wingcommander
I am so sorry. That is a horrible experience, you and your mother didn't deserve that treatment. Considering elders back in my day used to drop anything to see a sheep in need at any time of the day, that is very weird. What a jerk he was. I wasn't surprised at all to read what you wrote concerning his funeral. Isn't it strange how hypocritical jw families where elders are all involved always receive more glory and social activity? There should never be any faction within the org regarding this, yet time and again I've always seen elders get better treatment than anyone else, even more so than pioneers and ministerial servants. I was shocked at how much brothers used to come to me, stressed about the silliest of things. They looked up to me as if I knew how to solve all their problems. I viewed it as my Christian duty to help them with anything. Now I learned the truth about "the truth", I came to realise that an unhealthy phycology was developing in the organization. This unhealthy behaviour manifested itself in seeing brothers and sisters being too open with elders about their private lives, getting themselves into all sorts of trouble. As we had a particularly evil elder body, I saw so many cruel things happen where elders raised things they should have kept to themselves. Many restrictions and reprovals occurred because 1) the publishers were too open with the elders, and 2) the elders were too open about the publishers with the entire body. Unfortunately I played my part as well, and I regretted every moment.