Disfellowshipping - Pros and Cons

by Spectrum 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  AlmostAtheist

  From my hundreds of seconds of study on the subject, I've concluded that the shunning policy spoken of in the Bible was directed to individuals. It was never meant to be an official action of the congregation, but a protection to each individual Christian. In particular, I think 2 Corinthians 2:6 lends merit to this idea, where it talks about the "rebuke given [to a sinner] by the majority is sufficient". Doesn't a majority imply a minority? Not all participated in shunning this man, but those that didn't were not counseled over it. It was an individual decision for each Christian.

  Read without Watchtower bias, the New Testament never even suggests that a sinner needs to meet with the elders for the purpose of being judged for his sins. What it DOES do is tell the hearers of the letter to avoid those actively sinning. It doesn't say, "avoid those accused of or 'found guilty of' fornication", it simply says, "avoid fornicators". This actually makes a ton of sense. If you're a Christian leading a Christian life and one of your fellow members leaves the faith to pursue sin, why would you want to associate with him? You would want to associate with people that aided your battle against sin, not those that would tell you to "live a little".

  To take those verses and corrupt them into an official congregational action forces you to add all sorts of rules to it. How will they be known to be fornicators? You need someone to decide if they are or not. How will others know? You need to formulate an announcement. What if they stop, what then? You need to completely invent a reinstatement policy.

  Judicial committees, appeals, reinstatement hearings, "acts befitting repentance", "six months, a year, or even longer" -- all of these policies need to be invented in order to support the original decision to "go beyond what is written".

  In programming, when you start to break rules, you can usually assume you've made a mistake. The rules are there for a reason. If you keep on, you'll have to break more and more to get to the end you want. But if you stop and reexamine what led you here, you'll find that there is a clearer, more reasonable way to approach the problem. Surely in interpreting the Bible (or anything), once you've seen yourself making things up, you have to know you've erred somewhere down the line.

  Dave
• 

  Spectrum

  Confession,
  Thanks for that analysis I can now see where JWs get there shunning laws from. I think you have explained it clearly. From your analysis which I agree with they have gone too far. You also mention that it is a little unclear as to how exactly to view dissenters because some of the passages are stronger in condemnation than others. Obviously the JWs went for the full on slap them into submission interpretation.
  
  Ozzie,
  I think if you want to maintain a certain standard your going to have to go along with the rules of that organisation. You entered into that contract because you were enticed by the high standard that you witnessed on entering. And it wasn't even a bog standard contract, it was a baptism. To then say that, I don't agree with your standards, they are too this or too that, I find disingenuous.
  
  However having said that, the contract must be fair. What they expect of you they must first apply to themselves. Any judgement must be done in the spirit of Christ. How would Jesus have handled this situation rather than how would OT Jehovah.
  We can't consider Christ a pushover either and let people behave unchristian like with impunity otherwise JWs might aswell merge with the Catholics.
  
  I would have had a serious problem if I was told not to talk to friends. In fact I think that I had already made my mind up not to follow this rule at least for friends. I remember one idiotic meddling JW say to me, "did you know your friend was disfellowshipped", I said "yes, i was talking to him yesterday", then she went into a song and a dance about how i should not talk to him. I can't remember my reaction well but I think I just laughed it off.
  
  Barry,
  I don't know what to say regarding your experience. I know in my congregations you would have got a couple of warnings then got kicked out. It seems you were an anomaly! The thing is what you did didn't make you a bad person but a bad JW, uncomforist therefore didn't belong in that club. So there should be no hard feelings. Am i right?
  
  
  For me this thread is an exercise to find out whose overdoing what. Some of the JW shenanigans are really bad but some of the counter accusation might not merit serious thought.
• 

  belbab

  The Watchtower with their tyrannical disfellowshiping policy have gone far beyond what is written. In the discussions on this board over several years, especially about the child abuse withing JW group, it has often been claimed by JW supporters that there is no more child abusers within their ranks than in other religious groups.

