What do you disagree with the Disfellowshipping policy?
What do you disagree with the Disfellowshipping policy?
by ClassAvenger 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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ozziepost
You haven't added too much, Avenger! Were you leaving room for an essay??!!
OK, I'll start off:
1. Judicial committees are not found in scripture - they're an invention of the WTS.
2. "Restrictions" are not found in scripture - they're an invention of the WTS.
3. Whilst DF is "allowed" for in the NT, it certainly was different to the way it's "explained" by the WTS.
Cheers, Ozzie
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wednesday
Seems the JWS used the example of the jewish elders taking a sinner out and stoning them. That was compared to DFing. I think it is one of the most cruel things u can do to a person. I became so sick during my DFing, i became unable in interact with people socially in a normal way. It really damaged me. I hope all the brothers who did that to me rot or at least get the same back to them.
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Islandboy99
Though I don't think any of it is scriptural... I don't have a problem with it.. Them not talking to me or even saying hi suits me just fine..
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Gopher
Good point, Islandboy. The DF'ing arrangement is allegedly a way to protect loyal JW's from outsiders and their evil thoughts. But in reality, it's the other way around -- it protects US who have been marked with the scarlet "A" (apostate) from having to deal with religious zealots who think they and they alone have the inside track on all that is true and righteous.
One simple scripture from the NT could dismiss the JW way of disfellowshipping as wrong. It's somewhere in 2 Corinthians, where a man had been excluded from Christian worship for doing the nasty with his stepmom (by Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians). In the 2nd letter, Paul wrote that they should welcome him back, and that the "rebuke by the MAJORITY" was sufficient and had served its purpose. Notice the key word, MAJORITY. That means that associating with this man was apparently a conscience matter, since there was just a majority (and not the whole congregation) who used their own judgment and determined it wouldn't be good to associate with this man. There was no announcement to the Corinthian congregation saying that they all must shun him or else they too would be shunned! That is a JW procedure and not a Bible one.
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ozziepost
It's somewhere in 2 Corinthians, where a man had been excluded from Christian worship for doing the nasty with his stepmom (by Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians). In the 2nd letter, Paul wrote that they should welcome him back,
Yes, but is the person referred to at 2 Corinthians 2 the same as the person of 1 Corinthians 5? Of course, the WTS have long said it is, but Bible scholars don't concur, and really, there's no evidence in Paul's words to support the Watchtower view. So we're left with two events that may, or may not, be connected.
Further weakening the WTS view of the Pauline letters, is that these were not the only letters to the Corinthians, they are simply the only two that we have in the Bible. For example, in 1 Corinthians 5, just after giving the instruction to expel the immoral brother, he speaks of a previous letter ("I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.........But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother etc etc" - verses 9 and 11.) Then in 2 Corinthians 2:4 he speaks of a letter that he thought could have caused the Corinthians "great distress" because of its words. We, therefore, know of not two, but four letters to the Corinthians.
In all of this, the WTS uses one obscure verse to justify its DF policy. That surely isn't "Bible based".
Bible students they ain't.
Cheers, Ozzie
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SM62
As I explained to one of the local elders, I think that an organisation has a right to choose who it wants as members. If I was threatening to go to the KH to heckle the speaker, they have a right to tell me to stay out. If I totally disagree with the beliefs of a particular religion (whether RC, Jew, Muslim, JW etc), why would I want to go to their place of meeting? BUT, and a big BUT, no organisation has the right to tell anyone who they can and cannot speak to. They have no right to put pressure on friends and family and force them to cut a loved one out of their life. What sort of sick people do that? If a couple have 10 children, and all 10 choose 10 different religions, what does that matter? Why would the parents only talk to whoever agrees with their beliefs? No loving parent would do that. The WTS is the sort of organisation that causes the type of problems we see in Northern Ireland. They are causing divisions with this cruel and heartless policy and they don't seem to care about the serious damage inflicted on people, many of whom have not been DFd for fornication or anything like that, but simply for daring to speak their minds and for having different views to those at the top. JCs are sinister kangaroo courts held in secret - why all the secrecy? Even in a 'worldly' court of law, the accused is allowed to have witnesses. I will never agree with this policy - it is one of the reasons why I can't go back to the KH, although the main reason is that I could never accept their ridiculous interpretation of the 144,000 of Revelation - it really makes me sick.
Terri
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mustang
OK, Ozziepost started making a list. I’ll add more to the list:
Add1) Many go off half cocked with this and shun people on their own understanding and without any proof or "due process". They will do this before, during and after any real DF’ing. An imagined Df’ing seems to be just fine in the eyes of many.
Add2) DA’ing is a strange permutation of all this.
