continuing a topic that is dear to my heart because of my experience as both a shunner and a shunnee .... some people seem to get very agitated when i talk about the responsibility people have to make the right choices and that despite all the wrongs within the wts, people themselves have a role to play and some personal responsibility for the experience.. notice i said "some" responsibility, not "complete" - this doesn't absolve the wts for the things they do wrong in any way shape or form.
so please don't get argumentative about possible meanings and absolutes - of course the wts has a significant role to play but we need to decide what we're trying to achieve here and why the personal choice is so important.. i'm also not talking about actual crimes that the wts should answer for.
if they cover up child abuse for instance, they absolutely should be reported immediately.
nevaagain
My brother in law was once DFd. He was living at home with parents and got married (with a JW) without anyone's blessings. The day his DFing was announced, no one in the family told him to go away. Dad was not a believer and he was not going to allow it anyway. In other words, no one in the family was going to shun him. He still came home that day and took all of his things, went to live with his wife and did not show his face around the house until he was reinstated
my wife is shunning me.
she is always in cult mode, we don't talk anymore, we don't sleep in the same bed.
i have been sleeping on the couch.
It continues to amaze me that despite the overwhelming amount of experiences from this site and other sites, people continue to think that indoctrinated individuals are 100% responsible for their decisions. I would not go to the other extreme and consider they have zero responsibility but c'mon, lets not forget the amount of BS people swallow weekly at meetings. The conditioning and constant fear mongering.
I even know individuals who have quit meetings and somewhat faded for no apparent reasons, yet the cling to the blood doctrine even when it means risking leaving young children behind to fend for themselves. You are going to tell me these parents are evil and are choosing to kill themselves without regard for their children? If the answer is no, then what is different in the case of his wife? What we need to remember in this fight is that half of the answers we get from our loved ones sound like they come from a WT magazine. As long as they sounds like so, then chances are they are not truly expressing themselves.
My wife had said things to me in the past that honestly are hard to swallow. I would have preferred she would have said she was with another man, honestly. At least I could have blamed it on myself for not paying enough attention to her.
my wife is shunning me.
she is always in cult mode, we don't talk anymore, we don't sleep in the same bed.
i have been sleeping on the couch.
Ever since it became obvious that having woken up was going to be a problem, I have been reading the bible and trying to learn more. Boy have I stumbled into things most JWs read but never paid attention to.
Most of us know that the only biblical bases for divorce is adultery but the WT society has chosen to add spiritual danger as another reason for divorce, despite the counsel found in the gospel. The gospel not only advices against leaving an unbelieving mate, it also estates that your children would be unclean if the unbelieving mate was not sanctified by the marital union.
Another nice piece is in the story of the Israelites and the law. WT insists that the law is abolished but the principles survive. Speaking of the headership principle, there is an interesting piece in Numbers 30, in the first few handful of paragraphs. It speaks specifically to women who make a vow or pledge to Jehovah. Go ahead and read it for yourself but in a nutshell it shows that the husband or even the father of the woman (basically whomever owned her at the time) can forbid her from carrying thru with her pledge and she is legally free from it in front of God.
Seems to me like is a very inconvenient "truth" for the WT to make members aware of this part of the bible.
special pioneers let go.
bethel workers laid off.
construction halts, what's next?
cognac,
in my humble opinion the internet won't make much of a difference. There is already plenty on the internet to wake up an elephant, and yet it hardly works in massive amounts. I am not downrating its importance, I am just saying that you would expect more awakenings if it was so.
Lack of financial support would indicate lack of divine backing at first sight, agreed. However, the org would provide new light way before that. It would not be the first time this is discussed. When things go well, is a sign of God's blessings, when thing go bad, is a sign of the times of the end and only the true org would be able to discern it. It could easily be attached to Revelation and the paragraph that talks about the dead witnesses. They used to say that paragraph was a prophecy, partly fulfilled after all the apostles died and the resurrection of the two witnesses (also from Revelation) was fulfilled when Russel created the bible students association.
