Thank you for starting this thread. Doctrine definitely mattered a lot to me. I had read the Aid book cover to cover TWICE by the time I started high school. I was prolly the most frequent user of the KH library. My high school had a strong movement of Campus Lifers trying to convert JWs to their faith and I saw myself as an apologist defending the Witness doctrines on death, the trinity, etc. Eventually I got to learn more about the Bible outside of what the Society dished out, and I learned that I was quite a bit misled on such matters. But that wasn't what specifically made me leave. It was the Society's dishonesty. THAT is what convinced me that it wasn't God's organization. I learned that the Society was intentionally lying about the facts about crucifixion. I realized this firsthand from examining the very classical Greek and Latin sources the Society cited. Some of their "facts" were totally made up. The last straw tho was the Trinity broshure. By the time it came out, I knew very well what was said and believed by the church fathers. So when I read that broshure and read that page that outrageously misrepresented what Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, etc. taught about Jesus and God, I was so angry. I felt like that householder a friend of mine placed the Creation book with and when my friend returned for the RV, the householder told him he ripped the book up and threw it away because of its "scholarly dishonesty". I refused to go to the book study that page would be discussed, knowing I could not just sit there hearing ppl regurgitating its untruths without speaking up. So that was about the time I left. Also I had had a nasty encounter with the elders over my research about the cross.
Another thing around that time was the Revelation Climax book, or the "cartoon book" as I called it. The interpretations were all so unbelievable and although most were already taught in older publications (like the proclaimations from the '20s being the great trumpet blasts in Revelation), I was shocked to read them all side by side and realize what a crock of **** it all was. Going to the book study when that book was considered as also felt to be a huge waste of time.
Another big deal was this: I could not, no way could I I, go out in field service and say that such, and such, such was the truth, knowing it not to be the case. I could not go out to lie to people. So the doctrinal issue pretty much ended my "kingdom preaching" as well.
About the lack of love, I pretty much chalked that up to human nature and thought that was how it was pretty much anywhere else.....I never ever bought into that "spiritual paradise" nonsense which I thought of as idealistic license, and not of a real doctrinal teaching....
Leolaia
