Jeff....I am in the process of rereading COC and found your post interesting.
The Bible as it is is claimed to be the foundation for the WTS doctrine. So, yes, it is appropriate to consider the contents of "truth" that they somehow glean from it. Especially considering how many they hold accountable to these "truths".
It was amazing to me how much of R. Franz's issues with WT doctrine was based in simply reading the scriptures, the freedom (and obligation) to examine the scriptures as they are.
He wrote:
It was an education and it was also very humbling, for we came to appreciate that our understanding of Scripture was far less than we had thought, that we were not the advanced Bible scholars we thought we were. I personally had been on such a "treadmill" of activity over the previous twenty-five years that, although reading through the Bible several times, I had never been able to do such serious, detailed research into the Scriptures, in fact never felt great need to do so since it was assumed that others were doing it for me. The two courses at Gilead School I at attended were so tightly programmed that they gave little time for meditation, for unhurried investigation and analysis.
Having now both time and access to the extra Bible helps, the lexicons, commentaries, Hebrew and Greek concordances, and so forth, was an aid. But above all it was seeing the need always to let the context guide, always to let the Scriptures themselves control, that made the major difference. There was no overnight change of viewpoint but rather, over a period of years, a gradual deepening of appreciation of the crucial need to let God's Word spread for itself to the fullest extent possible. I could see why those one-hundred and two-hundred-year-old commentaries in our Bethel library were comparatively timeless in their value. The very fact of their verse-by-verse approach more of less obliged them to stay within the contextual meaning and thereby considerably restricted them from taking excursions into sectarian views or interpretative flights of fancy.
In context....what a thought....thoughtful research....what a thought....sh*t
He also wrote:
Many other of Jehovah's Witnesses, not having the information I here supply, arrived at the same crossroads and made their own decision, doing so simply on the basis of what they had read in the Scriptures. Others, however, face a serious crisis of conscience and do so with uncertainty, with a sense of confused anguish, even of guilt.
So....discovering the "lie" within the "truth".....makes you evil....we know about that.
he also wrote:
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
wings (I could go on....you know that though)