I first began my misadventures with Jehovah's Witnesses in 1972 as a youth(18 years old) and was baptised in that same year. I was young inexperienced and they caught me at a low point when I was weak and looking for God to solve problems. Being raised as a Catholic and going to all the religious indoctrination up to the point of confirmation, I guess you could say I was indoctrinated from birth to believe a certain way which left me vulnerable to the JW propaganda.
Fast foreword to the time of my departure in 2001 february.
For a couple of years (late 90s) before I left I started noticing out right lies in the WT publications about their history and the luster that these magazines used to have started to fade rapidly also around that time I really began to notice the gobs and gobs of praise they were bestowing on the Organization and the representative members of the so called Faithful & Discrete Slave(GB). I was slowly getting sick of it as I was starting to find all kinds of things wrong from that point on. My personal reading of WT publications in turn fell to new lows every year as I found such dribble hard to digest.
What really used to bug me was how the friends were just soaking it up, with words to the effect:"The faithful slave this" and "the faithful slave that" and calling the organization "mother" and be obedient to "mother" they even used to use some scripture in proverbs somewhere where it says to be obedient to "mother" and applying it to the organization it was really starting to bug me as I never really was all that impressed with those at the top.
I even recall brothers after a stern tongue lashing from the WT at the conventions saying they were beat black and blue by the rebukes and how they really needed it. To me it was disgusting as the reasonings no longer were making sense and were never really practical, but I knew how to speak JW speak and so I either just listen or found myself agreeing with them in order not to arouse suspision of my growing discontent or loyalty to the Organiztion. Influence of being in groups surely has its place in getting one to accept things that one might question and to conform to the crowds mentality.
What have been your experiences in this regard, were you turned off by all that too, did it have similar reactions?
Did you start to notice how the GB was getting more worship than even the God they claim to serve?
I think somewhere in the 80s after the big thing with Ray Franz and Dunlap that the organization really started to hammer away at the need to let "mother do your thinking for you and everybody wanted to appear obedient to "mother" or the GB so it seems everybody wanted to speak JW speak was jumping on the band wagon and they always had to include some praise for "mother" in their everyday conversation. This is what made me start feeling like everybody was brain dead.
Today after years and years of WT propaganda the freinds have clearly turned into a bunch of Faithful & Discrete Slave worshipers. Look at their new song books and the wording changes and new songs they can hardly sing 2 verses before GB worship is expressed in some form.