Reexamining my last comment, I can choose to gather with family whenever they gather, so
I will not look at fading as a hinderance. I can get involved in social changes if I want to so
I can stop feeling hindered there. Martian, I suppose your fringe-thinking works sometimes.
Here's part of what inspired the thread. We went to a JW wedding recently. The people involved
and invited were not from my current congregation (of which I am still an inactive member and wife
is active). While I dreaded going, it worked out great. Nobody asked me difficult questions and
I got to see that everybody was so much into going to college or not pioneering or whatever. They
were "in the cult" but most were trying to have a semi-regular life. That wasn't bad at all.
Well, the wife is a social JW. That's her main thing to hold on for. She believes they are God's
people and accurately use the Bible, but the truth is that she is not a deep study person. She just
loves doing stuff with her JW friends. I guess my going to the wedding inspired her to push more.
She tells me how there is a going away party for one JW moving, and another party for some young
JW who just finished the summer semester and now has their degree (or something like that).
"We gotta go." "I already said we would be there." "It's just friends getting together, not a meeting."
You all know the drill.
It is very easy to say, "Just go without me." But I always feel the need to try to provide at least a
mini-intervention. So I say, "These are events involving people in our congregation. They are so
judgmental. What's going to happen if I show up, but I don't go to the meetings?"
"Well, they invited us. There are others who miss meetings that go to these things." (Kind of a stretch.)
The serious meeting-missers are not invited. Some come along with invited ones.)
"My interacting with the congregation members will cause some of them to mark me and you. You will
get invited to less of these things because your 'bad associate' husband won't be able to come, then."
"No, why do you say that? You aren't involved in sin, are you?"
You see, folks. This is where the madness comes in. SIN- as defined by what? -The Bible, my wife,
the Governing Body, or me? Reading Ray Franz and posting on JWD is definitely sin according to them,
but not according to me or the Bible. Truth be told- I should just go and cause her to be invited less and less.
The problem (in my mind) is that she would view that as the friends being cautious- it would be because of
me instead of because of them. I want her to see their real cult personalities without attributing it to me.
Truth be told, the more I interact with JW's from the congregation, the more likely that they will decide to
either save me or cut me off. I like limbo better.
There's more to my current reflections, but this is the part of the iceberg that is above the surface.
I thank everyone for reading. Now it just sounds like over-complicating simple matters. Maybe it is.
