does shunning a person who quit going to the meetings make him want to go back?
well that's the reason why they shun people.
they think you'll go back if you're shunned.
jws, the Watchtower magazine states the purpose of disfellowshipping is to cause pain. Apparently I misunderstood. I thought you were disagreeing with the facts. Sorry.
You wrote:
My only experiences are personal.
So are mine:-) I write from a historical perspective, and I am always learning and always eager to be relieved of a delusion. I appreciate your comments, Thanks! gary
does shunning a person who quit going to the meetings make him want to go back?
well that's the reason why they shun people.
they think you'll go back if you're shunned.
jws, thanks for your comments. I'm not sure what facts you are disagreeing with. Do a word search on the Watch Tower Publishing Corporation produced CD on the words "disfellowship" and "pain" together and you will find the Watchtower quote that says disfellowshipping's purpose is to produce pain in the victim. I would find it for you but I do not have access to a cd right now.
As for the information protection policy, do your homework back to Rutherford's purge and the Johnson writings. Also you might want to talk to Witnesses who were there during the 30 Years A Watchtower Slave publication in the 1950's. Isolation of dissenters has always been the reason for the disfellowshipping policy rather than a benefit. If you read the history you will see this is a fact. The internet has changed nothing. It has just made it faster and easier to fine information.
If you have facts to support your disagreements, I am very open to looking at it. Please just post the information here. Thanks, gary
the wt hierarchy seems to invalidate their "anointed" members, in print, by the following quote:.
watchtower 1991 march 15, page 22.
"who really have a heavenly calling".
So the Watch Tower Publishing Corporation has it both ways.
Since there have been hundreds if not thousands of faithful and discreet class needed replacements:
1. As a class, the faithful and discreet are faithful and discreet.
2. As individuals, the faithful and discreet class are, by doctrine, neither faithful or discreet.
And:
1. As a class the faithful and discreet class is, by doctrine, Divinely directed.
2. As individuals the faithful and discreet class, by doctrine, is not Divinely directed.
And:
1. The Society represented by the Governing Body is Divinely directed.
2. The Governing Body are just individual members of the faithful and discreet class, by doctrine, and are not Divinely directed.
It all makes sense to me.
The Way I See it http://www.freeminds.org/buss/buss.htm
does shunning a person who quit going to the meetings make him want to go back?
well that's the reason why they shun people.
they think you'll go back if you're shunned.
The stated purpose of shunning and snubbing is to create pain and induce the victim to return to the control of the Book Publishing Corporation in order to end the pain. The real reason is to protect the members from information and facts known by the outcasts, i.e. information control.
Just think if members were freely allowed by the group leaders to associate with US . . . .
They would have to deal with all the information we presented to them like the United Nations association scandal, the child abuse issue, the real Organization history, and the conflicted blood doctrine. They wouldn't get anything else done. With the current shunning policy in place, anything we do say is dismissed without consideration because we are not approved sources for information. When the source is demonized, no information is relevant.
A high control religious group tends to use high control tactics on it's members.
The Way I See it
http://www.freeminds.org/buss/buss.htm
with all the talking about visiting inactive ones, i wonder how many inactive people have not been visited yet?
if you weren't visited yet, could it be because they df'd you, and you don't know about it?
I don't hide from them. I invite them to study with me. They tell me I am not worth the effort.
gary
i dont know about you guys but im starting to get the feeling that a big fallaway is on the cards in the wt world what with all the recent scandals and the advent of the internet , information is so readily available to those in developed countries ,i feel that especially in developed nations the wt will suffer huge losses due to apathy and their extreme stand on so many issues, that many will become sick and tired of the wt treadmill of life which is so far away from the simplistic beauty of biblical christianity what do you think?
Better education nets less use of superstition and religion to explain things like life and death. The technology generation proudly emerging today, uses facts and reality rather than superstition and fear.
A reasonable approach often used by the rational thinker is to challenge and expose the assumptions and the prejudices. A secular study of the origin of the sacred texts and the political role they played in history, as well as a secular study of the Hebrew people and their concessions and confessions, objectifies the assumptions and stops any thesis based on those assumptions from taking on a reality.
The net affect is, dogmatic claims are difficult to sell to the rational, realistic thinker.
howdy all,.
has anyone noticed that some jws (prematurely) will run to debate the "trinity", "hell", "immortality of the soul", but they head for the hills when someone brings up the watchtower's present claims which are supposed to show why god approved and appointed them over all his belongings?
i find that when jws do become unwittingly involved with such a discussion, they practice a method of bait and switch.
MYOHNSEPH, You wrote:
And, to me, it's really sad. All those hours of meetings and preparation for meetings, week after week, year after year, and all the vast majority of them have to show for it is just a facade of spirituality and scriptural understanding.
You are a true sage. Thanks for the wisdom. gary
hi' i am a new kid on the block suffering from depression 'being married to a witness for 27yrs.is there others that would like to share there thoughts or answers?
in wisconsin
Hi kls
I have had depressions and I have been married to Witnesses but I am not sure those two are related. For me, when I had a depression I blamed that on my job and on my wife. It was just a way to deny the reality of the depression and to avoid confronting the depression in a rational way.
Maybe being married to a Witness will cause a depression. For me I think it did not. Now I am shunned by two of my sons, my parents, my brother, all my JW relatives and I am not depressed.
I guess I hope you get some help with the illness from a therapist or a medical doctor. The problem is the problem. What we think is the problem is often not the problem.
Best wishes, gary
recent bizarre family events have led my mom a 35-year witness (she's in her mid 60s) and my dad, the unbelieving mate (he's in his early 70s) to consider putting their "affairs in order".
neither are ill in any way, but my mom's mother is not doing too well, leaving her care to be managed by my mother.. .
when grandma's husband died awhile back, the affairs were not prepared adequately, leaving a lot of headaches for those of us required to handle things.
rt wrote:
Its sad to see all these witnesses who thought that they would see some promised Armageddon (which is sick in its own way) growing old and having to face death.
They are going to receive the very punishment they wish (ed) on their enemies (me) . . . . . death.
i was a 3rd generation witness on both sides of the family.
even my great-grandomthers were considered witnesses, but i don't know if they were baptized.
my parents however were always considered weak and still are even though my mom has become more involved & for longer periods of time in the last 15 yrs.
Hi Theresa, Thanks for the topic.
Now I believe my parents did the best they could under the load of their willful ignorance of common knowledge, their superstitious beliefs in gods and demons, their tradition of ritual religious activity, their denial of the reality of living and death, their resentment and bigotry, and their fear of all key figures and all that is unknown to them. I guess they are model Jehovah's Witnesses. They probably would have been models in any high control group they were indoctrinated into.
It's easy for me to see why they are so disappointed in me. I have instincts that seem by nature, unorthodox, inquisitive, rational, realistic, accepting, and daring. Virtually all the elements of my current self must look like a contradiction of them to them. They most likely would have resented me and feared me and rejected me in any context.
I guess the Jehovah's Witness context just made their rejection of me easier for them and gave them the justifications and the righteousness to avoid the guilt that normally would go along with the rejection of an offspring over an abstract difference in philosophical opinions and over my desire to abstain from religious behaviors as an adult. Behaviors that they required of me as a child in their care.
Plus the Jehovah's Witness context makes it easier to perpetuate the rejection against their own best interests, past a rational ending point and well into the time of their own need.
So, I guess my parents would be considered religiously (spiritually) strong. gary
The Way I See it http://www.freeminds.org/buss/buss.htm
