Ex-Jehovah’s Witness criticize the policy of shunning

 

I just finished reading “The Reluctant Apostate: Leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses Comes at a Price” by Lloyd Evans. It provides a detailed look at the history of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and how Evans’ mother ended up joining the faith after a series of failed relationships. Most Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) are born into the faith and find it very difficult to leave the faith even if they want to.

Why? Lloyd Evans explains his reluctance to leave the JWs in his book and much of it is due to the JW policy of “shunning.” Once a member of JWs are disfellowshipped or disassociated, no one within JW is allowed to speak to the former member, not even immediate family members. In the case of Lloyd Evans, once Lloyd left the JWs and was disassociated, his father disowned him immediately and, thus, never met Lloyd’s newborn daughter.

Many ex-JWs describe intense feelings of guilt once they leave JWs for having shunned family members who left before they did. For example, one ex-JW mentions that even though he now has a good relationship with his brother, who is also an ex-JW, he feels awful for having shunned his brother for the ten years prior to when he left the faith and had a chance to restart his relationship with his brother.

Here is another ex-JW explaining why she left the faith.

She never felt as though she fit in with the rigid doctrines of JW. She always felt more artistic and creative than JW would allow and eventually left. She also criticizes the policy of shunning, believing this causes tremendous psychological damage that can last a lifetime.

ADDED: Here is Lloyd Evans (formerly known as John Cedars when he was trying to keep his identity secret from Jehovah’s Witnesses) interviewing Imtiaz Shams. Imtiaz Shams is an ex-Muslim who runs a group that assists ex-Muslims and exiles from other religions.  Lloyd Evans is an ex-Jehovah Witness activist.

I think you’ll enjoy this interview.

Published in Religion & Philosophy
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  1. HeavyWater Inactive
    HeavyWater
    @HeavyWater

    Arizona Patriot (View Comment):

    HeavyWater (View Comment):

    I remember when I was going to college and my best friend was a fundamentalist Christian (I was secular, non-religious). At one point, somehow, we ended up talking about religion, salvation, Christians, and Jews.

    We ended up talking about the Holocaust. My friend said, “The Holocaust was a trial of the Jews for what they did to Jesus.” I cringed and didn’t know how to respond.

    The one reason why I have never been able to accept Christianity is because I don’t want to worship a immoral God who would punish Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and the rest of the human population.

    I understand the counter-arguments. I just don’t buy it. I’d rather burn in hell than worship an awful, miserable God described by that friend of mine.

    I urge you to be open to the possibility that what your college friend said was not the teaching of Christianity, and was quite a dreadful thing to say. I hope that your friend has come around to a different view.

    On the larger issue of salvation, you’ve probably heard this before. I don’t think that you’re looking at things correctly. I think that the key parable is the Prodigal Son. We all run away from God, to do things our own way. It ends up in a disaster. We are all welcome to come home, but you can’t be home unless you go home.

    God doesn’t have to send anyone to Hell. Wherever we go, without God, we create Hell on our own. There is some fire imagery in the New Testament, but more often in the parables of Jesus, He describes it as being shut out in the dark.

    So I don’t think that it’s God who punishes anyone. God gives everyone the option to choose Him, or not. Everyone gets exactly what they choose, and then has to live with that choice, forever.

    I fear that you will end up getting exactly what you say that you want in your last sentence above. I very much hope that this does not happen.

    I think it’s very possible that, if a God does exist and there is some sort of afterlife, God would applaud people who used their critical thinking skills and we unwilling to just slurp up superstition from the various religious cultures.

    It’s also possible that, if there is a God and there is an afterlife, God sends people to heaven or hell based on whether they were born on a Monday, Wednesday or a Thursday.  Something totally arbitrary.  

    My best guess is that there is no God.  But I can be wrong about things.  I’ve been wrong before and I’m sure I will be wrong in the future.

     

     

    • #61
  2. Kay of MT Inactive
    Kay of MT
    @KayofMT

    HeavyWater (View Comment):

    My best guess is that there is no God. But I can be wrong about things. I’ve been wrong before and I’m sure I will be wrong in the future.

     

    If there is no G-d, there is certainly something, as I have had many, many ESP experiences. Maybe this “presence” is just called G-d, for lack of a better description. The central teaching of the bible both the Hebrew and Christian, is kindness, love, caring for each other. You can nick-pick verses all you want but it does’t change the central theme.

    Micah, a modest Prophet, 6:8-9 “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk modestly with your G-d; Then will your name achieve wisdom.”

    • #62
  3. Quietpi Member
    Quietpi
    @Quietpi

    Eugene Kriegsmann (View Comment):
    However, I do believe that you have opinions which you call fact based upon the Lutheran interpretation of Scriptures.

