Situation:
You are inactive or disfellowshipped or disassociated. Your family won't talk to you hardly, or at all.
YOUR view: Your family is being unkind, ridiculous and cruel. They are YOUR FAMILY and they should be there for you no matter what.
THEIR view: They love you, but they cannot contact you or have association with you because they want you to survive Armageddon. It's like surgery, it hurts, but it is necessary.
Another situation:
Someone you know dies. They are a Witness. The funeral is at the Kingdom Hall. You attend.
YOUR view: You miss the person who died. You remember how great of a person they were. Their sense of humor, their generosity. You want to talk about them. You respect their views, but a funeral is to mourn them, and to celebrate their life.
THEIR view: We as individuals are not the most important thing. But Jehovah loves his servants. So a funeral mostly to bring praise to Jehovah and to bring real comfort to the bereaved by talkin about the resurrection to earth under Christ's Kingdom.
Another situation:
There is a change in one of the teachings in the WT. The old teaching has been around for a long time, and Witnesses have been preaching it for years, but now the teaching has changed.
YOUR view: False teachings mean false prophets, and God does not make mistakes.
THEIR view: Jehovah is leading his Organization and the light is getting brighter. We could not stand it if the light was too bright too soon. So truth is revealed gradually. If it seems to change back and forth, that is like a boat that is "tacking" that is, it changes course a lot, but still gets to its destination. And we shouldnt worry too much about changes, we should appreiciate what we get from the Faithful and Discreet Slave.
The point is, JW's don't view themselves as being mean or cruel. I don't know why some on this forum think that Witnesses are mean to them ON PURPOSE. My family does not consider itself to be mean to me. They say they love me, and THEY BELIEVE IT. They think that avoiding me is the best way to help me.
They really believe that.
There doesnt seem to be any reasoning that works, any plea for mercy or reasonableness. When that brother died at the assembly, and they didnt have a defribrilator, and they waitied for an appointed elder to call 911 because others are not supposed to, and my family said, "Well, its great that he died at the assembly, the best place to die."
I knew at that point that nothing, absolutely nothing is as important as the Organization.
BF