Expert: Andrew - 9/23/2009

Question
Andrew.

I realize that you are an ex-witness.  Sorry to hear that.  But your discussions about how a person becomes a witness, and then essentially has to abandon thier own kin is a little over the top, no?  While you have a point that in cases where the family are all baptized witnesses, and for talking points, one of the children who is baptized commits an unrepentant gross error causing disfellowship.. yes, in this case, the other witness family members are encouraged to limit thier exposure to that errant family member...what you would call shunning...
But to say that a mother, who becomes a witness, would abandon relations with her own daughter... her own flesh and blood... and to say that same mother is a threat to her own grandchildren?
Please!   God respects our human free will to chose to obey Him or reject Him... it's our free choice.  Witnesses also have to be respectful of this same fact.   If the daughter choses to not become a witness, and the daughter does not want her children exposed to witness literature... so be it.   Don't expect the mother not to answer a question posed either by the daughter or the grandchildren with an answer based on scripture...but visitation between witnesses and non witnesses are no based soley on the kingdom preaching work... In other words... witnesses still love, cherish, and spend time with their non witness relatives!   Now if we are asked to go the bar and have a round of drinks with relatives, we will decline the offer... but never have I heard of a witness who shuns his own kin on the basis of membership... this is not scriptural... just like a wife of a JW, whose husband is not a JW, does not shun nor divorce her husband!
Sometimes I think your bad experience has really gone to far!


Answer
Dear Robert,

I realize you are under the spell of cult mind control as practiced by the Witnesses, and therefore have an impaired relationship with your critical thinking faculties. Sorry to hear that.

How a person becomes a Witness and then essentially abandons their kin, not because they "have to" but because they are subtly influenced to do so, is indeed "over the top", but if my report is "over the top", it's only because I'm reporting on a situation that is.

The way you Witnesses impair freedom of mind through the practice of cult mind control tactics and destroy family ties in favor of your idealogy, that is, your PET INTERPRETATION of God's will, is simply wrong. You may not be willing to admit that it's wrong, and you may object to my expose of the error; but my expose is not what's wrong; your organization's practices are.

It doesn't matter what your spiritual beliefs are, any organization that influences people to destroy family ties is committing a moral and sociological and political and spiritual error. Family is more important than ideology. Period. Your pet interpretation of God's will is a pale shadow of God's mind, yet you equate them. Ultimate arrogance and hypocrisy--the same arrogance and hypocrisy of which you accuse the clergy of other religions.

It doesn't matter whether the Witness organization officially teaches people to cut off family ties. Your leaders have written every single iota of their publicly-scrutinized official teachings with plausible deniability in mind. Of course you can explain away and reframe every organizational policy in a way that makes those policies seem reasonable. Yet look at the net effect. Through whatever mechanism, official, subtle, or whatever, people who stay long with your religion end up cutting ties with their non-Witness relatives and former Witness relatives, making your organization just as destructive to family ties as any other cult. There are too many horror stories as evidence to the practical outcome, which Witnesses never hear about. And that is ultimately the real reason for your official shunning policies, so that you will never hear the other side of the story. You are not meant to know the devastation in human lives your policies cause. That way you can continue them in ignorant bliss, and forever tilt with windmills to prove yourselves uniquely "right" and on "God's" side.

Yes, I say there is no such thing as a Witness grandmother babysitting her own non-Witness grandchildren who would not try to influence them to join the Witnesses, thereby turning their backs on their own parents, because I have seen too many cases of exactly this occurring. The grandmother justifies it because of her obsessive worry that the grandchildren are about to die at God's hand in Armageddon any moment. But the net result is children dishonoring their parents, and--once again--divided families.

Yes, God respects our human free will, but the Witnesses do not. Yes humans can choose to "obey" God or "reject" God. But it is the Witnesses who interpret that that means, and who act as judge, jury, and executioner upon those who do not live by Witness interpretations. God has not appointed your organization as you claim, so you have no right. There is no greater arrogance in the universe than to pretend to speak for God without any direct appointment to do so. Just like every other fundamentalist monotheistic religion, you assume your interpretation of ancient documents is God's own interpretation, failing to account for human error, yet judging and punishing based on that private pet interpretation. Shame on you!

> Visitation between Witnesses and non-Witnesses are not based
> solely on the kingdom preaching work.

Yes they are. Because of the social seperatism Witnesses practice, they make themselves alien to their non-Witness relatives, not just in terms of their spiritual beliefs, about which one could avoid conversation; but rather about their condescending relationship to the world, which inevitably impacts upon every single relationship a Witness has with a non-Witness. Where the scriptures say "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son" and "God is Love" the Witnesses instead focus upon how they are better than the world, and this us-vs-them mentality is repeated a thousand times a year in your program content, for the purpose of causing the Witness membership to remain separate. You may have a good motivation for that, to preserve moral purity, but look at how it impacts upon families. You cannot deny the impact, however you might try.

Your mind is so full of deception that you cannot even hear simple statements. It is useless to try to communicate with you, because you have believed your own lies to the point that you repeat them innocently believing it is the truth. May you someday open your eyes. I have nothing more to say to you, Robert.

Dear Reader,

Robert wrote:
> Witnesses still love, cherish, and spend time with their
> non-Witness relatives

This is an example of the engineered ongoing image-enhancing public relations campaign which Witnesses are taught through their five meetings per week. They are carefully taught how to circumnavigate each and every "objection" that might come up, and they have plausible answers to all of them.

However, plausible answers which promote falsehood and obfuscate simple truth are still lies. Witnesses, in fact, are conditioned to stop loving their families altogether. Since family love is such a primal human tendency, the Witnesses are only partially successful; yet the fact remains that Witness programs consistently teach their members that unconditional love of family members is "wrong", pretending that conditional love is better, a sign of loyalty to the creator, the God of Love. Conditional love is not love at all, it is manipulation. Thus the Witnesses are conditioned to substitute manipulation in place of love, even in family life; based on a fear that real love for each other might somehow override love for God.

One cannot promote love of God while conditioning people to stop loving. One cannot avoid tearing apart families where only some members of those families are within a separatist social environment in which they are conditioned to substitute manipulation for love. One cannot honor the central statement of the Bible, "God is Love" while practicing the manipulation-instead-of-love lifestyle that the Witnesses practice.

> Sometimes I think your bad experience has really gone too far!

Yes it has. It went much too far. But my experience is typical of those tens of thousands of Witnesses who leave or are expelled from the Witness organization each year for trivial "offenses" which all boil down to thinking for themselves, and those other tens of thousands who are impacted by losing relatives who become Witnesses.

Parents, teach your children from a young age how precious family is. Offer early intervention starting in the 4th grade about the nature of cult mind control, so that your children will recognize it when they are exposed to it, and be able to make a conscious choice before they are seduced.

May every living being become spiritually aware so that he does not fall for the trap of accepting predigested "truth" from an outside human source rather than feeding his soul from a true connection to spirit. May every person and learn to think for himself rather than become over-reliant on agenda-ridden guidance from even the most well-meaning humans. May fundamentalist monotheism, which substitutes pet interpretations of God's will for spiritual insight, and then passes laws and judgements among people based upon the unknowable vanish from our world.

God is love, not law.
Love is unconditional, not manipulative.
Spirit is grace, not control.
Foundation is family, not idealogy.
Truth is simple, not convoluted.
Freedom is universal, not limited to those who "obey" a pet human interpretation.

Blessings,
AndrewXJW