Ok, you're going to have to forgive me here, because I don't quite understand what the issue is. I will be the first to admit that my association with the WTBTS has been peripheral. Nearly 20 years ago, my beloved Aunt began studying with the witnesses. Her involvement led to herself, her husband, and her four children eventually being baptized into the organization. As my extended family was always a close one, I attended many JW meetings and social functions with their family as a child. My own nuclear family, for a short time, allowed my Aunt and Uncle to conduct a few "bible studies" in our home. Fortunately, my parents were wise enough to see the organization for what it was: a corporate cult masquerading as the sole path to salvation. While their presence at holidays was missed, my family was, unlike so many of those that I've read about, able to maintain a relationship despite the disparity in our relgious lives. I continued the long summer visits with my cousins in their small town, the only difference was that instead of going to church on Sunday, we went with them to their various meetings and activities. I remember absorbing much of the information I heard, and vividly remember one horrible New Year's eve in the 80's that I watched the clock for two hours before midnight, absolutely petrified, because my Aunt and cousins had told me that the "present system of things" would end before that year was over...
For most of that time, I could believe that the JWs were a harmless sect (though misguided) and took all of the information my extended family gave me about the religion at face value. My parents, however, had a harder time. It wasn't until the last few years, while I watched my Aunt die from a condition that could have been greatly alleviated, if not eliminated, by blood tranfusions and/or an organ transplant she felt her "bible-trained conscience" could not support, that I began to really wonder exactly what my family members had gotten themselves into. My mother, heartbroken at the loss of her baby sister, was treated as a stranger at her funeral service, WT pamphlets thrust at her in her grief. She was my mothers sister long before she was "their" sister, and I couldn't fathom the cold reception. It was soon after that I began to research for myself exactly what it was that JW doctrine was comprised of. I read the WT literature. I read the opposition literature. It didn't take a great leap of logic to weigh the two and determine where common sense and truth lay. It was only with age, and an informed perspective, that I began to see how easily they drew my Aunt into their clutches, and how destructive the WT organization had been in my family.
Since my Aunt's death, two of her children have disassociated themselves from the org, while two remain heavily active (one a former bethelite and the other a regular pioneer). The two who have left the organization have faced shunning by their former "brothers and sisters". It has been quite hurtful to them. It's been wonderful, however, to have them participating in family holiday events again. In speaking to both of them, they have said that they were fully aware that their inactivity in the organization would most likely lead to their disassocation. They knew the price they would pay for leaving (one "faded" while the other sent a letter disassociating themselves), and while it was painful it was not something they fought. To do so would have been futile.
My sincere question is what grounds would anyone have for fighting an involuntary disassocation on the grounds of inactivity in the organization's activities? The WT works like your average corporation. You enter into an agreement with a corporation to be in their employ, faithfully report your hours and do the work you've been assigned to do, accept 'promotions' to greater responsibility within the organization, and are an active member of the corporate structure. If one day, you decide that you no longer wish to show up and do what is expected of you and you continue to do nothing in the organization, and they fire you, can you say "How dare they fire me? Now they're going to tell everyone else that I'm not a good employee and that I'm no longer part of the company, I won't be able to use the company facilities, and everyone will treat me like I quit!" Essentially, isn't that what's happened?
