Article: It's Time to Outlaw Extreme Shunning in Modern Society

by AndersonsInfo 183 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

adamah

Prime said:
If someone is suicidal or commits suicide, it's not because of expulsion from a congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. There are persons I know/knew that were disfellowshipped and quite frankly, they really didn't care. Those that did care were often reinstated.
Bud, you're arguing against your own organization's beliefs: did you NOT listen to the public talk, or read the WT magazine on shunning?
The WTBTS has admitted shunning HAS to be uncomfortable for the shunned IN ORDER FOR IT TO WORK.
Prime said:
If it is a family member that chooses not to associate with you and you believe they're wrong because of their decision, there's nothing to feel bad about. If the family member believes they're not in the wrong, they also have a support group. Namely, anyone that isn't a JW. If a person believes they are in the wrong, they can be reinstated. Anyway you look at it, there's an open door.
Personal rejection is a fact of life in modern society. A fact most people experience early on. Some people are rejected at birth. If someone lives at home, they won't be rejected because they're disfellowshipped. Not because of any official tenet or protocol employed by Jehovah's Witnesses anyway. People don't commit suicide because of rejection in itself. Nobody has to take the blame for such a thing.
You're simply trying to allay a guilty conscience, trying to avoid bearing any and all personal responsibility for being a cog in an unthinking machine and merely following orders, denying the obvious: shunning is a form of social ostracism, an attempt to control others for WHATEVER reason. Since JWs cannot use reason, they simply IGNORE, DENY someone's existence.
Sometimes such attempts to control WILL result in suicide, esp in those who are most unable to withstand societal rejection, namely those who've been psychologically 'knee-capped' after having been raised in a manner that places utmost importance on being a member of a blessed group, places blind obedience to authority above individuality and making personal choices: these WILL absolutely retard the development of a healthy ego (since parents who don't possess such thinking cannot possibly encourage it in their children). A typical JW family is thus a breeding ground designed to produce more followers, more publishers.
Are you really just not able to see that, or acting as if you're morally-blind?
For the sake of your children and YOURSELF, take the blinders off, guy. You're completely arguing against common sense here, and now taking a position that's ever MORE outlandish than claiming that JWs engage in "extreme shunning" (which I agree is hypobolic).
If you haven't read my blog article on shunning, then there's no time like the present for YOUR sake.
See, if you're correct that shunning is NOT harmful, then that's very GOOD NEWS, INDEED! Notify the Society and tell them there's no need to deliver future talks at DC designed to alleviate such guilt, since no one has to take responsibility for ANY harm they cause!
That includes past participants who now are willing to publicly admit they felt guilty WHILE doing it, but did it anyway. They are now off the hook!
Adam
frankiespeakin

Prime,
If it is a family member that chooses not to associate with you and you believe they're wrong because of their decision, there's nothing to feel bad about.
Assumes 'nothing to feel bad about' has universal application, depictive of a narrow reality tunnel where his feelings are the correct one to have and should be the worlds feelings on the matter as well.
If a person believes they're not in the wrong, they also have a support group. Namely, anyone that isn't a JW. If a person believes they are in the wrong, they can be reinstated. Anyway you look at it, there's an open door.
Excuse me but you should have said: "Anyway 'I' look at it, there is an open door" you only give two scenarios and ignore anything besides these two, which in reality are many. Black and white thinking, leaps in logic, are promenant features of you arguements.
Personal rejection is a fact of life in modern society. A fact most people experience early on. Some people are rejected at birth. If someone lives at home, they won't be rejected because they're disfellowshipped. Not because of any official tenet or protocol employed by Jehovah's Witnesses anyway. People don't commit suicide because of rejection in itself. Nobody has to take the blame for such a thing.
True, rejection is a fact of life but the examples you give need some more forethought. Maybe this is the way you keep cognitive dissonace to bareable limits: failure to see a connection between the cruel practice of shunning and thoughts of committing suicide.
'Nobody has to take the blame for such a thing,' shows a callous attitude towards one's fellow man, are you on the current Governing Body, because you sound just as cruel as they do? or maybe a future Governing Body hopeful?
besty

@prime
Personal rejection is a fact of life in modern society.
A fact most people experience early on.
Some people are rejected at birth.
If someone lives at home, they won't be rejected because they're disfellowshipped.
Not because of any official tenet or protocol employed by Jehovah's Witnesses anyway.
People don't commit suicide because of rejection in itself.
Nobody has to take the blame for such a thing.
You can almost taste the empathy.
Lurkers - please think about the disconnection from your humanity when you practise shunning. You are damaging your biological hardwiring, which seeks human connection.
Frazzled UBM

Count the rationalisations of Prime as listed by besty1,2,3,4,5,6,7. If there was an Olympics for rationalisations dubs like Prime would sweep the medal tally.
Marvin Shilmer

