Hi Sam, didn't get a chance until now to respond to your last post. I have to say that I really did honestly find it hard to respond without having all the facts. You say that if someone wants the facts that they can get them. My training as an elder, and I use this phrase deliberately, is that when a situation arises in a congregation which MIGHT warrant judicial action, that the body of elders, as you might know if you have the 'elders book', assign two elders to investigate. If they find evidence that might require a judicial committee to be formed, they meet with the other elders and review what has been discovered to see if there is truly enough evidence to form a judicial committee. I don't know, (how could I?) what happened in your situation, but I can say that in each case where I was involved in a judicial committee or in considering whether a committee should be formed, that we carefully considered the evidence and then reflected on the scriptual principles which govern whether any action should be taken to not only help the person who is in the middle of the situation, but the congregation as well. In that way, we were not just shooting from the hip, but trying to do what was needed in the particular situation.
You say that if anyone wants the facts that they can get them. But who will they get them from? If they get them from the bro or sis who is in the frame in front of the JC then there MAY be a bias there on the part of the 'accused.' Somebody who is outside the situation cannot of necessity get the inside story. Why not? For what I consider to be a very good reason. I have sat on quite a few committees on very delicate matters. When these things first came to light the body of elders consider the bare bones of the situation, and, as already mentioned, decide on whether a committee needs to be formed. From that point on, only the judicial committee hears all the gory details. This is so that only those who need to know are in a position to hear what is alleged to have happened. Imagine the accused goes before the committee and is repentant and remains in the congregation. How much easier it is to recover spiritually if only the bare minimum of people know what actually happens. The same thing applies even if somebody is unrepentant and is disfellowshipped. If they want to return then they can be confident that their story is not common knowledge. In saying this I do not condone gossip or people talking about things that they shouldn't. THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN. Probably does, sometimes, but this is the problem of those who actually do this, their own imperfection, and should not be laid at the door of the congregation. I really sound like an apologist here, right? But even though I know major mistakes have been made in judicial committees (I mentioned in another post that a close relative by marriage was DF'd ten years ago, completely unjustly, and belateldly reinstated and told he should never have been DF'd, but that is a whole other story), but it seems to me that there is not a workable alternative to this.
I have already mentioned to you my reservations about the way your committee treated you. You say that they hate you. Only you can know if that is true or not. They certainly did not handle the situation very well. You, and problemaddict say that these are man made rules that are not contained in scripture. But when somebody contravenes scriptural principles, what is supposed to happen? I used to be in the Catholic church where they paid lip service to Bible principles but never followed through. So you could live exactly how you wanted to all your life and then have a deathbed conversion and everything was hunky dory. While not condoning glib and insensitive handling of people's problems, I can see why a code of discipline and punishment, for want of using a better word, is necessary to keep the congregation clean. Paul did say that the congregation should 'remove the wicked man from among yourselves,' so there is scriptural precedent for judicial action. Please do not take from this that I relish this idea. I do not. But it seems that there have to be checks and balances, otherwise, we might as well be like everybody else and not worry too much about the level of moral standards in the cong. I am pontificating here, not holier than thou, otherwise I would not be posting here. I have my own doubts about many things in the org, but I am teasing out for myself what it all means.
As to whether HS was involved in your JC, sorry but I have no idea. Their lack of concern about DV is very problematic. Quite a few years ago I was on a committee where a bro I knew well in the cong was in front of a committee for DV. I thought about excusing myself from the committee as we had been quite close friends, but in the end I decided to go on the committee as I thought I had some insights into his character which might prove useful. Anyway, we had the committee, and one of the key points, and anyone who has been involved in a committee will know this, is whether the person is repentant, and has taken steps to prove this, as in, saying sorry to a wronged spouse in the case of DV and promising not to do it again. This individual had not done that, and obviously did not recognise at the time what true repentance was. So this person was DF by myself and the other members of the committee. He was re-instated later and continues now as a bro, and as far as I know (I have moved countries since), he is still in the cong, and the DV has not happened again.
You say in one of the posts related to your recording that you were DF'd for reviling. An unusual ground for this, not something I have come across before in my personal experience of DF. Again, not knowing the details makes it hard to comment on. Whether you would welcome my comments or not is another thing. Would like to say again, and also to problem addict, that anonymous accusations are worthless.
