For some of us who leave the b.org, we realize that the Society wasn't telling us the truth about who Jesus is. That's in a sense okay, since Jesus' own disciples didn't really know either -- when he asked them, they gave all sorts of different answers. I don't think the Bible gives a single answer as well. Jesus is many things to different people. But from your point of view, was the WT teaching of Jesus a handicap or a help in your subsequent seeking (and finding) of Jesus?
Let me give you some food for thought. Plato once memorably said: "A man cannot search for what he knows, for since he knows it, there is no need to search for it. And he cannot search for what he does not know -- because he does not know what to look for." What that means is that no one can search for what is totally present or totally absent. Only with partial knowledge, imperfect knowledge, faulty knowledge, is such a seeking possible. The Jesus of the Bible is seekable because he is not fully revealed or understood, and one cannot seek him without some sort of knowledge -- however faulty -- to start with. The problem, I think, is the process of seeking. Are we really seeking or only wishing to validate our original (faulty) assumptions?
After all, maybe what we should be seeking is not Jesus himself but what he represents. I personally feel that what matters most about seeking Jesus is finding the Kingdom he preached about -- which lay not in a distant future "government," or an ecclesiastical system, but in the very real presence of God in acts of justice and charity. It is just this message that organized religions (not the least the JWs) have lost entirely. That's what I want to seek -- for me, the real Jesus is the message of humility, love, and justice that he taught and he embodied this message with the very way he lived his life. Jesus' revolutionary message is that God is not isolated, distant from humanity, living in "third heaven" or the "Pleiades" or whatever, but that he can be in you and rule your heart by the way you live your life. That's what Jesus means to me, and that is the kind of kingdom I want to seek in my quest to be a better person and live a better, more charitable life.
Anyway, I don't think I would've gotten this far had I not been introduced to Jesus, however garbled, by the WTS. It is a false Jesus, in my opinion, but had I otherwise lived a completely secular life -- I don't think I would've found such a wonderful compass toward "character development" than I find in Jesus. I doubt I would've been so interested in the Bible had I not known the JWs. So was Plato right? I'm not so sure. In my case, I found a kernal, a mustard seed, of the kingdom in the leaven provided by the Society. But many more only find the leaven, the destructive spirit, the abuse of authority and lack of love, and understandably have been left embittered by the experience and want to have nothing more with seeking the "truth" or seeking God, the kingdom, or Jesus. On balance, it may be that the half-knowledge thought by Plato to necessitate the quest may for more people sabotage the "seeking" before it can even start. And that's a sad thought.
Leolaia