Just a thought

by Gorb 8 Replies latest jw friends

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  Gorb

  Is the change in jw dress policy a way to make the changes in DF policy easier to accept?

  A way to devide?

  G.
• 

  hoser

  I don’t see much change in the df policy.

  Will a dfd still have to attend meetings for 6 months to be reinstated?

  probably

  Did the prodigal son have to wait 6 months ?

  As far as the corporate dress code it is just that. A change in policy to retain employees.
• 

  NotFormer

  hoser, I agree: the "changes" haven't actually changed very much.
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  joey jojo

  Announcing all the changes at once was just a way to slip through the changes to disfellowshipping practises involving minors.

  The rank and file dubs will be so dizzy with excitement they won't focus on the most important policy change.
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  Jeffro

  The change in dress policy is probably intended to get more people to resume in-person meeting attendance, as well as to seem less out of touch with modern dress standards.

  The change in df policy is to ‘show’ the government of Norway (and others) that they are (supposedly) improving their procedures. But it’s easy to see that giving people the smallest bit of attention only if they are making efforts to ‘return’ is just more emotional manipulation.
• 

  FFGhost

  I don’t see much change in the df policy.

  You don’t? Read the s-395 again.

  Will a dfd still have to attend meetings for 6 months to be reinstated?

  Absolutely not - read the s-395.

  A summary of the most significant changes:

  — multiple meetings with the “accused” are encouraged, even apparently expected, to try to “lead him to repentance”. In the past, the “accused” got exactly one meeting, one shot to convince the committee he was “repentant”. Fail to do so, certain DF.

  — Elders “chase after” a DF person after only 3 months, checking to see if he can return. In the past, a return after 3 months was utterly scandalous. 6 months was the absolute bare minimum, typically only granted if the DF’ed person formerly had, or has current family members, of enormous importance. Waiting a year or longer was much more the norm.

  — in the past, the DF’ed person had to write a formal letter, pleading for reinstatement and presenting a long list of how they were “repairing their relationship with Jehovah”. Now, elders chase after them, asking THEM if they want to return, every 3 months.

  — Minors are virtually never going to be DF’ed anymore. If the parents have the “situation in hand” (an extraordinarily, and probably intentionally, vague term, almost to the point of meaninglessness), not only is the kid not DF’ed, there’s not even a judicial committee.

  — Formerly, it was a prominent “virtue signal” for “exemplary” publishers and those with “privileges” to go out of their way to shun anyone DF’ed, particularly and specifically when other JWs were around. Now, such “privileged” folks are expected to publicly speak kind words to anyone DF’ed who shows up at a meeting, doing so repeatedly as the DF keeps coming.

  It’s an enormous change, but (in my opinion) only a transitional phase. It’s as much as they could “get away with” springing on JWs all at once. More changes are coming (again, my opinion).

  Sorry for derailing the thread, it just bugs me to see folks shrug and say “eh, it’s no big deal”. In the (previously) glacially slow to change world of JWs, it’s as big as it gets.

  Answering the OP, I think it was very likely intended to “distract” the (few remaining) thinking JWs from considering how deep the other changes are.
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  slimboyfat

  I did notice that in the broadcast Mark Sanderson spent 90% of the time talking about disfellowshipping with a short statement about dress at the end. Yet most of the JWs as far as I can tell are talking about the dress change and not the statement about disfellowshipping.
• 

  road to nowhere

  Slim. Good point. Dress standards are a sore point for lots of us

  The kangaroo court procedure is well known on both sides: those who decrie the procedure and those who want more pharisaical controls
• 

  Beth Sarim

  The pharisaical controls continue.

  Just with a little bit of "seasoning"

  We see these "pharisaical controls" rear their ugly head once you disagree with something from the gb or the wt.