Marrying a divored person who was abandoned?

by betweenworlds 12 Replies latest jw experiences

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  dozy

  Marriage by someone who isn't "scripturally free to marry" is very common in the JW world and is one of the few situations which leads to a guaranteed DF. Usual procedure is a reinstatement within 10 - 12 months following a couple of letters -sometimes a kindly elder on the JC will initiate reistatement. No repentance need be shown (how could it be?), just an element of sadness & depression (which is inevitable as most of the JW's friends have been shunning them over this time.)

  Sometimes it is possible to overcome this - there have been a few creative methods used over the years to circumvent the rules. I recall one situation where a sister & her husband (both JWs) broke up & neither were free to marry. The sister then admitted to a JC that she had secretly comitted adultery while she was married some years previously but felt very sorry about it now & was privately reproved. This then freed her ex-husband to remarry. And when he had re-married , she was then free to re-marry.
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  betweenworlds

  hey everyone,

  Thanks for all the responses. I honestly wish I could just break her away from the witnesses all together. I've given her both of Rays books to read, but she's only thumbed through them. She so strongly believes in the doctrines that she keeps going back no matter how much it undermines her personal happiness and well being. Ugh I hate what this religion does to peoples heads.

  She had stopped going to the hall for a few years after her husband died, and in the interim met this other guy who is now divorced from his wife who took off to Germany and left him. He's a born again christian whom she has started to convince that the witnesses have 'da troof' Now she's terrified that she's going to bring him to the hall and the elders are going to not approve of him, or them as a couple and tell her she can't marry him, or that if she does she'll be df. I keep telling her please don't let these people determine her happiness!! She should know in her heart if it's right or not and doesn't need this group of untrained pharisees with their books of law telling her what to do. But alas, I don't know if I'm making any headway or not. I'm going to pass on your responses to her.

  Thanks again all

  bw
• 

  sir82

  As Dozy noted, a marriage between persons "not scripturally free to remarry" will result in an automatic DF. If the elders do what they are supposed to do, they will enter on the S-77 form that it is an "adulterous marriage" . The Society gets really hung up on stuff like that.

  If that happens, the Society will send a letter back to the elders saying that even when the person is reinstated, he/she can have no "special privileges of service" - i.e., can never be a regular or auxiliary pioneer, can never work at Bethel, never do international construction, etc. If a brother, he can never be a MS or elder. That Society letter will follow the affected person(s) around no matter where he/she moves, like an anvil around the neck.

  We have a couple like that in our congregation. Knowing that they can never have these "special privileges" serves to dampen whatever zeal & enthusiasm they may have once had.