Add3) The "auto-DA’ing" thing. You did it yourself without ever formally declaring it. I believe that a comment in this post (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/64045/1.ashx)
will clarify that. See Earnest’s comment with a quote from a QFR.
Add4) As Ozzie pointed out: "Bible Students they ain’t". (My spell checker wanted to make that "Bile Students"; OK, I could go along with that.) But they are LEGAL STUDENTS (Students, I say). And that is what this whole thing is: a cocked-hat perversion of religion to legalistic lines.
Add5) Continuing from Add4: DF’ing has an INVERTED/PERVERTED view of love. That is, "bomb ‘em back to the Stone Age, and they will come running back to you with great heaping gobs of love". This really doesn’t work.
Add6) It amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment" and violates peoples rights. The Church is legally allowed to do this, but it still steps on the rights of others. All instances of this should be applied for legal remedies in favor of the targeted and abused.
Add7) It makes a total mockery of any pretense to love, family values and the true meaning of religion.
Mustang
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stillajwexelder
Then he said: "A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ?Father, give me the part of the property that falls to my share.? Then he divided his means of living to them. Later, after not many days, the younger son gathered all things together and traveled abroad into a distant country, and there squandered his property by living a debauched life. When he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred throughout that country, and he started to be in need. He even went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to herd swine. And he used to desire to be filled with the carob pods which the swine were eating, and no one would give him [anything]. "When he came to his senses, he said, ?How many hired men of my father are abounding with bread, while I am perishing here from famine! I will rise and journey to my father and say to him: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Make me as one of your hired men."? So he rose and went to his father. While he was yet a long way off, (he approached the judicial committee that originally disfellowshipped him and asked to be reinstated) his father caught sight of him and was moved with pity, (and the chairman of the judicial committee told him to attend meetings for a few months to prove he was really repentant and in the meantime nobody could talk to him) and he ran and fell upon his neck and tenderly kissed him. Then the son said to him, ?Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Make me as one of your hired men.? But the father said to his slaves, ?Quick! (wait at least 3 months attending meetings) bring out a robe, the best one, and clothe him with it, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fattened young bull, slaughter it and let us eat and enjoy ourselves, because this my son was dead and came to life again; he was lost and was found.? And they started to enjoy themselves. (But the congregation were not allowed to applaud and clap when he was reinstated) "Now his older son was in the field; and as he came and got near the house he heard a music concert and dancing. ( So he called one of the servants to him and inquired what these things meant. He said to him, ?Your brother has come, and your father slaughtered the fattened young bull, because he got him back in good health.? But he became wrathful and was unwilling to go in. (But old-school members of the congregation still looked down on him and he was not allowed any privileges in the congregation) Then his father came out and began to entreat him. In reply he said to his father, ?Here it is so many years I have slaved for you and never once did I transgress your commandment, and yet to me you never once gave a kid for me to enjoy myself with my friends. But as soon as this your son who ate up your means of living with harlots arrived, you slaughtered the fattened young bull for him.? Then he said to him, ?Child, you have always been with me, and all the things that are mine are yours; but we just had to enjoy ourselves and rejoice, ( and absolutely no way was anyone in the congreagtion allowed to hold a party for the reinstated one in the congregation ) because this your brother was dead and came to life, and he was lost and was found.?"
So this is what I disagree with about disfellowshipping and reinstatement -- IT IS ANTI-SCRIPTURAL
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RAYZORBLADE
Ozziepost: thank you for that information, I know someone that would appreciate this information, greatly, thanks!
Great question, and I'm sure this thread is going to build.
Do I approve: my response, ambiguous.
No, but....
...with me, in a very strange retrospective point-of-view, I suppose I'm glad I was turfed. At least it got me "OUT" of the WTS.
That being said, as time and space took over, I was gradually weened off of my JW fix.
As more time and space parted our ways, I discovered more information about the JWs that I may have not been previously receptive to.
20 years later, here I am.
After this length of time, when I look back: sure it was stressful, and I was a wreck. Who wasn't really?
The resolve I have found by coming to this forum has helped me go over things that I previously missed, and I re-examined policies/doctrines and other failed prophecy.
It's still not easy that's for sure, and Ozziepost's information leaves; for those of you recently disfellowshipped, or perhaps soon-to-be disfellowshipped, some food for thought. Of course, if you have family etc., that are believing JWs, your predicament is indeed, worrisome.
Mustang, that was a good follow-up as well, thanks for the link.
Thanks Ozziepost. Give my love to Mrs. Ozziepost will ya? Thanx!
(offers a bottle of Canadian Pelee Island Melange to you both, Happy New Year)