Hey, sleepy and troubled, didn't you guys do a movie with Snow White??
With regard to letters you are getting into a minefield, if you make a misstep...BOOM!
Enough said.
Should you write to the society?
by sleepy 22 Replies latest jw friends
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Winston
When I was a JW I wrote the Society and got a run around for an anwer.
They will give you some council to do things their way.
More than 5 yrs ago I was on a tour in Paterson Bethel and because my wife had kinda influencial freind their we got a special tour of the writting dept(for answering letters).
If I remember correctly they had several sister that would work under one brother and these sisters would read the letters and put them in certain catagories. We got to see and read some of the letters even though we were not supposed to. There were several brother with several sisters working under each brother, in this dept.
If I remember correctly, I asked if they had standard form letters for certain types of topics, and the sister said yes. I think the sister do alot of the answering of the letters and the brothers just check up on them.
Anyway that my $.02.
The Never Ending Search For Truth
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Stealth
Sleepy;
You mentioned in another post that you have already written the Society with some of your concerns. You also said that you received a reply. My question to you is:
Did their reply address any of your concerns specifically?
Do you feel that their reply showed genuine concern for you as a Christian?
Do you feel that their reply was personal in nature or just a form letter?
The reason for my asking is that I too am considering writing a letter to the Society. I think that it would help others, to know how they respond in general to these types of letters. If you can share any context of the reply they sent to you it might prove helpful.
It seems like the majority on this DB feel that it is a complete waist of time to do this. If there are any who have actual letters with replies from the Society that can illustrate how this is true I think it could help others who might be contemplating writing a letter.
Sleepy, Email to me privately if you wish, I think we have much in common and are in similar positions in the organization.
Regards, Stealth
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Winston
I would be willing to bet that before the Society uses a brother or sister for the job of reading and answering these letters that they must put them thru a special coarse to teach them how to read these letters and not get deprogrammed.
I wounder how many who have this job still feel it's the truth, and how many have eventually left the ORG.
The Never Ending Search For Truth
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AlanF
Sleepy, I completely agree with you that people should write to the Society, for the reasons you stated and others.
Writing in lets Watchtower writers know what JWs or outsiders are thinking. It tends to break through the walls of isolation, at least for those writers. My understanding is that the Society keeps track of how many letters are received about a particular subject, and if enough letters are received, they might do something about it -- if for no other reason than to stop the flow of letters.
Writing in is especially beneficial for the one who writes in. Experience shows that a person who questions almost any WTS teaching, if he or she receives a reply at all, will get one that says in so many words, "We might deal with this one day, but in the meantime keep quiet." Often the reply will contain a half-hearted attempt to argue against the person's point, but this is almost always done by referring to older WTS publications. If the person's argument is sound, the reply will invariably ignore or distort the most important parts of it. Sometimes it will say, in so many words, "We disagree but are not going to argue with you." Often a reply will contain an encouragement to "avoid asking unprofitable questions". The upshot of this is that a questioner will see clearly that the Society cannot reasonably answer plenty of hard questions about its teachings and policies. Often a JW will not believe a critic who explains all this, but must see it for himself. That's extremely valuable, because the questioner cannot deny his personal experience.
Watchtower correspondence writers really have little option when answering hard questions or criticisms but to toe the party line. They certainly can't take it upon themselves to agree with the critic. If they can't answer the question, they must take it to their overseer, who will then determine whether to pursue the question or to trash the letter. Thus, there even appears to be a subtle pressure on low level correspondence people to trash certain kinds of questions so as to avoid giving their overseers a challenge. Such challenges might propagate upward and, horror of horrors, get to an actual decision maker who will then have to actually make a decision. In the usual fashion of dictatorial regimes, no one below a certain level is allowed to make decisions on their own, and they learn by experience what kind of problems to avoid troubling their superiors with.
