The GOVERNING BODY doesn't make the polices.......

by Terry 24 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Terry

  Oddly enough....The Governing Body don't make the policies; the policies make the Governing Body!

  How can I say that?

  Think of it this way...

  The Economy is every transaction, asset and liability within our country which is inside a greater context of the World Markets.

  Each family has their little piece of the greater pie: debts, savings, purchases, credit-you name it.

  But--get this--NOBODY is in charge of the economy. Nobody RUNS it. Nowhere in the world is some Dr.No deciding what happens.

  However, EVERYBODY is reacting to it. Those with political power (Presidents) try their ideas with the same zeal as the housewife clipping coupons is trying hers. NEITHER of them runs the economy. IT IS GREATER than any scheme, plan, transaction or ideology!

  The Economy is a medium...a context...an enviorment without control! In its elusive way: the ECONOMY controls those within it.

  Now, apply the same thought to the Governing Body. The ETHOS of christian/biblical belief is like the Economy; it is bigger than any persons, preachers, conclaves, denominations or religion--but, it affects all of them and they react with their own set of ideas.

  The Governing Body has their VIEW of what must be done just as the 12 apostles of the Mormon church or the cardinals in the Catholic Church--yet, NONE OF THESE INDIVIDUAL GROUPS can operate unilaterally to CHANGE things!

  WHY?

  It is bigger than all of them because it is a Universal system of inter-connected beliefs ACTING as a greater reality!

  When a policy gets changed by the Pope (such as contraceptives being okay for prostitutes) it is a response to an ever growing awareness (mainly through critics) that deaths due to aids and abortions due to unwanted pregnancy are the DIRECT RESULT of Catholic bans on contraception.

  When the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses makes the "Millions now living will never Die/Generations" change in "understanding" it is do to critical backwash and a tightening sense of unprovability. They are REACTING to outside forces not creating forces from within.

  When the Mormon leaders approved blacks for the priesthood it was a reaction to public censure holding them up to ridicule and not an internally generated autonomy of purpose at work.

  What does all this mean?

  Religion is a MEDIUM like water and the believers/leaders are the fish swiming in specific schools within an ecosystem of enormous magnitude.

  These giant schools of fish turn this way and that AS THOUGH they were an entity instead of hundreds of individual fish. Yet, they have no leaders!

  Thei responses are dictated by the effluent moment to moment contexts of life and death within that medium.

  So too, with religions and believers and leader and lay persons.

  The Governing Body does not make the policies; the polices make the Governing Body.
• 

  pirata

  @itsacult: nonsense.

  Care to expand on your critique of Terry's argument?
• 

  sir82

  Over the past 20-25 years, I'd say it's the legal department that makes the policies. It's all about protecting assets and reducing liability now.

  It's the GB's job to put a veneer of "spirituality" on whatever twists and turns are dictated by the lawyers.
• 

  Terry

  Policy is just an ordinary reaction to an everyday situations that brings about pressure for change.

  Because the people who are regarded as Leaders make a formal statement of how they will deal with these pressures it becomes de facto: POLICY or "New Light".

  But, it is simply a normal encounter with the forces of change that involve every avenue of life.

  Religious people deal less with everyday facts than with mystical and supernatural FORCES of "Good" and"Evil" which creates deep emotional turbulence and awe.

  A garden hose is just a garden hose until you see it beside you in the dark and it transforms into "HELP--A SNAKE!!!"

  Emotions can transform ordinary facts into hallucinations of great magnitude.

  Religion is filled with hallucinations, fears and power struggles.

  The Governing Body is handcuffed to their mystical LARGER-THAN-LIFE importance image. These are very ordinary old men with little experience with normal everyday life. All they see and react to is COLORED WITH END OF THE WORLD significances.

  But, they carry a huge weight in whatever they do or say. Like a very large ocean liner, they are the tiny rudder which changes the course of a great many people should they flinch or blink in the face of pressures.

  A lot of the recent changes are just their emotional reactions to the New York proximity of the World Trade Center to Bethel headquarters!

  Letters from around the world fed by encounters with "apostates" bring pressures to react as well.

  In other words----these are NOT MASTERMINDS with an agenda and vision for the future.