  Yet they have always claimed they were a cleaner organization than all the rest.

  Is disfellowsiping a good thing? I say, let the gb disfellowship everyone, and then the 12+ or --, spend the rest of their days picking lint out of their own navels, and bask in the sunshine of God's approval.

  And in their downsizing they can use their ink producing facilities to produce more whitewash, because it is peeling off in many many places, and their abominations are being revealed.

  I have posted before on disfellowshiping at:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/33895/1.ashxI am having trouble putting in a second url, there is a part two to this post.

  belbab

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 

  Country Girl

  Really. It all sounds like a bunch of insecure window washers playing big time politics, if you ask me. Just like those cops, security officers, politicians, or anybody else who thinks that having some sort of badge or title allows them to trample the rights of other citizens in the quest for an ego boost, its nothing but a power play. All of it is about power. Real or percieved power. Doesn't matter if it's on a large scale <world politics> or on a smaller scale <KH politics> it's all about who is the biggest fish in the pond. Combined with an isolationistic culture, and primitive equality values, it's a hotbed of abuse.

  Somebody once asked what the GB and the hierarchy at Bethel get out of all this tomfoolery. Was it money? Big houses? Riches? No. It's power.. the most magnificent ego boost there could be. What man would NOT be intoxicated with people treating him as if he was God walking on Earth by thousands of Witnesses, tripping over their feet to meet him at every stop along the District Assembly Tour and saying "Yes! I met Mr. So and So today at the assembly." All the other people in their congregation get all thrilled cuz he met Mr. So and So.

  The reason that it is so entrenched is because if these men went into the REAL WORLD, they would be nothing but Jack Has Beens. They would fail miserably on the state of real world business/politics because they are so UNWORLDLY and DELUSIONAL. This way, they can get their ego fix and still maintain their delusional world.

  Without a broken heart.

  CG

  CG
• 

  Country Girl

  Spectrum said:

  Ozzie,

  I think if you want to maintain a certain standard your going to have to go along with the rules of that organisation. You entered into that contract because you were enticed by the high standard that you witnessed on entering. And it wasn't even a bog standard contract, it was a baptism. To then say that, I don't agree with your standards, they are too this or too that, I find disingenuous.

  Spec:

  You must surely know that alot of us were RAISED in this asylum and did not accept ANY contract, nor did we agree with what was FORCED on us. There is a REASON that children under 18 are not held to the same contract liabilities as adults, because they are not logically capable of entering into a contract, much less one that is forced on them by supposedly well meaning adults who have no damned clue.

  Even those people who are lured into this cult at a later age are lured with promises of this or that, and they never come true. It's all lies.

  Why does Ozzie have to maintain ANY standard? Why should he feel that if he enters into an agreement in which he is hoodwinked and lied to, that he has any obligation to maintain any standard?

  You need to get a grip. Would you hold those of us that were FORCED into this organization through no desire of our own to the same standard? Why should those of us that were FORCED be FORCED to maintain a certain standard after we find out that what we were forced INTO was a big farce?

  CG
• 

  Spectrum

  Country Girl,
  
  I wasn't really talking about Ozzie per se I was talking about all of us including Ozzie.
  I take your point that if you are raised in the Org then you have no choice and the contract is via proxy of your parents. Parents decide a lot of things for us when we are young, this is not unique. I was forced to do a lot of things when I was young but going to the meetings was not one of them so I don't know how it feels for you. When I did go I went voluntarily and I was still bored out of my skull so I wouldn't volunteer for another 2 months.
  What surprises me is that my sister's children seem to enjoy it. That defies belief considering how lazy they are. Maybe they escape doing school homework!
  The main point for this thread is really for those that join later in life with a lucid mind then decide it is not for them. Their personality doesn't suit this rigid regime. They prefer to smoke or fornicate or whatever else they get up to that breaks their rules.
  At the time I prefered not to have these people as part of the Org as it brought the standard right down and made a mockery of the claim that we were God's path for salvation. Although I had nothing against these people in my heart I thought that they had lost their salvation and were now worldly. In this sense I was in total agreement with disfellowshipping.
  I think that if you get kicked out for blatant misconduct, everyone more or less knows the rules, then there should be no hard feelings over the decision.
  
