Thought I'd better say Hi!
To say I was once a "worldly person" would be an understatement. I consider myself to be a man who has "been there and done that" and enjoyed all the pleasures of the world. Then one day I met someone who was in the "truth" if that’s what you like to think it is, we dated and much to the annoyance of some of her family we decided to get married. I started going to the meetings and was slowly sucked into the hype, after asking two or three Elders for a study and being ignored each time I went to an elder in the sister congregation and he was happy to help. It was only after I got baptised that I started to notice the cracks in the facade. I went on the min and was used in the meetings and got to know how the org worked and that was when I knew I had been fooled by it all, I was still an outsider in the congregation and was an expert people watcher, you were told to love one another and treat them as your family but when I noticed that you had the “Us and Them” groups with certain brothers and sisters being ignored and the total insincerity that was given to all but a few. Perhaps because I had come into the truth I noticed things that those who were born into it didn't.
The week in week out guilt trip they put you on if you missed a meeting or you weren’t doing enough field service. The Brothers who gave talks on subjects that they themselves didn't obey to. Then you had the evil vindictiveness of certain m/s and elders against others because they didn't like them. Even when help was asked for I never got it.
When I was worldly I had a social group of friends who would look after and do anything for each other, I couldn't say that about the org.
For me it came to a head when the P/O and other elders kept asking me if I knew things about brothers to stop them from becoming m/s or elders or just to find things out so as they could use at a later date, also the persecution of two or three brothers by a power crazed P/O which almost destroyed the congregation. After that the meetings were never the same, you could feel the tension in the hall for months, This proved to me that there was no love in the congregation and if these people were Christians did I want to end up like some bitter twisted old man like those around me. These things and other stuff that I haven't mentioned finally confirmed what I had been thinking for some time "If there was a God them you can keep him because I don't believe in one any longer".
My wife and I have a three year old son and one due in three weeks and between us we have decided that the Org is no place to bring up children that is another reason why we have left.
I would like to thank all that post on this site for answering some of the questions I have had in the past couple of years about the GB and Borg and there corrupt ways.