Their lack of effort in this regard is appalling to me and I believe it
shows their true colours. That they are more concerned with, and too
busy with, the 99 other sheep who remain in the fold to worry about
"difficult" lost sheep like me! When I was still an elder, one of my
friends in another congregation had a son that was leaving the truth,
turning to evolution etc and on their request I was happy to meet with
him every week for hours to discuss and debate with him
evolution/creation and many other topics. I did not view him as "lost"
or the "enemy" - I loved him, and I was happy to listen to and respect
his point of view even though I argued opposite views. Would be nice to
have the same consideration given to me and to be treated with the same
dignity by all my ex-colleagues, not just one....
doubtfull1799 and no-zombie, as I read your stories, something occurred to me. If you see at the history of this forum, and if you look at the amount of posts about the following things:
- Not a lot of house to house preaching
- Current preachers are slackers, with little interest in making a real effort in engaging people in their conversations
- Changes in doctrine that are too obvious to ignore
- People leaving for all kinds of reasons
- Women, LGBT people, single parents, people with a spouse who isn't a JW, and all those people who used to be unpopular in congregations seem fed up and taking a stand against the WT views on all of them
- "Elite", uber JWs not seen as role models anymore
- Large accessibility to material that exposes their inconsistencies, inaccuracies and immoral, unethical, and illegal practices
- Not relying on published printed material anymore, changing their model
- An increasing amount of ex-JWs
and the list goes on, I'm thinking now that considering that neither elders nor currently active JWs, not even the CO get paid for any of the work they do, maybe they are just burned out. Maybe they just need to establish priorities simply because they just don't have the capacity to tend to every single issue, especially since the JWs that are still in are slacking, and weak in their standing.
It's just a thought. Not defending nor making excuses for them (trust me, I have no interest in making them look good), but if you look at the entire picture, right now elders and COs are dealing with a lot, on top of keeping up with all the changes that are being imposed on them.
I wonder if it's just them not having the physical or mental capacity, and they are just letting go of those they don't think are/should be priority. They have to save face in a s--t load of things.
