Reniaa if I may comment here...
I don't want to sound confrontational to you really, you're happy being a JW which is cool. I'm glad for you. I just want to give you some facts to think about OK, you don't have to agree with them, just some things to think about.
Show me the religion in our times that is so good that not a single member is a pedophile, murderer, taxman, liar etc?
I assume you mean tax cheat here. If you do enough research you'll find a religion that is like this, I'd like to say Quakers or Christadelphians. The last one is just ridiculous because you need to qualify the type of liar. If my wife gets a horrible hair cut and is just so happy with it then asks me what I think I'm going to tell her she looks fantastic. Does that make me a liar? I suppose it does, but would you really use something like that to discredit a religion? Remember Jesus said a fine tree cannot produce worthless fruit, please don't use the no true scotsman fallacy here. I also don't think that people have a problem with FORMER murderers and FORMER pedophiles being in an organization at all. However the problem (at least that I have) is that there are numerous cases of stuff like this being covered up. I have an 18 month old daughter, I know there is an accuseed child molester in my former congregation. However if he was disfellowshipped for it, I wouldn't know what he was disfellowshipped for, if he transferred in from another congregation I wouldn't know he was disfellowshipped at all. So if I brought my daughter to the Kingdom Hall and let her talk to and play with other JWs (which any parent would let their child play with trusted church associates) I'm essentially playing Russian Roulette.
That's the issue here, it's not that people are sinner that are JWs, it's that because of the policies the sin can cause GREAT harm to people. Imagine my daughter got molested because I didn't know the man she was playing with at the hall was a former, or accused child molester. Would you think someone should've told me or would you chalk it up to imperfect men? My child's innocence stolen, she's going to be in therapy the rest of her life, she'll never recover from something like that, would you say that a policy should change or would you say "hey it's imperfect men, get over it"?
You are the ones using imperfection as an excuse to condemn which is just nuts because you then end up looking for perfection where it doesn't exist.
Gods imperfect followers on earth weren't marked by their perfection but their ability to take Godly instruction and refinement when they have let mistakes creep in.
I'm pretty sure, and correct me if I'm wrong here that what folks are talking about is the inability to admit when they're wrong. That's the problem with calling yourselves "The Truth", because if you have to change a teaching then it brings up a dichotomy. If they simply said "We try to follow God's laws in the bible as closely as we can"; I don't think there would be an issue at all. If you ask someone "The teaching that changed, does that mean you were teaching something false" the answer you'll usually get is "No, it was truth at the time." You've probably heard this before but when JWs were teaching that organ transplants were wrong, if someone interpreted differently and received an organ transplant they would've been disfellowshipped. However then the teaching changed, they wouldn't say they were wrong about the disfellowshipping and the man was right, his disfellowshipping would remain and he should've listened to the organization. There's testimony of Fred Franz to verify this. There wouldn't be any issue if the organization didn't claim to have truth and that all their current teachings are right.
Do you understand what I'm getting at here? If you would like me to explain further I can try.
One of the reasons I am not in a christendom religion is there inability to be refined from false teaching they accummulated from the great Apostasy hundreds of years ago.
Reniaa, you're not being honest here. Every single christendom religion has changed their teachings from what they had at the Great Apostacy. In fact if you just go back 50 years, I defy you to find one religion that hasn't changed their teachings.
Jws have ripped themselves away from these teaching and still need constant refinement so they are a work in progress until 'what is imperfect is made perfect'
But they already say they are "The Truth", if they need refinement then what they're teaching now cannot be truth. It's a dichotomy.
