When Mark Sanderson speaks of the wisdom of the modest ones and how you don’t jump the gun and assume it is your place to do this or that, I don’t figure that he must be speaking to someone else. I figure maybe he is speaking to me.
This is because I remember how Brother McPhee at the Circuit Assembly related how he gave counsel to the circuit elders via assembly talks and when he returned he found they had not followed it. When he asked why they told him that they thought he was talking about the brothers in Pennsylvania. He related the experience, repeated the counsel given, and added “No, brothers—I was speaking to you, not those bad brothers in Pennsylvania.”
They are bad there, however at mention on the mixed website of some within the organization going rogue, I said that sometimes I feel that I am becoming one of them.
I told the elders that I would not get into squabbles with these characters, and I said that so as not to be oblivious to theocratic counsel. Yet here I find myself making sporadic ad hominem attacks—(not many really, but it does happen—sort of like when an elder backed into my car in the drive and said a bad word that I have never heard him say before, and then he apologized, and I said “Don’t worry about it—that’s what bumpers are for)—to a few yo-yos on the the mixed forum. Of course, I don’t beat myself up too much over it—if these characters would work on their ad hominems a bit more, it wouldn’t happen. And it is also true that in the absence of theocratic counsel, I would be much worse. But even so, I am allowing personal exasperation to throw barbs here and there after I said I would not do it.
The initial long response to one thread was okay, of course, because that constitutes as though a letter to the editor. Maybe even the first retort to you-know-who can be overlooked since she is so much the way she is. But the third one was unnecessary and just reflects personal lack of self-control.
“I find, then, this law in my case: When I wish to do what is right, what is bad is present with me….I see in my body another law warring against the law of my mind and leading me captive to sin’s law that is in my body. Miserable man that I am!” (Romans 7:21-24)
I have to behave better. I said that I would.
But Anna said:
Judging by the few comments in response there are ones who understand where you are coming from and are even grateful for ones like you, as one of them said: "My study conductor was always unsure about the what to say to the questions I'd bring. So I began looking for jehovah's witnesses that were/are responding and thankfully I found a good few, including yourself ……. and to be honest I'm not 100% certain that I would have continued if I hadn't been able to get answers to questions and honest perspectives on being a Witness" ….So what's the problem, really? In fact the sooner one understands that, the less chance there is of being stumbled or shocked and leaving. [bolding hers]
The problem is that I told the elders I wouldn’t do it. But because I believe what you have just said and from time to time get emails stating the same, I don’t beat myself up when I break my resolve, though I do say “Don’t make it a habit.”
When the elders met with me after the meeting, I had no thought at all of putting the experience online. That occurred to me later.
I just came to think I’d let it stand as a real time example of responding to counsel even if I don’t agree with every aspect of it. The only examples of meeting with the elders that ever appear online are those written by unruly persons already on the edge, like Dathan and those rebellious louts, who rail at the attempt at “mind control” and cry ad nauseum over their right to free speech, missing every spiritual point in the process of making their dominant fleshy one: “No one’s telling me what to do!”
I don’t resent the counsel at all. I take it for just what it is—loving oversight. I both accept and appreciate that Jehovah leads his people via a human agency, and I am grateful that there is something that corresponds to verses such as Hebrews 13:17, to “be obedient to those who are taking the lead among you and be submissive, for they are keeping watch over you as those who will render an account, so that they may do this with joy and not with sighing, for this would be damaging to you.”
As such, I accept they have the responsibility to counsel in line with scripture, and I don’t carry on as though my toes are being stepped on or my rights infringed upon. They represent the human link in the divine/human interface, and they do not demand lockstep walking even as they give pointed counsel. I don’t consider myself above them. They are above me as regards authority.
I appreciate their efforts to check me, and as stated, I would be far worse in the absence of godly counsel to not engage with those who show by word or deed that acquiescence to Jehovah’s standards and all that is entailed is repugnant to them. It does me good to be checked by them, for I do believe that we become who we hang out with. We may not become it instantly, but we do so eventually—if not in point of argument then in forfeiting the Christlike manner—and often even in point of argument, as they are almost always based on following the trends of the day.
I would like it if there was a little more organizational pushback on some of the charges leveled against us—you know, take these guys on. I’ve said it many times before. But you can’t always get what you want. You can’t always get what you want. You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.
And I have. I can’t go charging around like an enraged bull. But that kind of conduct can get a guy skewered anyway. It does me well to do what I do under the discipline of conforming to theocratic counsel. Even if in one aspect I am not a stellar example of it. I am in most other aspects.