Judicial Committees....

by AllTimeJeff 6 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  AllTimeJeff

  This isn't especially thought out on my part, but I wanted to put this out there. It's more about elders, and how some who had to handle judicial committees could at least be as reasonable as possible, or total idiots.

  Many have been mistreated by a JC. In fact, I bet that just by agreeing to disfellowship someone, I have contributed greatly to a few peoples emotional and spiritual misery. I will always regret that part of my JW life.

  But the fact remains, some get a sick pleasure out of being the enforcer. Of prying into other people's personal lives. (esp their sex lives). Of adding to what even the GB said was proper. (happens all the time. They are very private and secretive for a reason...)

  And there were those who tried to be reasonable, some I know wouldn't disfellowship Judas Iscariot... (I told him that, he laughed.... I hated him then, now I really respect him....) They seemed to be their from stopping idiot elders like me from disfellowshipping.

  I have no point to this, other then to say that, as usual, being a borgbot elder tends to bring out the worst in elders, and cause the sludge to want to "reach out" so they can govern, and apply their own self righteous spin to the already nutty and restictive JW dogma.

  I really feel for all who have had to sit in front of a JC and are still scarred by it. I hope that you heal from that at some point. Please know you are better then them. You really are.

  Discuss! (if you want... rant over!)
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  crazycate

  I think for many elders, it is the one place in their life they have power. I believe one elder I knew used his position as PO to try to impress his "wordly" father, who had wanted him to go to college and become a doctor. (Not that this particular nut job could've done it, but I digress.) I think this desire was one of the reasons for his dictatorial approach to "shepherding."

  Cate
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  purplesofa

  I have been before two Judicial Committees, both for committing fornication.

  One was small town congo in Arkansas, 2,500 total population of town!! I got all the tedious questions.

  I never came away from anything that made me feel so much like scum from the bottom of the earth.

  One elder, said I was "Jus ripe for the picken" and said something about the way I dressed, that still to this day

  has effected what I choose to wear. I never was told to pray, nothing about coming back, nothing about what to do

  while I was gone. I just got the ax. I felt like everyone of them was on a power trip, and this was their small town drama.

  Twenty-eight yrs old, 5 kids, in a small town, newly divorced, family member had just

  committed suicide, I was really sorry.

  Second time I was before a JC, for fornication the elders were gems. I was in a big city this time, San Antonio. I was not nearly as sorry

  for this second offense and the first. But, I got alot of coaching on how to conduct myself before a Judicial Committee on how not

  to get DF. This time the elders were not Gods to me. I was privately reprooved.

  I asked them before I left them room for them to deliberate, To please give me something to work on

  if the DF me, because obviously this was a big weakness for me, having to deal with this for the second time!

  I have some elder friends that are out, and one of the deciding factors was the mistreatment they saw with Judicial Committees.

  It wore on their conscience, the injustice and being part of it. I think anyone that goes before a committee and confesses willingly

  and asks for help and gets DF is a crime. There is something seriously wrong with the elder body if they let this happen.

  Disfellowshipping should be the exception and not the norm. It is not an effective form of

  discipline.

  purps

  purps
• 

  moggy lover

  It was my unpleasant duty to serve on several such JCs, and I never felt completely at ease at any of them. Conceived by the Watchtower leadership as a means to keep the local congregations "clean" they nevertheless more often descend to the coarser level of outright intimidation with the sole purpose of obligating the individual into a forced conformity to the established norms of Watchtower policy.

  It is in this aspect that the JC betrayed a far more sinister reason for its existence: Not just to root out any perceived heresy, or any infraction of Watchtower Law, but more purposefully, to root out any trace of an emergent individualism.

  Sexual immorality is a perpetual threat to any association of Watchtower followers, and these problems can be solved by counseling, by pastoral ministration, or even by mutual family integrative co-operation. But the Watchtower leadership chooses to portray its claimed fidelity to biblical verities by creating a Pharisaical framework whose similarity to Christian patterns is absolutely nil.

  But these instances were only a small fraction of the cases that are brought before JCs, at least in my personal experience. Theological dissent, or doctrinal aberration are by far the more threatening cause for alarm to the comfortable sterility of any local congregation of Watchtower followers, and my own was no exception. The very structure of the JC, its sinister secrecy concealing a malevolent intention, its star chamber tactics, its implied authoritarian infrastructure, are all carefully artificed to intimidate and compel.

  Most elders within the Watchtower imperium function as nothing more than theological eunuchs, incapable of any genuine opinions of their own, satraps whose only purpose is to serve as the instrumentality through which the will of the Watchtower leadership is enforced on the perceived recalcitrant. As AKJ has already noted, and which I can confirm, many of these self same elders approached their task of presiding in these committees as if imbibing from a heady elixir, the exercising of power which created an illusive exhilaration.

  I have so often, in my inner most thoughts, conjured up visions of all those half forgotten memories of people I so casually wronged, and I have wished to beg their forgiveness. Where are they now, after some thirty years? The theological flotsam arising from the cultic experience, they have all, like me, blended, into a twilight existence where mercifully, such experiences are regarded as cathartic rather than brutalizing.
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  Scarred for life

  I really feel for all who have had to sit in front of a JC and are still scarred by it. I hope that you heal from that at some point. Please know you are better then them. You really are.

  I never had to sit in front of a JC but I know that I was scarred just by witnessing people being shamed and disfellowshipped in front of the whole congregation. I know that my sister feels the same way. I can think of several people just a few years older than myself that were abused in this way. I was not even close with them or knew them well. But to witness that by a group of people that you have been told all your life are your spiritual "family" and they love you and look out for your best interests just destroys all your trust in everything you have been taught. Even at the ages of 10, 11, 12 I knew that this was wrong and cruel and evil and definitely not love.

  There's a lot of scarring spread around by the JCs.
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  sir82

  I got a lot of coaching on how to conduct myself before a Judicial Committee on how not to get DF.

  I asked them before I left them room for them to deliberate, To please give me something to work on if the DF me, because obviously this was a big weakness for me, having to deal with this for the second time!

  That's a pretty good strategy. If anybody out there is facing a committee and would like to avoid being DF, stuff like this would probably work on a lot of committees. You manage to look humble and also stroke the elders' egos at the same time.
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  Lady Lee

  I read that the elder arrangement can attract men who if they were out in the world would never be chosen to supervise staff members. They cannot rise above a certain level in their career. Being a JWs doesn't always screen out those who will misuse the power given to them.