With regards to making rules, but especially the rule that violates Jesus commandment of loving your neighbor (his #15), I would like to add this post:
I am still a JW. I still believe in Jehovah. When many learn TTATT (The Truth About The Truth) they loose faith in everything including Jehovah. I had some terrible things happen to me from within the organization. I also learned about the organization joining the UN. I saw how the organization protected and hid pedophiles. I became friends with those that the organization persecuted just because these ones were helping the victims of pedophiles. All of these things made be go back to the scriptures. After studying again Jesus life, I changed my way of thinking about our organization. I used to brag that our organization patterned itself after the early 1st century congregation. Now I am ashamed that it does, because if you pattern yourself after something flawed, then you will be flawed. When Jesus was walking the earth his apostles were always arguing about being important. He even washed their feet to try and teach them not to lord it over each other. He gave them those two rules and told them that was all that they needed. Soon after his death they appointed men (by throwing dice) to make up rules. This was the first Governing Body. They have continued to our day with making up rules to lord it over the others just like the Scribes and Pharisees. To enforce their rules they use shunning. The April and July Watchtowers of last year had some pretty upsetting rules in them. I don't know how much of all this he already know. Please ask him to write back and let me know. Also, if he will take his "Reasoning from the Scriptures" book and look at some references that the Society uses in it under the subject of cross. It should blow his mind after he looks up those references and see how the Society misquoted them. Once they even put a period inside of quotation marks, which signifies to me that is the end of sentence. However, in that Imperial Bible Dictionary there was not a period there. Instead there was a comma, and what went after the comma was the rest of the sentence that actually supports the belief that Jesus died on a cross. It makes no difference to me what he died on, but to be lied to like this makes me want to look at more of their references. In that same chapter on cross, the Society prominently quotes a man that does have the view that Jesus died on a stake and not a cross. However, if you look up that man (Parsons), you will find that he believes Jesus is merely a man, not the son of God. In fact, he thinks that all Christianity is of pagan origin. Why in the world would the Society use this man as an authority?