IW,
I met Ray some years ago at his house and again just very recently I talked with him over the phone. He's eighty now and his wife is in poor health. I’m not sure how much energy he has for web posting.
I got the chance to really pick his brain during that informal get together back in the mid-nineties. He’s actually a very mild mannered kind of individual and doesn’t try to press his beliefs onto anyone else. He has a kind of different view of the Godhead, though I couldn’t really completely grasp it. I remember thinking he hadn’t really ‘left’ the Watchtower because he didn’t believe exactly like I did concerning who God is. That was a long time ago and I’ve grown to the point where I realize the folly of such thinking (mine).
He was pretty much responsible for the ‘Aid to Bible Understanding’ book that we all knew as JW’s. He admitted to me that he was also in part responsible for the early 1980’s push for those who were JW’s to ‘shun’ those who left the group. I lost my JW sister right about that time. Little does she realize she was being (however well intentioned) misled. I could tell by the expression in Ray’s face the guilt and pain he felt for his involvement with the book and its contents. He still maintained there was a lot of truth in it, but acknowledges the shunning ‘push’ was wrong.
Why am I telling you all this? Well maybe to give an insight to the man. And maybe also to challenge you to avoid looking to any one man for ‘spiritual guidance’. Don’t allow yourself to feel betrayed because he doesn’t agree with your ideals in every manner. Ray has done a great service to us all with his book, ‘Crisis of Conscience’. But remember he’s just a man like any other man. No more, no less.
Steve . . .