This is a follow-on to my earlier post 'The slain of jehovah'.
So we're sat in a cafe with my old friend of over 40 years, together with his wife. Actually, it's 50 years. They've recently celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary and I was the best man at their KH wedding.
After I was DF'd I assumed my friends wouldn't want to know me at all, so I kept away. They lived in another city so it wasn't difficult. Strangely, they hadn't even known about my own DF'ing until our meet up on Thursday. Likewise I hadn't known that they'd left the dubbies in the mid - 70's. Left, but not disfellowshipped. They'd moved house a lot so they must have slipped through the net.
As our time together slipped by, I told them how my parents had wrongly assumed that I'd left because of the Watchtower article concerning the veto on certain goings-on in the marital bed. (Watchtower 1972 December 1 pp.734-6 Questions from Readers) They were mistaken of course, the article came out some months after my departure and it was some decades later that I became aware it even existed.
However, the article sparked of some curiosity in my then oh-so innocent friends, both of them not quite understanding exactly what the WT article was refering to. It actually gave them an interest in the sauces and pickles side of marital life.
And as the lady herself said, sometimes it's better to give than to receive!
But here's the strange thing. Both our sets of parents approached us when the article in the 1972 WT was revoked in a 1978 WT. (Watchtower 1978 February 15 pp.30-1 Questions from Readers) They'd convinced themselves - both my parents and the parents of my friends - that we'd left "The Truth" solely because we wanted to be able to do all the naughty things that the 72 WT had forbidden.
I recall being quite offended when my own parent told me that these things were OK for me to do now and it need no longer be a sticking point in my return to the truth.
Bloody hell. Nuts or what?