DOT,
Don't overload on this stuff. My suggestion is to start at what you feel may be foundational to your faith in the religion itself, and determine how you really feel.....not what you are beint told to feel. Perhaps it will be the same, perhaps it won't.
I was once similar to heavensgate. I was a pretty active apologist, and tried to overwhelm otherwise simple arguements with what amounted to philosophical JWisms. There are multiple points of views ona variety of scripture, otherwise there would not be 16K Christian sects and counting.
My personal experience is this. I was an apologist, and someone was very reasonable with me (not very apostate-like), and brought some points of view regarding blood up with me. I fought and fought, but if I was being honest with myself, I could not "defend" my position on blood anymore. Once that was the case, it had me trying to excuse the fact that i could not defend that doctrine.
I have had conversations with CO's, DO's local elders, bethelites, and family that works in foreign branches. ALL of them have used the same arguement when faced with out and out duality or hypocrisy in a teaching. That arguement is paraphrased by me as the following.
Jehovah is using imperfect men, and they will make mistakes. However, to go against them is to go against God, since his son is in firm control. So while they can be wrong, and be forgiven, you will be held accountable for going against Jehovahs annointed.
The divergence was where they were willing to state the above, and give the GB a role I do not believe Jesus intended for them when he said HE has been given ALL authority in heaven and on earth.....I was not. I just saw somethign i thought made sense or a POV i could understand, and another one that I didn't see a goor reason for believing.
Heavengate would try to lump every person here into one catagory. One mode of thinking. That is simply not accurate. People here are all sorts. Some are rude, some are funny, some are crazy....but most importantly everyone has their own viewpoint and it is respected (more or less).
When I first understood blood in a different way, I wanted to shout it from the rooftop! Not to try to get people to follow me, but to perhaps affect change. in fact, i spent alot of time remaining as a teacher in the congregation, to TRY to affect change, instill the need for Christian conscience and personal responsability, and do good with people I cared about. This did not last long. I was villified for speaking against the slave, even though all I did was tell elders I believe they have RESPONSABILITY and not AUTHORITY, and that we should consider the difference.
it was the beginning of the end for me. It was and is a hard road. its been a year since I have gone to meeting. The elders have decided not to contact me and have left me alone (thank goodness), and my wife who stopped going a few months ago has not been reached out to even once. Very interesting. It is a hard road, but one that we chose because we have an infant and another coming, and while we enjoy our lives and family, we didn't want them to believe even in some semantical quai way, that their salvation would be dependant on how closely they followed the dictates of 8 men, witht he threat of disfellowshipping looming if they felt differently.
Thats it.
Keep searching. Be authentic. Be brave. Test out "every inspired utterance".
