Last week I had a phone conversation with my family back in England. My parents had figured out that something wasn't usual about my attitude to the "truth", so they started grilling me: have I been to meetings? going in field service? etc. etc.
I basically told them that I have been researching the society and the bible, and that I have real problems in believing any of it anymore. I gave them some examples of where the society has made screw-ups and misleading quotes in it's literature. They ignored them, of course.
Then the emotional tactics started. "Are you going against the slave? Don't you think that is arrogant? Where's your humility? Don't break your Mother's heart! What about (Mrs Expatbrit)? Don't you think she'll be hurt?"
After this they began to try and rationalise my attitude in JW terms. You know what they came up with? I'm succumbing to the lure of materialism! Now that my business is growing beyond the single self-employed guy stage, it must be taking all my time. I've become unbalanced and allowed my spirituality to suffer!
Hilariously, they started blaming a brother I studied with when I was eighteen! He was, and still is, virtually inactive, but is extremely successful. We would study, then go to the pub and talk about real things like what the hell I was going to do for a living, or when England were going to win the World Cup again. In witness terms, he was a loser, of course.
But that was fourteen years ago!
They simply cannot believe that I might have researched and come to some valid conclusions. In their enclosed JW mind, there is simply no possibility that someone could have a valid reason for leaving or even doubting. They have to pigeonhole me with a label!
These are my parents! I know they are good, intelligent people. I know that I used to think this way about others who left before me. But to be pigeonholed, filed away under M for "materialistic" so quickly by my own parents....
(sorry for the rant)
Expatbrit