My niece is on FB. She's a very creative and lovely person, but she's the only other family member I have who's a JW. Her mother got booted out for smoking, and her brother just seems to know it's a bunch of crap.
On FB, I posted a funny status update that went something like this: "My mother brought me up and hoped that I would grow into a career that would fulfill her dreams. Unfortunately, I didn't become a Watchtower magazine salesman. "
Hey, I thought it was funny! Unfortunately, she didn't and sent me the following message:
hey uncle ben, hows things going? i love ya and miss ya lots but ive been noticing some of your status', dont get me wrong everyone is entitled to there own opinion. but i would like to let you know that witnesses do not sell there literature, and we were made to have free will and choose the way in which we want to lead our lives. you can choose to do or say whatever you want its up to you. i choose to follow principals that help benefit me along with the other over 7 million witnesses in the world and ive been doing pretty good. i am trying to be polite in stating my opinion in saying that when i see your posts of little jokes about the witnesses, your also making jokes about me. now i know i can just pass by those posts and keep scrolling and ignore it but i just wanted to let you know it kinda hurts my feelings in some of the things you say. but anyways i dont mean to bother you, say hi to little Theo for me and i hope to see you both soon
Here was my response:
I know that they currently don't sell their literature, but when I was growing up in it, they did. Along with that, I was raised to believe that Armageddon was going to come before those who saw the events of 1914 pass away. I grew up believing this "truth" throughout most of my life. They ended up changing that "truth" when you were 3 years old, so you're not going to remember it.
As for making jokes about my experience as a JW, it's a great way to take being raised as one with a grain of salt. When I was regularly attending meetings, I was marked as "bad association" (why is beyond me) and all the parents in the congregation essentially told their kids to stay away from me. So I couldn't have any friends in The World because they were bad association, and I couldn't have any friends in the congregation because I was bad association. Pretty much nobody would talk to me at the Kingdom Hall. Then when I missed a meeting, everyone would tell me that they "missed me" at the last meeting. How could anybody miss me when they didn't bother associating with me?
Not everyone was bad in the congregation. The ones who actually seemed to be genuine loving and caring people were marked as "weak in the truth" because they didn't make every meeting. Whenever I run into those people in public these days, they still enjoy talking to me. Whenever I run into those who never bothered to associate with me, they either ignore me to tell me to go back to the meetings. The last time I attended a Kingdom Hall was for a funeral in the year 2000 for someone who was "weak in the truth". The others who were "weak in the truth" enjoyed talking to me while those who were "strong in the truth" either completely ignored me or told me that I needed to come back to the meetings.
In short, I did not see any real genuine love in the organization and the ones who actually did show it or had the potential to show it were called out by the Watchtower articles as questionable people. I got tired of letting "The Truth" make me feel like an unworthy person after I quit going to the meetings, so I prefer to look upon the whole experience the same way the average non-witness sees it - a bizarre, strange and perhaps a funny way of living life. The only difference between me and someone who has never been a JW is I know how it works on the inside because I've been there.
You can either view my humorous take on it as an attack on you, or you can take it as me making light of a bad experience from my past. That part is entirely up to you.