Well, here I am again. We had to go off grid for a time, time and half a time as we thought we had been outed. Fortunately it was a false alarm, but it was a stressful time. I asked for my original diary thread to be deleted in case there could be anything on there to identlfy Mrs Smith and I. I am always very careful when posting, and am sure there was nothing on there, but felt it best to have it removed in order to be as cautious as a dove. Thank you to Lady Lee for assisting with this. So let's go again, here is a recap of my story:
I have been an elder, a pioneer, a Group Overseer, Ministry School Overseer Watchtower conductor, given talks and demos at assemblies and conventions, been in a few dramas, pretty much all the things you would expect from someone raised in the truth from a young age. Ticked all the boxes of doing what I oughta, was a good boy, the golden child. All this for close on 25 years. Now things are different. Through the years I have always had questions. Like why can't I grow a beard? How come most things in Revelation are viewed as symbolic, yet the number of 144,000 is taken as literal? Why is there a thousand rules when Jesus advised to the contrary? How many different definitions of 'generation' can there be? These and more made regular appearances in my brain and were swiftly shutdown. Silly boy, trust the organisation, it is God's visible arm on earth! So I worked faithfully, my wife and I. However, the longer I worked in the congregations where we lived, the more the veneer of truth began to peel. It became more and more obvious to me that there was no way Holy Spirit appointed either me or my fellow elders into their positions. There were some statements made in some study articles that I just couldn't reconcile with the scriptures. Serving as an elder became more and more difficult. The more aware I became of what the WT said not aligning with the scriptures, the more my conscience played on me. How could I stand up there and teach others things that didn't make sense to me? Due to my experiences as an elder, I was seeing the organisation from the inside. The side that Joe Schmoe publishers don't see. The heated battles pre CO visit about who should be put up for appointment. Counselling young dudes on the scruffy facial hair and not being able to give a scriptural answer to the question 'why?' Doing shepherding calls on people who smile and nod and then carry on doing what they were doing before. I couldn't keep doing this and stay sane and true to my inner voice. Opportunity arose with some issues in my family. We are spread all over the globe and some of them have serious issues. They are nice to everyone who praises them and kisses up to them, but poison to those who call them on their bullcrap. There was a lot going on at that time, and my wife and I decided we needed time for us. I wrote a letter to my fellow elders and stepped down. What a relief. The weight had gone. More time. No more stupid elders meetings running late into the night over nothing. Bliss. Not long after stepping down, I was assigned a Number 3 talk on the increase in earthquakes. For some reason, I thought I would not do the research solely in WTS publications. So I hit up Google and to my surprise the USGS website sad that there has not been an increase in earthquakes. Hmm. Interesting. I skipped over the obvious apostate sites and found a similar story elsewhere. The USGS has no vested interest in reporting that there has not been an increase in earthquakes so my Spidey senses got a-tingling. My mouse hovered over the link in the Google results to jwfacts.com. Should I? Sure enough I clicked. I didn't have an Ananias-like experience, so I was able to read the whole article. 'Scuse my French, but shit got real. Suddenly I didn't feel so bad about having those doubts all along. Obviously others had the same or similar thoughts and had done some research. Some serious research. I spent a good part of the evening looking up things that had always bothered me, and along the way found this here JWN. Other sites I looked at were CARM, Freeminds, JW Struggle, 144,000.110mb, sccmcroberts, and many others, along with a big pile of books on religion, athiesm, and everything in between. My mind was at ease finally. I was not bad person for asking all those questions in my mind. It turns out that there are many who had wondered the same thing and sought out those of similar mind. Certainly a long way from the crazy apostate types presented in the pages of the Watchtower. Some on here are :-P but for the most part there is a lot of sound discussion backed up by evidence. I still had one dilemma. My darling wife whom I love to pieces. Having been deep in the matrix myself, I knew that any attempt to wake her up in a hurry could have horrible consequences no matter how deep our love. Very slowly, here and there with careful questions, I got her to start using her brain and not think what she is told to think by the WTS. Did you know that transplants used to be banned? They were equated with cannibalism! Where does it say that there will be a paradise earth? When you read Revelation 7:9 doesn't it sound like the Great Crowd are in heaven? Slowly slowly she began to realise that the answers to these questions and what is taught in the WT publications didn't match. On Friday the 13th (LOL) of April, she finally said to me 'we are in a cult'. Things began to change. We both researched more and more and are completely mentally out of this cult. We are working on a long slow fade. We are gradually reducing our field service time, are missing meetings, and are looking at moving some time next year. We are in a big congregation, and as long as you smile and nod, put in that unscriptural field service report (with the made up numbers on it) and keep a low profile, you get left alone. Here I have chosen the name Winston Smith - a name taken from the main character in the book Nineteen Eighty Four. This is my diary, a place for my thoughts. I hope you enjoying reading my posts. Please, always feel free to leave your comments and join in the discussion. My last diary topped more than 10,000 views over its twelve or so pages, so I hope we can continue helping and informing people and sharing information - both for members and lurkers alike. Here's to the future!
Winston Smith