Powerful, sad and shocking. Thank you for posting this, Randy.
I vividly recall what a jolt of self-righteous specialness and holy-spirit-directed warmth electrified our JW community with the announcement of the new no-tobacco edict that night at the Service Meeting.
Amazingly (and shamefully, I'm now feeling), it is while reading this wrenching personal account, that I realize how compliance with this "new light" so tragically impacted a certain segment of JWs of whom I had absolutely no awareness in my brand-spanking, just-dried-off daze as a thoroughly-devoted new believer.
Because the area in which we served our time as JWs was 100% metropolitan/suburban, nicotine withdrawal and the possible jeopardizing of certain kinds of retail employment were pretty much the extent of dire consequences suffered by the few we knew of affected at all, I am stricken to my core by what you present here. I simply had no idea and have never, until now, learned anything that exposed how abusively this "adjustment" was executed against those whose livelihood depended on the tobacco industry.
"Bombshell!" indeed, in more ways than one: violently destructive for its victims and eye-opening for the uninformed.
Again, thanks for posting.
AMNESIAN
I vividly recall what a jolt of self-righteous specialness and holy-spirit-directed warmth electrified our JW community with the announcement of the new no-tobacco edict that night at the Service Meeting.
Amazingly (and shamefully, I'm now feeling), it is while reading this wrenching personal account, that I realize how compliance with this "new light" so tragically impacted a certain segment of JWs of whom I had absolutely no awareness in my brand-spanking, just-dried-off daze as a thoroughly-devoted new believer.
Because the area in which we served our time as JWs was 100% metropolitan/suburban, nicotine withdrawal and the possible jeopardizing of certain kinds of retail employment were pretty much the extent of dire consequences suffered by the few we knew of affected at all, I am stricken to my core by what you present here. I simply had no idea and have never, until now, learned anything that exposed how abusively this "adjustment" was executed against those whose livelihood depended on the tobacco industry.
"Bombshell!" indeed, in more ways than one: violently destructive for its victims and eye-opening for the uninformed.
Again, thanks for posting.
AMNESIAN