What if there was not DFing of apostates?

by YoYoMama 38 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Flip

  what if the Witnesses did not have a policy of disfellowshipping those that are apostates. What would the congregations be like? Would there be unity?

  YoYo, yours is a loaded question that misses the point.

  It’s the approved methods used by the WTBTS during recruitment of children and the unassuming adult that I find most odorous.

  During the initial recruitment period new persons especially children are not given the opportunity and/or the time to make a properly informed decision of exactly what it is they’re expected to ‘publicly’ commit themselves to.

  The ‘budding’ Jehovah’s Witness’ entire learning experience is not subjective and is derived from peer pressure brought to bear from instruction specifically designed to control the thinking of the community of Jehovah’s Witnesses by the WTBTS.

  The severe consequences to the prospects immediate social fabric if they should one day learn the true history of the WTBTS and publicly come to a different conclusion than their ‘family’ of Jehovah’s Witness is disingenuously downplayed by the organization and the least understood of consequences, until it’s to late.

  Of course this is a powerful weapon used by the WTBTS to maintain an assured complement of adherents in its ever-present effort to retain a tax-free, religious status. And since virtually all WTBTS information dispensed is so full of crap, these ‘teaching’ methods used by the organization to maintain ‘unity’ and if need be, subsequent disfellowshiping, are completely understandable and entirely necessary for the WTBTS’ corporate survival.

  Flip
• 

  PopeOfEruke

  Sadiejive wrote:

  The thing is, that they perpetually reason that one cannot take one scripture out and isolate it from the bible in its entirety...that is "taking it out of context". But they do this with this scripture.

  Not only do they do this with scriptures, but also with single words out of scriptures. Like the "abstain" in "abstain from blood" from Acts 15:29. They rave on how "abstain" means keep completely separate, avoiding in any way shape or form (Remember the famous analogy about the alcoholic being told by his doctor to "abstain from alcohol"..)

  Yet turn over a few pages and in another scripture the same NWT says to "abstain from fleshly desires". Wouldn't this mean no one should ever have a nookie? Why doesn't "abstain" here get the same heavy treatment as Acts 15:29? In my 35 years in Jw-dom I never even heard this 2nd scripture discussed. They just pick and choose wherever and whatever they want.

  Pope
• 

  Marilyn

  Sadiejive, not to mention their flawed system of judging others. By their own reckoning they are imperfect, yet the WTS gives its flawed members the authority to dictate who shall have their family taken from them and who shan't. Their whole disfellowshipping arrangment is problematic and seldom meters out true justice or serves to keep the congregation clean. It just serves as a warning to others to tow the party line and never question WTS teachings.

  Guess you have them pretty well summed up though.

  Marilyn
• 

  Skimmer

  Hello Marilyn:

  Having not been in a KH in nearly thirty years, I can't comment on recent trends in DF activity.

  But, back in the early 1970s, the threat of the Big A coming in 1975 provided a sufficiently strong "stick" to keep the sheep in line. I don't recall that DF on basis of apostasy being very common at that time; no doubt this was mostly due to the relative scarcity of information about the real truth of the WTBTS, Also, the apostate witch-hunt mentality that started in the early 1980s had not yet begun.

  I do recall numerous DFs in the area I was in at the time, but much more frequent were the cases of public reproof. I don't remember any marking, but maybe that was a later development.
• 

  Room 215

  Hi again all,

  In most cases when the WT makes a change or shift in emphasis, a hidden agenda lurks behiond teh ``new light.'

  Hinding behind the sanctimonious language used in the explanation, buttressed by the specious reference to scriptures which ``we now understand more fully,'' etc.-- the invokation to ``the light getting brigther,'' it's invariably pragmatism, CYA considerations and/or monetary advantages which are the driving forces behind policy and even doctrinal changes.

  Thus, whatever they said for public consumption, it was Jimmy Swaggart's defeat in California courts that occasioned the 1989 change to a voluntary donation arrangement-- selectively applied. The 1985 change in baptism vows was born of the legal department's insistence that the vows needed to include a direct reference to the organization so as to strenghthen their arguments in court.
  
  Similarly, the liberalization of the alternative service issue is a direct reaction to the heat they were taking in Western Europe, not in any increased enlightenment of scripture.

  So it is/was with Dfing.... it's no coincidence that the ``tightening up'' coincides with the GB's panic over the Ray Franz-Dunlap shakeout and the perceived need to isolate anyone in possession of the facts from the rank and file.

  And, as I've said many times before, you can bet your bottom dollar that in the unlikely event the JWs would suffer a catastrophic defeat the courts, including a huge monetary award to the aggrieved,
  ``new light'' invoking the ``Prodigal Son'' and urging the need for mercy and forgiveness in dealing with the wayward sons, would flash brightly from Brooklyn...
• 

  hillary_step

  Room215,

  A valuable and accurate post.

  The WTS are masters of the art of cunning and sensationalism. No new change is ever as simple as it looks.

  For example, the lastest plans to shelf any more constructions of, or additions to, Branch building projects world wide will be painted with the brush of 'simplification'.

  What they will not tell you is that simultaneously with these instructions not to build at Branch level, a massive building campaign for Kingdom Halls worldwide has been drafted. Why?

  Well, the line run will be huge increases of publishers who need a place to worship. But the reality is that Legal are rapidly working toward protecting WTS assets in view of litigation that seems very likely to strike them in the near future.

  Kingdom Halls are built and paid for not with WTS money but with local hard-working JW's, many of whom do the building themselves, saving cash. In the final event - who owns these Halls?

  Three guesses not neccessary, though hidden by Trustee paperships, the WTS holds these assets, assets that they have not directly paid for, and yet are untouchable in litigation.

  Another cunning stunt from the desk of Legal - HS
• 

  Richie

  YoyoMama...
  Just one point....I agree there should be some limited shunning for those who are extremely dangerous and encourage wrong behavior. But you tell me, why should you be df'd for disassociating yourself; there is no biblical precedent for that whatsoever and moreover this incorrect form of disfellowshipping makes a person (or observers) dissent from and resist the Borg more readily. You seem to suggest that whenever you are df'd and decide not to come back to the meetings anymore that you have become an apostate automatically. This is a mindset which was created by the WT in order for you to remain in an organization which keeps its members primarily out of fear.
  Since I left the Borg, I have actually been able to draw closer to God and feel much freer to check out scriptures and interpretations as to whether these things are really so. So, please do not presumptuously make blanket statements without checking them out first thoroughly!
  Remember: "Has presumptuousness come? Then dishonor will come; but wisdom is with the modest ones" (Prov11:2)

  Richie :*)
• 

  ballistic

  Yes, I agree. I was not disfellowshipped for apostacy, and can state as a fact (because the Watchtower published this) the majority of disfellowshippings are for immorality.

  Am I an apostate now? Well if I am, it has only come about many years after being disfellowshipped, having spent some time wishing to return to the org.
• 

  Englishman

  I don't know how I missed this, check this out:

  But now I am writing YOU to quit mixing in company with anyone called a brother that is a fornicator or a greedy person or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even eating with such a man.

  So then, if one chooses to resign as a JW, he is not "called a brother" any longer. Once he is "no longer a brother", his behaviour should not be cause for disfellowshipping, because he has resigned from the brotherhood. As a resigned witness, he should not be perceived as a threat any longer.

  Englishman.

  Bring on the dancing girls!