by yknot 96 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
notverylikely
That wasn't me. I wasn't pushing him to be anything. In fact we were both quite surprised when they started grooming him to be an elder. He was relatively new in the WTS and was only in his early 30s while all the other elders werein their 50s and older. And there were plenty of elders already so they didn't need him.
I honestly can say I know of only 1 sister that was like that - pushing her husband to do more. And she was probably the reason he was held back!
Scully
Leave it to the ladies (Scully and Lady Lee) to really break it down to the nitty gritty.
Thank you ladies.
do you have to attack people? He has just a smuch right to say what he wants without being attacked as the next person OR YOU
@miseryloveselders wrote:
However, often enough when a person commits [infidelity], they're so far gone that when they appear before the Judicial Committee, its unlikely they'll show remorse.... I don't think [infidelity] leading to divorce automatically leads to a DFing. I can see a [reproof] depending on the extenuating circumstances and the defendant's attitude toward the whole thing.
@djeggnog wrote:
There is no due process of law and no defendants in God's organization. There is nothing automatic about disfellowshipping someone, for the purpose of the Judicial Committee is to determine whether there is repentance on the part of the one that has committed this serious offense against God and against his own body.... Also, the decision made by one Committee might seem more harsh than a similar decision made by another Committee for the dynamic in one Committee will often be different in another Committee....
@miseryloveselders wrote:
I don't know if you had a minor lapse of thought LOL, or maybe you view the WT as such a bastion of light that you're blinded to all reasonable [criticism] of the WT. Egg, its called a Judicial Committee for crying out loud LOL. Judicial as in Judiciary, or Judicature, as in Justice, as in Jury, as in Jurisdiction, you get the point. The accused are in fact defendants, maybe not in a court of law respected by Caesar, but you ask anybody in here who's ever faced a Judical Committee, they probably felt like a defendant. Most probably felt like they knew they were convicted before even showing up....
There are no defendants, no due process of law under the Theocracy. In the world, due process is based on the "law of the land" to which the government is subservient, the US Constitution being the supreme "law of the land," but under the Theocracy, there is but one law, God's law, which is superior of any laws conceived by man to effect justice in the land. Jehovah is the Lawmaker, and His laws, codified in the Bible, are supreme, and unlike due process, there can be no law imposed that limits the reach of God's law into a person's life. Any laws promulgated by man are subservient to the laws of the Theocracy, and if found to be in conflict with Divine Law may not be used against anyone in a Judicial Committee.
For example, in the US, a police officer is prohibited from conducting a search of your vehicle, including a search of the trunk, just because he or she has a suspicion that you are guilty of some crime, and if the officer's curiosity should get the best of him or her and he or she conducts such a search without your permission, the officer's conduct will be sanctioned in a court of law as an unlawful search, and anything discovered during the search, pursuant to the exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment (Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), may not be used against you since the discovery constitutes the fruit from the poisonous tree (i.e., the illegal search) since a limit is imposed on the government's actions as the government is expressly prohibited by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution from violating a citizen's constitutional right to protection against unreasonable search and seizure by the government.
A store detective can search a customer's property (purse, handbag, clothing, pockets) in an abundance of caution that you may have been leaving the store with store merchandise on your person for which you had no intention to pay, and such a search would not be a violation of your constitutional right against unreasonable search and seizure by the government. Nor would your Fifth Amendment right from self-incrimination be implicated by any incriminating statement you should make and confess to in writing at the store at the urging of the store detective since this right only applies should the government agent -- the police officer -- interrogate you about this crime after having advised you of your constitutional right to remain silent and be represented by an attorney at all phases of your interrogation.
