CoCo -
I have to answer this way; I really was a jw who believed and loved people. I always saw the ideology, while I looked past all the hypocricy. Then I found that 607, 1914, 1975, the 1914 Generation were all wrong. I saw that nothing reflected the love of Jesus in the way I saw people treated. I could only see 'Pharisees' where there was supposed to be healing balm.
Still I wanted to believe. Then I found out that Mexico was more important than Malawi. And that blood really wasn't blood at times. I discovered that some fine men and women, men and women who had devoted entire lives to 'full time service', were dismissed and kicked to the Brooklyn curb for reading the Holy Book.
I discovered that Jimmy Swaggart was an ok guy to share with in interfaith lawsuits, if one had alterior money to hide from the Man from Uncle Sam. And that, in Bulgaria one can take blood and won't be disfellowshipped, just disassociated and treated precisely in the same manner. I found that children could be raped by elders or ministerial servants or circuit overseers, that it was only rape if two or more witnesses saw it happen. I found mansion deeds in San Diego that gave ownership of million dollar homes to guys who have been dead for thousands of years.
I watched 'annointed' ones die, and be miraculously replaced time and again by new eaters of the bread of Memorial. I stayed alive till '75, then heard that what I saw happen in the prophetic claims was just my overactive imagination at work. That same imagination made me see things in the bible that were not supposed to be there, and things in the Watchtower that kept repeating over and over again like a bad dream.
Then I discovered that the best part of Jehovah's witnesses no longer are. And that apostates are not howling at the moon and eating blood pudding. And that Christians and Christmas and the flag had all been misrepresented. And that even though I saw all these wonders, and even though I was of reasonable intelligence, I choked and sputtered on the 'truth about the truth', yearned to see all the 'proof' disproved, so that I could crawl back into the comfortable fetal pose, warm in the embrace of God's people who would usher me into a life of ease in the New Order so close at hand.
Then another look revealed hundreds and thousands of others, broken hearted and crying out to find comfort as they discovered the same things I did. So, rather than go away, I stayed, and prayed that I might be allowed the opportunity to reach out my hand to someone who needed it. I chose to turn my aching heart into a healing hand if I ever got the chance.
I stick around with that hope. For when a heart breaks, no one understands it better than he who has had his broken before.
Jeff