I got baptized as a JW around the end of 1981 and continued as an active publisher for about eight years. However, I gradually started to become disenchanted with the organization. It wasn’t just one thing, but an accumulation of things that eventually got to me. I will list some of these things below:
1.When I got baptized in 1981, I sacrificed a military career by becoming a conscientious objector. The “brothers” told me that quitting the military was the only way they would allow me to be a publisher. I had no problem making this spiritual sacrifice. The military, however, was nice enough to give me an honorable discharge anyway. So, I decided to use the benefits that came with being an honorably discharged veteran to get myself a totally free college education (thanks to the GI Bill). I immediately came under pressures from the elders in my congregation who told me that I was pursuing this system of things rather than the kingdom. I ignored them for a while, but they started making indirect references to me during public discourses. One of them (a Bethelite) even used my situation in one of his discourses at an annual convention as an example of a person who wasn’t putting the kingdom first. So, I eventually capitulated and quit college. Some months later, I found out that the same Bethelite and his wife were encouraging young witness girls to get a college degree, because this would make it easier for them to get into Bethel. Additionally, two of the elders who pressured me to quit, had their own daughters go through college and complete their degrees!
2.At one of the circuit conventions, the Circuit Overseer as well as some of the local elders gave a series of discourses encouraging the brothers to throw away their VCRs, since this device could become a gateway to pornography within the household. That didn’t make sense to me and it started to dawn on me that the “Society” was trying to control every aspect of the lives of witnesses.
3.Then there was at least one occasion when material presented in the Watchtower appeared to be inconsistent to what my wife and I learned in the Bible. So, we questioned our congregation overseer about this teaching. The response to those questions was that in the next public discourse, negative references were made about us because we asked questions about some of the “Society’s” teachings.
4.For my wife one of her major issues with the witnesses was the constant pressure on us to produce a certain minimum amount of hours in the proselytizing work (door-to-door preaching). If you didn’t maintain a certain minimum hours preaching, you were considered inactive. So, we both eventually became “inactive” in our door-to-door preaching and then in our meeting attendance. This led to fellow “witnesses” shunning us even though we hadn’t done anything wrong.
5.I also began to question in my conscience the Watchtower’s focus on the significance of 1914 and their insistence that the generation of that time would not pass away before the system ended.
6.Eventually both my wife and I developed enough courage to break our ties with the Watchtower. I made it official by sending the Watchtower Society two separate letters disassociating myself from them. After I sent the first letter, the “Society” sent one of the local elders over to try to change my mind. I agreed to let this elder conduct a Bible study with me. During the Bible-study, the elder was constantly looking for some moral flaw to justify why I slowed down in meeting attendance. At one point, he found an exercise tape in my house that had “Joannie Greggains” (an exercise instructor) wearing a two-piece leotard outfit. His response to finding this tape suggested that he had found his reason to explain why I became inactive. Never mind the fact that this was my wife’s exercise tape! This elder kept looking for a moral smoking gun rather than trying to encourage me spiritually. This is consistent with one of the “Society’s” magazine articles that suggested that the reason that many became inactive was because they were starting to engage in unclean habits.
These things as well as many others accumulated on both my wife and I so that eventually we both left the JWs.