Now if a police officer should conduct such a search at the store based on a complaint made against you by the store detective for theft (i.e., shoplifting) absent proof being presented to the officer of the likelihood that a crime had been committed (e.g., items with store tags still affixed to the merchandise said to been secreted away on your person), then the officer, who is a representative of the government and did not seek and obtain a search warrant signed by a magistrate before conducting the search, thereby intruded upon your constitutional right against his or her conducting an unreasonable search, and the case filed against you must be dismissed since whatever was discovered during the illegal search would be thrown out in court as a violation of your constitutional rights.
However, any incriminating statements that you made in the hearing of the police officer after you had been Mirandized (that is to say, after you had been advised of your constitutional right to remain silent [Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)]) or any statement that you signed at the store at the behest of the store detective may still be used against you at trial, even though the allegedly stolen items were excluded as evidence against you. Rather, based on the complaint of the store detective, the officer should have transported you and the allegedly stolen items from the store to the precinct, where you and they would have been booked as evidence while bail, if required, were arranged for your appearance in court where the case could have been properly adjudicated.
Did you get all of that? I'm going to say what I said earlier in this post again for emphasis: Under the Theocracy, there is no due process of law. Ok? There is the accused -- you -- but there are no defendants. For there to be a defendant, there must be a plaintiff and there is none. In Judicial Committees involving two or more brothers that were involved in a business transaction that went all wrong, there would be an accuser and the "accusee," that is, the accused.
For example, let's say one brother contracted with another brother in writing to paint two houses for a specific amount, but because the contracting brother miscalculated the cost and had to buy more paint, he decided it would be fair to deduct half the cost of the paint from the contracted brother's end, so that instead of the contracted brother receiving the agreed-upon wages of, say, $2,000.00, he was given only $1,750.00, since the additional paint cost $500.00, for which half of the cost ($250) was deducted from the contracted brother's end by the contracting brother. You may know how this matter is going to be decided by the Judicial Committee, but you could be wrong.
The right decision is that the offset, the amount deducted from the contracted brother, was improper since such a deduction wasn't contemplated in the written agreement, but a Judicial Committee might decide the contracted brother to have been unreasonable to the contracting brother and that the contracted brother is imputing wrong motives to the contracting brother, who should not have had to bear the entire $500 cost alone. Again, this would be the wrong decision, but the apostle Paul at 1 Corinthians 6:7 stated the following:
Really, then, it means altogether a defeat for you that you are having lawsuits with one another. Why do you not rather let yourselves be wronged? Why do you not rather let yourselves be defrauded?
Sometimes there can be a wrong decision, but, under the Theocracy, there is no due process of law. We let ourselves be wronged, we let ourselves be defrauded. We don't leave God's organization over a bad decision made by elders, a bad decision made by imperfect men. We don't allow a wedge between ourselves and Jehovah to emerge just because those appointed as elders in God's organization made a wrong decision, a biased decision, an improper decision, a stupid decision against us.
[DIGRESSION BEGINS]
I'm going to digress here a second just to say -- since I have your attention and the attention of lurkers reading my posts here -- that if you (not you @miseryloveselders, but the royal "you") are angry over the decision of the elders to disfellowship you, if you are angry that none of your former friends (or even your real friends) in the truth are speaking to you any more (they can say, "Hi!" at the supermarket or at the doctor's office, and they can extend common courtesies to you if they should see you walking home in the rain as you are driving home or see you struggling to extract your inhaler at the mall when they know you have asthma, but they don't do so because they take literally 2 John 10, 11, and do you wish to be "a sharer in [your] wicked works"), why the attitude against Jehovah? What did He do to you?
You learned from your study of the Bible that you, like the elders, are imperfect people, so that hold the elders to such a standard that even you cannot meet? Why not, as Paul said at 1 Corinthians 6:7, "let yourselves be wronged?" Why not "let yourselves be defrauded?" If your family is as important to you as you claim they are, do can what Paul also said at Colossians 3:13: "Continue putting up with one another and forgiving one another freely if anyone has a cause for complaint against another. Even as Jehovah freely forgave you, so do you also."
