Worf:
Around 1995, there was a wt article that really ticked me off and I found myself saying "how could they have such a cold hard attitude toward people who had suffered because of listening to them?"This article had to do with alternative military service.The article actually gave a change in how we should view it.It was now allowed.But it also said something to the effect that Christians should not feel bad that they had "followed their conscience" in this matter and had suffered for it,(ie jail time etc.), even though now there was a change in view on the particular matter that they suffered for.
I recall like it was yesterday reading ---stupefied!---this article for the first time. After a number of years of battling everything from nagging doubts about some WT policies/teachings/"recommendations" to major disagreement with various others (and, thus, in the process, virtually crippling myself performing the mental gymnastics required to continue believing in the overall integrity and Christianity of the organization!), I fairly sputtered incoherently as I read aloud to my husband the relevant paragraphs from this article.
To be exact, after presenting the "new light" on alternative military service, the article asked the reader, in its annoyingly routine and overdone style, whether those who'd suffered in the past should regret having done so in view of this "enlightened" understanding (obviously attempting to buffer themselves against the indignation they brilliantly anticipated on the part of those who'd now conclude they'd suffered needlessly). The WT's incredible answer to its own rhetorical question??? Paraphrasing: That no (quelle surprise!), there should be no regret for proving one's loyalty to Jehovah by having followed his Bible-trained conscience [in having made the decision to serve a prison term rather than accept alternative service!].
I was thunderstruck. For various reasons, the "generation" change, the change in whether JW's modern-day preaching constitutes a so-called "separating work," and what constitutes "the disgusting thing standing in the holy place" had much less negative effect on me than the high-handed, disingenuous arguments presented in this article. Looking back, it was the first time I admitted to myself what I'd already begun reluctantly to suspect---that besides many of the Society's teachings being in serious error, that it---i.e., its leadership--- is dishonest, arrogant and, finally and most appallingly, rather than Christ-like, brazen in its contempt for and mocking in its abuse of trusting followers for whose consumption they blithely manipulate the scriptures, their own history, and other information. And what they don't manipulate, they simply make up, for the apparent sport of it. (Unlike many here, I don't for one second think that the gb believes the "truths" they traffic; I am convinced they get off on witnessing just how much control they have over a flock who unquestioningly accepts all the absurdities they pass off as "spiritual food.")
Anyway, it was also for me at this point that what had been tiny cracks began to rupture into Grand Canyon-sized craters of non-belief, non-acceptance.
This was a definite warning sign. I wish I had seen the full significance of it. I could have saved myself a few more years.
I fully recognized the significance of what this article revealed about the Society's leadership but, despite the sense of betrayal I felt along with other doubts and misgivings, my own peace and confirmation of heart and mind required additional proof. The ensuing years, though wasted in terms of additional years spent serving a corrupt and abusive religious organization, assailed me with irrefutable evidence of the only kind that would suffice to awaken a long-time die-hard JW of the tenaciously faithful sort I had been to the sobering, life/belief-shattering reality that the WTS is a fraud, not being used as God's anything, and that it was not only okay, but, in fact, imperative that I separate from it.
-AMNESIAN
