In Defense of Shunning

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

Gather around Grasshoppers, and listen to the wisdom of Jimminy Cricket.

To John Butler, this is a second hand, or third hand rumor.

If absolutely true, the fact remains that John did not cause anyone harm, and has no personal responsibility for the evil people do.

However, just ACCUSING someone of this particular crime can ruin the accused person's  life FOREVER, because it ruins his reputation FOREVER ... whether he is guilty, or completely innocent.

If John does NOTHING .... he has not personally CAUSED any harm to anyone.

If he acts, and the accused is innocent ... no one remembers that .... only that someone thought he was CAPABLE of doing whatever it was.

The Gossip Mill never sleeps, and grinds up anyone.

Second hand information, or third hand information is GOSSIP.

Sometimes doing the "right" thing is so complicated it is impossible.

.... best we can hope for is not personally causing harm.

But, sometimes like a frog in a pasture ... we just have to jump ... and the grasshoppers  have to scatter, or become frog food.

 

 

 

[Anna]

14 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

:"Many in the congregation must believe that your current motive is to promote such apostasy" 

Thank you, because that is one of the reasons I could not report to the police the information i had been given about Child Abuse. 

Anna, there is your answer from JW Insider. 

Oh John....... I just read this comment and noticed this portion, and although I agree with you that we should stop this conversation as it is off topic here and we seem to be going around in circles, I feel I have to ask you this;  What does reporting a suspect of child abuse to the police have anything to do with promoting apostasy???? It seems like you are all mixed up about what you should and shouldn't do. I know you are not stupid, I can tell you are intelligent, so I don't get this apparent mental block you have regarding this particular subject.

[Anna]

11 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

second hand, or third hand rumor

There's no smoke without fire.

 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

That's why I believe many difficult problems can be solved with superior firepower.

It's only a five-shot, but I can acquire and hit center mass using only my peripheral vision.  If I need more bullets, I will use theirs.

( The scripture on my little plaque is heavily paraphrased .... )

 

[JOHN BUTLER]

 John 9 41 : Jesus said to them: “If you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you say, ‘We see.’ Your sin remains.”

As for me I think I'm still blind, though there was a time i thought i could see. 

 

But they're only toys officer. We ain't allowed real uns ere in UK. 

 

 

[Space Merchant]

On 11/30/2018 at 5:41 PM, JOHN BUTLER said:

It would have been a no win situation on here whichever way I decided. Some said tell the police, others said mind your own business.

In the end, some form of action has to be made, regardless.

On 11/30/2018 at 5:41 PM, JOHN BUTLER said:

As it was pointed out to me. i only have third hand information, which I have no proof is correct. I believe what i was told by the person that told me because I trust them to tell the truth about such serious matters. However, the police may not believe me. And if i went to the Elders of the congregation then it would give them chance to destroy the evidence they have ,and to make me look like a slanderer. Remember they have accused me of slander once before.... So I've let it go by. 

But even with this information, have you gone about getting more info on the situation itself? From small information some people can open doors on this matter. Don't worry about "they", and a situation like this, with even minor information should not be something to simply let go by.

On 11/30/2018 at 5:41 PM, JOHN BUTLER said:

It does not make me as bad as what I'm accusing the Elders of. Why ? Because the Elders have FIRST HAND INFORMATION FROM BOTH SIDES. They will know the accused and the victim. They will have taken notes from both sides. 

But if only a small amount of people had known this how is it the church elders have first hand information?

 

On 11/30/2018 at 5:41 PM, JOHN BUTLER said:

I'm not in a position to talk to either side. I know the accused but not the victim. I'm shunned by all of the congregation, that's over 120 people, so I have no chance of talking to them. The Elders would use it against me if i started investigations of my own. 

Shunned or not, it does not stop someone from seeking information by any means possible, let alone the ability to take some form of action, even if said action is very minor.

On 11/30/2018 at 5:41 PM, JOHN BUTLER said:

I think some on here are brothers of 'high rank' in the JW Org. So would you take it further ? 

