Taming the Personality

The taming of personalities, as shown by Isaiah’s prophecy, is being repeated many times over among sincere persons who, upon learning Bible truth, have ‘made their minds over’ and ‘put on a new personality.’ (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 4:23, 24) Consider the following example:

David is a big, brawny young man who grew up on a farm in Minnesota, in the United States. “My father always told me to settle my arguments with my fists,” explains David, who later became an amateur boxer. “I can always remember him saying, ‘Never start a fight, but be sure you finish it.’ As a result, it was fight first, never ask questions. I actually enjoyed doing bodily harm to others.”

For instance, one night a man pulling out of a parking spot blocked David’s car. He stubbornly refused to move. “I was so mad I wanted to kill him,” says David. So he dragged the man from his car and beat him to the point of unconsciousness. Could a person with such a violent disposition really change his ways?

One day, while he was unemployed, David was contacted by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Their message about a coming righteous New Order of things touched his heart. “I was convinced from the start that they had the truth,” says David. As he applied in his life what he was learning, David started making changes​—he quit smoking and stopped taking drugs. He was even making progress in taming his violent disposition.

But several months later David had a disappointing setback. He was working on a construction job. One morning a co-worker started harassing him. David warned him to stop, but he did not. The result? David explains: “I hit him so hard I thought I had killed him. He was unconscious for about 20 minutes. I felt really ashamed of myself.”

However, David slowly progressed in making over his personality. A real test came several years after he became a baptized witness of Jehovah. He was out preaching from house to house. At one door a man came out and started swearing at him. The man then grabbed hold of David’s coat and threw him off the steps. Without saying a word David started walking to the next house. Not satisfied with this, the man chased after him and, picking up a baseball bat, hit David across his lower back. Yet this formerly violent young man did not retaliate! He just walked away. What a remarkable change in personality! This “wolf” is now getting along peacefully with “lambs,” serving as an elder and as a full-time minister in the congregation.

Often people are so impressed upon seeing such changes in others that they, too, are prompted to change their lives for the better. Thus, another young man, also named David, after meeting an old friend whom he had not seen in a while, said: “He was different. He no longer had long hair, used abusive speech or cared to get involved in drugs. He had completely cleaned up his life. This shocked me so much that I had to find out what caused the change.” David’s friend had become one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. And so did David, after first cleaning up his own life.

The above experiences can be multiplied over and over again in the 45,000 congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide.

In Mexico two villages were feuding. There were frequent slayings. The police could do nothing to stop it. Then, one family started to study with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Other families sold their weapons, using the money to buy Bibles, so that they, too, could study. Soon, a spiritual paradise of true peace and unity was established among those villagers.