the one who killed all those people

Meryl, my friendly neighborhood door‐to‐door Jehovah’s Witness, invited me to a meeting at their local Kingdom Hall last Sunday.

Some of their doctrines were not like anything in my Lutheran upbringing. Did you know that in 1914, Jesus, who is the Archangel Michael (but not God), hurled Satan down to earth? Before 1914, I suppose Satan would go down to earth, do his nefarious needs, then come home to heaven.

So Meryl came by today for another talk, with her sidekick of the day whose name I’ve forgotten Cathy. They asked what I thought of their meeting. Different, I said. But the part about Satan being thrown to earth in 1914 was pretty hard to swallow. So they started to explain where the Bible says that, in their interpretation.

Meryl’s sidekick Cathy, giving examples of demonic influence post‐1914, couldn't remember the name of, you know, the one who killed all those people.

Hitler, Meryl supplied.

Right, Hitler, and she rhetorically asked what would make him think of burning all those people to death.

Gassed, I corrected. He didn’t put the Jews in ovens to burn them, but to gas them.

I hadn’t been so astounded by someone’s ignorance since Sherri Shepherd on The View didn’t know whether the earth was round or flat.

Since I called Hitler a Catholic, they brought up an ongoing scandal about Catholic priests molesting children. So I showed them a printout of a New York Times article about Jehovah's Witnesses being accused of sex abuse and silencing victims and their families with threats of disfellowshipping (complete shunning by those still in the church).

All talk of the Bible and Satan ceased. For the rest of their visit, my guests defended Jehovah’s Witnesses’ judicial policies, asked if I’d want to be accused with less than two witnesses, suggested the New York Times might have an agenda to make Jehovah’s Witnesses out to be like the Catholic Church, thought they remembered this story was on Dateline but taken off their site for factual inaccuracies, and admonished me to not believe everything I read.

But Meryl did ask for my printout as she left.