"...when our own thoughts are forbidden, when our questions are not allowed and our doubts are punished; when contacts & friendships outside of the organisation are censored, we are being abused for an end that never justifies its means.
when our heart aches knowing we have made friendships and secret attachments that will be forever forbidden if we leave, we are in danger.
when we consider staying in a group because we cannot bear the loss, disappointment and sorrow our leaving will cause for ourselves and those we have come to love, we are in a cult.
special pioneers let go.
bethel workers laid off.
construction halts, what's next?
Yes. I don't think 100% will remain but for sure many will. Some elders may take the lead and wake up some in the process when their unchecked authority raises to their heads.
As far as the lack of literature, we used to have a CO who would always brag about the time he spent in jail in Cuba. He said they had a handful of magazines that they managed to bring in and would constantly study again and again. He also said that some of the witnesses in the jail knew morse code and would communicate the contents of the magazines to one another by tapping morse code on exposed plumbing.
special pioneers let go.
bethel workers laid off.
construction halts, what's next?
Nothing! If it happens, it would be a sign of the times. I hardly think it would wake anyone up. My local elders would probably organize an underground network of meetings..."so we can keep the faith while we await further instructions."
I remember an elder who used to constantly say that day will come when we would have to meet in private and small groups, probably let our beards grow and always carry booze in our cars. All to pretend to be worldly people and be able to continue preaching in hiding.
continuing a topic that is dear to my heart because of my experience as both a shunner and a shunnee .... some people seem to get very agitated when i talk about the responsibility people have to make the right choices and that despite all the wrongs within the wts, people themselves have a role to play and some personal responsibility for the experience.. notice i said "some" responsibility, not "complete" - this doesn't absolve the wts for the things they do wrong in any way shape or form.
so please don't get argumentative about possible meanings and absolutes - of course the wts has a significant role to play but we need to decide what we're trying to achieve here and why the personal choice is so important.. i'm also not talking about actual crimes that the wts should answer for.
if they cover up child abuse for instance, they absolutely should be reported immediately.
continuing a topic that is dear to my heart because of my experience as both a shunner and a shunnee .... some people seem to get very agitated when i talk about the responsibility people have to make the right choices and that despite all the wrongs within the wts, people themselves have a role to play and some personal responsibility for the experience.. notice i said "some" responsibility, not "complete" - this doesn't absolve the wts for the things they do wrong in any way shape or form.
so please don't get argumentative about possible meanings and absolutes - of course the wts has a significant role to play but we need to decide what we're trying to achieve here and why the personal choice is so important.. i'm also not talking about actual crimes that the wts should answer for.
if they cover up child abuse for instance, they absolutely should be reported immediately.
I think that if one was to be involved in a murder case, the person pulling the trigger takes all the blame. You could never say that the bullet has some blame, even if a tiny one.
I agree that there might be those JWs out there that see shunning as a realization of power. A way for them to channel who they truly are. Steven Hassan explains in his book that someone that is under cult indoctrination does not loose free will and his abilities to make choices, but they do loose the choices themselves. i.e.: before being a JW, a situation may present you with choice A,B and C. After being indoctrinated, option C may be out of the pool because you were indoctrinated to think the bible speaks against option C, even though most reasonable people would not see it as such. You still have free will, except your options are now limited.
I don't care how much you know about the health benefits of salads, if someone managed to convince you that the salad is poisoned, you will not eat it. This happens to all of us day in and day out. Some people are afraid of flying to the point they won't fly at all, yet they have no problems texting and driving all the time. This only changes when you have a major awakening. People have awakenings to all sorts of things, not just from cults.
according to one source on a western european 'apostate' website, the org's plan is to abandon the name "jehovah's witnesses" in the future, and replace it with "worshippers of jehovah.".
http://www.bruderinfo-aktuell.de/index.php/fixnews/#comment-4313 .
the gist of the account appears to be a repeat of rutherford's re-branding and debunking of old predictions made by the previous shower of fakers.
