Personally I find it hard to believe that people who have been in the organisation for many years , and worked there way up through the various ranks and eventually arrived at the position of Governing body member , do not know what they are doing.
I and many people here are not Einstein's , we do not perform brain surgery, yet we could see that the beliefs and polices of Jehovah's witnesses were flawed and wrong .Even after being indoctrinated from birth.
But does this make them evil? I don’t know if such a thing as Evil exists .
Are child murderers Evil ? was Hitler Evil?
Or is there something wrong , with these people. Do imbalances in the Brain , cause people to do such things?In fact is that what Evil is?
Or are some people more "evolutionarily" advanced than others, leaving some to act more like animals , where such behaviour is almost normal.
What control exactly do we have over our actions? Does free will really exist?
All these things have to be considered.
Even today it is debated in court whether a person is mentally ill or not. It is not always easy to tell, as we have no easy way of defining what is normal behaviour.
Regarding the Governing Body,if they had complete control over their actions I can not see how they were able to believe they had been chosen by God to rule over his people on earth , and to make decisions that could effect whether people would live or die. But it is hard to know what goes on in someone else's head.
The effects were certainly harmful. But I would argue that of all the governments in the world today and amongst all the religions , they all in some way enforce laws that some people see as harmful or in error.
The way things stand with the human race is that some human will have authority over others, whether we choose it or not. There are some excepted standards of morality amongst most people , but no absolute rule that is set in stone.
I believe many injustices by men in authority can not be avoided , due to the difficulty in setting all embracing rules over a humanity made of many different individuals.
No one has succeeded in satisfying everyone. Maybe one day that will happen.
But by and large I feel that certain men in authority such as the Governing Body have acted differently to how I would. I wouldn’t have chosen to do what they have done and I carnt understand why they did things that way. From my standpoint they are wrong, even evil .Especially if descisions were made for selfish reasons.