So I've been out since my mid teens. Never baptised and consider myself among the lucky ones as it meant I could still have a normal(?) relationship with my parents who are both still in.
Jump forward 14 years or so to last night. I'd always thought the witnesses were a bit daft but basically harmless. That is until I decided to take a look during a period of depression last year, I was thinking 'maybe I was wrong to leave' and decided to research it myself.
Of course, being a normal human being for over a decade, I approached it critically and, of course, what I came across was not a new-found love of the WT. No, what I found was scandal, cover up, contradiction, deceit and death.
This made me angry, very angry, I don't really do angry usually. Nevertheless whilst I stopped defending the WT when colleagues who knew I'd once been a witness asked questions, I didn't speak to my parents about my concerns.
Until last night.
I've thought for a while that my father might be PIMO, so I decided to test the water and texted an innocuous question about whether it was true that the generation of 1914 had now become an 'overlapping generation.'
This resulted in a phone call, lasting almost an hour. My hope was to raise a little bit of doubt in his mind, I figured I'd question the UN relationship and leave it at that. Unfortunately I was ill-prepared and whilst he's admitted having questions of his own I ended up going all scatter-gun and asking about almost all of the things I'd found on JWfacts that I agreed with (some things I countered in my own mind when I was doing my research and so didn't mention them, I like to have a balanced debate with myself).
My concern is that I might have done too much too fast, and that having viable (if incorrect) responses to some of my attacks may have mentally given him the ability to doubt everything I said. He's said he's going to ask the elders about the UN and I'm very worried that that might put him in the position of being told he has to cut ties with whoever raised it with him.
I get on very well with my parents, as does my brother who is also out (also never baptised) and I fear I've put him in a very precarious position. We still have a family dinner every week and whilst my brother and I don't join in the prayer, we will remain respectfully silent. As to the WT, as a family we simply avoid the subject, they don't try and bring us back and we don't criticise the Org (until now) My mother is definitely PIMI although I doubt this would make her cut ties (unless instructed to by the Elders, possibly).
Have I jeopardised this carefully balanced relationship?
Sorry for the wall of text, this is my first time posting although I've read a lot of other peoples threads!