Hi, new member here, but I've lurked for a while.
For obvious reasons, I won't give too many details about myself, but I thought I'd share my story of what might in the end have been the easiest fade in recorded history. It's going to be a wall of text, and I'm writing it mostly for myself to get it out of my system, but it is, of course, a pretty open forum, so any comments and most questions are welcome.
Here goes:
What made me realize TTATT was legalism. It's funny how you can accept and even support things until you're on the receiving end, isn't it? In my case, I hit the glass ceiling at speed. I started pioneering in my late teens; really loved the social part of it (not the service, but the friends it provided), the responsibility handed to me in the congregation and on assemblies, the way the top people said they liked what I was doing and to keep it up. I started noticing how everybody around me began getting promoted to MS, though, and somehow it skipped me every time, so one day I told one of the elders in my congregation something to the tune of "Hey, it's all good and fun, you know, but I can take some more responsibility if there's an opening somewhere."
- That's really nice to hear, he said. I'll take that up with the BOE.
Well, nothing happened for a couple of months, and then the CO came and went, and after that a couple of brothers took me aside and told me that they liked my work, but really: How much contact do you have with your DF'd brother (who lives some 300 miles away)?
I've never seen any reason to shy from the truth, so I told them: "We phone each other a couple of times a month, just to check on one another. We are brothers, you know, even if he doesn't agree with our faith."
Long story short, they never said anything concrete, but I realized that my working essentially double shifts (32 hours a week plus pioneering plus all congregation work I could get my hands on) wouldn't lead anywhere if I didn't compromise some of my basic values. From that point, it took me about two weeks to burn out completely, mismanaging both my work and my "privileges" for several months, turning up late for meetings, developing what I can only describe as a strong social phobia. So I handed in my resignation from pioneering, and let every job at the congregation go except for the ones I actually liked, which they let me keep.
That was about eight years ago.
I still had a general belief that the Bible was the nearest God's word we could come, and that the witnesses were the group that came closest to following that, despite the obvious problems that are bound to surface when trying to herd a large organization. That, and I have a very pious mother, who truly believes that if you lack faith, you can gain it back by congregation work. So I tried. And one day I thought "Hey, what would I look like with a beard? I know at least three bearded brothers who are very liked and well respected, and one of them even has some 'privileges' in his congregation, even if he can't stand on the platform on assemblies - and that's alright; I never liked doing that anyway."
A vacation later, I came home with a well-kempt, neatly trimmed full beard, in a similar style to that of the (much older) well-liked brothers I knew. Needless to say, the guano hit the fan. The BOE had a meeting one week later, and another week later, two concerned brothers took me aside to the library and said I wasn't setting a good example, so I'd have to choose between my beard and my "privileges". Well, I liked my beard, my wife liked my beard, and almost no-one had commented negatively on it, so I chose my beard. And this time, the ultimatum they gave me couldn't be scripturally supported by any twisted logic, so I started thinking for real. The thinking lead to research, and the research lead to some stunning realizations which most of you have reached too.
Now, back to the subject of fading:
During the last few years, I've read. A lot. I've realized that some "apostates" truly are nothing but disgruntled, petty people with nothing constructive to spend their time on. I've also realized that some had very valid complaints. I've read up on the 607 controversy, I've read Crisis of Conscience, but I've also read everything I dismissed back in school - I realized that I'd had the tools to scientifically debunk the Flood myth in my head for a dozen years, I just didn't combine them with a common sense approach to the Bible. I've read books by Simon Singh and Richard Dawkins (and I pride myself in having joined Douglas Adams in "understanding" evolution and dismissing the necessity of a creator thanks to the latter).
I'm usually pretty careful, and when I haven't been brought up believing things, I tend to research them properly before making a decision. I've seen the stories here of successful and less successful attempts to fade. The thing is, my parents are in. My wife is in. My sister is in, my in-laws are in, many of my friends are in. I questioned if, if push came to shove, people I care about wouldn't suddenly become hostile.
Well, a few months ago, I simply couldn't take it anymore. I had stopped preaching a long while ago, but I had still counted time for any philosophical discussions that even touched the subject of religion. Now I stopped reporting, I stopped having my parts, I asked to be replaced by someone else when it came to my remaining "privilege".
After three months of no reports, I got the visit. Two elders I really like asked if they could come by, and I told them they were welcome, and we spoke for a while, and the subject of service came up. If there's something I've learned from this board, it's not to argue specifics, and not to be confrontational. My side of it was simply that I couldn't stand behind the things we are supposed to tell people, as long as our official standpoint is that so much in the Bible is literal truth. I gave the flood as an example, simply because it requires an additional step to get from there to truly apostate (or atheist) thoughts.
In the end, they said that no-one can get DF'ed for their thoughts, but they warned me of speaking to others about these matters. And that was pretty much it.
A while ago, we had the CO here, and he and one of the elders who'd visited me asked me if they could meet me again. I got a bit paranoid, but I figured I could as well be straight with them and have it over with.
The CO was a good guy. A company man, of course, but a true believer. One thing that strikes me about the conversation with him was this: We discussed loss of faith, and he pointed to faith being part of the fruitage of the spirit, and from that standpoint, it's something God can take away from us if we do things he disapproves of. So he said "I'm not trying to hide that this is my point: You must've done something wrong if you lost your faith." He was also pushing the point that my faith had been fact-based, and when my facts changed, so did my faith.
From my side, I was trying to get the point across that faith - what you believe is true - is the result of a combination of what you know and how you work as a person. I could never base faith on anything but facts, because that's the kind of a person I am. As long as some facts were hidden from me, I had faith in God. When I got hold of the information that had been kept away, my faith vanished.
I also got the chance to explain evolution in one sentence right at the end: "Our" literature accepts the concept of micro evolution. The main difference between that and what biologists believe, is that "we" claim that there's an artificial end to how far someting can evolve, and biologists say that there isn't. Evidence supports the latter view, while there's really no evidence at all for the former one. I didn't take it further, and I have no idea if it helped, but it felt good to defend my position.
So, the aftermath so far?
- I'm pretty much free, as long as I don't debate with members of the congregation, which I have no intention of doing - they're connected to the Internet too.
- My wife has been wonderful all this time; very supportive and extremely respectful of my situation even though she still believes.
- My in-laws are pretty much OK with the current situation. They'd prefer it if I "took the spiritual lead" at home, but they know their daughter.
- My parents have very mixed feelings. I believe if my father was 30 years younger he might leave too, but now he's got too much to lose. Also, my mother is a very strong believer, and living with her as an unbeliever would be hell on earth, not because of aggression on her part, but because of the constant nagging to gain faith through work.
- I've begun building new friendships outside of the congregation, which works just fine for me.
- I no longer have a troubled conscience for spending time with my brother.
All in all, I don't think it could've worked out much better.
