Greendawn, you are getting to the heart of it, but I don't think they need to change their entire body of doctrine at all. They have very solid, scripturally defensible positions in relation to their rejection of the trinity, immortal soul, hell, etc.
The issue is: where do they draw the line on what doctrines (products) are 'safe' and don't need overhauling, and which products are defective and need 'recalling'.
What is the best process to carry out such a task?
yaddayadda
JoinedPosts by yaddayadda
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What is driving change at WTS? What is the GB? Has it failed the flock?
by yaddayadda ini have been wondering a lot about this lately.
what drives changes to policy and interpretations?
what processes are in place, if any?
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yaddayadda
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What is driving change at WTS? What is the GB? Has it failed the flock?
by yaddayadda ini have been wondering a lot about this lately.
what drives changes to policy and interpretations?
what processes are in place, if any?
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yaddayadda
Some great thoughts are coming out, thanks.
Thought scenario: Imagine that the GB have admitted to themselves that the organisation is going off track and something seems to have gone wrong. They have hired you as a consultant (but you are also a believing JW) to analyse what is going wrong with the organisation. What questions would you ask? What would you (respectfully) report back to them? -
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What is driving change at WTS? What is the GB? Has it failed the flock?
by yaddayadda ini have been wondering a lot about this lately.
what drives changes to policy and interpretations?
what processes are in place, if any?
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yaddayadda
(removed - double post)
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53
What is driving change at WTS? What is the GB? Has it failed the flock?
by yaddayadda ini have been wondering a lot about this lately.
what drives changes to policy and interpretations?
what processes are in place, if any?
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yaddayadda
(I've added to my original post quite a bit, so apologies for those who posted before that).
Sir82, although its true that the organisation squelches independent thought, I don't agree that those who make it onto to the GB are persons who have been so 'squelched' that they are incapable of having a new idea. Ray Franz relates in his books a number of examples where senior Watchtower persons often came up with new ideas that were presented to the GB (some quite bizarre, eg, the 1980 'sputnik' proposal to move the start of 'this generation' to 1957! - Crisis of Conscience p. 218-220). Ray also related that from time to time senior Branch personnel sent letters to the GB proposing changes to certain policies, eg, the number of meetings, military service, etc. Fred Franz himself, as the 'oracle' of the organisation, came up with many new ideas through his many chimerical interpretations.
Since the GB appears to have evolved into nothing more than a group of senior executives running a gigantic global publishing corporation, lets examine their corporate strategy from a business-model perspective:
Since 1995 there has been practically zero 'new light' when it comes to their body of teachings/interpretations. The culture appears to have degenerated very much into a 'maintain status quo '. They seem to be saying: "we have given up on tweaking our body of teachings. We have given up on our product mix. We are only concerned about dealing with the scale of the organisation (ie, it's size, entering new markets, etc) and marketing (changing colours, styles, freqency of publications) rather than the product itself (the truthfulness of the teachings)."
But the GB have got it all back to front. The purpose of the leaders of any religious organisation should be to teach scriptural truth, to continously improve their teachings, ie, to improve the quality of the products, NOT just to improve the scale and glossiness of the business. In fact, they are failing on both fronts because their market is shrinking in the western world, (hence the cashflow problems). Why has this happened? Because some of their products (their false teachings) are of such poor quality that they are enough to deter any potential buyer. Buyers now have access to rich sources of information about any product/service they are thinking of buying (though the internet). When a company has a bad, defective product and the public become aware of this, purchases on all products takes a big hit. The company must recall defective products and improve them ("new and improved recipe"). Yet the Society appears to have no mechanisms in place to do this! It appears to be blithely unconcerned to test and improve the quality of its products. There is no process to test deeply entrenched assumptions and premises. There is no quality control system for their products!
The GB are obviously brainwashed men, but they are not stupid. They are merely captives of their own concept. But despite this, it is apparent, as sincere as some of them no doubt are, that they have been collared by lawyers and financiers who have warped their vision. Posters who note that they are obsessed with money and control are absolutely correct. The vision and mission statement of the GB, their prime objective above everything else, should be: To teach the truth from God's word the Bible!! ("Let God be true though every man be proved a liar"). Sadly, the GB seems to have concluded that they cannot be teaching the truth any better, that the quality of their product line is beyond improvement. They appear incapable or unwilling to look at the ingredients, either through flaws in their own internal structure and processes, or because of deliberate intransigence.
I would love to see some really serious, constructive discussion on this, even though most on this forum feel the GB is hopelessly corrupted, reform is impossible and dismiss the organisation out of hand. -
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What is driving change at WTS? What is the GB? Has it failed the flock?
by yaddayadda ini have been wondering a lot about this lately.
what drives changes to policy and interpretations?
what processes are in place, if any?
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yaddayadda
I have been wondering a lot about this lately.
What drives changes to policy and interpretations? What processes are in place, if any? Is it just individual members of the GB who come up with pet theories and randomly present them to the GB for a vote? Or does the GB set up projects and working teams to analyse certain teachings and interpretations that they feel might need to be re-examined and tweaked? Or is the GB merely reacting to reports coming in from the Bethels around the world on trends? Or all of the above?
It seems to me that there is no real mechanism in place at the Watchtower Society to keep testing and researching their own interpretations on certain matters. Any changes appear to be completely reactionary. They seem to be only concerned with adapting to the environment around them, particularly pressures from the external legal/political environment (eg, making going to a polling booth a 'conscience matter' in some lands, tweaking the blood policy, joining the UN) and the march of time (eg, 1995 'generation' change). Mounting financial pressures have also led to certain changes, notably in the frequency and extent of how the Awake and Watchtower are published (the change to the latter being effective from Jan '08).
