I am visiting this site for quite some time now and now i think it is time to tell something about me and my experience
without giving away my name (I am in "fade mode"): I am from the small country they call the netherlands, the land of wooden shoes, tulips, cheese and too many inhabitants per square meter. I am married with children and a second generation JW. Since a year I stopped visiting the hall. In that period I discovered that I do not miss it at all which is actually strange since if it is the truth it would really should pull me to it and not bounce me of it. I actually discovered that something very heavy was falling of my shoulders. Since I had a lot of doubts builded up, a lot of years before I started to express them to some people in the local congregation (including the doubts of the slave). The fun part was that it really started to smolder after a watchtower article about charles taze russell and "kingdom songs". It was actually used to promote the new song book... the songs have changed a lot and not for the better. CTR got his faith back by visiting a baptist/adventist gathering because of the songs and after that started the company/religion we now know as JW! I started to get anoyed about a lot of things especially against the way everyone seems to look at (my) children. I also had a lot of doubts about the fact that we teach a lot of things to others while in real life noone seems to care about. It started to hit me that something is really wrong. Especially the love-part felt like fake (not strange since it IS fake)!
I started to feel that if THIS was the organisation I had to live with then I rather die then keep living on. I even told the brothers I did not care about the paradise since the spiritual paradise that we were supposed to live in had cracks from the core. And then... i simply told my wife I would not go anymore... I may help her when she goes to a convention (and I go with her) but that's it.... I stopped...
Shortly after I stopped I had the "courage" to read the book "crisis of conscience". A lot of things I was coping with where told by someone who had been in the top of the organisation and he could honestly say what happened there. He was demonized... but I could not read it in his book! He was a very humble man in my book and I think that he had more respect for the bible then all the other chums on the hihj seats in total. After that book I felt encouraged to read the bible... although I read a lot of biblebooks before. After starting in the gospels something happened...
I felt a loving kindness and a "freedom" when I started to read the bible, when I read about Christ I felt warm and I felt a tenderness and loving kindness I seldom or maybe never experienced. Simply because I started to read the bible without premeditation and prejudgement... I read it because I wanted to do so. I felt encouraged in a lot of respects and even feel more capable of doing what is right then in all the 34 years in "the truth". I did swear a lot when I was a witness, I drunk a lot , I simply turned into a badder person in the latter years since I did not feel any hope or any love at all in the last couple of years. I always felt like a stranger in a strange land who never ever got accepted (not in the world or in the truth). Everyone laughed with me and at me because I seemed a fool to everyone but now I think I know why... I was hated because I stand for something higher then flesh... I stand for truth and only the truth that can be understood by spirit: it is the simple gospel of Christ.
In the company I work for we once had a advertising campaign which had a slogan: Simple but Brilliant... and that statement is true especially when you relate it to the Gospels. Christ came to simple men, was born in a simple and poor family, he had no bed to sleep nor a house to stay by default, he died with a death that even a poor man does not die... he became lesser then men so he could be elevated to the highest of names. When I learned that I knew that I found what I have searched for: the love of Christ and his Father... I know for a fact that even though you may be broken and battered by every power in the world or even battered by the powers that are beyond men, you can still be encouraged and cared for by someone who is higher then all these things: Christ Jesus and his Father.
In this I am standing alone in my family but I must say that my relationship actually became better of it... I have respect for the religion of my wife even though I do not share her point of view (anymore)... I have respect for every person in this world who believes differently. I hope that my wife at some time will find the same piece of mind... a source of water that stops your thirst for something else... I do not have to sell magazines anymore to feel a bit better... or visit a hall to feel myself a bit better... it is just a placebo. The real peace of mind can not be "earned"... you either get it from above or you don't.
Isaiah 48 says: 17 Thus says the Lord , your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. 18 a Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! b Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea I feel like that and I hope others will experience this feeling as well...