It was the September 1, 2006 Watchtower, page 17, "When A Loved One Leaves Jehovah". It was this quote I found upsetting:
“It has become harder and harder to sit at Christian meetings and see parents laughing and talking with their children,” says Louise. “Any happy event is overshadowed by emptiness because of the ones missing.” One Christian elder recalls the four years during which his wife’s daughter cut off association with them. He says: “Often, even the ‘good times’ were difficult. If I gave my wife a gift or took her somewhere nice for a weekend, she would break down crying, remembering that her daughter did not share our happiness.”
Are such Christians overreacting? Not necessarily.
Even as a Witness I found this line of thought troubling. There's so much going on there. For one, it seems to imply that its audience would naturally conclude that the individuals quoted might be "overreacting" to being cut off from their children! What sort of person would reason that way? Then to add, "Not necessarily," is again an implication--that there are circumstances in which overreacting to having to shun your own children might happen. Well, they'd have to be pretty extreme, like mass murderer/child molester extreme, if you ask me.
I always felt that the Society was trying to get us to accept this arrangement as from God; but really, we were only told that justice was served. We don't get any kind of record of what happens in their judicial committees. One sentence from the platform, and that's it. Well, that's not how it was done in Israel, and not how it was done amongst the early Christians; in matters affecting everyone, crimes, doctrine, and matters of possible injustice, things were conducted before the eyes of the congregation. So where is the scriptural precedent for the secrecy?
In my own personal Bible reading, I encountered 2 Corinthians 12:21, which speaks of Paul actually mourning over the unrepentant. Such mourning is nonexistent amongst those "taking the lead" in the organization, as evidenced by this article and many others we've seen in more recent times. The Society has never, to my knowledge, commented at all on 2 Cor. 12:21 in terms of its implications. It may only be one scripture, but it says a lot.
As someone I cared for deeply had been expelled a year before this article was released, I read it with special interest. It offered me no comfort at all. Now I see that Witnesses clearly have to either feel emotions that are like a split personality or else none at all in order to live up to these requirements. You're supposed to love your brothers and sisters enough to die for them, but you're also supposed to treat them as nonexistent if they fall into sin.
It was this callous attitude that helped me begin my journey away from Jehovah's Witnesses. It was the opposite of what I'd read in the Bible, so I knew even then that something was wrong.
--sd-7