  They are just tired, silly, superstitious old men who happen to be viewed like superheroes. They are bureacrats, geezers who are pencil pushers and reactionary fuddy-duddies.

  That's what I am saying.

  They have millions of people actively listening to them like E.F.Hutton is giving out stock tips!

  When circumstances say "Boo!" these old farts simply jump sideways and 7 million people shadow their startled movement!
• 

  dgp

  I see your point, Terry, and I usually agree with your posts, but this time I would say that, while the Governing Body does not make the rules for Christianity, they at the very least give an aura of sacredness to the policies, whoever actually writes them.

  I would expand this discussion. When I was still a Catholic and mourned the death of John Paul II, who I got to see in person (yep, that was me!), The Economist said that one of the great achievements of the man was that, for the first time in 500 years, a bishop was at the forefront of History (with a capital H), not lagging behind it. If I'm not mistaken, The Economist was making reference to John Paul II's role in the overthrow of Communism (of which we'll be talking a bit later). But, if this is true of the largest Christian denomination, what can we say about the Jehovah's Witnesses? It's not them but worldlies with worldly aspirations that give a sense of direction to this world. We are all the heirs of the Enlightenment, whether we like it or not.

  The Russian communists, by the way, believed in what someone called "the fatal conceit", that they alone knew how the world works, instead of accepting that they can't control everything, even less so understand everything. They needed the west to surive as much as the Watchtower needs the worldlies. Their construct collapsed. I think the same will happen to the Governing Body, and they will bring it upon themselves.
• 

  Terry

  I see your point, Terry, and I usually agree with your posts, but this time I would say that, while the Governing Body does not make the rules for Christianity, they at the very least give an aura of sacredness to the policies, whoever actually writes them.

  I'm almost understanding what you are saying...but, not quite.

  The aura of sacredness which comes to the reactions of these old men (an aura imagined by the mere rank and file) is, of course, fictional myth-making. They are "Elvis, the Beatles and Michael Jackson all rolled into 7 people (Governing Body currently.)

  These "idols" are in a straitjacket they cannot remove. They live frozen in amber like that mosquito in Jurassic Park. The straitjacket is the HISTORY of the JW religion with all its horribly embarassing bad calls purported to be "guidance" by Jehovah.

  So, they can only react very very slowly to obvious dangers ahead. Those REACTIONS (generations change) is nothing more than face-saving.

  "But, you said THIS GENERATION will by no means pass away...!"

  It doesn't take a genius to see that as a train wreck.

  They were forced to tamper with the very meaning of "generation" like stretching a piece of taffy!

  That is what I mean when I say the Governing Body doesn't make the policies (they inherit those crazy doctrines from Russell and Rutherford)

  but that the policies (that crackpot history and all those wrong dates) make the Governing Body (react).
• 

  ProdigalSon

  Terry, after reading former top Naval Officer and whistleblower William Cooper's "Behold A Pale Horse", martyred by the US Government, it appears to me that there is indeed a "Dr. No" playing us like a piano economically. They actually have computer programs that devise and monitor how we spend money, and they have ways of harnessing the negative energy we generate with our greed and materialism. They raise the price of beef over here, coffee over there, and document how we respond. It's a big f'n demonic game to them.
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  Borgia

  Terry,

  I guess I can agree with the post title. Many of the policy changes are steered by legal department. Within a framework of religious understanding: like: the evil doer must be done away with, legal jumps in to devise a 10 step policy to implement the idea. The boys and boys on the GB team only have to say yes or abstain. As with any organisation, be it the state embodied in a person like a king or emperor, a committee, there are those in the hallways of power. One could say the invisible equal to the civil servant.

  Here is where policy is being made. And nowher else. Policy is an expression of a strategic view. It is never made by those who decide. But by those who influence the decisionmaker(s)

  Cheers

  Borgia
• 

  stapler99

  I think you're on the ball, Terry. Systems should be viewed as interconnected wholes, and it's not necessary for the parts of the system to understand it.

  In fact, those /outside/ the system may have a better understanding of it. We have no need of God's spirit or divinely revealed truth to ask how it works. Instead we are free to ask, what is it about certain doctrines and features of the organization that explains why it exists, the mentality of its members, and so on.
• 

  Farkel

  Garbage.

  Farkel