Who here is a high rank? And what is their business with the situation you are intertwined with?

On 11/30/2018 at 5:41 PM, JOHN BUTLER said:

The Congregation is Honiton, Devon England. The other details can be found on the topic. So any one in good standing can follow it through if they want to. And yes i would confirm what I've written on here. 

Yes the other thread. But the person in question, the mental ill person who is supposedly the culprit, you have to get some information. If not the victim, then the abuser in question. If you knew him at some point in his life, you'd know where he lives, perhaps, his workplace and or if outside of a JW church as to what he has been doing and or other.

In some cases, if some abusers want to, as they say, cover their tracks, they will shift to seek targets outside of a church or school so that they are not as detected easily, other abusers tend to go for social media, online video games and a list of other things. An example would be a potential child abuser who has been hiding among the ranks of a Spider-Man community.

Although no longer of that faith, surely there is something you can do. The reality is, you cannot save them all, but perhaps you can save one, and on the other side of the spectrum, when it comes to the abuser, grant that abuser in question is mental unstable, that will pose as a challenge.

[Space Merchant]

On 11/30/2018 at 10:01 PM, JW Insider said:

Expelling is Biblical. That's true. But what is the method and are Christians under some kind of rule of law that needs to be applied uniformly in all situations? What if it was a principle that is good, but the way it was executed even in Bible times turns out not to have been a Christian method.

Because when it comes to expelling, there are those who do so the right out so that so and so can re enter the church, others will use expelling merely to get rid of you and mark you for because they want to purify the Church of the damnation as some would say.

The method itself, the real one is that we should excommunicate in regards to being it’s merciful to sinners. The Church ties of the person in question will be cut off totally, however, there are some lines of help be it the church leaders and members of the family itself. Some would believe that excommunication is a complete cut off from both church and family leaving you with no way of re-entering the church, let alone the community itself. A Christian brother and or sister can come back to the church, although excommunicated for their actions, prayer, repentance, and striving to do good, whereas this can be explained and or see by others of the community will allow this person to come back, into the church and his or her church ties will be repaired, healed. Whatever sin he or she had done, it will be no more as if it was a rain drop into a river.

As for the other false methods, this results in some Christians thinking that Excommunication should and can be abandon for they do not see it as a way of mercy and or maintain the peace in the church and believes a person who has sinned should not be brought forth for expelling.

On 11/30/2018 at 10:01 PM, JW Insider said:

For example, the Bible allows for a husband to disfellowship his wife. (The Bible never allows for a wife to disfellowship (divorce) a husband, by the way.) But are we under Mosaic rules for divorce just because it is Biblical? In fact, Jesus said that even though it was Biblical, it wasn't what Jehovah really wanted.

• (Matthew 19:7, 8 )  7 They said to him: “Why, then, did Moses direct giving a certificate of dismissal and divorcing her?” 8 He said to them: “Out of regard for your hard-heartedness, Moses made the concession to you of divorcing your wives, but that has not been the case from the beginning.

Jesus doesn't say Moses wasn't inspired when he made the Biblical concession for divorce as one of the laws in the "perfect" Law covenant. But Jesus rejects this particular "jot and tittle" of the Law as a mere concession for human hard-heartedness, especially because it was being misused in practice.  "Hard-heartedness" is a form of having "no natural affection." (See my earlier post on this topic.)

Agreed. But I do not recall a wife being able to expels someone granted that I was very vocal of religious leadership, the ones who are of the church who has the ability to excommunicate someone. It would be understandable if there was a woman who held religious office, but that has never been seen in the churches of old let alone in the days of our church fathers.

On 11/30/2018 at 10:01 PM, JW Insider said:

There is an even more obvious case where the Governing Body now rejects something that is definitely Biblical. In the Bible, it's OK to "beat" your children, physically. When asked about this, GB member Geoffrey Jackson, in front of the Australian Royal Commission,  said that the GB now believe that the "rod" of correction is not a physical rod, but that it is the "virtual" rod of righteous corrective discipline. Of course, what do we then do with the Mosaic Law that says that if you beat your slave to death that there is no punishment as long as it takes the slave a day or two to die? (There is a punishment if the slave dies within in a shorter time period.)