Of course, to be answered, questions must be phrased properly. Hard questions or criticisms that appear to be from non-JWs will almost certainly not be answered. Unsigned letters will simply be thrown out. A questioner must pull out all the stops to appear obsequious and to avoid sounding dogmatic, or too definite, about his argument or position. He or she must be prepared to deal with elders about the matter, since the Society will often forward the letter to the local body of elders or even the local Circuit Overseer rather than answer it themselves. That method of avoiding questions works well because the local 'authorities' can often intimidate the questioner into keeping quiet. Often, they will turn the question aside and concentrate on irrelevancies like, "Are you loyal to the 'faithful slave'?" "Do you disagree with other teachings of 'the slave'?"
When contemplating writing in, a person should go through all the standard channels before writing a letter. Local elders should be given the questions first to give them a chance to come up with an answer. That allows the writer to inform the Society that the reason he's writing is that the local elders can't answer. That tends to stop the Society from simply forwarding the letter back to the local congregation. If they do that, then the person has every right to complain in a subsequent letter that he's being given a runaround. Elders have a hard time dealing with such undeniable accusations.
All in all, I think it's a good thing for a questioner to write the Society. It gives the JW organization a fair chance to answer, and it usually proves to a determined questioner that the Society cannot give a reasonable answer, which then allows the questioner to move on with a clear conscience, and to explain to anyone who asks why they've become inactive, that the Society could not or would not deal with their serious questions.
If nothing else, writing in and getting standard bullpucky answers back provides good entertainment.
AlanF
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Vienna
Troubled:
Please be warned--if you are writing the letter to the Society with the purpose of saying "hey, you guys can not answer these questions, but here they are anyway because you're wrong", then be prepared to be disfellowshiped for apostasy. Once the elders get a copy of the letter from the WT headquarters, they'll send out the investigative committee to meet with you. They sum it up nowadays with this simple question: "Do you believe that Jehovah's Witnesses are used by Jehovah's as his spirit directed organization?" If you answer yes, then you're okay. That IMMEDIATELY means all of your questions fall under basic WT teachings, so you're not an enemy, you just have questions.
If you answer no, you're out and labeled an apostate. If you send in that letter, be prepared to make a stand either for the WT or not--there's no black or white. There used to be years ago, but with the increase in those leaving, elders are told to keep it simple. I know from experience with myself and my husband. They asked my husband that same question, and it cuts to the chase (both of us are out of the JWs now, we are Christains and are happy....finally!!!).
What direction is your letter taking...I'm just curious....
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Simon
To be honest, I don't think that writing to the society accomplishes anything - they know that things are wrong because they put so much effort into covering things up and re-writing the history that they would rather forget about.
Take a look at the story of Carl Olaf Jonson - he sent the research he had done which proved that 607 could not have been the date of the destruction of Jerusalem and they just tried to supress it by DF'ing him and nearly everyone who had read it (which became The Gentile Times Reconsidered)
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sleepy
stealth,
Unfortunatly I'm unable to find the letter the society sent me but I can tell you the jist of it.
They did adress my concern's directly and tried to answer my questions using quotes from the insight book .
I found they did show concern for me and not contempt or arrogance.
Trouble is their answer just was not logical.
As to whether it was just a standard letter I don't know as I haven't seen any others of a similiar nature.
I wasn't a waste of time though as I didn't expect them to agree with me but I just wanted to give them a chance.Also It helped me to formulise my thoughts more clearly.
Looking back though I dont think I expessed myself as well as I could of and will prehaps write again on the same subject.
I must mention that I live in Britian and wrote to the London bethel so I don't know how Brooklyn responds, but I think they must have known I was a brother by some of the things I said and were purposely trying not to be harsh or dogmatic in their reply.
Even if they didn't know I was a brother I'm sure they would have let the elders know that a person in their area had written to them and would have asked them to call on them.I know this happens becaused I've been asked to do so myself.
