well, i've been procrastinating this for some time now and taken my counsel from you fine people here but i finally made what will be my last journey ever to the kingdom hall today and posted my disassociation letter into the postbox
with fine tuning over past weeks, this is what finally went into it:
Dear XXX
I am sorry that I haven’t spoken to you in ages. I have been feeling guilty about not being around when you have called.
Along with my apologies also come my thanks and appreciation for your determination in maintaining contact with me.
I haven’t associated with the congregation for some years now, in fact not since 1997. Throughout these years, I have continued to maintain a belief and confidence in Jehovah. I would say that you and a few others have helped me in that respect. The ones I would particularly single out apart from yourself are XXX, XXX and XXX. Each of you have displayed what comes across to me as a Christian kindness and concern. Some others have, I regret to say, shunned me and my children, albeit perhaps through embarrassment.
For quite some months now, I have been reflecting on this and the events that led to me becoming inactive.
As you know, I have had a great plague brought down upon my family, and try as I have, I cannot help but think that this would not have happened if my family had been protected from ‘wolves disguised as sheep’. I can understand the Society’s rules on maintaining confidentiality with personal information, but this policy placed my marriage and family in grave danger. I have since found out that XXX had ‘history’ of destroying families, yet nobody at any time approached me and told me of the extreme danger that this person posed.
I do not view anyone as personally responsible for what happened except the perpetrator. I would hate for you or anyone else to blame yourselves, but I would hope that a policy change in the organisation would come about. How many more innocent people and their marriages, families and children have to be placed at risk before something is done about it ?
I truly appreciate the time and effort you have spent in delivering the Watchtower and Awake! magazines to me. They have served to reassure me of Jehovah’s existence and my faith in him.
However, issues have been emerging for me for a while now that have caused me concern. These include further changes and ‘new understandings’ relating to the use of blood products and another, although relatively minor, the appropriateness of voting in political elections. The arguments delivered through ‘Questions from readers’ and set out in long complex explanations remind me of Matt 23:24 which reads ‘… who strain out the gnat but gulp down the camel.’ Especially as, reading between the lines, these changes are being brought about by what appears to me as political manoeuvering rather than spiritual enlightenment.
The United Nations
What really has shaken my confidence in the Society though, is the news that was reported a few months ago in The Guardian - a printout from the Guardian website is aside.
I can recognise the words within the report that are malicious or incorrect, but the actual facts reported are that the Society has been associated with the United Nations since 1991. The Society have since admitted this and have given reasons for their association. However, based on their teachings to me over the past 20 years, I find it absolutely unacceptable
If I or any other one of Jehovah’s Witnesses had done this, then we would have been disfellowshipped. This whole situation smacks of hypocrisy and removes all illusions I had of an organisation true to Jehovah. Either the United Nations is the ‘disgusting thing … standing in a holy place’ or it is not. Either way, I believe the Society have unforgivably compromised themselves.
The Society has in the meantime resigned their membership.
My dedication to Jehovah
I dedicated my life to Jehovah before the public declaration was changed to one of subjecting oneself to an earthly organisation. I believe that a day will come when I will have to explain my choices and behaviour before God, and I would like the choices I have made to be ones I have made myself and with a clear conscience rather than those of someone who has written something today and will change it to something else tomorrow.
I understand that this letter will identify me as someone with independent thinking. However, I find reassurance in the words of Galileo Galilei:
‘I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.’
I now know that I wish to permanently disassociate myself from the international organisation known as ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’. Luke 6:22,23.
It’s with a heavy heart that I choose this path and to face certain shunning from people such as yourself, that I have the greatest of respect for. I do not and never would seek to weaken your faith or to work against you.
May Jehovah continue to bless you and your family as well as the ones in the congregation who truly serve the one true God.
Yours sincerely
and there it is, i am now an official XJW and for me, the borg is dead ...