Thank you for sharing your story.

It truly shocks JWs, it always has, that I take a stand for Jehovah without an expectation for reward. It does not matter to me whether I live or die at the end of this System of Things because it only matters how I walk, and that I walk with integrity towards what is right in the universal challenge. Paradise is restored for justice’s sake not as a right or a personal reward. I marvel at the hubris of some Jehovah’s Witnesses and the focus of others, with their eyes on the prize, when the sole decision was to take a stand for Jehovah or for His Accuser. It does not matter that this paragraph is rooted in events of the past because it is who I am today and the principles it explains are with me still.

I was his witness – though somehow my dad and I were never baptized as Witnesses. Even I tried to have Bible studies with other as a boy. But I never thought Jehovah would invalidate the test of Job by appealing to the greediness for life of some people over others, as is a core Jehovah’s Witness teaching.

Your story brings back memories, and remembrance of guilt and worry whether I was a good enough human being to be acceptable to God – whose earthly judgment was manifest in His anointed. My dad always wanted me to get baptised and marry a “good” Jehovah’s Witness girl but I just could not. I did not experience the hypocrisy inside the congregation. My repulsion was not based on this. I wanted a life partner who could add critical thinking to my strengths, and not sap it from me. I wanted someone to accept me and grow with me and become one flesh.

“How had this been going on? How could Jehovah let this go on so rampantly and unchecked in his congregation? … I had in mind my own spiritual crisis and didn’t want to be silently responsible for someone else’s… But what happened next would forever shake my faith in this organization that claims to be led and kept clean directly by God’s own Holy Spirit….to leave it in Jehovah’s hands.”

Any person with an ounce of reasoning, one iota of critical thinking, has to ask how Incompetent must be The Almighty God? What kind of spectacle is this theatre? What about all those judgment and destruction stories from the Hebrew Scriptures?! Where is the justice – typified by the restoration of Paradise? How blind must His chosen be to accept a Spiritual Paradise double-talked as perpetual darkness masquerades New Light? Where is the hand of Jehovah when guidance is claimed from His Holy Spirit? Exactly how corrupt must it be before it is uncovered – and I refer to many things even the worldly people perceive such as the United Nations adultery!

On my father’s deathbed, he confided to me that if the end of this system did not come before he died he did not know what to think. Though not a Witness he had associated with them and became an outcast within his own family in a paradoxical disfellowshipping, and it happens both ways folks. His was an apology to me, the boy who handled the Bible better than some congregational elders! He never knew about all the things we know from surfing the Internet: the indignant e-watchman, Silent Lamb victims, UN treachery, the factual history of the “Governing Body,” etc, etc… A critical thinking Jehovah’s Witness using only the NWT Holy Scriptures for reasoning and recalling the Apostle Paul’s admonition to reason only needs to know the Scripture about trees identified by their fruit (Matthew 7: 20; Philippians 1: 9-11; Colossians 1:10) and that all things good find their source from Jehovah (James 1: 17) to know what’s going on here. 2+2=4 no matter the sum of interpretation from a self-proclaimed class “annointed.”

If Jehovah says he cannot lie and he lies the whole construct shatters into minute shards. Likewise, if the translation of those sayings is defended as imperfectly scribed, though done under the governing Holy Spirit, then the Author is false for He willingly permits the lie in His name. (And I do not resort to the simple ad homonym “the Bible is full of contradictions” accusation but rest my eyes squarely on the Watchtower’s own claim as God’s Channel.)

It is with this critical thinking that I now have a Bible study with Bethel Elders – a critical thinking from which I was shielded as a child when presented with the Jehovah’s Witness black and white worldview. I am lucky for my facility with the Bible, but the Elders are lucky too. They have the chance to truly examine their own Watchtower beliefs from an unexpected source (Matthew 25: 40). And I have this opportunity to have the two-voice healing debate that, unlike leaving it up to someone else to minister, will free me rather than enslave me.

It would surprise many who witness my Bible-based knowledge/rhetoric firsthand to know that I am agnostic moving toward atheist. But it would not surprise your readers that are familiar with the history. Every time a Witness comes to my door for my Bible study, I take the time to be healed anew by reviewing the accurate knowledge of what so influenced my past.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rqw4krMOug&feature=player_embedded

Sorry for a long post. Keep going fellow Canuck. If there is a Jehovah, as the Watchtower represents Him, then not only is He All Knowing and The Personification of Love but he is merciful and a Perfect Judge of character. Would you even want to live in a paradise under a rule of something/someone less?