Well, I knew it was only a matter of time before my parents confronted me on my "loss of spirituality" (their term). I love them dearly and would rather cut off an arm than hurt them, so I was hoping (naively) that my so far successful fade might escape their notice. We live about an hour apart so my lack of theocratic activity would go unnoticed. Okay, I'm a coward, too; that played into it.
I'd had a discussion w/my mother about 2 years ago so she was aware of my doubts, but it came to a head this morning. They showed up at my door (after calling me the day before to let me know they'd be by) and, once we were all seated, wanted to know what was going on. Now, let me say that they're both in their mid 70's and extremely zealous--they live and breath by the Society. Well, what could I do? I was as honest as I could be, letting them know the basis of my doubts, the problems with the Creation book, the misrepresentations about the nature of evolution, the baseless claims for the last days, the failed predictions. And it was basically pointless; my dad, who did most of the talking, just kept coming back to "but this is God's organization" and how wonderful and amazing and truthful it was. Oh, and that the Society DOES apologize when it gets something wrong. He didn't address any of my specifics (and honestly, I didn't expect him to) except to say that evolution was a dogma perpertrated by scientists that had a vested interest in keeping the system intact or something of that nature. It's amazing how someone as intelligent as my dad, who loves science, can literally banish an entire field (biology) as entirely misguided and just waiting for some mysterious, inevitable, panacaeic discovery that will turn the entire discipline on its head and prove that humanity was an act of special creation 6,000 years ago.
After that, I just let my dad talk because I love him anyway. He talked for close to 2 hours. My mom said a couple of times, "But can't you just put all your doubts on a shelf, wait for Jehovah to correct them and get on with the preaching work?"
I don't know what's going to happen. At one point, my dad made an allusion to how our actions affect others, including our family, even to the point of continued assocation. I knew what he was intimating and I said, rather adamantly, "I want to be perfectly clear: I haven't DONE anything and I don't SAY anything about any of this to ANYBODY. I don't want to be accused of "teaching falsehoods!" He backed down at that point and admitted that I hadn't and that he wasn't going to repeat any of our conversation to anybody.
Still, there's nothing like the feel of a sword over your head...Damn it, I hate this! There's more but I don't feel like typing right now; I'm feeling a little sick. My fade was going so well, too.