I kind of submitted a 'closure' letter to the local Jw's. It actually is more for me, than them. I don't actually know if it will be posted - but the local editor has printed all my past letters - and all of them have been far more critical and pointed than this one. I think he will print it - we shall see.
Anyway - here is the letter as submitted:
An Open Letter to Jehovah’s Witnesses
My Former Brothers and Sisters;
For all of my productive years of life, till I was 48, I believed in your religion. I lived it. I preached it. I talked the talk and walked the walk.
I was wrong. In October of 2007 I removed myself legally from your religion. I did so after three difficult years of inspection and introspection. I was finally unable to justify the moral wrongs that I became aware of inside the walls of the Kingdom Hall and the Headquarters in Brooklyn. I detected lies from the top, an organization that publicly denounced the United Nations as the wild beast of Revelation, but who privately attached itself to that body for a period of ten years. I discovered an organization, both local and international, that did not deal well with a significant pedophilia problem within, leading to broken and destroyed lives. I found an organization that had altered the Bible, even using a spiritualist’ translation by Johannes Greber to support key textual adjustments in support of favored doctrinal positions. I discovered so much more, so much that I might indeed write a book someday - but not here.
When I left, however, I found wonderful things that I did not anticipate finding. Things that were screened off from me while I was inside the organization. I found that the Christians down the street were not the spawn of the Devil as we had been taught, but decent and caring and loving souls, just trying to worship God in the best way they knew how. I discovered that the million and a half Jehovah’s Witnesses who have left the organization in the past decade are also good and fine people, likely the cream of the crop. Many of them, like me, leaving due to a Crisis of Conscience. I discovered that I did not need a constant indoctrination, a man-written dogma to tell me how to live, what to wear, when to smile. I discovered that I like life now, and don’t wish to live in a paradise with others who rejoice over the idea that a sadistic God will kill 6 billion people so that a few might live. I prefer to worship a loving God who accepts us for what we are, allows us to read His Word and understand and apply it, and who has no desire to exterminate most of the human race to give earthly residence to a few smug religionist who have spent their lives selling literature to others to earn salvation. I discovered that I don't wish to 'shun' and ostracize my relatives and friends who have used their God-given right to choose and think for themselves. That I find greater happiness in embracing a sinner who might come to repentance than I do in treating him like so much cat-manure on my shoe. I have learned that I don't wish to bring my grandchildren into a religion that teaches such hatred as normal, such judging as acceptable, and such doom and negatives as proper. In short, I have discovered that life is beautiful as it is - not as we dreamt it to be in a perfect world of delusion.
Some of you will continue to call, though few. Some of you will wish I was dead, as you think of me that way already. Most of you will go on believing you are 'special', chosen by God, and destined to live forever on earth. You consider me the 'evil apostate', though you have not confirned anything at all about me personally since I left your sales-group. Que sera, sera. I cannot change you. I don't wish to. I only hope that some of you will someday open your eyes, let the scales fall from them, do an honest investigation of your faith from outside the box you have been nailed inside for so long. If you do that, I look forward to welcoming you outside. If you don't, then your captivity is your fault. I love you all.