Blondie,
Thanks.
Up until age 40, I had simply accepted what the organization taught me, without question. I felt I had found the truth that all people seem to be seeking. But from then until I was almost 60, I entertained serious questions about the organization and its teachings, and I developed doubts. I began seeking for something better.
The main reason for this was that I had resolved to read the Bible from cover-to-cover as often as I could for the rest of my life. Part of my motivation was that I felt I wasn’t making the progress I should as a Christian. I was embarrassed that others I knew, inside and outside of JWs, had a better knowledge of the Bible than I did. I had been in full-time service most of my life, but I felt inferior when younger men who had raised families and worked in the "outside" world often showed more maturity and common sense than I thought I had. I was determined to catch up by getting as close to God as I possibly could when one is a member of the "other sheep class."
In a short time I began to see the Bible in a new way. The thought kept losing its power that the Bible was written directly to "the anointed" only. When I had questions about what I was reading, and those questions were not covered in the Society’s literature, I spoke to members of Bethel’s writing staff personally. Most of them were of the "other sheep class." They showed no hesitation in helping me find very logical answers from "worldly" commentaries. I was amazed to discover that Matthew Henry, for example, dealt with the Bible to a far greater extent than the Society had, even going all the way back to the days of C. T. Russell. And Henry produced his awesome commentary in the 1700s! He was a trinitarian as he wrote, but later his entire congregation switched to being non-trinitarian. Eventually, at the suggestion of one of the writers, I purchased Henry's set of commentaries. It should be noted that the Society doesn’t condemn this since his work was produced before the WT's so-called 1918 "judgment day of the house of God."
I had always done the best I could to comply with all the rules and regulations of the organization. I felt it was my responsibility to aid others to also conform. Obedience to God meant being loyal to an organization that I felt he had founded and directed. But regular Bible reading was causing my relationship with God to become more personal. I began to appreciate that conformance to the thinking of God and Christ was not the same as always submitting religiously to a group of imperfect men.
Some of the answers I got from non-WT commentaries to simple Bible questions were very different from those published in WT literature. I could give many examples, but here are a few:
- The "other sheep" of John 10:16 are those not yet disciples when Jesus spoke, especially Gentiles, but certainly not a secondary class of Christians who would receive a destiny different from the first disciples.
- Christianity is a way of life, not membership in a particular organization.
- The earliest churches were independent, not controlled or directed by a governing body.
- The restoration prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures apply to faithful Jews as well as to the Christian church, not to a printing establishment that came into existence thousands of years after Jesus' earthly ministry.
- The return of Christ will be visibly observed by every person on earth, not by a comparatively small group of men who would see him in a mystically invisible sense.
- The Bible offers only one salvation destiny, not two.
I began to wrestle with big questions about my faith. How did I know I was really a Christian? I performed as the organization expected, but I felt that my institutional environment was requiring me to brush aside some of Jesus’ vital teachings. In fact, the organization was teaching things that were not even hinted at in the scriptural context or that contradicted the Bible’s plain and simple statements. I didn’t feel it was safe to discuss my questions and doubts with anyone in the organization, so I kept them to myself for many years. Day and night I prayed earnestly that God would open my eyes and my heart to his truth and to where I might find people who already possessed it.
Occasionally I would learn of improper, even immoral, conduct by one prominent member or another. At times I was an eyewitness to the unfair treatment of underlings who were falsely accused by elders, circuit overseers or other leaders. The usual answer to such absurd conduct was that God would remedy the situation if we would just wait on him. But in many cases, years would pass and the wrongdoers would advance to greater authority and their victims would languish deeper in hurt feelings or bitterness. This was disturbing to me and led to heartache, especially when men in authority seemed critical of those who offered information that could have resulted in a correction of the unfair situations.
Finally, I sought out an old friend who had left JWs several years ago. We spent an entire day discussing many of my most difficult questions. I was deeply impressed by his logic and use of the Scriptures, but even more by the faith and joy that radiated from him. When he spoke, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had a relationship with God and Jesus and that he was experiencing that something more in Christianity that was missing from my own life. I would have given anything to have a life like his.
I thought about that discussion for the next few days, and I made up my mind to leave Jehovah’s Witnesses within the coming year. Of course, leaving was nevertheless very difficult. I knew I would need to let go of fifty years' worth of friendships and of many things I'd been taught. But I knew that God was answering my many prayers of the past several years and that my decision could only lead to the better life and greater blessings that I was hoping for. It turned out to be the best step I ever took in my life.
