Hello everyone, just wanted to say hello and let you know a bit about my story and tell you how thankful I am that I found this site!
I was never a baptized JW although in the early 90's I studied for about 3 years and was an un-baptized publisher for about 1 year before my doubts about some of the beliefs and also my inability to overlook the constant hypocracy of the elders did me in. Sadly it was not before I dragged the love of my life into it, and also my sister (they are both baptized although she left after seeing the elders double standards when it came to doling out counsel/punishment to their own families, he is still in) Anyway even though I couldn't bring myself to commit to the org because of the crap I saw going on in the 2 different halls I attended I still believed it was the TRUTH...what an idiot!
I have been reading the posts here for about 3 or 4 weeks now and I am finally seeing the real "new" light. I had no idea about the U.N. thing and some of the other lies. I have been living with terrible guilt all the years since I walked away because as I said I still believed it was the truth. I struggled for years and said countless prayers to Jehovah begging him to help me see past the hypocrites and to stop being so weak spiritually (the elders wife I studied with told me I could only pray and "wait on Jehovah" to clean out his org....I couldn't tell her that her own damn husband and kids were the worst ones!!) I thought eventually I would go back and just ignore my doubts and the hypocracy around me, but now that I have read the many experiences here, I know that I'm not the spiritually weak one but that the WTS is just a pack of lies that no thinking person could ever have true faith in! Thanks so much for letting me rant, this has been a long time coming and it feels so good to finally feel free of the guilt! I will be permanently Not at Home now when they come knocking unless of course I decide to tell them what I have learned on this site! Thanks again everyone!