My judicial meeting took place on Monday night. It didn't go very well. I was a bit annoyed because the meeting centered on my private beliefs - things that I've already spoken to the elders about in the past many times before. I don't think I handled myself as well as I wanted to, but I guess I did ok under the circumstances. The meeting was three hours long, and I recorded the first hour of it. The meeting was pretty repetitious, so the first hour is pretty representative of the entire meeting.
I wasn't so much nervous as I was excited and I think that kept me from responding in as calm a manner as I would have liked. Also, my memory becomes really spotty when I'm put on the spot like that, so there are many things that I wanted to say that escaped me at the time. I did allow them to do a lot of the talking, which I thought would be valuable for the recording.
Basically, the discussion centered around faith vs. evidence. Their argument was basically that I had to accept the bible on faith if I were to continue to be a Witness. I couldn't do that. I was surprised that the meeting dwelled more on my private beliefs than on what I might have said to others. It seems that there is a difference in their eyes between one who has doubts based on a weakness and one who has doubts based on research. According to the elders, the latter is an apostate, while the former is just spiritually weak.
By the end of the meeting it was clear that I was going to be DF'd. I asked if I could have the option of DA'ing myself retroactively if their decision was to DF me, as I would prefer DA'ing over DF'ing. This conversation went on for an hour and it was finally decided that I could not do that. At that I stated that I had no other choice than to DA myself. They wanted me to write a letter, but I told them that I'd rather do it orally. They consulted the flock book which said that that was acceptable and they accepted my oral disassociation.
After the meeting I felt tired, but it was a good tired. This phase of my life is now over. I was baptized on December 17, 1988 at the tender age of 13, and I was DA'd on January 28, 2002 at 26 years of age. Maybe I'll celebrate it every year? :)
Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know how I was doing. I'm doing great right now. I converted the recording into an MP3 (about 4 mb) if anyone would like to listen to it. The quality is not that great in some parts, but I think it came out pretty good overall. My mistake was in not taking my suit jacket off - any slight movement I made came up as static on the recording (and I did do a lot of gesturing while I spoke, apparently!). If anyone would like to listen to it, email me. If there is enough demand, then perhaps someone could host it?
So now my apostate status is official! Do I get a gold watch or something? :)
rem
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." - Mark Twain