Ok Here goes. Here are the 2 stories I said I would post. In both cases I was closely involved with the ones that were disfellowshiped. The stories are similar but with different outcomes. I hope you can see the similarities Story # 1 happened several years ago. A young sister got involved with a young brother, and committed immorality. There was a time lapse between the time the incident happened and when it finally ended up in a judicial committee. During that time period, she became involved with a nice worldly person and fell in love and decided to marry him. To my knowledge, she never had been immoral with the worldly person, he being of a higher moral character than her previous witness encounter. When her case was heard by the JC, the subject of the worldly person came up and she was told to break it off with him and that if she didn’t she would be disfellowshipped. When she indicated that she would not break it off and was planning to marry him, she was disfellowshipped. Fast forward….. She was re-instated quickly because her Husband started studying, and made rapid progress and today is an elder. Story # 2 Is similar, but with a little different twist. More recently, another young Sister meets a young brother at an assembly and they immediately hit it off. It was like they were made for each other. The problem is, she was considered by many to be the perfect little witness sister, a future pioneer and the model witness. He on the other hand was considered as little better than dirt by most of those in his congregation. He was raised in an abusive JW home, had longer hair than normal, and somewhat of a rebellious attitude. Some time after they met and had been seeing each other for a while, he and a friend got involved in some drinking and had to much and were found out by family members. The elders in both congregations had been looking for a way to keep them away from each other in order to “protect” the future pioneer. The problem was they were in love and as you know love has a way of finding its own path. The drinking incidence, seemed to be the opportunity the elders were looking for. First the young man was told that he should stay away from the young sister because he was “no good for her”. The drinking incident was put on hold until it was seen how he would respond about staying away from her. After another assembly when they were again seen enjoying each others company, he was told that a Judicial Committee had been formed and that his case would be heard in a few weeks. The young couple were then faced with a decision. Do we stop seeing each other, and run the risk of his being disfellowshiped, an maybe never being able to be together? The other option Was to go ahead and get married, and then at least no one would be able to keep them apart. They went with the second option. The Day after they were married he was disfellowshipped. He was disfellowshipped, technically for alcohol abuse, but the real reason was because he refused to stay away from the Girl he loved. Where in the Bible do we find support for decisions such as this? About 10 years ago when I first started having serious doubts, I read Ray Franz’s book “Crisis of Conscience” Some where close to the end of the book he used the Illustration of “An iron fist beneath a velvet glove“. Both of the above stories are real life examples of the “Iron Fist” in action seek2find
My 2 stories
by seek2find 2 Replies latest jw friends
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jula71
The stories are common and I have heard and seen a million times. Most JC's are designed, not to help the person, but see if they step in line. Most actions in cases are conditional and have some kind of action attached to them. I had a friend that got in "trouble" and was publicly reproved. But he was told, if he did not show on the night the announcement was made, he would be DF'd the following week. Long story short, they are exercises to see how much power is still held over the individual.
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Legolas
Thanks for the stories!