It seems to me that there is almost a complete lack of sincere desire and will to proactively examine their interpretations and teachings. The GB appears to be nothing more than a kind of Corporate Board concerned only to deal with issues of global corporate strategy. In terms of actually bringing the organisation's teachings more closely into harmony with the scriptures and caring for the flock, it is evident that there is complete complacency and cocksureness on their part. The culture for healthy change at the doctrinal level appears practically nonexistent, or severely crippled, stultified. Why is this?
The question is: what actually is the GB? What is role, it's purpose, it's objectives? Ray Franz's book are about all we have in trying to assess what goes on behind the smoke and mirrors in the GB boardroom. From those books it appears that the GB is mainly concerned with flying around the world meeting with Branch heavyweights, giving talks at DC's, examining initiatives and strategies for growth, building projects, expansion, and occasionally dealing with difficult questions that have come from one of the Branches, largely on some grey area about judicial/disfellowshipping matter. There doesn't seem to be any process in place whatsoever to research and unearth new ideas concerning the accuracy or otherwise of their interpretations on the debateable teachings that are turning many people away, for example, the shunning policy (although there is a rumour that some of the GB have recently sought change on this), the flawed 'two-witness' rule re child abuse accusations, letting babies and children die for want of a blood transfusion, unscriptural disfellowshippings for things like merely smoking, their erroneous chronology/1914, etc. Any new proposals on these matters seems to derive from individuals only, either on the GB or Branch overseers, completely randomly. The individual submits his pet theory or 'new light' to the GB, who, according to Ray Franz, don't research the proposal thoroughly but are content to vote on it after some brief discussion in the boardroom that is largely dominated by two or three strong personalities.
The decision making processes at the Watchtower Society and the role of the GB are clearly in need of a total overhaul. The GB appears to have evolved into nothing more than a corporate strategy board, hopelessly trapped in a business-model paradigm, blinded to its own flaws and weaknesses. It is clearly failing to address the needs of its flock and is not at all concerned with humbly correcting its glaring errors and harmful, unchristian teachings and interpretations that have stumbled millions of persons. It is obsessed with statistics and unity at all costs. The GB has failed in its mandate to care for Christ's interests on earth. -
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Watchtowe Will Acquiesce and Conform to Segregation
by zack inthe "illuminators" book, the one that pioneers receive at their pioneer service school, and with which i was handsomely blessed by "god's loving.
organization", contains a section on ceaser's laws and their relationship to "god's" people.
one fascinating gem, which was a revelation at the time to me,.
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yaddayadda
Need proof please. Can you produce a scan of the particular section in the 'Illuminators' book you refer to?
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Without Any Observer Can The Universe Exist?
by frankiespeakin inwhat do you think?
it is kind of like the question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a noise as it crashes to the ground?
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yaddayadda
Without annoying posters can stupid threads exist?
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Blood Covenant
by andyviw inhave you ever wondered why the absolute aversion of jws to blood and anything to do with the cross?.
could it have something to do with the theme of the blood covenant that runs through out the scriptures starting with the animal that most of been sacrificed to cover adam and eve.the offering of able noah after the ark landed the jewish laws of animal sacrifice leading and pointing unmistakenly to jesus the lamb of god that takes away the sin of the world.
is it they are refusing to enter in to the blood covenant which is the only way through the veil into the most holies are they with out the blood on their door posts and lintels.could all this avoidance of blood be betraying something much deeper and of eternal importance.unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the son of man you have no life in you.jn6;52,53 remember the life is in the blood..
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yaddayadda
Its not really clear what you are getting at. You seem to be conflating the fact that most JW's don't take the emblems at the memorial with their refusal to take blood transfusions. Are you saying the aversion to both is related? I don't really see the connection. Can you be clearer.
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baptism question
by candidlynuts inwhy do the great crowd have to be baptized?
we dont partake at the memorial.. it looks like baptism would only be necessary for the " annoited" if you go by jw rules and stuff... .
i was thinking about that today and thought that its all just to control the masses.. get baptised and if you sin, they have the authority to " discipline " you .
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yaddayadda
You could take your line of thinking a lot further. Why do the 'great crowd' have to abide with anything in the NT since all of it was all written to 'anointed' Christians?
The WTS says certain texts, eg, as Romans 8:15-17, applies exclusively to the anointed. Such a notion is absurd since the entire book of Romans and in fact the entire NT was written to anointed Christians.
Scripturally, there is no such thing as a non-anointed Christian! -
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Since I left...
by RollerDave insince i left.... so there i was, a disabled single dad bereft of all he had known or believed for 30 years.. i had moved a good 45 minutes away from the area where the events in my introductory post went down, but was now living in an area where i had resided some ten years earlier and still had a few stale connections with the organization.. i was lonely, depressed, pissed off, and really disgusted with the god i had been shown in my years of unfruitful association.. in my mind, he had made me the way i am, which apparently entailed being unable to meet his 'righteous requirements', and was going to kill me for it.
he had endowed all of us with a natural human nature (apart from our fallen sinful nature,) and now expected us to conquer our every natural impulse or desire, even the healthy ones, to survive the big a.. hold off on marriage or kids, no college, no success, no normalcy... the big a'll get ya if ya don't watch out!.
so i railed against him, defied him to just take me, do anything to show he even existed or had any power at all.. i went around saying 'god is an a$$h*le' and the like, but then i realized something that shook my world..... i was just as much a witness outside the organization as i had been inside!.
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yaddayadda
Thanks for sharing and great to read your story. The biggest mission of all for a badly burnt ex-JW is often simply to retain their faith in God. Congratulations on doing that and go well with your continued journey of spiritual discovery.