In 1989, I was in the Writing Department for only a few days when Joel Eames came to my office. Joel was at Bethel at that time some thirty or more years and was Lloyd Barry's male secretary. Lloyd had a female secretary too, but the job Joel did was much more important in that he was spokesman for Lloyd and took care of highly confidential GB matters.
Once settled in a chair in my office, Joel welcomed me to the department and we made small talk. Eventually, he came to the real reason for his visit: "You and Joe no doubt have invested in the stock market for many years and we'd like to know what stocks you both recommend?"
To say I was surprised is to put it mildly. Actually, I was amazed that a long-time member of Bethel, a faithful servant of Jehovah, a JW leader, was inquiring of me about the stock market. I asked him who the others were that wanted input from me and Joe about stocks. "Why many of the other staff," he said and further explained that the department had a subscription to the Wall Street Journal for market information.
I guess I wasn't very diplomatic when I told him that we had never invested in the stock market because it was a form of gambling. I said, "That's what we were taught. And no Witness we knew was into stocks,” I said, “except one old brother in West Palm Beach, Florida, a former circuit overseer. He regularly invested in the market and one time lost all his savings. Nobody had any sympathy for him because he was gambling and we knew that gambling was wrong."
Joel looked at me like I had a screw loose and told me nothing was wrong with investing in the stock market and nobody paid any attention to that old line of reasoning anymore. Of course, I could hardly wait until that evening to tell my husband that the old timers in the Writing Department were investing in the stock market. Need I say how disappointed we were by this, but as JWs do, we soon forgot our uneasiness with what we learned and their “Do as I say and not as I do” attitude and continued to press on in our special assignment of “Kingdom service.”
Alex’s sad tale of losing his house because of involvement in the stock market as described in the January 2013 Watchtower reminds me of an idiom that applies to the Watchtower Society, "The pot calling the kettle black" which is used to claim that a person is guilty of the very thing of which they accuse another. I say this because two years ago, I learned from a Bethel insider that one large Watchtower branch was heavily invested with Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street Investment giant. However, when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, that particular Watchtower branch lost millions. One would expect that if one Watchtower branch was investing in the stock market, all the major branches also did it. Who knows how much Watchtower lost when the stock market collapsed in 2008, but I bet it was plenty.
...OUTLAW