Re: tell me why?
a) dishonest fund/money making. b) how bigoted religious people could be.

Re: tell me why?
I left when I was 18, 7 years ago. Some of my reasons (at that time), in no particular order:

I saw no future for myself in TF. I could see myself working at a steady job with a steady income and getting my own home and life, etc., but when I thought of what it would be if I stayed in TF... moving about from home to home, doing "provisioning" and "witnessing", at 40 years old having not a single meaningful possession in the world and relying on "the home" for everything, always doing what others told me to do every moment of my waking life... it just seemed a nightmare and I knew I had to get out.

I wanted independence. I don't want to live my life by some arbitrary rules that Berg and Zerby cooked up. Who are they to tell me what to do or how to live my life... or tell me what to watch, or what to eat, or what to read, or anything else that's my own god damned business?

I was still a Christian at that point (nominally), but I wasn't interested in the slightest in the "Letters" and GNs and shit. I don't want to get up early every morning to read that shit. I don't care about "prayer vigils". I don't believe in prophecy (I did at the time, but only biblical prophecy... I didn't believe in TF's prophecy). I'm sick and tired of having "Word" crammed down my throat all the time.

I hated communal living. Two (or more) families living together, each have their own standards with their own kids, one set of parents will be all sweet and lenient with their kids but be severe and brutal with the other family's kids. Or just treat them unfairly. My life after the combos was characterised by that, always different standards between the families and resulting feuds between the kids. As an adult, I still hate it. I want my own personal space. I don't want to have to conform to the agreed upon standards of "the home". It's my home, I make the standards.

[list=2]Perhaps one of the biggest things was that I hated the lie we were living. We'd dress up as clowns and make balloons and ask for donations for our missionary work. When people asked us about our work, we'd show them brochures and stuff with photos of missionary work in Eastern Europe and text. People sometimes asked us if the money was actually used specifically for missionary work, helping people. They might give us a bigger donation and say it was for our missionary work. The problem is, we weren't doing any. That money was our income, it was used to pay our rent and utilities, our food and petrol, etc. We weren't doing any missionary work! Those photos we'd show them were of OTHER people from 15 years ago! Yes my parents were involved in that back when I was a baby, but they hadn't been doing it for 15 years easily. They were just living in a home, no jobs, taking care of their large family, and scrounging off the good intentions of the public. Lying to them to make them open their wallets. Oh they probably were fine about it in their minds because after all, they did go to one or two hospitals or "old folks homes" around Christmas and sing a few songs... they called that missionary work. I hated it. I felt we were like gypsies, beggars. I hated being a beggar clown telling lies to people about some good work we were doing so they'd give us a donation, when not a single cent would be used for anything of the sort.[/list]



Not exactly few words, but those were my reasons. I have more now but that was about it I think at the time.