Frenchy, does there also have to be a lot of fornication? I have never seen someone get df'd for lying.
I gather by this you mean that someone can get DF’d for one instance of fornication but not hardly for one instance of drunkenness. You are quite correct. Getting drunk once in a great while is not viewed as drunkenness. One time fornication is viewed as fornication. (Not my rules, just saying how it is.) As I mentioned previously, lying must be done with intent to deliberately malign someone or to misrepresent (Oh oh... I see it coming!) facts to as to conceal some wrongdoing. I have been on committees that df’d someone for lying. Not many, only two that I can remember off hand. Lying is often used in conjunction with another df’d offense as a noose closer so to speak.
Example: "Have you been fooling around, sister?" –"No brother, I have not! How dare you imply that I am immoral. This is the third time you’ve called me in here and asked me that! I did not have sex with that man!" –-"Well sister, here’s a polaroid that we took while stalking you for the past six months. Now, what do you have to say about that! Ah ha! That’s what we thought! So not only are you fooling around but you LIED to us about it when we asked you repeatedly! Shame on you. It’s the big "D" for you!"
The lie is the clincher here. It’s used a lot by committees to justify their not finding any ‘works that befit repentance’. This is especially so in cases of habitual ‘trouble makers’, i.e., where the person is not liked very much by the members of the committee. In other cases where gossip becomes a problem and a particular publisher is caught in several lies that defame another’s character and a pattern is established that this was done with malice of forethought then DF’ing can occur.
Now gluttony is another matter. How ‘fat’ does a person have to be before he is ‘fat’? Fatness itself is not a sin. The general definition of gluttony is eating (or drinking) too much but it has a much narrower application in the way that it’s used by the WTBS, i.e., at times we may all eat too much but that does not make us gluttons in the same manner that getting drunk every once in a great while does not make one a drunkard. Again, the rules are not mine but I must say that it’s a sensible stand.
Now I know some fat sisters and brothers. I know some not so fat brothers and sisters that eat more than them. Which is guilty of gluttony? How much overweight does one have to be before he is a glutton? I had a sister that was being DF’d for smoking bring this up, by the way. She asked me why we didn’t df fat people. I reminded her that she had a fat daughter and asked her if she thought we should DF her. But she did have a good point in that people are allowed to overindulge in food but not in other areas.
On a lighter note to larc: Personal experience has shown me that for some reason fat sisters have less of a problem with fornication! Strange, isn’t it? Fat brothers, on the other hand seem uninhibited by the condition. Goes to show that our kindly sisters have more tolerance than the brothers. Another point: Sisters can always use Scripture to defend their status. For does not one of the Psalms tell us that the good news will be declared by an army of large women? (Ps 68:11)
-Seen it all, done it all, can't remember most of it-