Recently, my mother, who had stopped talking to me because I was 'apostate,' started speaking to me again.
(Note that I successfully faded as opposed to ever being disfellowshipped due to dodging every elder question with "I'm not sure, I'm still searching and trying to find the answers.")
The reason why? At the International convention this year, they receieved a new video called something or other. It is basically another one of those "your family can still be saved even if they're fading away" videos. So that invigorated her to show it to me to try to appeal to my "heart."
The gist of this video is this. Essentially, a JW family is letting "the world" get to them. The parents are working hard at their two jobs to support themselves in their nice upper middle class house/life. The older son is exploring his musical talents and isn't believing "the truth" much any more due to his secular education. And his musical talents are so good that he's being tapped as a producer to an up and coming rap group that will make him a success. The daughter met a great, open minded "wordly" guy in school that is legitimately into her, non judgmental, etc. oh, and there's a goofy younger son that is really excited about everything.
It actually sounds like a wonderful situation - what a Christian family -should- be. Generally good people, not letting religion override facts, nice things happening to all of them in their lives. You're rooting for them to continue in this lifestyle.
However, the father is feeling guilty about the lack of meeting attendence and all of the danger signs. And when an elder and his wife move into their basement due to giving up "earthly" things in preparation of serving where the need is great, this is reinvigorated. Uh oh!
In this video, quite a few things are brought up:
1) The daughter's worldly boyfriend brings up that people should be accepting of gay marriage since it's their private lives and it's not harming anyone, and you shouldn't judge people to that point.
2) He also mentions not being controlling of who he's dating and if she wanted to date other people or explore other options, it's fine, while admitting that it can be tiring to do so. She relays her fears of not finding anyone within the organization to her father.
3) Older son tells younger son that as he goes through school, he'll learn that most of the stuff he's been learning is bunk, that things like evolution, etc. are true fact, and that he'll eventually be uninterested in religion after that.
4) The wife states that with the debt they're in, they have to continue working two jobs or be broke.
5) The husband is pretty regularly forced to work madatory overtime by his boss.
Fortunately for the witness family, all of these things are resolved in the end! This is how!:
1/2) The witness girl breaks up with her worldly boyfriend because, even though he's a great guy, legitimately, continuing to date him will mold her to his viewpoints.
That's right - no counters were given to any of what he said, it was just, "your way will corrupt me, so I'll stop." Does she find anyone within the organization? Who knows!
3) When younger son brings up to his parents that the bible may not be correct, the basement dwelling elder shows him a model of Noah's ark that he built. The son loves it! The family later gets together in a park to show the scale of Noah's ark! Yay! What does this have to do with validty and evidence?! Who cares!
4) The husband tells her that they can save, with her quitting or working part time, and cutting down on expenses. Note that he kind of forgot the debt. They are much happier and can spend more time with each other now!
5) The husband goes in to his boss and says "no more overtime." The boss says, "okay, I'll hire someone else." Then, as the husband starts crying (!), the boss relents and shows that he was bluffing basically, and says, "I wish I made the same choice before I ruined my family."
What about the older son that was becoming successful, knew about evolution and stopped believing, and wasn't falling for any of the other nonsense in the movie? Well...the father tells him a story...
...when the father was a kid, he had a muscle car and was drinking one night. he was watching his little brother, took him for a ride in the rain, sped, took a corner wrong, crashed, and killed his brother. You see, actions have consequences.
This resonated in the older son's mind, and he stopped making beats for the up and coming rapper, ruining his musical career, and now did family study and went out in field service all of the time! Nothing is mentioned about the whole evidence based belief thing! Yay!
So, yes, this entire video has to be some kind of elaborate troll. I sat there with my mouth agape the entire time because it was unbelievable that they made a video saying, "yes, all of these other things make sense, but ignore them all, emotional appeal, everyone is happy in the end!" This is literally what they're producing now.
The worst part was that I felt really bad at the end. My mom thought that this would sway me and was so hopeful about it, and I had to basically gently let her down with a glimmer of hope saying that maybe I'd try to go to a meeting every blue moon. Ugh.