    Actually, there is almost no opinion or dogma in what I’ve cited.  While I have made reference to doctrine, first it isn’t the doctrine of Lutherans exclusively.  It’s the most basic doctrine of all Christianity.  I did that to demonstrate why the Watchtower found it necessary to interpret it the way that they did.  What I have brought forward is that the Greek language does not accurately translate to “a god.”  It doesn’t matter what religion the Greek scholar is, or if he claims a religion at all.  The translation does not depend on the translator’s doctrine.  The translation comes first.  The doctrine comes second.  It is dishonest to let one’s doctrine influence the translation.  The text says what it says, like it or not.  It is from this that we draw our doctrine, not the other way around.

     

    • #63
  4. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    Kay of MT (View Comment):

    Another experience with JW. A neighbor in my apt complex called out to me one day, Kay, aren’t you a Jew? Indeed I am, I replied.

    Well, I want to let you know why people hate Jews and why you will go to hell, said she.

    Do tell me, I said sarcastically.

    Because the Jews killed Jesus, she explained.

    And, I asked her to tell me where she had heard this, “Oh, at the JW meeting house.”

    This was approximately 10 years ago, so they are still peddling that story.

    Maybe The Watchtower has changed it’s editorial position, but say 25 years ago they certainly did run quite a few articles bashing Jews and Catholics.  But the statement about going to hell contradicts what I have been told by a JW about their doctrine on heaven and hell.  What I was told is that humans will not go to heaven or hell.  Heaven is the province of angels, hell is the province of demons.  When a human being dies, they’re just dead until Judgement Day.  Then everyone will be temporarily resurrected and judged.  Those who are judged to be saved (exclusively Jehovah’s Witnesses, by the way) will be given new bodies that will never age or wear out and the entire Earth will be renewed to a Garden of Eden-like state.  Those not saved will simply be re-killed.  They will not be tormented for eternity.

    Whether this was official doctrine from the top or not, I can’t say.  It seemed like there were local variations on some beliefs, such as whether or not it was sinful for a Christian man to wear a beard.

    • #64
  5. HeavyWater Inactive
    HeavyWater
    @HeavyWater

    Here’s an insider view of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

    Two people explain why they left JWs.

    • #65
  6. Kay of MT Inactive
    Kay of MT
    @KayofMT

    Randy Weivoda (View Comment):
    Whether this was official doctrine from the top or not, I can’t say. It seemed like there were local variations on some beliefs, such as whether or not it was sinful for a Christian man to wear a beard.

    It doesn’t matter to me what the JW say, I don’t believe any of it and it is all made up. Nobody has ever come back to life to tell us. A few after life stories floating around out there, including my own from my grandmother, but we don’t really know. And I for one am not going to worry about it.

    • #66
  7. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    Randy Weivoda (View Comment):
    What I was told is that humans will not go to heaven or hell. Heaven is the province of angels, hell is the province of demons. When a human being dies, they’re just dead until Judgement Day. Then everyone will be temporarily resurrected and judged. Those who are judged to be saved (exclusively Jehovah’s Witnesses, by the way) will be given new bodies that will never age or wear out and the entire Earth will be renewed to a Garden of Eden-like state. Those not saved will simply be re-killed. They will not be tormented for eternity.

    That is essentially what is taught, with the exception that the only ones saved will be Witnesses. Like @Kay of Mt I am pretty skeptical about claims of an an afterlife no matter how it is portrayed by the various Christian sects. However, the interpretation of the Witnesses makes them happy, and there is nothing I can find that is wrong with being happy if it isn’t at someone else’s expense.

    @quietpi, in reference to your last post, Saying that it is the doctrine of all Christianity does not make it fact. It does make it a matter of faith. If you accept that, that is fine, but it still doesn’t make it immutable fact. There is nothing scientific or provable about it. It is simply an accepted belief which makes it no more valid than any other belief is to its adherents. 

    I woke up during the night last night thinking about this conversation. It struck me that a God capable of creating a universe as large and diverse and the one we are part of is, certainly, too wise and omnicient to quibble over minutia in how He is worshiped by His creatures. These arguments are the product of the essential tribalisms of mankind and have little or nothing to do with Supreme Being that created all of this. The antipathy toward one religion over another seems to me more a matter of envy and perceived threat, and, thus far more anti-God than anything else.

    • #67
  8. HeavyWater Inactive
    HeavyWater
    @HeavyWater

    Here’s another video interview of someone who is still technically part of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but no longer believes.

    He keeps his identity secret so he won’t be shunned.

    • #68
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