It was always offensive to me for the WTBTS to be telling me what the reactions of my own conscience should be. Especially when it seemed that someone needed to be telling THEM what a conscience was in the first place.
Remember the Malawi thing? For those of you too young to remember, every citizen in Malawi was required to purchase, for twenty-five cents, a party card. This card identified the person as members of the only political party in the country, that of a Mr. Banda. It was more like a national I.D. card than anything else.
Well the society in its wisdom decided that no JW could in good conscience purchase this card. So, sitting in the comfort and security and isolation of their ivory tower in New York, they intoned darkly of how purchasing the card would amount to "worshipping" the state.
The reaction of the state was immediate. People who refused to purchase this harmless card had the full fury of the state of Malawi brought down on them. Crops were destroyed. Houses were burned. Wives and daughters were serially raped and murdered before the eyes of the husbands and fathers, who where then murdered themselves. It was a needless disaster of magnificent proportions.
The Borg urged all JWs to write to this Banda character asking him to cease and desist. He didn't.
Later, after the coast was clear, those ass-holes in Borg headquarters went to Malawi to survey the results of their deciding for others what the voice of their own conscience should tell them. There is no evidence that the GB was moved. After all, they had been safely ensconsed half a world away.
And the thing that really burned my ass about it that was in order for these modern-day Pharisees to get to Malawi in the first place, they had to get passports from the U.S. government.
Ever looked closely at an application for a passport? In the application, which must be signed by the applicant, there is what amounts to a loyalty oath to the government of the United States that does not differ in its essence from the oath of loyalty contained in the Party Card of the government of Malawi - the absence of which had precipitated so much misery and death on Malawian JWs.
I pointed this out to a pair of JWs who came by one day. And it silenced one of them, and it drove the other into angry denials. Anger. Isn't that interesting? Anger, indicating that the mark had been struck since, as we all know, it's the stuck pig that squeals. Later these two came back with their overseer and a passport application. They attempted to tell me that the oath it contained wasn't really an oath. But it was right there in black and white. But they would not see it. Sort of like the story of the emporer who had no clothes in reverse.
The society has wrapped itself up in conflicting and confusing policies over the years so that now they can't wiggle in any direction without violating some principle of theirs. Their stand on the blood issue is like walking over the abyss on a razor's edge.
But that's another thread altogether.
Francois