  "You need to get a grip. Would you hold those of us that were FORCED into this organization through no desire of our own to the same standard? Why should those of us that were FORCED be FORCED to maintain a certain standard after we find out that what we were forced INTO was a big farce?"
  
  Good point, and the answer is don't get yourself into a contract that doesn't suit you. If a bank gave you a piece of paper that in the small print said your soul belongs to God but your ar*se belongs to us would you sign, be worked to the bone for no salary, then complain about your woeful situation they put you in. Nobody in the right mind would do that.
  
  
  A good question is, how many people don't know what they are getting themselves into?
  I think that JWs have gone too far with dealing with disfellowsipped people. They are treated like lepers this is plain wrong. I find this really unchristain which in Christ's eyes it is unacceptable. The JWs have to watch out lest they find themselves dangling over gehena.
• 

  tijkmo

  disfellowshipping---shooting the wounded
• 

  Confession

  The main point for this thread is really for those that join later in life with a lucid mind then decide it is not for them. Their personality doesn't suit this rigid regime. They prefer to smoke or fornicate or whatever else they get up to that breaks their rules.

  I think you'll find this does not portray things accurately. A person may become one of Jehovah's Witnesses while having what you would call "a lucid mind," but this does not mean they actually understand what they've gotten themselves into. On the contrary, they usually have very little understanding of how they themselves may end up being shunned. Further, their "lucid mind" may have absorbed a good many things about the organization--but it has not absorbed the other side of the coin.

  Your characterization of those who leave being those who "prefer to smoke or fornicate or whatever else" is, I believe, unfair. You do understand that many ex-JWs left because of coming to understand that the Watchtower Society is not what it purports to be, don't you? You refer to a type of contract. Okay, well if members are to live in accord with organization dictates, then isn't the organization also required to fulfill their end of the contract?

  They have claimed to be the "sole channel of communication" from God to the rest of the planet. Lots of "lucid minds" joined the organization--only later to discover all of the whitewashing done to it's past, littered with an astonishing number of false date prophecies never fulfilled. Only later do they find out that its founder relied, among other things, on astrological signs and mysterious Egyptian pyramid measurements to determine certain of these dates.

  They have been guilty of hypocrisy, by ejecting members and ruthlessly shunning them for not remaining "neutral" in governmental matters--but themselves became a signed member of the United Nations--the very thing they condemn as "disgusting" and something never to be "touched." Lucid minds only find this out later.
• 

  jessthebull

  I have to say I too take umbridge with your saying that all people who leave JW's do so because they cant hack the pace and would rather smoke, drink etc...

  That is so so annoying to hear when you leave because you realise that the contract you entred at 14 years old, with a huge amount of encouragment/pressure from family and friends, is a crock.

  At 14 i had no idea about the history of false prophecies, doctrinal flip flops and out right miss representations perpetrated by the borg. When I found out about these and decided to leave, my mother like you said it was because i just wanted to be like the other kids. I was highly insulted.

  I am not disfellowshiped , yet. And you can bet that I will be extreemly upset about it if it does happen.
• 

  greendawn

  Even if we disregard the fact that many are disfellowshipped for no good reason at all such as disagreeing with the orgs ideas, for those that did commit moral misdeeds I don't think the bible talks of theit total isolation and shunning but rather of keeping them away from very intimate contact. Then they could try to persuade them to repent.
  
  Having said that though the JWs are like the pharisee who boasted that he was pure and despised the sinner. They have too much going wrong with themselves and they shouldn't become too judgemental of others.