Taking out your anger on Jehovah and leaving His organization is not unlike cutting off association with your mother and father because of the actions taken against you by your older sister.
Further to understanding what the apostle John was saying at 2 John 10 11 about our becoming "a sharer in [the] wicked works" of the disfellowshipped person by "[receiving] him into your [home] or [saying] a greeting to him," there are too many occasion when we might see the disfellowshipped individual at the supermarket, at the county office where we in the regular course of our business go to obtain permits or to pay license fees, at the barber shop or at the beauty salon, and they might work at these enterprises or they might be customers just like you in these places. You might even have business dealings with one or more of the disfellowshipped person's relatives with whom they live.
What? So because one member of the family has been disfellowshipped, then the rest of the disfellowshipped person's family are to be treated with contempt for having a disfellowshipped relative? It's their fault that their disfellowshipped relative committed a sin and wasn't repentant in the estimation of the elders that took the action against their relative? What about mercy? Is the family not already hurting over the intimacy that they can no longer enjoy with their disfellowshipped relative? You have judged and are now taking the initiative to go beyond what the apostle John said and have painted the entire family as unworthy of receiving life under the kingdom? You feel it would become a sharer in the disfellowshipped person's wicked works were you to visit your brothers and sisters that all live in the same home where the disfellowshipped person resides should he or she answer the door and greet you at the door, do you? You courageously visit householders at their door all of the time, but are petrified at the door of the disfellowshipped one, even though he or she didn't come to visit you, and you didn't go to visit him or her?
In such a circumstance, these are the words you might have to say at the government office: "Hi. I'm here to ...."
In such a circumstance, these are the words you might have to say at the barber shop or at the beauty salon: "Yes, we are both Jehovah's Witnesses, but he received a sanction like when an athlete is not permitted to play for six games and so we aren't free to discuss the matter during his 'suspension.'"
In such a circumstance, these are the words you might have to say at the disfellowshipped person's house should he or she be the one to answer the door and greet you at the door: "Hi. I'm here to see your mother. Is she here?" And if she's not home: "Then, would you let her know that I came by and to call me?"
From the article "Imitate God's Mercy Today": "While the elders will continue to shepherd the Christians in the family, we might find that we too can visit without having dealings with the expelled person. If the disfellowshipped one happens to answer when we visit or telephone, we can simply ask for the Christian relative that we are seeking." [w91 4/15, paragraph 19, p. 24].
What's so hard about doing any of this? Nothing, but there is immaturity among Jehovah's Witnesses, too, and many disfellowshipped persons often come to realize this when they happen to meet their former brothers and sisters in the communities where they live. When those not Jehovah's Witnesses see the way Jehovah's Witnesses treat disfellowshipped persons, they are often appalled by the lack of common courtesy shown to disfellowshipped persons, which affects their view of Jehovah's Witnesses and tarnishes our reputation for being loving people. People need to grow up in love! (Ephesians 4:15)
If I see one of Jehovah's Witnesses treating any disfellowshipped person unkindly, as if they are out to embarrass them in public in front of folks that do not know God and do not know the reasons why some are disfellowshipped from God's organization and often have no knowledge about the issue that led to the disfellowshipment, I will briefly explain that "He (or she) may now be on suspension, but hopefully you won't regret what you're doing now when his (or her) suspension is over." The point to keep in mind that disfellowshipped ones are still dedicated brothers and sisters, which is why no need exists to rebaptize them when they return.
[END OF DIGRESSION]
As far as due process of law, Egg, there's an appeal process, there's witnesses, according to the new book if my memory serves me correct the witnesses don't even have to be Jehovah's, if you catch my drift. After the defendant has been convicted, its put on his permanent record, and even sent to the brothers in New York. You can liken the private reproval to a misdemeanor, and the DFing to a felony conviction. Since we're discussing marital [infidelity] and grounds for scriptural divorce, there are some choice articles in the WT CD Rom about new evidence coming up after the Judicial committee settled the matter. When that occurs, they sometimes pursue a new [judicial] committee, one might call it a retrial, with new evidence.
