Warning: You're not going to like this answer. Really not going to like it. I foresee you pouting here and lashing out, because this is not remotely flattering. But if you're interested in the 100% honest recount of my experience, read below. If you only want to hear positive things, do NOT read this.
I'm a religious nerd, and love to attend different services to see the people there, to better come to understand and love them. So, name a group, Christian or not, I've probably been there half a dozen times. I've done this for +15 years at this point, and by and large usually have a positive experience and smiling at people love of God.
The single glaring exception to this positive trend is visiting JW. It was... a horrible experience. I come with a smile trying to be friendly, and... I was treated like a stake that walked into a hungry lions den. That no one cared about me except as a piece of meat to "save". When I would talk to people and not follow a script it... it was like watching a train fall off the tracks-- they didn't know how to talk to me except on that one track path. They didn't comprehend the questions I tried to ask them. And then I literally watched them practice "evangelizing" by reciting scripts! And the sermon was 100% fear-based egotism akin to other folks sermons of "everyone else is going to die but us!".
I left, completely and utterly repulsed.
But I'm a stubborn person and try to be optimistic, and thought "ok, so that Kingdom Hall is a bad place. Probably a fluke- cause flukes happen. I'll try another one in another city" (I was traveling a lot back then). So I tried a second in a second city-- if possible it was a worse experience. Being stubborn, I tried a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, in a variety of different meeting types. So many things-- a phobia of learning, a phobia of others, praising persecution that they enforced even on their own family members. And never a mention of following Christ, a relationship with Him, or anything honestly love motivated.
Again, I'm stubborn. Stupidly stubborn. I thought "There has to be some logic here, some love, that they at least see themselves and understand, some beauty there." After all, I'm a person who walks into mosques, wiccan halls, hindu temples, Scientology places, etc, and I always do find some measure of beauty there.
So I search more and more for months. I want through literature after literature, met with their missionaries, scoured their website, asked all sorts of congregation members. And.... the exact words of my thoughts were "this ice cream tastes like vomit. Did the first bite, and the next container of it and the 5th after that. How much vomit ice cream and I going to force myself to go through looking for something good?"
So I stopped. And I walked away from it. In 15 years of religious studies, it is the only faith I have walked away from. I was so... calling it "empty handed" doesn't fit the bill. I wasn't empty handed-- I was in desperate need of a shower.
Now, do I shut out every JW individual based on this experience? No. In fact I still happily talk to JW and along with any other folk, to see them as an individuals. I'll happily say I have even had some positive encounters with some individuals. But you'll never again see me enter a Kingdom Hall. Mosque? Sure. Wiccan hall? Sure. But never again a Kingdom Hall.
