I don’t follow any Twitter villain as a matter of routine—once in a while I peek—because if I do so I am tempted to respond and if I do that he is nothing but taunting and contemptuous. It is not as though I cannot hold my own & even make inroads but there is hardly any point to it. It is a been there/done that. Besides, I told the elders that I will not do that anymore (not regarding him specifically) and if they ask me again I don’t want to be tempted to lie. Should I cave a time or two, I will readily forgive myself—not to worry on that score—but I would rather not cave by putting the temptation before myself constantly. “Some people just needs killin” says you-know-who, but that doesn’t mean you ought to appoint yourself the one to do it. It has a way of sucking out large chunks of time that can better be used elsewhere.
Today detractors charge what they do before a worldwide audience—the very people whom we are trying to reach, and they at least can be expected to mull it over because there is nothing to counter it. Granted, there are so many other horrific things to monitor in the world that it is hard for anti-JW activists to put their ‘good news’ on the front burner, but it would be silly to say that it has no effect. It wouldn’t take much to counter it. Even a talk parallel to what Bro Losch just gave at the annual meeting regarding dates that failed to come true might do the trick. Once a matter is spoken or written about, you can keep referring back to it.
The idea is not to silence opposers, for that cannot be done. The idea is to give some who may be swayed by them, even some of our own, something to offset their charges. The organization may choose to do that someday. Or maybe not—time will tell. It certainly is not the ‘whatever is righteous, whatever is chaste, true, lovable,’ etc where we like to remain, so that is good reason to avoid it. But there may be some who feel some sort of defense would come in handy.
Opposers will always have limits to their efforts because they have nothing to replace what they would take away—most people became Witnesses in the first place because they felt exploring the world that is yourself only goes so far as a guide to life. Still, I have seen people gleefully saw off the branch on which they are sitting and laugh uproariously as they crashed to the ground, like the Dr. Strangelove cowboy who rides the nuke down to destruction, whooping and waving his hat as he drops—some people’s heads would laugh at you from the wheelbarrow carting them away from the guillotine—so some generalized pushback might be in order to prevent that whenever possible. Nasty people usually overplay their hand and in so doing torpedo their own case—never before their followers, of course, but before anyone of sense, it happens. But, still…
I’m not suggesting anyone get into a play-by-play scenario with the ‘good news‘ of those who oppose. I was struck by how, after the first Montana verdict, there were persons who wanted to rub my nose line by line into that first verdict so as to point out how the courts ruled JWs violated law! and then after reversal of that verdict, they said, ‘well, what do you expect? Witnesses follow the law—it’s the law that is not written right.’ People like to follow play-by-play in ongoing court trials these days to the extent that I almost say, ”Well, send the jury home, then—they don’t want to be there anyway. Put it all on social media and decide the matter by ‘likes’”. I never weigh in on developing matters—it is nothing more that common sense modesty to realize that since you can see but 1% of what the judge or jury sees, it is a fool’s mission to go there.
I’m not speaking of anything detailed as a defense, because details will not be constant from one situation to another. They represent non-repeatable human idiosyncrasies, and I have no problem accepting that people can and do say wrong or dumb things. No. Just something like the generalized facts I outlined in the post, so that if anyone wants to research our stand on matters, they will have more to research than a statement that we “abhor child sexual abuse.”
I am usually shouted down when I bring up one sister’s example—the kumbaya site practically chased me out with pitchforks (though not everyone)—but her example strikes me as a very sensible one—to familiarize herself with “apostate” ideas, so that, in the event her teenage son stumbles across them one fine day and is unsettled, she is able to help him. It is only icing on the cake that the kid is now an adult, has apparently never wobbled, and wonders why is mom is spending so much time with those crazies on the internet. If there were a few resident experts at each Kingdom Hall, people who knew how to keep tabs on what is bad and knew that doing so you does not require you to watch every Jerry Springer episode on the topic—you don’t want to do that because if you immerse yourself in what is sordid in any subject it affects your well-being—you know, balanced people—that it would be a good thing, not a bad thing, because then you might be able to help ones stumbled.
You don’t want to encourage people to go there, just like you don’t want to encourage people to go anywhere that toxic people hang out. These days, pop psychologists win approval by telling you do dump friends and even family members who are “toxic” in favor or those who are not. But to all but forbid people to go produces a strange effect of fleeing from the apostate as one would flee from the bogeyman. You have scenarios like that played out in the drama where the Russian brother inquires of his old friend only to hear that the old friend succumbed to reading literature critical of the organization and is no longer serving Jehovah—as though that’s all it takes to derail decades of service to God!—read a few brochures and you are toast. It’s ridiculous. Better to say, in my view, ‘go there if you must and be on the lookout for the unforgiving slave, for Demas, for the ones who went out because they are not of our sort, for the one fixated on the straws in others’ eyes, for the slave that buried the talent because his master was harsh, effectively saying ”You want disciples? Go out and make them yourself! I’ve got things to do!” Any drama is better, easier to follow, and easier to appreciate, when there are bad guys in the plot.
But won’t some go there and decide the ‘bad guys’ are actually the good guys? Probably. But I suspect no more than when we counsel so strongly not to even glance in a certain direction, and by so doing we appear exactly like a cult to people brought up in its modern definition. Drop down a notch to ‘investigate with caution if you must’ and the perception disappears. Amber Scorah has “her eyes opened” only when she goes into missionary work in China and begins correspondence with an “apostate” for whom it appears that she later dumped her husband in order to run off with? She should have had “her eyes opened” a long time ago, and if she had, that ridiculous phrase would have disappeared from the vocabulary by now. She herself would not be saying that she had her eyes opened—she would be saying that she went off because, like Demas, she prefers the world that JWs have fled—that JWs allowed her to see both plainly, and she chose the pathway that they did not.
The reason that this change of tactics will happen only by small degrees, if it happens at all, is due to what the scriptures say about those taking the lead. They are like the loyal shepherd who sees the wolf climbing the fence and holds the sheep out of harm’s way. They are like the farmer who knows that when you look behind, your plowing goes awry and the rows get all funny. They are like the strategist who says that they will slam you no matter what you do, so ignore them and press the pedal to the metal. They are like the doctor who says to keep away from what will raise your blood pressure and knot your stomach in favor of what is soothing to the soul. They are like the pop psychologist who says you should dump those toxic relationships. They are like the nursing mother who treats the flock tenderly and with protectiveness. They are not like the mom who says, “Alright, lean on that hot stove—see if I care! HA! Burned yourself, ya little snot? That’ll teach ya!” And they certainly are not like the brainwasher who says don’t go there, —‘all the better for me to control you, my dear, hehehe:))))))’ even though that is the only way opposers, and to an increasingly strong degree, the overall world sees it. Why play into their hands? Why go out of our way to prove Jesus’ words that the sons of this system know which way the secular wind blows but the sons of the light wouldn’t even know how to tie the laces of a secular shoe if you gave them one?