I might as you what were you doing reading the new textbook that was written specifically for the benefit of congregation elders, but I won't. Of course, you are free to regard a reproof as being like a misdemeanor conviction and a disfellowshipment as being like a felony conviction; I do not, and I do catch your "drift." There is indeed an appeals process, but if someone disfellowshipped or who was later reinstated after having been disfellowshipped should move to another congregation, without there being a record, how would the local elders in a different congregation know what weakness a brother or a sister might need their attention?
Also, how would the local elders of a different congregation come to know that a particular brother is disqualified from serving as an elder or in any capacity whatsoever until the New Order? Some offenses committed in this life do not merit the offender, although a reinstated brother in good standing, being accorded the privilege of being an attendant holding a microphone during a meeting or directing cars in and out of the parking lot.
What if the brother or sister has a problem with alcohol, which problem was kept in check at one congregation because the elders were aware of it, but the elders at a different congregation were not made aware of it, and the brother or sister should harm himself or herself at a Christian gathering of some sort largely because no one at that gathered knew that the brother or sister had been disfellowshipped or had been reinstated after having been disfellowshipped for drunkenness due to his or her being an alcoholic? I'm not sure what you are saying here, but the fact that there is an appeals process does not mean that there is due process of law or defendants in the Theocracy.
Egg, make no mistake about it, there is due process and defendants, and a whole lot more that resembles Caesar's laws and processes.
What may resemble a mushroom could well be a toadstool. Perhaps you've heard this before, but Christians are not under law, Caesar's laws or anyone else's, but under undeserved kindness. (Romans 6:14)
@Scully:
According to Caesar's Laws, there is a principle whereby the punishment should fit the crime. There's no such principle in a JW kangaroo court. You are either Marked™, Reproved™, Disfellowshipped™ or Disassociated™. All three pronouncements (Marking™ is the exception because they don't announce people as being Marked™) are dealt with in the same manner. The individual is treated like $h!t, gossipped about and viewed with suspicion, even if the outcome of the hearing is inconclusive and no decision is reached, the person can be 'convicted by gossip mill' - I've seen it happen. I've been the subject of the JW gossip mill and know the way it can destroy your life.
According to Caesar's Laws, the defendant (accused) has the right to legal counsel, and the right to establish their defense with witnesses. There are no such rights in a JW kangaroo court.
This isn't true at all. Above, @miseryloveselders makes the following point about witnesses with which I concur:
As far as due process of law, Egg, there's an appeal process, there's witnesses, according to the new book if my memory serves me correct the witnesses don't even have to be Jehovah's, if you catch my drift.
You're right when you say that the accused has the right to legal counsel in courts of law, but under the Theocracy's law, no. As part of the process, one may even appeal to the brothers in Brooklyn.
According to Caesar's Laws, the defendant (accused) is deemed innocent until proven guilty. There is no such principle in a JW kangaroo court, the accusation is deemed credible and the accused must prove their innocence.
According to Caesar's Laws, the defendant (accused) is not required to answer questions that could incriminate them. In a JW kangaroo court, the accused has already been incriminated whether they respond to the accusations or not. They can be DFd in absentia without ever appearing before the Judicial Committee™ or offering a defense.
According to Caesar's Laws, the defendant (accused) has the right to face their accusers. In a JW kangaroo court, no accusers ever have to face the accused. The Elders™ form a committee based on the private statements of others, whose identities are kept confidential.
The accused is not deemed guilty nor is the accusation made deemed to be credible. The inquiry made isn't about guilt or innocence. The inquiry made is motivated by a desire to help the errant one find their spiritual bearings, if indeed they have lost their bearings, that they might regain their footing. Whether the accusation made proves to be true or false, the goal is to find repentance should a sin, in fact, have been committed. If none is found, a sanction may follow and it need not be as severe as disfellowshipment. At no time does anyone need to prove their innocence to anyone in a Judicial Committee. If no such "proof" even exists, then how does one prove a negative?
