything any any cult or oppressive religion that you can imagine I talk about and I talk about science and all kinds of other subjects so as I may be repeating myself to a certain extent on a certain level people need this this debate needs to continue so I will continue doing this indefinitely as far as I'm concerned as far as the tell-tale channel goes ultimately I I feel like the tell-tale channel is just a starting point for me I would really like to get into more mainstream activist and I would like to I mean I'm affecting people's lives obviously we're both affecting people's lives here on YouTube but I feel like I'm disproportionately affecting the lives of young people which is good they need help too because that's mostly who watches YouTube but I would like to find a way to reach out into the community of people who are a little bit older who are outside of YouTube not really watching it that's ultimately my goal anything I can do to help more people and actually I've talked about doing this I do have intentions and plans but i-i've kind of hoped to start a 501 C 3 corporation like a non-profit kind of thing where you know I've talked to a lot of people who are say 16 and they get kicked out of their house they don't have a cell phone they don't have a cell phone they don't have anything I would all in the end I would really like to start some kind of an organization to donate money to these people and I've put a pretty decent bit of thought into how I would do this you know I'd supply cell phones and and cell service for a year or something or two years or a year after they're 18 or something like that and I'd give them a certain amount of money every month for that amount of time now I don't know if it's feasible to do yet still investigating but that's my ultimate plan is something like that well who better to look into it and someone who's been in that situation as a team I think the only problem I can foresee is the city is the sheer scale of the problem when you have a million Jehovah's Witnesses in America alone that there are literally thousands of people who are affected but I really applaud any efforts to to ease the predicament of people in this situation so if there's anything I can do you know you and I are in touch quite frequently so right let me know I just think it's it's remarkable the work that you're doing I think that the more voices of reason we can have the better you were talking about repetition and I think you and I have a little exchange about this on Twitter I actually think that repetition is sometimes needed because just because we've used an argument before in one video doesn't mean everyone saw that video sometimes someone needs to hear that argument or maybe they heard the argument before but they need to hear it phrased slightly differently for it to sink in properly so yeah that's very true and also things get outdated quickly so my videos change a lot you know I changed my background or I changed my microphone or something and it just sounds better so saying it a second time is acceptable I think indeed so finally what would be your message to any witnesses who have stumbled on this video who might be at a stage where they're starting to entertain doubts I I think my message would be it's beyond so obviously the governing body members say we're just men we're imperfect men all all that other stuff if you take an objective look at the situation it's beyond that it's beyond just they're imperfect men okay I could accept that if they were just imperfect men trying to do the best they can or whatever you know and honestly I think that in some cases their intentions are pure but they are wreaking havoc on people's lives if you just take a look at this objectively just step back and think about whether or not this is the best way to do things and whether or not they really are helping people are they actually helping people with the to witness rule is that actually what the to witness rule was intended for was it actually intended for criminal offenses think about that stuff think about whether or not disfellowshipping is actually supported by the Bible I know it looks like it is at its face but read the verses not just the verses Jehovah's Witnesses give you read other parts of the Bible try to investigate see if the Bible really does support this or not I mean look at it from an objective standpoint or as objective as possible it's possible the bible does support shunning and if it does I'll accept that but let's take a look and find honestly right if you're questioning just look at things objectively and honestly think are the governing body members helping people does the Bible really say this those kinds of questions are what you should be investigating indeed I absolutely applaud those words and agree with them but telltale I really appreciate you coming on the channel for this interview I think a lot of people have found it very helpful I appreciate you having me on and maybe I'll get you on mine again one of these days well I would love it okay so viewers I do hope you have enjoyed this interview don't forget to subscribe to the channel for more interviews and indeed more videos of lots of different types but I do hope you've enjoyed this and as always thank you for watching [Applause] [Music]
Info
Channel: John Cedars
Views: 30,663
Rating: 4.9164658 out of 5
Keywords: jehovah, jehovah's witnesses, shunning, disfellowship, telltale, watchtower, christianity, ostracism, interview
Id: 5Wiaz40nz-8
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 59min 8sec (3548 seconds)
Published: Tue Nov 20 2018
Reddit Comments

I love telltale watched all he's videos, very intelligent

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/paradox20000 📅︎︎ Nov 20 2018 🗫︎ replies
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