What SD has pointed out is that 99% of them will read an article like this and think to themselves, poor parents, their child is shunning them. The very few thinkers will get it.
Excellent point, there. Been trying to read more on propaganda techniques. This one is called "reversal of reality", I believe. Or it could be a "lie by omission", as it could be that their daughter very much wanted to talk to them but they shunned her. We don't have enough details to know for sure. Come to think of it, we don't even know if these people are real. But since when does that matter, right?
Truth be told, I was as much a zealot for the doctrine and rules as any of them, with some exceptions, but I was at least aware enough even as a Witness that I thought the shunning thing was rather harsh. I at least liked to make eye contact with people I'd trusted or liked who got DF'd and in some cases I even mouthed a greeting.
No doubt to her chagrin now, the woman I loved and eventually married was the wake-up call for me. She was the beginning; when she got DF'd, it made me start to rethink the rules. The more I talked to the elders about my feelings on the matter, you know, without being confrontational or challenging the ruling or anything, the more callous I realized they really were. They expressed in no uncertain terms that even if she got reinstated she wouldn't be worth dating again. Apparently, her sins were so evil that even repentance would not erase them, I guess. (At most, she got drunk/high and had sex with someone? Truly, the unforgivable sins! In hindsight, I still say that even though we're not exactly that compatible and have had our problems, she's a good woman and a good person, hardly deserving of the stuff the shepherds who were supposed to be trying to heal her were saying about her to me in private.)
This article came maybe seven months after I ceased contact with her. It just drove the knife in further for me. When even her reinstatement wasn't good enough as far as resuming our friendship (which is what it was when we parted ways anyhow), that was the final straw for me and I knew I needed answers the elders couldn't give me. Because I knew that this level of regulating the personal lives of adults was not found in the Bible. And as the Reasoning book so kindly reminds us, Jehovah's Witnesses adhere to the Bible as their final authority.
Wow, did that turn out to be a bad line to use for a guy like me, who took them at their word...and found it to be a lie. Clearly their rules go beyond the Bible, and that was my pet peeve about it all. I'd had serious doubts before, but it just wasn't time yet to pursue them fully until 3 years ago. It is an irony, isn't it, that the articles written to keep people in line actually serve to squeeze them right out of the organization. Go figure.
--sd-7
