What better place, what better world can be offered, is the question tossed at those who have left.
What if it is just the same place, without taking everything we hear at the kingdom hall as gospel?
Can we just take with a grain of salt the things we know deep down are without basis?
It is the same place, with the same friends, but without the drama of feeling that you can never do enough, that you were born sinful.
A faith that does not ask you to treat your family as disposable; a place that does not kick people to the curb when they need their family the most; a faith that lets you trust your heart, not ignore it.
Can we just stay in the same place, and realize that we do not have to sacrifice our children’s lives by denying them blood if desperately needed? A place that realizes that David and his men ate the show bread, and were not punished, because they were starving to death; that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and we applaud him for it, yet to work on the Sabbath was a death dealing sin for a Jew.
A place that realizes that children cannot make a conscious responsible decision to make a life ending decision, that it is something that only adults can make if they so wish.
This place is a third way for us, neither dyed in the wool gung ho believer nor ranting apostate, neither of these two stereotypes.
This is a new place, a middle ground, one that acknowledges that we love those we attend with and don’t wish to alienate them or leave them.
In this place, we acknowledge that when leaders say they are imperfect, what they really mean is that they are often very wrong, even reversing decisions that affect our lives, even though they feel they can’t be straightforward about it. We are asked to be humble and contrite; can we not expect them to be the same?
This way takes greater faith, not less faith; it acknowledges that we may be a group that strives to emulate divine thinking but falls short.
In this place, we ignore the assertions that the voice of God comes through only a group of men in Brooklyn, and recognize that we can determine how to treat our families.