Hello everybody. I haven't been on here long but I found this site a couple days ago and quickly realised it had a lot of posts by people going through similar experiences as me. I read some of the answers and it helped relieve some inner anguish I've been carrying since everything I came clean to my parents about everything I've been reading about.
I just have been going through a rough patch right now; that might be an under or overstatement depending on your own personal experiences with this kind of stuff. How it all started, in short - I was in biology sophomore year and started leaning more towards evolution than creation as an explanation for the origin of life.
I feel like this was really the source of my original doubts about the Jehovah's Witnesses organisation as "the truth". When I started doing personal research I stumbled upon JWFacts.com. Originally, I clicked out because it struck me as apostate material and I immediately assumed it wasn't factual.
Once I let myself read a few articles I realised something else- it seemed all very factual. Using just the resource of the vast and endless internet I double/triple checked every fact I read on jwfacts and they were all 100% valid.
I was also doing personal reserach on evolutionary biology and other fields of science that backed it up. But I felt guilty- I FEEL guilty every day. Because I was raised my whole life as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and now my parents are acting like this is all a crisis. Initially, I hid everything from them. Recently, however, two of my elder brothers left "the truth" and moved away, telling my parents they weren't interested any longer. My parents pulled me aside and asked if I shared any of their doubts, and well, I was honest.
This "crisis" is now a ginormous elephant in the room every time I spend time with my parents. I feel sick at my stomach every time they want to "talk about it". I have plenty of conviction, and plenty of reasons why I don't want to be a Jehovah's Witness, but every time they look at me I feel downright criminal- like some sort of murderer. They make me feel incredibly guilty about the choices I'm making to think for myself. My mother sent me a really long email about how she feels that Satan has his grasp on me right now. That I'm on a stage for Satan and Jehovah and I have to make my choice. She also asked me to stop reading all the material I have been that "contradicts God's word", and see if I change my mind by the end of the summer.
But I don't want to do that; all the material from the WTS seems heavily propaganda-fied. Why is it SO wrong for me to seek out "secular" perspective on the matter? I'm aware of biases, but isn't that the same principle for WT material? Isn't their material even moreso biased- to convince me that Jehovah's Witnesses are the ONE TRUE organisation, despite records of doctrine change, political involvement, lies and misquotes?
If anyone replies to this, I just want to know that someone out there has been through something like this and that maybe all this anguish and depression and feeling hopeless will go away. The only reason I feel so sad is because I have this dread that I'm choosing between my life and my family's happiness. I don't know what to do. I don't know if I should choose what I've learned or give in to this incredibly powerful pull from my parents to go back to mindless submission.
Please, anybody.