The charge by JWs that ex-JWs are "bitter" is typical of JWs who have no answer for criticisms against their religion. They substitute an emotion-based dismissal for reasoned argument.
To be bitter is to be intensely reproachful, to harbor intense animosity, to have a great deal of cynicism and rancor towards someone.
To be sure, in a large population of abuse victims -- and Jehovah's Witnesses are often victims of abuse by their leaders -- you're guaranteed to find bitter people, but that does not mean that every victim is bitter. Nor does it mean that criticism of the abuse is bad.
Being bitter is not necessarily bad. If you were a victim of Nazi persecution and the Nazi's killed every member of your family, you'd have every right to be bitter. In fact, something would be wrong with you if you weren't. You'd need to take care that your bitterness didn't eat you up, but you'd still have every right to be bitter against your persecutors.
If you are a JW and the JW organization comes to persecute you by disfellowshipping you and preventing every member of your family from having a warm relationship with you, you have every right to be bitter.
But not everyone who suffers like that becomes bitter. Many remain fairly calm and are able to express reasoned criticisms of the Watchtower and its leaders. Many JWs dismiss such reasoned criticism as the mere product of uninformed emotionalism. Why? Because it makes dismissal easy.
Reasoned criticisms are also often expressed by people who are bitter. Being bitter does not automatically make a person unreasonable or unable to offer valid criticism. The fact that many bitter people are unreasonable does not invalidate reasoned criticsims.
Very often, people gradually come to a realization that JWs are not teaching the truth in certain areas. They become uncomfortable with these false teachings, and so they begin to investigate more thoroughly. Once they do, they keep on uncovering more and more false teachings, and they usually begin to uncover abuse. Once they pass a certain point of tolerance, a sort of mental switch flips and they no longer look at the JWs like they used to. Rather than looking for reasons to excuse the false teachings, they look for more examples of false teachings.
It is when that mental switch flips that they become ex-JWs in their own minds, and they often begin expressing themselves. Sometimes their expressions are far from tactful. No matter, if the criticism comes from an ex-JW, JWs -- trained by the Society itself -- almost always label it as the product of a bitter person so as to be able to dismiss it without thinking about its validity. It is this mindset, aided and abetted by JW leaders, that proves that Jehovah's Witnesses are a dangerous and destructive cult, because they subvert a person's mind.
It's easy to show why even bitter criticism should not be dismissed without further consideration. Suppose that lone survivor of Nazi persecution were asked to be a witness against the Nazis at Nuremberg. The survivor recounted the death of his family in strong terms and shouted curses at the killers. Should the court have dismissed his testimony simply because he reacted to his family's death as any normal human being would? The answer is obvious. Yet that is exactly what JWs expect everyone to do whenever they hear criticisms of their religion.
AlanF
