In reading some old post I came across this thread - just amazing and Hillary_Step's quote really had an impact. Facinating thread if you have some time
Hello Amazing, I specifically took this matter up with the Branch in London in 1977 a few years after this KM slid its way into the 'publishers' hands. The reason that I drew this matter to the attention of the Service Desk was that an elder in a congregation which I had visited as a Temporary CO admitted to having been involved in an affair some years earlier as a single man, with a young JW woman. Though he had since married, the object of his affections before he had married decided to ‘kiss and tell’. The elder used this KM as a defense as to why he had not reported the sin to his fellow elders at any time since the affair. He and the other party had dealt with the issue and put it behind them until her conscience overwhelmed her.
The Service Desk made it very clear in a letter, which I probably have stored somewhere, that the point of the KM was not to excuse a serious sin done many years ago, but was intended to address the issue of minor sins like smoking, or an occasional bout of drunkeness. It did not apply to serious sins committed by any person, elder or not, which had take place, even in the distant past.
Almost as a coincidental event, very shortly after I dealt with this issue, a member of the Branch Committee in another English Speaking European country was removed for a sexual indiscretion that he had committed twenty-seven years earlier. It was an absurd situation, and one that sent shivers of fear through many, who looked back on their youth with terror as they remembered the days when sweaty gropings were classed by the WTS as ‘loose conduct’ and not the ‘fornication’ that it became in the early 80’s.
When a person hands their precious conscience over to an organization that shows all the characteristics of a sociopath - having no conscience - it is an unnerving scenario and one which elucidates much pity for me from me for what most JW’s have to live with in their daily grapple with a dissonant life.
Best regards - HS
