larc
When I was an elder I explained to a mother why it was more important being a Witness than having a relationship with her four children that were disfellowshipped and I did it with a straight face. I also had to explained to MY df'd mother why I couldn't have anything to do with her as well. I went to the hospital with sister who had an unbelieving husband and told the doctor that she was prepared to die instead of taking the blood. I stayed with her husband during the operation and recovery. That was a tense situation. I don't think that man likes me very much.
I had to explain to my unbelieving brother-in-law and his very irate mother in a hospital waiting room full of people why my sister-in-law was choosing death and leaving him and their two small children rather than take a bone-marrow transplant. I have to say that it was very difficult trying to make it sound like it was the right thing to do!
I was out in service one day and I called on a family that had just received word that their son had been killed in Vietnam Nam just hours ago. The mother, surrounded by the father and more of her children, looked at me through teary eyes and said, "Oh, please, if you're a minister would you please pray for us, you have no idea of how much we're hurting." I had to explain to her why it was a sin for me to pray for them in their hour of grief. I don't think I'll ever forget the look of disgust on their faces for refusing them that prayer. Thirty minutes later we were picked up by the police and brought in for questioning. I can't imagine why. Maybe somehow they didn't think we were Christians!
I did some government sponsored work for a dear old lady who became endeared to us during the course of our work. She had us meet all her children who in turn expressed their gratitude for the consideration we were giving their aged mother and thanking us for going beyond what the work called for in taking care of her needs. One day one of her daughters called me long distance to tell me that they were giving their mother a very special birthday party (The old lady was in her nineties) and that all of her children wanted me there because she often spoke of me and they had come to think of me as family. I had to explain to her daughter how sinful it would be for me to go to that old lady's birthday party.
A sister in our congregation lost a daughter and then about a year later while waiting any minute for a phone call to tell her that her oldest son was dead got, instead, news that her youngest child had just been killed in a freak accident. She asked me to do the funeral but after one of the elders (the one gunning for me) raised so much protest I called the C.O. After a brief chat with him I had to tell that old lady that the presiding overseer of the congregation that she help to found would not be able to do the funeral for her son. I had to explain to other people at the funeral why it was that I, as the mother's minister, was standing on the sidelines while a stranger, a minister from Babylon the Great was doing the funeral discourse for the son of a woman who had been a witness there for over thirty five years.
So you see, larc, I'm used to dealing with difficult situations. In light of what I have already had to do, I don't think that answering those two questions will pose much of a problem for me. I've been trained by the best in the fine art of deception, of making the absurd seem Christian-like. Knowing their mindset I don't foresee a problem at all.
Thank you for your concern. I really do appreciate it. I'm appalled at how people such as you and I, who are only virtually acquainted with each other, seem to have more respect and feeling for one another than the people with whom we have been associated with for a lifetime have for one who simply chooses another road.
I liked the lifestyle of Jehovah's Witnesses. I like the idea of living a clean, moral life. I don't mind the work involved. I don't mind devoting all my weekends to service and the meetings. I don't mind traveling at least once a month out of town to give Public Talks, or taking the time to organize people for my work assignment at the Circuit Assemblies and the District Conventions and the time spent working up schedules for the Service Meeting and the Public Talk schedule, going to a quick build from time to time. I don't mind the hundred other things that kept me busy every day. That's not what drove me away.
Bad doctrines, intolerance, arrogance, the callousness and vindictiveness of the leadership did.
-Seen it all, done it all, can't remember most of it-