-
“…a family member that chooses not to associate with you…”
Watchtower policy does not present this as a choice.
Watchtower enforces this disassociation under pain of the same treatment.
If Watchtower wants Christians men and women to shun based on choice then its whole judicial policy needs revamping so rather than congregants being instructed to disfellowship an individual they would, instead, be informed of the sin committed so the Christian men and women could decide naturally based on their own Christian conscience.
Oh. I forgot. That’s how the Bible presents the case. We’re talking about Watchtower.
Never mind.
Marvin Shilmer
adamah

Since Besty broke the string of questionable assumptions apart, let's just address them, one by one:
Personal rejection is a fact of life in modern society.
A dubious claim, since not EVERYONE personally rejects those they claim to love. In fact, MOST people living in a modern society don't do that, since that's the entire POINT of a family: it's the group of people that you share DNA with, and hence humans selfishly place their best-interests above all of those who don't share their genes.
But even if it WERE true, it borders on the childish defense of, "But Mom! Everyone ELSE does it, so I can do it, too!". That's called an 'appeal to popularity', and Mom only says how you shouldn't jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge, since others are doing it. Popular doesn't constitute right (and your pointing to the practices of the World seeking justification is more than a bit ironic, no? Remember Jesus' whole, "my kingdom is NO part of this World" thing?)
A fact most people experience early on.
Sure, many people DO experience personal rejection. Is that supposed to serve AS some type of justification for doing it, another 'appeal to popularity' or 'appeal to tradition' (i.e. that's just the way we've ALWAYS done it)?
Some people are rejected at birth.
Sure. But is that just another way of saying, "Just suck it up, you babies, since some people have it worse than you"? That's the classic reasoning employed by bullies everywhere, a diminishing of the impact of their actions.
If someone lives at home, they won't be rejected because they're disfellowshipped.
Agreed (first non-question claim in the string: there's a glimmer of hope)!
Not because of any official tenet or protocol employed by Jehovah's Witnesses anyway.
Hope is dashed, since we're back at that dismissal thing. Sure, you cannot imagine there's ANY possible way for THAT to be viewed by a R&F member, not even accidentally! That's blind denial of responsibility, AKA implausible deniability.
People don't commit suicide because of rejection in itself.
Technically true, but semantics. Most people commit suicide when in the depths of despair, from the overwhelming sense of hopelessness which RESULTS from feeling they're trapped in a painful unthinking and unchanging system that demands blind obedience and conformity, and they see no other way out.
Nobody has to take the blame for such a thing.
No, it's exactly the opposite:
EVERYBODY needs to take a shared responsibility for creating and supporting such toxic environments, whether current supporters or in the past. Don't worry: there's plenty of blame for everybody to share, so grab a plate and dig in.
You're telling me that Jesus could intervene on behalf of an adulterness to prevent her physical death from stoning by mob (where stoning was the ancient form of 'karet', cutting off), but JWs are STILL resorting to a psychological form of stoning that in some cases, results in physical death?
JWs need to REALLY study Jesus' example to get some "new light", since shunning is a PRIME example of following Pharisaical traditions that lead to such mob mentality behaviors, hence placing Jesus' example above the OT rules which you paradoxically claim that you believe he replaced!
Simply put:
JW practices such as shunning are the tactics used by emotional thugs, bullies, then excusing their childish and cruel behavior and excusing their actions under the banner of serving Jesus.
Adam
blondie

I knew df'd people who lived at home, children and spouses, who were not allowed to eat with the family but separately all alone.
wallsofjericho

I knew df'd people who lived at home, children and spouses, who were not allowed to eat with the family but separately all alone.
oh no, that wouldn't screw anybody up... no no
zed is dead

Prime would cry like a little baby if he were ever shunned.
zed
Prime

You can almost taste the empathy.
Lurkers - please think about the disconnection from your humanity when you practise shunning. You are damaging your biological hardwiring, which seeks human connection.
A person's opinion on this issue is largely based on what they believe to be the truth. Just because a person rejects what Jehovah's Witnesses present as the truth doesn't necessarily mean anything. As for theisim, they do present a consistent Bible-based worldview that makes practical sense.
When it comes to this issue, people talk as if the world is an oasis of "empathy" and family unity and Jehovah's Witnesses came along and dried everything up.
Nothing is further from the truth. From sectarian violence to conflicts in many person's extended and immediate families, the human race is one very large dysfunctional family.
Many persons in modern society are not empathetic or at all trustworthy. This has much to do with why the disfellowshipping arrangement exists in the first place. It's been my experience that the vast majority of Jehovah's Witnesses are dependable and trustworthy. If you say otherwise, anyone with any common sense at all will question the claims of turncoats (e.g. "the board of bitterness").
It's advisable to get to know others in person before accepting the claims of bitter, anonymous cyberghosts.

Article: It's Time to Outlaw Extreme Shunning in Modern Society

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