by KAYTEE 8 Replies latest jw friends
Ad hominem !!
In footballing terms kicking the player rather than the ball.
How many times when discussing a problem (serious or otherwise) with elders were YOU attacked rather than the point you were trying to make, YOU the innocent one would come away feeling quite guilty. They are past masters at this technique, coupled with the fact that they attack you on your OWN. One elders (pet saying "do you know who you are talking to")
......as "Dell-boy" would say - yes a 32 CARAT PLONKER
KT
I don't think it is a matter, at least for me I am speaking as an ex elder, that you are trying to kick the person rather than the ball. As an ex-elder you are trained to believe that more questions will reveal a weakness in study, FS, meeting attendance, personal study, reading the literture, meeting attendance.
The elders THINK that this is life's problems, but there are many elders who I know that their interests were to reveal details instead realizing the individuality of the person and life cannont be fixed with the above "remendies".
Elders (not all) to me are big headed people without the proper training to help people with serious situations and their snake oil treatment just does not work in this time and age and never would have in any other period of history.
People are too complicated to fix with spandex suggestions.
abr
avidbiblereader----------- I cannot emphasize enough how much I agree with what you said!! I kept trying to tell my elders that the advice they kept giving me just DOES NOT WORK when you're dealing with an abuser...that it may apply with the general person, but not with an abuser. They kept telling me [or checking to see if this was the need] to pray more, go out in service more, study more, attend meetings more, give comments more.
I was about as model as a model witness can be given my limitations---was killing myself to follow through, even--and kept being told that if I did these things MORE, my abusive a--hole of a husband would somehow be moved to changed his entire orientation toward the world [me top dog, you under me]. In one of my last meetings with them [supposedly to 'encourage' me!], I finally told them outright, "There is nothing I can do that can make J---- act right. There is nothing I can do to affect that." [with specific examples at the time]
They finally had to agree, puzzled as could be that--'hey--here's a situation where this advice doesn't work...I wonder what to make of that.' They really have left me alone since then. One of them even said early in the session, "I've been trying to think what we as a congregation have done to show you that you are a valued sister, and I've come up with nothing." So...there you have it...from the elder's own mouth. And that was from a sincere one, who actually gave the MOST help [or attempted help] out of anybody. So even the one who gave the most could see that my situation had received the least [attention], so to speak.
And the kicker is, with the JW mindset, there are a goodly number of those who would see it as, 'Well, obviously, Jehovah's holy spirit just was not operative there.' [as in, not with me--not withIN me...I didn't get the help, not because of shortcomings in the congregation/ religion but, because I was not deemed worthy by Jehovah...I would have received the help I needed if I were well pleasing to Jehovah.] --Sick mindset...sick, sick!!!
I agree wholeheartedly. By way of background, my ex-husband was not a JW; I was. He was violent, and hit me on several occasions. I would call the police. One time he pulled the phone out of the wall while I was on the line with 911. About 20 cops showed up, guns drawn.
The brothers came over to "encourage" me, intimated that I was not acting as a submissive wife or else this NEVER would have happened, and proceeded to read me the following scripture (emphasizing the underlined sentence...in fact they had me read it again for emphasis):
(Matthew 18:2-6) 2 So, calling a young child to him, he set it in their midst 3 and said: "Truly I say to YOU, Unless YOU turn around and become as young children, YOU will by no means enter into the kingdom of the heavens. 4 Therefore, whoever will humble himself like this young child is the one that is the greatest in the kingdom of the heavens; 5 and whoever receives one such young child on the basis of my name receives me [also]. 6 But whoever stumbles one of these little ones who put faith in me, it is more beneficial for him to have hung around his neck a millstone such as is turned by an ass and to be sunk in the wide, open sea.
It is soo nice to be in a position where those men no longer matter to me.
Justitia
To get back to kaytee's thread . . .yes, this happened to me several times when I was trying to understand Witness thought. The elder attacked me and my moral makeup instead of discussing Bible and Watchtower questions. I was young and very impressionable and easily squashed him.
edit . . ." easily squashed by him. "
JW`s are trained to "Intelectually Bully!"..It`s not easy for most of them..LOL!!...OUTLAW
Just noticed this thread.
When we began to ask a few awkward questions, we were told that we were "too intelligent" and that's why Jehovah chooses the "foolish" ones.
HONESTLY!!!!
DNC,
There is foolishness and there is stupidity, it seams as though if you are not a glorious one, you are not endowed with common sense, sadly lacking in the majority of the elders, purely because they are pumped up with their own self importance. If we are not expected to ask questions from time to time, why has the Bible got 1,500 pages made up of 66 books,It was a quick get out for them
KT
