If you work for a bureaucratic corporation, when you have a serious problem, such as an addiction, you generally don't go up to your employer and tell him about it first. If it effects your work, you may go to the union representative. You probably go to your doctor or minister or a friend to help you. If you have committed a serious crime, you generally don't just walk into the policestation and confess. If you feel you will be caught or cannot live with your crime, you go seek legal counsel or, again, go to your minister or friend. If you are prosecuted for a serious crime, you have your legal counsel who has your best interests in mind, and there is a prosecutor representing the law who has the citizens' interests in mind. You get heard before a supposedly unbiased judge and typically have the right to a jury of your peers. This tends to make things fair.
But the average JW is a volunteer "publisher" for a giant printing corporation. His boss is the elders who are middle managers in the corporation. Their first priority is to the giant printing corporation, yet they expect publishers to come to them and confess their own violations of any of the corporation rules. They act as the publisher's spiritual doctor, minister, and friend. They act as the publisher's representative to the corporation.
If a person cannot live with their violations or fears getting caught, or indeed is caught by other publishers turning them in, these people are supposed to fully cooperate with the middle managers for the giant printing corporation. They will act as friends of the accused and tell them they are on their side, but then they wind up being the doctor, minister, police, prosecutor, representative, legal counsel, judge, and jury.
The middle managers will stab a member in the back to protect the corporation.
Even in cases where no corporation laws are broken or the "publisher" admits guilt and wants to put it all behind him, the middle managers offer solutions to the publisher's so-called weakness that benefit the corporation.
"Do more for Jehovah's organization" they say. "Sell more literature, recruit more people, read the literature more and attend the meetings more."
Thoughts to build on this?
A Serious Conflict of Interest
by OnTheWayOut 8 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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OnTheWayOut
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Heaven
I think part of the issue is that most normal corporations aren't cults like the WTS. The cult portion creates enormous issues in all aspects of a person's life. I think as soon as you bring God into the picture, things can get ugly.
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undercover
We're seeing the Society for what it really is...a printing corporation. So we compare it to other corporations and how they treat employees versus how the Society treats their "volunteer employees".
The people still willing to "work" for the Society think they're serving a higher purpose and a higher authority. They're willling to put up with a certain amount of BS in order to think they're serving God. That's where the Society has them. Fear of God and guilt of not doing enough to please him. Classic cult tactics to keep the sheeple in line.
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TD
"Conflict of interest" is a very good way to put it.
You can't be someone's advocate and adversary simultaneously. That conflict of interest is why the JW organization lost their claim of clergy privilege in California and will lose it elsewhere unless they mend their ways.
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willyloman
I once suggested to another elder that they ought to change the procedure so that one of the elders (a fourth elder) would be appointed to "represent" the accused in a judicial commitee. After all, I argued, the elders have the official book of directives and understand the process much better than Joe Publisher who may be seeing a JC at work for the first time in his life. The deck is stacked against him. If justice is really the goal, I said, this would be a way to balance the scales.
His reaction: Why would we do that? Then we'd be just like the worldly courts.
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Spook
My experience with elders was thankfully that they try to be better than the society. My cong had a bunch of good guys. Unfortunately, the district though we were getting a little uppity and assigned some whack-jobs over. The party ended.
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Borgia
Willyloman,
I recently had the same discussion with an elder. I went into detail what constituted correct procedure, acceptable evidence, etc, etc and compared that to the average judicial committee and how they violate even the basic principles of justice. It was quite an unsettling discussion for him.
His response was that the JC was intended to bring an accused to repentance. To which I responded that the prime function of a JC is to keep the cong "clean". It's a political institute that is weighing public impact of private acts. So ,in case of Jesus Cano, there was no attempt at bringing him to repentance ... he was DF-ed in 24 hours to save public face.
So my question to him was: does Jehovah's organisation have lower moral values than the worldy courts?
Cheers
Borgia
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bluecanary
You nailed it OTWO. I don't have anything to add, but I wanted to say how this relates to my experience. I was raised in the b0rg, a JW for 20 years. In all that time I had no experience with JCs. Elders were people who gave talks, that was it. I never questioned The Truth tm . It wasn't until I had my started having those back room experiences that I realized something was terribly wrong. Your post is pretty much a summary of what woke me up to the truth about the troof.