I could be wrong but I think the writer of the reply knew what would happen if he informed the elders and decided not to do so, something about the tone of the letter sujested that.
perhaps I'm wrong.
I will try and find the letter and get back to ou latter -
bluesapphire
About a year ago I wrote a six page letter to the society putting them on the line for inserting Jehovah in the NT and for their lies about how we got the bible. I pretended to be my mom and used her address. They responded and we corresponded for six months having a total of 6 or 7 letters, each one of theirs was written by a different person. The bottom line was that they COULD NOT answer to any of the charges. They went around in circles and basically said, "It's the truth because we believe it."
At first I thought it had been a waste of time but when I talked to the elders - some from my sister's hall. (I told them I didn't care for the elders at my hall so they agreed to talk to me.) They knew the society hadn't adequately answered my questions. Then little by little I began to see articles in the magazines addressing the issues I had brought up - one of them was the Luciaris article and another was the recent article on the Church Fathers. (A major point I had made was that the teachings of JW's is NOTHING LIKE the teachings of the early Christians and I had challenged them to prove that the early Christians believed some of their teachings.) I included quotes from the Early Fathers to show what the early Christians believed and how THEY interpreted the scriptures. I also gave them proof that the Catholic Church was responsible for deciding which books belong in the Bible to begin with.
Anyways, their letters were long and they always included articles against the Catholic Church but they certainly DID NOT answer any questions. It was all circular reasoning and it was obvious that they KNEW IT. To this day my sister hasn't read the letters because she is afraid to. But I have a powerful weapon in my hand to show her when she's ready. They absolutely have NO ANSWERS. She must already know it deep down because otherwise she would be willing to read the letters.
I don't think it was a waste of time.
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Maximus
To add some specifics to what AlanF noted:
First, let me tell "anon" I appreciated the publication reference. That's exactly how the writer of the article felt, that is the way it should be, and that is what "the Society" will point to as policy. The jarring reality comes when one writes in such a way that the faithful slave's teaching is called into question, and as is noted gets DF'd or declared as having disassociated himself. That can and does happen through the local body of elders.
First ask yourself: What is "the Society"? Is it the corporation, its directors? I know what you mean, of course. Write "the Society" and see what happens.
Here in the United States you may receive a letter back, may be very long in coming however. The reply will be on the stationery of The Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, with a rubber stamp of new and different handwriting from the Watchtower Society of New York, standard for many, many decades. The address will be Route 22 Patterson, NY, no matter if you wrote it to 25 or 124 Columbia Heights.
Your letter will have been scanned and processed by the relatively small Writing Correspondence department, and will bear a Desk Symbol like ECA, ECB or ECC. The E is a hangover from the time the Writing Department was known as Editorial. The Writing Department for publications is in Brooklyn and does not respond to letters. The chance of a GB member reading a letter is nil, zilch, zip, nada.
The folks in Writing Correspondence have a database of all sorts of answers, but they do not do research and they can say nothing that is different from policy that can be easily obtained elsewhere. Template response is the order of the day.
Quantity of letters on abuse or similar situations is certainly of interest, and so are sincere letters that speak of dilemma regarding the blood issue, but it is not the content but the magnitude that draws attention. I agree with Alan on that point.
I've seen letter after letter that goes in couched in such cap-in-hand terms, just so as not to offend--and I've seen scorchers that go nowhere. The atmosphere should be just like the W article "anon" cites. But it isn't. And that's sad.
It's the old circular reasoning thing yet one more time: Of course we humbly respond to questions, it says we do in the Watchtower!
I am aware of at least one situation in which a "loyal" elder was locally asked whether the organization is directed by Jehovah, to which he answered Yes. When asked whether the faithful slave and GB is the channel in providing food from Jehovah, he answered truthfully that he was a little "fuzzy" on that point--did not even say he was entertaining doubts. A relative called him after the succeeding service meeting to inform him he had been DFd for apostasy. An appeals committee upheld the matter.
They're very touchy these days.
Max