I have spent the last week or so with my sister and bro-in-law and my 6year old niece, all JWs.
They live in a town not too far away from me, and I visit them every couple of months or so. My sister and I are close, not extremely so, but we appreciate each other as we have no other bros & sisters, our mother died 21yrs ago, and our father treats us as though we are dead too (due to non-JW issues).
Last time I went to visit them, my bro-in-law asked my niece to ask me if I'd go to the meeting. He should have known better as she said, "Daddy asked me to ask you to come to the meeting..."
I told her no, I won't be going. She asked why, and I simply said I didn't want to go and that was that.
Fast forward to this weekend.........
It's Saturday night, we've had dinner, I've just given my niece a bath, and the others are doing the washing up.
My bro-in-law says, "Can you go through the Watchtower with S***** [my niece] and find an answer for her?"
Now, my bro-in-law and sister know I don't go to the meetings anymore, and that I have disagreements with JW doctrines. Yet they put me in the position, in front of my niece (who adores me, and I her), of pretending I am still a JW and help indoctrinate my niece.
I couldn't do it.
"What if I teach her something different," I asked.
"Just find an answer for her from the WT study," my sister replied firmly.
"I'll find her a scripture to read, cos I might not agree with something the WT says. You'd like that, wouldn't you, S*****?" I asked my niece. My niece nodded affirmatively at the prospect of finding a scripture to read.
At this point my sis & bro-in-law got agitated. My bro-in-law said, "Don't worry about it then, there's no need to make an issue out of it" and walked over to pick up S***** who up to this point was being held in my arms during this discussion.
"I'm not making an issue out of it, you are! All I simply said was that I believe in the Bible, not the Watchtower!"
"Don't say that! If you say anything more like that, you can go home, I don't care what time it is, you can leave now!"
I couldn't believe he was saying this! My bro-in-law was prepared to send me home, a 5hour drive in the dark, all because I said I didn't believe in the Watchtower!!!
My sister diffused the issue by stepping in and saying that she'd do the study with S*****, which basically consisted of S***** reading the first page of the study article, underlining all the words she could read - a dozen "Jehovahs", 5 "Gods" and an assortment of "the", "on", "and" and other small words (she's only in Kindergarten, remember).
My bro-in-law was a bit huffy for the rest of the night, but my sister was ok from then on. I wanted to tell her about my bro-in-law trying to get me to go to the meeting via my niece last time I visited, but I never got the chance due to a persistant shadow. I just want to tell her that I don't appreciate his tactics, and that I'd like her to accept my beliefs, just as I accept their beliefs.
I know plenty on this board have had even worse experiences, but I thought it was pretty low for my family to stoop to such low tactics in order to try to get me to come back to the "Troof".