I accepted a Bible study with the witnesses. It was thrilling to feel that finally I could be part of a warm Christian brotherhood while my family sagged like a cardboard box on a rainy day. I was, as I said before, as solid a Christian Witness as I could be.I tried. I was a good friend to my sisters, not a gossip, a big-time stayer-at-home on our rough little farm, as good a wife as I could be to a husband as eccentric as myself, and I worked sometimes part-time then fulltime with a house more-or-less full of kids. In these past 21 years I have been in good congregations, a sad one and one so rotten to the core that I sent a letter to the Branch.
The Witnesses emphasized the binding unity of Truth. Jesus taught this. Witnesses that I most loved tried to live by it. What does it mean, live by the Truth? When I first studied I learned there were these big doctrinal differences that separated Witnesses from everyone else. But I was convinced the Witnesses were the folks that complied with first century Christianity in every way. The harder life got for me the more I studied my Bible. I couldn't possibly keep up with all the literature we got but I maintained my bible reading somehow. I knew that that was the most important.
Once I looked up the Hebrew words for male and female and I could not help but discover the words the bible people spoke showed how corrupt their attitudes were, say, toward women. It lead me to realize how important it was to understanding issues beyond the superficial in my reading. And naturally I began to wonder why, if the Bible put "burnt offering and sacrifice" together in a sentence it must mean something, like they aren't the same thing . My study and questions grew over time. I wondered who began this animal killing for God. It was men. I began to think that God had got a bum rap from bloody minded men. I have had years of meditation and study on this matter of Abraham's test. But in the end the critical points are as much ones common sense and faith as they are of scholarship. In fact common sense and faith had done everything for Abraham. If Jesus and Jehovah tell us what God is like, and Jesus holds us to believing the Scriptures, then it is wrong to put a word in Jehovah's mouth that he didn't say and didn't mean. Jehovah never commanded Abraham to slaughter/ sacrifice Isaac even if Abraham tried to do it. If the brotherhood demands me to cover for their bad in this, I will not.
If the brothers told you to repeat the false story from the literature and NOT read the Bible's own words what would you think?
I've heard you use the expression "churchoids"--That is was I would call it now. Not a brotherhood.
You might be disappointed in me, MadJ, but I would rather not disappoint Jehovah.