DoubtfullyYours - ........I can easily see that the good far outweighs the bad........
Unless I'm misunderstanding somehow, how can you possibly say this? Yes, the JW's dress nice and there are nice people in the organization, but they aren't necessarily more moral than anyone else (the horror stories abound like anywhere else). They don't do charitable work, even in times of natural disaster choosing primarily to help their own. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of families are estranged due to their rules. People live in a system of fear and control in the organization, many surviving on "pills and prayers", according to one famous talk by a Brother Mack. Kids are brought up isolated from the world at large and end up ostracized. They're then pushed into baptism whereby they risk being forever ostracized from their families at some point in the future. Time that could be spent recreationally is devoted to mindless door knocking and I can't tell you how many times I wished my dad would do something with us but he had meetings as an elder to go to. Most new members come from growing families or friends of friends, not helping hurting people in the world and bringing them in. Suicide happens often, so they aren't protected from that. People die refusing blood transfusions. They die because the organization makes arbitrary rules and won't let them get a party card in their country. So many lives ran off into a ditch because of Jehovah's Witnesses, but they're often out of sight and out of mind.
Where is all of this good that far outweighs the bad? I'm not being daft. I'm serious. When I lived my little JW life in a bubble it seemed great, but that's just because the dissonance wouldn't allow me to see things as they really were. I knew in the back of my mind that this wasn't right, and that wasn't right, but look at us being Jehovah's happy people, his clean people, blah blah blah. It sounds great, but it simply wasn't true.
