So in my lunch break at work today I walked in the park, just chilling out when a woman approached and offered me a leaflet. Didn't have to read it I knew straight away who she was.
Me: My family are involved with JWs. The new world was supposed to come in the mid-seventies but it didn't. My mum said people give up Christmas and birthdays but it's worth it because they get to live in a paradise earth forever. I can see that, but what if it doesn't come and you've given up all those things and more your whole life?
JW: Oh it will come because God cannot lie. It says that in the Bible.
Me: Now if you were born in India where I just visited in February you wouldn't believe in the Bible, you would have been raised a Hindu, Muslim or Sikh. Their Gods don't say these same things, it just depends where in the world you're born as to what you believe.
JW: Oh we're all over the world in every country (missing the point entirely)
Me: well my mother waited her whole life for the fulfilment of your Bible teachings and she's dead now. She thought I wouldn't go to school and I turned sixty last Saturday.
JW: I'm sorry, but your mum will be resurrected.
Me: It's not just that she died disappointed, she lived unhappily too. She and my dad were very unhappy together but the elder she went to for help told her she couldn't leave him because she couldn't get a divorce on grounds of incompatibility. If she did she would have to spend her whole life alone. So she was miserable in her marriage and that affects your children too you know. So we were all unhappy.
(She started edging away at this but I wasn't finished)
If I had raised my daughter in the region she wouldn't have been encouraged to go to university, it's frowned on isn't it?
JW: Well yes my daughter has given up her career for her faith.
Me: What about when she gets older and wants to buy a house or travel the world and later when she doesn't have a pension?
JW: Oh I don't look that far ahead.
Me: Well I think you should. My mother waited all her life for a promise that was never fulfilled. She's dead and gone, the children who were never supposed to go to school in this old world are sixty plus. I have a great-nephew who is two, he'll be denied all these things I just listed and he'll wait for this paradise too, what about him?
By this time she was looking really flushed and stressed and said 'well if you don't believe in it' and was edging away. So I said it was nice to see her and let her go. I hope something I said got through. It struck me that talking about my personal experience helped without overtly attacking the religion.