My verbalizing the stifling of a yawn was not intended to minimize the impact of the shunning policy. Rather it was to express how the predictable warnings in the Watchtower about contact with disfellowshipped individuals are...well, predictable. The whipping up of an emotional outcry about how the Watchtower is getting stricter implies it wasn't already strict or that it is tightening the screws. Firstly, look at all the warnings across the decades - apart from a seeping of humanity into the disfellowshipping policy in the early 1970s (I cite the Watchtower article on helping a disfellowshipped sister who has a flat tyre), it really is the same old same old. When the shunning policy is applied completely it is an act of unimaginable cruelty - which is why I believe it is not so completely applied as it once was - hence the regurgitation of a policy that were it applied strictly would see many, many witnesses disfellowshipped for still being in contact with disfellowshipped individuals (and this says nothing about the more clandestine contacts via email etc).
Besides, we have evidence on this forum that there is a rather less than zealous application of the shunning policy: Who here is ever surprised that supposed JWs in good standing post here??? Yet the one group JWs are told to be particularly avoidant of is "Apostates" .
My JW MIL only shuns those she wants to, but she never seems to get caught by the elders. Funny how there is a double standard and some of them pick and choose the rules they want to follow.
My observation as well Kristina1972. JWs take an incredibly selective approach to who they shun and how completely they enact it.
Not wanting to tread on anyone's toes - but risking doing just that - I submit that the completeness with which "JW families" enact the shunning policy has a lot to do with pre-existing relationships (i.e., the extent to which individuals in the families got on in the first place before the disfellowshipping). Briefly, it is easier shunning someone you had never particularly got along with or liked in the first place. It's much harder to completely shun someone you had a soft spot for and liked a lot. Simple fact of human nature. A similar view coiuld be expressed about marriages that are torn apart when one spouse is disfellowshipped for, say, apostasy. If the marriage was rocky beforehand, it sure as hell will be murder now. If a couple were warm and loving towards each other before the disfellowshipping, they'll weather it far better.
