Disfellowshiping and shunning

by Liquidizer 9 Replies latest jw friends

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  Liquidizer

  The problem is not the disfellowshipping itself but the shunning most of us don't accept. I'm not so much against the disfellowshipping but shunning because it doesn't help anybody to repent some possible gross sin. The situation is still more worse if you disagree with one or more of the WTS teachings. Disagreeing with something should not automatically be seen as any sect promoting nor division causing thing. To my mind, it's entirely different issue. What is really wrong from the witnesses part is that they classify those disagreeing ones among the gross sinners, disfellowship and shun also them, sometimes bacause of some minor or trivial question or issue.

  It also has to be remembered that the Bible doesn't talk about disfellowshipping. It talks about restricting the brotherly association with the sinners who don't repent. It doesn't want us to turn our backs on them entirely because otherwise we can't help them to return back and correct their ways. Shumming, on the contrary, pushes them furher away from the congregation and makes it for them very difficult to return. Sometimes they never return. Do anyone of us want to be held responsible for the loss of our neighbor to the way of sin just because we refuse to treat them as human beings and don't even talk to them occasionally? I don't, what it comes to me.

  L.

  __________________________

  This is the noise that keeps me awake
  My head explodes
  And my body aches

  -Garbage
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  Maximus

  For some time now I've never used the word "shunning" by itself.

  The problem is "ENFORCED shunning."

  As a JW, if I do not shun someone who is DF/DA by fallible men, then I as a JW will be shunned myself. The action is not voluntary, in recognition of Bible principle, it is enforced. I shun because I do not want to be shunned ...

  Where is such ENFORCED shunning to be found anywhere in Scripture?

  As to the purity of the congregation, moralizing often drives the erring one into deeper denial, and enforced shunning puts the person even further from help or assistance.

  Worse, JW elders cannot refute deeper questions about blood or chronology, but they will DF or declare DA because one remains unconvinced even by letters from the Society, which themselves do not refute but merely extend the admonition to "wait on Jehovah."

  Maximus
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  ozziepost

  There is no doubt that the whole practice is unscriptural. So who is culpable, the elders or the organisation that 'runs' them?

  Cheers,
  Ozzie

  "Evil is the absence of empathy"
  Movie (2000), Nuremberg
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  drahcir yarrum

  Disfellowshipping would probably be equated with "tough love" by JW adherants. "Tough love" is generally reserved in a more secular setting for incorrigible reprobates. Such as family members who are alcoholics and drug abusers who repeatedly disrupt the family with lying, cheating and stealing to maintain their habituations. The idea being that until someone in these scenarios has reached the absolute bottom with nobody to turn to, recovery, if possible at all is, not likely.

  I think we could agree that this is not typically the condition of
  erring JW's who very often voluntarily confess their sins, only to be cast aside. And even if they do not voluntarily confess sins, such extreme punishment as "enforced shunning" would seem too harsh for the vast majority of cases.

  The whole process by an organization that represents itself as reflecting the love of the almighty is repugnant to me.
• 

  Gopher

  Ozzie,

  I blame the organization for the harm shunning does. The elders are merely "unpaid assistants" that carry out this 'enforced shunning' policy because they have to! Or else they could find themselves in "hot water"!!

  Drachcir/Richard,

  They think of it as "tough love". And when I was "in", I bought that company line too. But as you say, it is too harsh for the vast majority of cases. It really becomes "hatred" rather than "love". Anyone who might normally (under non-shunning conditions) accept some shepherding help instead is kicked to the curb, and asked to go through hoops for several months, even years, dragging themselves to meetings where they treated as invisible. This has nothing to do with "love" and everything to do with punishment, revenge, and humiliation.

  I will never again be a member of any group that treats fellow humans with such crude manners.

  GopherWhy shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
  Mark Twain (1835-1910)
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  safe4kids

  Hi all,

  "Tough love" is generally reserved in a more secular setting for incorrigible reprobates. Such as family members who are alcoholics and drug abusers who repeatedly disrupt the family with lying, cheating and stealing to maintain their habituations. The idea being that until someone in these scenarios has reached the absolute bottom with nobody to turn to, recovery, if possible at all is, not likely.

  I am a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for 5 years now. I have been a member of AA for all of those 5 years and we practice tough love but I gotta tell you, it's much more loving than the witness policy of shunning. In AA, if a person continues to drink despite all attempts to help him/her, we still welcome them with love and compassion. Does that mean that we allow them to take advantage of us or enable their drinking/drug use? Nope, not in the least. Tough love is shown in the honesty we employ in telling them exactly, bluntly what their problem is, and what they need to do about it. We don't pull any punches but we also do not make the person feel that they are unloved. Every effort the person makes to help themselves is encouraged; every time they 'slip', they are helped to look at what caused it and what could have been done differently. I've known
  parents and spouses who have had to make painful and 'tough' decisions about addicted loved ones to save the families from suffering more abuse at the hands of the addicted member but NEVER did I see any type of shunning. A healthy stand for a family does NOT need to include shunning. Calling a person on their unhealthy, harmful behaviors does NOT have to mean a withdrawal of love for that individual. Funny how a 'worldly' organization can show more love and compassion than god's 'own true organization'.

  Dana

  "I undid his head collar and took him outside for a drink, and felt, if not exactly a communion with him, at least an awareness of being a fellow creature on a lonely planet."

  Dick Francis in "To The Hilt"
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  ARoarer

  The act of shunning in a DF/DA is an act that is dependent on a triangle between the ones involved. First there is the Perpetrator, the Watchtower Society. It perpetrates this rule of shunning through threats of punishment, and destruction. The Watchtower Organization, the Perpetrator, needs a Victim to carry out this act. The victim is the "shunnee" or the one to be punished and threatened with death and destruction. The Victim Shunnee plays that the Perpetrator wants the victim to play in order to wield the Power and control of a true Perpetrator. The Enablers are the Elders and the Congregation of members and even the Victim Shunnee who plays the role the Watchtower designates to them. In the instance of Pedophilia, the Pedophile cannot continue to molest if their Victims speak out and expose them and their disgusting form of power and control, but also expose the Enablers who support and protect the Pedophile. In other words without victims, and enablers Pedophiles are defeated. Likewise with the Perpetrating Watchtower Society. Without victims to be shunned by thier families and congregation, and without supporting elders who enable the Perpetrator, even though it is also vicimizing them and the congregation as well, their would be no such thing as shunning resulting from the act of getting excomunicated or disassociating oneself. Ohter religions practice excommunication, but they are not vicimized by it by the religious community viewing them as invisible or dead. The act of shunning is a definite form of perpetrating passive aggresion. It is definitely a form of power that is unscriptural, and based on total enforced participation.
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  nytelecom1

  I am a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for 5 years now. I have been a member of AA for all of those 5 years and we practice tough love but I gotta tell you, it's much more loving than the witness policy of shunning

  did you know that aa is on a list of cults along the
  jehovahs witnesses
• 

  philo

  Maximus,

  philo.
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  safe4kids

  NYT,

  LOLOL...I didn't say I was a good member of AA!!!

  Actually, at this point in my life, I don't get heavily involved with ANY organization...AA has its own 'nazis' and I avoid them like the plague. My point in the post was that tough love can be practiced without shunning...so any argument for that is out the window.

  But I appreciate the info...I rebel against any form of mind control, be it from an organization or an individual

  Dana

  "I undid his head collar and took him outside for a drink, and felt, if not exactly a communion with him, at least an awareness of being a fellow creature on a lonely planet."

  Dick Francis in "To The Hilt"