There are times when facing one's accusers would be inappropriate, such as when the accuser is an eight-year-old boy or girl and the accusation involves improper touching, pedophilia. If you don't understand this, I'm not going to take the time to explain the inappropriateness of conducting such inquiries -- not trials, mind you, but inquiries -- where teens or pre-teens are the subject of such inquiries, but just know that many adults that have children would understand the handling of such matters by proxy than face-to-face, since the goals of parents is to raise their children to become mature adults and to protect them from those that would harm them until they should become such.
Don't EVER compare the JW tribunal / kangaroo court / Judicial Committee™ to a real legal system. It's on the same level as Islamic Sharia Law, where there are corruption, collusion and a good-ol-boys network.
There is no "JW tribunal," no "kangaroo court," no Islamic (sharia) law practiced among Jehovah's Witnesses. You are, of course, free to believe whatever it is you want to believe, even if what things you believe are not true. You may have a lot of ideas about the law, and so do I (as to what motivates you to be saying what things you have said here). What things I've expressed here in this thread (about the law and about Jehovah's organization) are just a few of them. My hope is that after reading this post, you will stop pretending to know more about things than you really do not know.
@djeggnog
my husbands mom left her husband other year cos shed had enough of him shed not had her due for like over 10 years and she ran off with another bloke, now her kind ill husband is on his own now he dint give her her due cos they old and hes not able to anymore,
Wouldn't certain situations call for a judgement between accuser and accused?
For example:
"I don't know who Brother X and Brother Y thought they saw coming out of that "massage parlor," but it wasn't me. I was on the East coast on business at the time and I can prove it!"
@Lady Lee:
@Scully quoted the following from a QfR article [w73 6/1, p. 352]: "The innocent mate may even have contributed toward the unfaithfulness of his or her marriage partner. If, for example, the wife has deliberately deprived her husband of the marital due, she bears a certain responsibility for what has happened. She is not altogether without blame from God’s standpoint," at the end of which quote 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 was cited. You said:
This is what I had thrown at me all the time. It would be my fault if he committed adultery.
I didn't read any of this in this statement you quoted from the QfR article, but you did. Even if it were a fact that you may have contributed to your husband's unfaithful conduct toward you, this statement doesn't stand for the proposition that you did contribute in any way to his decision to engage in unfaithful conduct toward you. The statement you quoted states "The innocent mate may even have contributed toward the unfaithfulness of his or her marriage partner." Do you understand that no definitive statement was being made here that excuses your husband from what he was doing to you, elder or not? These WTS articles are not a substitute for the Bible, although, granted, some do tend to use them as such by twisting the words in them to support whatever their point of view might be on a matter. I understand this, but I don't do it. I try to be straightforward in my dealings with others.
If you yourself think these quoted words to be a license for a husband to rape his wife, then you've got another think coming, @Lady Lee. Your husband had no right to rape you, which is exactly what forcing sexual intercourse with one's spouse is. But I couldn't tell from your post -- and maybe others here know the answer to my question already because you have already disclosed this to them here publicly, I don't know -- but if this is not a secret: Was your husband disfellowshipped for his adultery or was your unwillingness for whatever reason to render to your husband his marital due accepted as an excuse so that he was given a pass by those assigned to his Judicial Committee? I don't know the facts, but it seems to me that if he blamed you for withholding the marital due that he could not have been repentant.
And like Scully said he wasn't held responsible for my adultery although that wasn't because I wasn't getting enough. it was to get him to leave me alone.
Wait! Now with this, what you seem to be saying here is that there was a tit-for-tat thing between you and your husband, so that even you committed adultery "to get him to leave [you] alone"? Am I getting this wrong?
