I’m an educated professional. Yet, before leaving, I had serious issues with the prophecies for at least 15 years. In terms of knowing TTATT, I’d say that happened about 8 years before leaving.
What made me stay? I thought that the core teachings were about beliefs such as: No hell, no trinity, earthly paradise, knowing about various biblical accounts. Oh how proud I was when I made comments at the hall for which people thought I had studied for hours! My intellect, my ego, was gratified.
Meanwhile, though I knew that our actions were very important, I had always taken these for granted and never really stopped to truly think about it.
So, even if I did not agreed with shunning the disfellowshiped, it wasn’t so bad since I wasn’t practicing it. Meanwhile, I kept convincing myself that the most important things were little details in the scriptures, like, knowing the names of the sons of Noah! I went door to door and told myself: How ignorant are these people, knowing an insignificant fraction of what I know on the bible. Not only did I feel so above the worldly people, I thought I was above the JWs themselves as I didn’t believe in the Adam and Eve story or a universal flood!
Then, I had kids. And now, I was supposed to do family worship and teach everything these man from NY believed. Suddenly, I realized that if I was telling anything concerning the TTATT, I was at risk of being disfellowshiped! Let me explain: At a district convention, I saw a little girl (about 16) telling everyone from the platform that she now shunned her father who was an apostate. Being a closet apostate myself for well over a decade, I realized that my kids could end up right next to her someday, for what? 15 minutes of fame?
That is when I understood that my priorities were all wrong, that it had nothing to do with the knowledge, but with the actions. Surely no one else loved that girl more than her own father and yet, that is the one she hurt! That has nothing to do with Christian love. Yet, love IS the most important thing about Christianity. It isn’t about knowing how old Abraham was when he had Isaak!
So, I left. I could not teach that to my kids.
The sad thing is: I don’t know if I would have come to that understanding if I did not have my kids. It had to personally affect me.