Empathy ,fellow feeling and comforting words are the sort of treatment you would expect from God's Organisation. Well how do you think this sister felt when she found her tragic circumstances gleefully recalled by the WTS and used to not to offer her comfort but hammer home a warning to all.
*** w51 1/1 23 "Put Off Every Weight" ***
Some weights and responsibilities, once taken on, cannot be rightly laid aside. Once assumed, they must be carried. A servant can deliberately pick up weights because of giving way to "the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes". To illustrate, here is another sad page from real life. A lovely young pioneer sister, six years ago, happy and carefree in the battle daily preaching the Word. Ahead of her were Gilead training and foreign missionary service, with all its added blessings. Today her plight tugs at one's heart. It started innocently enough. But no point in relating details-your imagination can fill them in. Today the weights upon her are almost beyond endurance. A worldly husband, finally hospitalized with incurable cancer. Three young children, one born a cripple. How much running in the godly race do you suppose this once-free pioneer now does? Looking years older than her age, from morning to night it is drudgery to carry the responsibility she must shoulder. No time at all now for service, completely inactive and knocked out of the battle. Still she struggles to get back into the race, but the load she carries will make the future road very difficult to travel. With tears in her eyes she said, "I'd give anything to be that free young pioneer again."
Example after example could be brought forth to show the sorry results of giving way to self and self-desire, rather than laying aside that weight and keeping to the fight at hand. Self in any form, self-gratification, self-importance, the self that makes you and your desires come first, ahead of the race to be run.
(end of quote)
Consider a few points,
1. Why did the WTS not set out all the unfortunate circumstances? Would these have produced some 'misdirected' empathy? Instead it said 'But no point in relating details-your imagination can fill them in,' which gives full license to those who adopt the most unfavorable interpretation. That is the green light to speculation and harmful gossip.
2. The way this article is written would DEMORALISE this sister. Was that the intention? How do you think she felt, now that her 'self-desire' had become public knowledge?
3. Would she consented to this whole thing becoming public? Her comments reported to the end were probably said to some elder in confidence but later passed onto the Branch.
4. What does the 'I told you so attitude' produce, other than a class of self-righteous smug types.? *** Rbi8 Luke 18:10-14 ***
10 "Two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and began to pray these things to himself, 'O God, I thank you I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week, I give the tenth of all things I acquire.' 13 But the tax collector standing at a distance was not willing even to raise his eyes heavenward, but kept beating his breast, saying, 'O God, be gracious to me a sinner.' 14 I tell YOU, This man went down to his home proved more righteous than that man; because everyone that exalts himself will be humiliated, but he that humbles himself will be exalted."
ISP