Thanks for your thoughts everyone.
EdenOne that was good timing hey :)
Hi Magnum...
The JW culture is so goody-goody and self-righteous and bragging and condescending.
It looks so different now that I'm looking at it from the outside. Some stuff disgusted me all along, but I just put up with it. Now, though, I see the big picture.
I hear you mate. It's weird looking in from the outside isn't it. Like you're in a strange dream sometimes. It's frustrating though because you wonder how they can't see what's so obvious... until I remember that was me too for sooo long :(
Hi ToesUp...
Two more people the org can not "use" for free labor and donations! Yippie!
No kidding hey. To be honest though, we haven't donated a cent to the org for at least 5 years. When we were in some of our assignments we witnessed a horrible amount of waste of donated funds by certain missionaries and bethelites. So we decided to give that money directly to needy families instead. One jackass missionary in particular made sure he spent every cent of the home funds every single month, regardless of whether they needed to or not. They lived like kings. Yet in his cong there were very poor families struggling to pay for medication for their sick kids, let alone 2 meals a day and they were guilted by him almost every service meeting into donating more and more. Makes me mad just thinking about it!
Hi leaving_quietly...
My issues with WTBTS are mostly doctrinal. Not that I'm burying my head in the sand on other issues, such as child abuse. However, for an organization that claims to be the ONLY true religion and GOD's organization, it MUST be able to stand up to scrutiny on doctrinal points. My own research shows it does not. Not by a long shot. I look forward to reading what you put together. I woke up when I was an elder and I resigned because I could no longer stomach teaching falsehoods. That's the bottom line for me.
I was exactly the same. That's what my research focused mainly on. What really did it for me was 607 - 1914 - 1919 but I couldn't share this with my wife at the time because all the research was outside of the WT publications. What hit her the most was the issue of Jesus not being our mediator. I also couldn't stomach teaching falsehoods and resigned quickly. Sorry to hear you don't have your wife with you yet mate. I hope you can reach her one day. I hate this religion for doing this to families!
Saintbertholdt, Lisa and Tornintwo you're more than welcome. Yes it took a while - about 600 hours all up but well worth it to be free. My biggest concern was to end up as one of those that still has doubts deep down as to whether it is the truth or not. I clearly remember all those that raced back to the kingdom halls after 9/11 because they still deep down believed. I wanted us to be able to walk away and never look back. I also wanted to have ample documentation as to why we left, so when we are questioned down the road we can quickly refer to it.
