LookingGlass:
I know, I know.... And this is nothing new, it's cyclical with the dubs, like a pendulum swinging back and forth. They're hardline, then they go the other way for a while, then the hardliners push the pendulum in the other direction.
Way back in 1981 there was a series of WT study articles on DFing, including one very pointed one on dealing with a DF'd family member. It was extremely harsh in tone and scolded the "friends" for treating their df'd relatives as though nothing had changed.
An elder and his wife had a daughter who was 20. She was a pioneer who was DF'd when she got pregnant at 18. Despite that the parents were supportive during the pregnancy and after, helping financially and emotionally. After the '81 Watchtower articles came out and were studied at the Sunday meeting, they sat down and wrote their daughter a letter terminating their relationship, based on what the WT said, "until she came back to Jehovah." It was such an abrupt, unloving turn of events that the daughter soon took a job several states away, took the baby and moved, and ended all contact with her parents, both of whom have since died. Those dubs lost out on a relationship with their only daughter and never saw their grandchild again, all because of 24 paragraphs of sloppy writing in an obscure magazine.
