Sorry… since I’m not DFd and still have family in the org I’d like to remain in contact with, I have to keep this deliberately vague.
Raised a JW, I was never considered “zealous” but was always “good.” The kind of guy that gets encouraged to “reach out for privileges.” Fortunately parents did not demand more.
I can’t complain; home life was good, Mum was loving but depressed, Dad was non-JW, alcoholic and incapable of normal interactions with adults but OK with kids. We weren’t dirt poor; what more could I really ask for?
I was always smart… damn, I was too smart. Started reading at age 2, Scored straight 99s on my assessment tests when I first entered school in 6th grade (homeschooling is good for some parts of the brain but not for others).
Never was good with people. Ate lunch by myself through my senior year of high school… who does that!? Even Napoleon Dynamite had Pedro.
I realized in 1995 that the generation change was a disturbing development. I was a teenager, thoroughly indoctrinated and did not have the internet, so the fact that the rest of the religion was “the Truth” kept me believing long enough to make the mistake of getting baptized, because I was getting to that age where if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to hang out with the other JWs anymore.
Only after a period of missing meetings did my doubts really progress. The indoctrination sessions are very important for keeping the credulity meter in the red. In the interests of having knowledge both pro and con, I read CoC by Ray Franz who immediately became my hero. I read his second book as well which really got to the heart of a lot of issues. And yet, this man, who saw through the elaborate WT deception, could not follow his arguments to their logical conclusion and see the Bible itself for what (I feel) it really is—a great work of human literature.
I’m in my 20’s, I’m a musician, I tend toward libertarian views, I’ve never dated (anyone), I enjoy The Simpsons, Futurama, South Park, sketch comedy, playing sports, science, business, debate, philosophy, classic literature, and alcohol.
Life is not fair. Life is not cruel. There are no blessings, and no curses. Life is like the ocean. There are forces at work (intelligent or not I can’t say) more powerful than any of us, and if we act in harmony with them we can achieve anything. If we work against them our best-laid plans may be for naught. And yet the element of randomness is ever-present.
One of the biggest adjustments is changing one’s view to see other people as just people, rather than evil scum who need to be exterminated. How you say… it takes you down a peg. We all have different values, different sets of principles. If I am offended that someone judges me despite the fact that I live by my principles simply because they use a different set, how can I rightly judge someone else based on the fact that their values are different than mine? More important to me is that one actually lives by their own values… “To thine own self be true.”
I’ve had my fill of hypocrisy after my years in the WT. P.S. I'm really not a jerk... I just don't know how to do smileys on this God-forsaken board. Also, my sense of humor tends to be drier than the martini you should picture me holding... see y'all round.