It's called trying to make changes that are going to tighten the control while looking like they are in the process of going mainstream to outsiders (and most on the inside).
Brothers, We're Living In Exciting Times!
by Nosferatu 14 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
garybuss
The Witnesses are already folding the bookstudy home groups here and apparently finishing the year off with two larger, manageable groups. I saw a new Kingdom Hall built up the street from my house with a parsonage attached, I saw the Witnesses go to court and admit they have a clergy, I picked up 6 Awake! magazines one afternoon tossed at apartment doors beside the penny shopper, I see Jehovah's Witnesses disassociated from the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society, and now I see the Governing Body communicating directly with the congregations, not using any of their 100+ corporations set up for that purpose.
Watch Tower Inc is selling Brooklyn properties as fast as the market will allow and Wallkill is already a mega-commune with more construction on the way. The Society used to try to hide their contempt for Jehovah's Witnesses, but not any more! You think they lock those Kingdom Hall doors to keep people from getting in? Ha!
Rock on . . . -
Nathan Natas
Another change that is very close to the tipping point is the Watchtower Blood policy.
On one side of the teeter-totter we have the false authority of the Governing body and their lawyers, and on the other side we have the growing mass of young corpses resulting from the policies of the Brooklyn imbeciles.
see, for example:
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2008/05/23/5646826-sun.html
Kids trump religious belief
State does right thing in saving lives of Jehovah's Witness children
Perhaps one day, hopefully soon, Jehovah's Witnesses will abandon their ridiculous belief that God opposes blood transfusions.
Until then, it's up to the state to continue to protect minors who need medical treatment from the religious beliefs of their parents and religious leaders.
Every so often, you hear of minors who refuse blood transfusions because they've been led to believe that a practising Jehovah's Witness would never undergo such a procedure. Inevitably, the government steps in and ensures the treatment goes ahead.
The rationale behind the state's involvement is simple and necessary. Saving the lives of children is more important than bowing to the senseless and potentially damaging dictates of religion.
This week, the Supreme Court of Canada heard the case of a former Winnipeg teen who was given a blood transfusion against her will in 2006 when she was 14.
In an affidavit to the Supreme Court, the teen compared the experience to "being raped and violated." Her reaction is undoubtedly heartfelt, but it underscores the necessity of promoting the best interests of children in such circumstances.
"This is about power. This is about who controls (Jehovah's Witness) children," says Juliet Guichon, a lawyer and University of Calgary bioethicist.
"Is it the state who can protect them or is it the Watchtower Society? That's what they're fighting about."
POOR INFORMATION
The Watchtower Society gives very poor information about the risks and benefits of blood and society lawyers -- who are also Jehovah's Witness clergy -- are representing the young woman, says Guichon.
"It raises the question as to whether (she) is in a position to instruct counsel. Ordinarily, the client instructs the lawyer. But does an adherent instruct a priest?"
So who knows how this unnamed teen really feels about her religion's ban on blood transfusions? Perhaps she's secretly overjoyed that the state stepped in and forced her to get treatment. While Crohn's disease isn't fatal, she could very well have died without a transfusion.
This case pits the right of so-called mature minors to choose or refuse medical procedures against the state's interest in protecting kids.
The teen argued she was mature enough to make her own medical decisions and, in fact, some provinces allow capable minors to make such determinations.
But maturity alone isn't enough, maintains Guichon. Officials also have to consider the quality of the medical information a young person is receiving as well as whether there has been coercion, she says.
It would be a very rare case where you could conclude that someone refusing life-saving treatment is mature enough to decide, she points out, adding that refusing such medical help might be evidence of a lack of maturity.
She said she hopes the Supreme Court lays down some guidelines about how to manage cases in which patients have poor information and are being coerced.
The wishes of minors are considered in medical matters, Guichon adds, but promoting the best interests of the child is the overriding factor.
And who would disagree, other than an unbending religious group that apparently believes blood transfusions will result in the loss of salvation, family and community?
It's a despicable scenario to present to a sick, impressionable child -- that you will be shunned forever for fighting for survival.
If Jehovah's Witnesses won't save their children, the state will have to do it for them.
-
parakeet
Good article, NN. I was a JW as a teen, an underage drone told what to do by parents and elders. I was extremely lucky never to have been in the same situation as the minor in the article (poor kid, but alive!), but I know that if I had been in the same situation, I would have refused blood, not because I was "mature" enough (I wasn't), but because that was what I had been taught and because I was told retributions would hit me hard and fast had I caved and taken the blood. It's the same reason I was baptized -- because everyone expected it, not because of any deep-seated faith.
Thank you, WTS, for making my childhood such an "exciting" time with constant threats of Jehovah's retribution 5 times a week. I hope you're having exciting times now. Lawsuits, rising expenses, mass exodus of members, outmoded and malicious doctrines. I hope you have as good a time as I did. -
garybuss
Nosferatu, Remember what happened last time the Society couldn't manage the elders? With the amount of dissent I'm seeing in the elder ranks now, I'd think we are about at that point again.
My money's on the table. I'm thinking the elder configuration as we see it today is about to go in the fire like fat off a pork rib. The Society can't manage 500 or 600,000 elders and keep em in line. They've shown us that big time. They might be able to manage a version of the old "service director" in each congregation. That'd only be 100k.
Every Watchtower magazine I see they're leaking more blood. These guys in Brooklyn have lost it. It's gotten away from them. They're starting to loose their core group. Seems to me, they are now at the stage where the Society has lost much of the elder cooperation and automatic acceptance they used to take for granted. Things are not going good in those back rooms.
