Gossip...

Mr Magoo

As some of you might know I'm not a JW, but married to one.
All though I have clear opinions about the WTBTS I haven’t told my wife or my family in law yet what I think of their religion.

Therefore they often talk about what’s going on in their con. without worrying about me hearing some of it.

This weekend I was told that one of the fellows from “our” con. had been stealing from his workplace and had been giving “a public”. (I’m not sure what its called in English - “a public” is translated directly from my native language, I hope you know what I mean. (A public warning..?).

It sounded to me that nobody actually knew what he had been stealing - and so people were guessing wildly.... “ He might have a drug problem that he needed the money for”...”perhaps he has a gambling problem”... Several jokes were said: “well - he has always been able to get some beers if a party was to be arranged” (he is (was?) working in a supermarket). Several figures were also mentioned.

They were also talking about a one-day trip that he had been arranged for a large group of the youngsters in the local and nearby con... “well - let’s hope they didn’t pay him in advance...”.

The first person who told me was my father-in-law - an elder, and the persons I heard joking about it was my wife’s two sisters husband - both elders.

When my wife “attacked” the person (another elder), that my father in law has heard the news from, for not keeping these private matters to himself - he said, “well, it’s always nice to know what’s going on in the con. so that we don’t hear it from others when we’re out on field service”

Last year I attended the summer convention with my family in law and similar gossip were an everyday subject. (I noted that a e.g. df’ed person quickly was made into a drug using troublemaker.

Personally I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling any elders anything if I knew they wouldn’t keep it to themselves.

No wonder people don’t want to get into trouble (judged be the elders) if they know they will be the subject of gossip for months.

I normally keep to myself what I hear about other people, especially when no one really now the exact facts. I’d rather contact the person and get the facts if he want to talk about it.

I would like to hear other peoples experiences regarding this subject.

Take care.
Mr Magoo

Angharad

I think this type of thing is pretty common in most congregations, it happened many times in ours that someone was publically reproved, and then you would then start hearing all sorts about them. Quite often even though what they had done is supposed to be confidental there was usually a local needs talk around the time of the annoucment, which is a bit of a give away and just fuels the gossip machines.

logical

Just let the hypocrites play their little games while they can, there will come a time when the game will end and what will they do then?

Carmel

It's too bad that the innocent children of the abusers in the cong's don't have the benefit of the elders backbiting about their pedophilic tormentors! What a tangled web they weave....

carmel

SlayerLayer

About a month after I was d'fd for somking, my first wife and I split up. No one in the congregation knew that I was smoking. Boy oh boy, was I made out to be the cheating husband! LOL What's so funny is that after we split up, it was another year before I actually "did the deed".

I guess when you really think about it, Jehovah's Witnesses entertainment is quite limited. No 'r' rated movies and such. I remember wanting to ride with certain people for field service just because I knew that they had all the juicy stuff. How sad and pathetic.

jukief

My hometown really had fun gossipping about me. Of course, I gave them good ammunition. You see, one day I up and left my JW husband, then a few months later I moved to another city (the reason was to attend college but I'm sure the local dubs concocted juicier reasons than that!).

One of my closest friends (or so I thought) wrote me a letter after she'd heard that I left my husband. She said she talked to an elder in her congregation about it (someone I'd never met and who knew nothing about my circumstances), and he agreed with her that if I left my husband it could only be because I was having an affair. So she felt she couldn't associate with me anymore. (Big loss, huh?) What's funny is that several years later my ex-husband visited these people and he made it very clear to them that there had been no affair and that the reason I left him was because he was such a horrible husband. :-)

Gossip was one of the primary reasons I decided the dubs couldn't possibly be god's organization. I've never seen anything that equals it--not at any of the places I've worked, in school or college, or among my "worldly" friends.