neat blue dog, maybe the better analogy with the JW meetings would be the private meetings of the elders and the governing body, rather than the public meetings. Of course only a select few can attend the private meetings. A number of ex-JWs on this site who had been JW elders said their figurative eyes were really opened regarding the JW religion while they were elders.
Folks, in some respects I began noticing problems with the WT teachings when I spoke with some of the local elders and heard their sincere WT based view of certain matters, such as the following:
- submission to all authorities in all cases (other than when they us to do something which the Bible [as interpreted by the WT] forbids) - even if the authority is oppressive;
- slavery being just another form of the employer-employee relationship (and that thus the same biblical NT principles of obedience of a slave to its master apply to modern employees in regards to their employers). Note that least one of my black ancestors were slaves in the USA (when slavery was practiced in the southern USA) and I find slavery to be extremely appalling, including as depicted in the TV miniseries called "Roots" (which I watched when it first aired, and I also read the entire book called Roots [and my father, a white JW, kindly gave to me a Reader's Digest condensed version of the book, without me asking for it]);
- an elder telling me about the letter from the WT to the elders about why the WT was an NGO in affiliation with the UN - stating the unconvincing reason mentioned in the letter;
- application of the NT verse (about anointed Christians will judge angels and thus that disputes between those in the congregations should be handled by the congregational elders) that the WT uses about "why not let yourself be wronged" by a fellow JW, rather the elder taking my side in matter (despite me being convinced I was right in the matter);
- being told that rather than using my unemployment benefits to have enough time to find and obtain a job similar to the one I was laid off from (namely an accounting department job), I should stop collecting unemployment benefits and simply apply for and accept any job (such as a menial low paying one) that I can get (even though a person at the unemployment benefits office said I don't need to do such);
- that if I only spend a couple of hours in field service per month and haven't managed to talk a lot of people into receiving WT literature then something is wrong with me as a JW (rather than that the reason is that people are not interested in WT literature and that they are tired of JWs coming to their door, and that the vast majority of people no longer even bother to answer the door);
- an elder trying to intimidate me (a ministerial servant at the time) into ordering the WT's JW Yearbook (even though the daily text had stopped being included in the Yearbook by that time and even though the Yearbook by that time was no longer used at any Kingdom Hall meetings, even for field service) - a series of books which were always very boring to me, and into ordering me to obtain a video by the WT about the organization (a video which I correctly thought would bore me immensely);
- being told by an elder (since I was a a ministerial servant at the time) to spy on a married woman at night (though from outside in a parked car on the other side of the street from her house) to see if there is WT based grounds of evidence that she is cheating her JW husband (the husband would be along with me in my own car, a car which the woman thus would not recognize) by adultery, with the grounds for evidence being to see if the lights in the house turned off (with the bedroom light turning off last) while a man other than her husband was alone in the house with her;
- etc.
