by Divergent 50 Replies latest jw friends
Enforcing cruel shunning is not 'human'.
...may not appear practical from a human standpoint. All of us must be ready to obey any instructions we may receive, whether these appear sound from a strategic or human standpoint or not.
Give up your humanity for a money making cult, that could be part of an international pedophile ring?
Where do I sign up?!?
They love to use 2 John 1:10,11, don't they? Let's review:
If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your homes or say a greeting to him. 11 For the one who says a greeting to him is a sharer in his wicked works.
Ok, fair enough, but what is "this teaching?" Let's back up and see the context.
Look out for yourselves, so that you do not lose the things we have worked to produce, but that you may obtain a full reward. 9 Everyone who pushes ahead and does not remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God. The one who does remain in this teaching is the one who has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your homes or say a greeting to him. 11 For the one who says a greeting to him is a sharer in his wicked works.
Hmm. The "teaching of the Christ." Let's see:
If the answer to any of these is "yes," please show me from the Bible. If any of these are, no, then let's go back to 2 John and review verse 9.
Everyone who pushes ahead and does not remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God.
I ask, then, who, really should be "shunned?"
Good point about rank-and-file flip-flopping Gayle on strictness towards shunning.
The impression I get is that many in the organization are not as rigorous in shunning as they are supposed to be, hence the periodic strongly-worded reminders.
The rank and file then obey for a while after the Watchtower then slip back into a more relaxed position - discreetly of course.
It's a little bit like meeting up with a JW just after one of their three-day conventions: They're insufferably righteous and preachy. Get them a few months out from the convention, and the burnished righteousness has toned right down and they're not as full on.
It's all part of the ups and downs of life in this organization.
On balance, though, I suspect that increasing numbers of those affiliated with the organization are stepping away from the more extreme elements. It's as if the GB are saying: How much blunter do we need to be??
This Watchtower was one big contradiction. Paragraph 17 said.....
'We need courage to be loyal to Jehovah. Many of us have courageously stood firm against pressure from family members......in order to prove ourselves loyal to God. In Japan, for example Taro had from childhood centred his life on being loyal to his parents..............He really wanted to make his parents happy. So when they opposed his association with Jehovah's Witnesses, he found it especially painful to tell them that he had decided to attend Christian meetings. Says Taro: "They were so angry for years, I was forbidden to visit them at home. I prayed for courage to stick to my decision. Now their attitude has softened, and I can visit them regularly'
Having been already annoyed at the audacity of paragraph 7 where we are to shun our own mother if df'd (forbid her from our home if it came to it), yet they make Taros parents look bad for doing the very same thing they set as policy! Who on earth writes this stuff. It looks like Bill wrote the first part of that Watchtower study, and Ben stepped in and finished it off. Unbelievable!
12 Daniel, a brother in Mexico, needed to choose between being loyal to God and seeking his own selfish interests. He wanted to marry a girl who was not a believer. Says Daniel: “I continued writing to her even after I entered the pioneer service. But finally, I humbled myself and told an experienced elder that I was disturbed by a conflict of loyalties. He helped me to see that to be loyal to God, I needed to stop writing to her. After many prayers and tears, that is what I did. Soon my joy in the ministry increased.” Daniel later married a fine Christian sister and now serves as a circuit overseer.
Man, oh man.....This happened to me! I was in love and I felt guilty because she wasn't a JW (we were 19). I broke up with her, broke her heart and it was a very sad time. Eventually, I, too, met and married a "fine Christian sister" and after two years, I realized my marriage was a mistake (even though I stayed in the unhappy marriage for 10 more years).
Latest campaign is called Project Shun the theme is easy to remember it's Shun..shun...and when in doubt...shun.
Reminds me of the Daleks....exterminate...exterminate...family ties...exterminate..exterminate...human emotions...
Straight absolute malarky...hahaha! I just smh when I read this stuff, cause it is such a lie. When I confessed, I confided in the elders all the nonsense taking place that I was aware of, thinking it would clear MY conscience and help the others who were "sinning". What happened to me? DF'd
What happened to them? NOTHING!! The guy is an elder, his wife (married in the Khall and all) is a reg pioneer, they have 2 kids are are living the full JW life. But when the elders questioned them about all their wrongdoing - which all took place in MY home cause they lived with me as a couple before getting married - they denied it all and called me a liar. The eldees bought it, and that was that.
14 Kindness can help you to deal with aconflict of loyalties. For example, youmay have definite knowledge that a certain fellow believer is guilty of seriousmisconduct. You may feel loyal to him,especially if he is a close friend or a relative. But if you were to cover up thewrongdoing, you would be disloyal toGod. Of course, your loyalty to Jehovahshould come first. So like Nathan, bekind yet firm. Urge your friend or relative to seek the help of the elders. If he or she does not do so within a reasonableperiod of time, loyalty to God shouldmove you to report the matter to the elders. In doing this, you are being loyal to Jehovah and kind to your friend or relative, for Christian elders will try to readjust such an individual with mildness. —Read Leviticus 5:1; Galatians 6:1.
Anne wrote and kindly reminded her mother that she had cut herself off from the family by her wrongdoing and unrepentant attitude. “The only way you can relieve your pain is by returning to Jehovah,” Anne wrote.
The writers that come up with this stuff live in the isolated world of bethel. When living in a like-minded hive of WT drones, disfellowshipping sounds beneficial to all concerned.
But out in the real world where ordinary JWs have to work with and live around nonJWs, the disfellowshipping practice screams "cult!"
The situation
described in this article would easily be surrounded by nonJW family
members, neighbors, friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and onlookers. Although WT
can issue the command that nobody ask any questions about the judicial
meeting and that nobody talk to the dfd, that certainly doesn't apply to
all those nonJWs. And when the mother in this WT story recounts what
has transpired and shows what the daughter wrote in the letter to any
nonJW, what are they going to think? "What a bitch of a daughter in a
stupid church. Poor mother."
Daniel later married a fine Christian sister and now serves as a circuit overseer.
As if "just marry a JW and you'll enjoy a wonderful life". Plenty of "fine Christians" married... and later divorced. After I became an elder and found out how many of these "fine Christian" couples and families were really a wreck, I lost my desire to marry. I'm still trying to recover from some of the stuff I "witnessed".
loyalty to God should move you to report the matter to the elders.
This is the type of thing that created this problem of the crime of child molestation being reported to the elders WHEN IT SHOULD BE REPORTED TO THE POLICE! If there is no confession or witness besides the victim, the "loyal" congregation leaves a molester free to strike again. Meanwhile, if an engaged couple confesses that they got a little touchy-feely, the elders bring down the hammer and publicly humiliate them.
I was an elder in a congregation where this tattle-tale spirit got absolutely out of control. As if there weren't enough real problems, there were some teenage girls and their mothers that started a war of accusations against one another. It was a mess with a quarter of the congregation not on speaking terms with another quarter and they were trying to drag the rest of us into the battle. I sure don't miss that kind of "fine Christian" sh!t.