@Scully wrote:
And yet, in requiring that The Marital Due™ be Rendered™, more or less on demand, the WTS is setting up married JW couples for just such a scenario.
@Lady Lee wrote:
exactly. The WTS set this rule in motion and my husband took advantage of it fully. When you feel like it is an obligation, a duty to perform there is nothing loving about it. It becomes no different a duty than washing the floors or scrubbing the toilet
I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses and I don't endeavor to set up any married couple among Jehovah's people so that the husband might get away with raping his wife. That's just nonsense. Just to be clear here, in the US English lexicon, the word "due," as translated from the Greek text at 1 Corinthians 7:3, is a synonym for the words "obligation," "duty" and "requirement." This marital "due" is a conjugal duty, that a wife owes as a debt to her husband, and the husband owes as a debt to his wife; which due they mutually agreed to render when they became husband and wife. But no one that commits adultery can excuse themselves by blaming anyone, least of all their spouse, for what he or she has done. Nowhere do we find in the Bible anything contemplative of such an excuse for immorality.
@elderelite wrote:
The ending quote "sex without love is futile but love can stand alone" always seemed like the society's way of saying "suck it the hell up" to me.. again I'm a man so take that for what its worth.
@djeggnog wrote:
No, that would be you badly paraphrasing something you were reading in an article based on your own pathological viewpoints with regard to (a) the WTS and (b) sex inside (or outside) of marriage. This "ending quote" is on you and has nothing at all to do with anything that has been or is being taught by Jehovah's Witnesses.
@Lady Lee wrote:
DJ for a JW man who has unhealthy ideas about sex that is unfortunately exactly the attitude he pushed on me.
Before I continue with my remarks, as I parsed this portion of what you wrote in your post, it could be understood as your suggesting that I have "unhealthy ideas about sex." Is that what you're saying about me? If so, on what basis do you say this about me? If I am mistaken here and your sentence (quoted above) was just badly phrased, then please ignore my questions, @Lady Lee.
I had no rights and only obligation to service him when he wanted.... I most certainly felt like the attitude of the WTS was "suck it up" I would think many women who had a husband like mine would have felt exactly the same way.
Ok, but I'm still not clear on what happened in your case, or even if you are interested in sharing with me, or with anyone, what action was taken, if any, for your husband's adultery. It does seem to me that if you thought your husband to have been abusive toward you (and your description here certainly sounds like it!), that you could have divorced him scripturally so as to protect yourself from further physical abuse. I don't ask you what you did, if anything; that's your business. I'm merely asking you if your husband was disfellowshipped for his sin of adultery.
@djeggnog
djeggnog, that was almost as boring and sleep inducing as reading a watchtower or awake.
*** w73 6/1 p. 352 Questions From Readers ***The innocent mate may even have contributed toward the unfaithfulness of his or her marriage partner. If, for example, the wife has deliberately deprived her husband of the marital due, she bears a certain responsibility for what has happened. She is not altogether without blame from God’s standpoint, for the Bible admonishes: "Let the husband render to his wife her due; but let the wife also do likewise to her husband. . . . Do not be depriving each other of it, except by mutual consent for an appointed time, that you may devote time to prayer and may come together again, that Satan may not keep tempting you for your lack of self-regulation."—1 Cor. 7:3-5.
--I found this quote a few weeks ago in my research. My wife saw it on my computer screen and went pretty ballistic, thought I was suggesting that I should have the green light for adultery because she'd been holding out for awhile, apparently due to a months-long illness that she never sought treatment for. Of course, I just found the quote curious and never intended for her to see that I found it. I thought it highlighted the seriousness of sex within marriage, more than the obligation of any one person to provide the 'due'. (But see the 'Adult Study Edition' Watchtower for good ideas on that issue...) It's sad that this stuff even needs discussion. Good couples should be able to talk this kind of stuff out. And not have elders telling women to give it up or blaming them for adultery, because adultery happens because of more than just no sex, if you ask me...
-sd-7