As for that verse in question Proverbs 23:13, 14

[13] Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. [14] If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.

When we discipline our children it should not be in fits of rage, angry out burst that causes one to lash out in the face of a child, to inflict pain and or injury, in some cases, even death regarding physical punishment. To disincline a child

one can use sufficient words of wisdom to reason with the child should he or she make error and or has done something wrong, a rebuke, in of itself works better than physical action that begets some sort of injury to a young one.

That being said, you'd be surprise of some mainstream Christians who think that beating a child, literally, is just, some would even make claim they are beating a demon out of their child, and so forth. A Child merely needs someone to reason with him or her in things that are good and things that are bad so when they grow older, by means of this education, family wise, Bible wise, they can make the right call on things and make positive decisions.

The other problem is, there are some passages people do not take into context at all, thus their error in this sense.

On 11/30/2018 at 10:01 PM, JW Insider said:

I'm not in favor of the physical beating of children. There are times when the principle is correct, but the methods used were "hard-hearted." The Governing Body says we have updated our understanding to that of the world here, and I think everyone knows that Brother Jackson is not so stupid as to think that the Bible was not really referring to physical beatings with these Hebrew expressions. It's time we progressed in our understanding of what it means to disfellowship, too. 

The same with me. Begetting violence solves nothing, for it creates more violence and reaps consequences, some of which are too much to contain. Well you'd be surprise, if perhaps reading that verse or another verse and or passage to those who are lacking in Bible context will think of this literally. For example, 4 years ago I remember someone burning their Bible because of a single verse, the same verse. Now, any honest man who reads for context will understand what that verse entails, I believed I explained it before in another thread here.

On 11/30/2018 at 10:01 PM, JW Insider said:

You've argued that other religions see familial DFing, for example, as Biblical. But so what?

Because it is indeed Biblical and regarding excommunication there is only but one form of it that is correct. You have 3 in front of you, only one is the right way.

Within Christianity, there tend to be three major views of excommunication:

• We shouldn’t excommunicate anyone, because it’s not merciful.
• We should excommunicate, because we want to purify the Church of the damned.
• We should excommunicate, because it’s merciful to sinners.

In the Old Law, anything that is great seriousness, a violation of God’s law through Moses, a person can be cut off totally from his or her community, even be subjected to death, and such violations carry the weigh of a penalty, for we have examples in the Bible itself.

But we are of the New Law, and even then, Expelling remains in the Church. When it comes to sinners, in some cases, a member of the church who is believed to having been unrepentant of his or her sins, committing them, even knowingly, some sins which can be serious ones, that person will indeed be excommunicated, all this why being part of the church itself. This will result in the church to put into practice 1 Corinthians 5:11-13 whereas the church cut ties with the sinner, hence having the church ties itself being cut off. The sinner is not entirely left alone however, help can come his or her wait to return to the church, that is, if the person in question shows that they are truly repentant, and that they cease all ill activity of what caused them to sin in the first place and or turn away from their actions, some actions being obvious ones that the sinner will still have to deal with, but in the end, work with said problem to seek their own betterment on the road to repentance i.e. someone who has had sexual relations begets a child being born out of wedlock. Excommunication, isn't the end of the road for anyone, it allows the sinner to be repentant, and in time, with the help of family and concerned church members who has religious authority in the church, can help the sinner return to the church, to return to the Shepherd, or as some would say, to be reinstated.

I believe that your faith community practices the last one, ironically enough the correct one, whereas excommunication (Disfellowship) is seen as a loving provision, thus being merciful to those who commit sin and the fact that it can be seen as a betterment to the faith community in of itself.

That being said, the first one on the list totally ignores Jesus' words at Matthew 18:15-18, for they reject the place of excommunication within Church itself.

For Jesus is the one to solemnly entrusting the Church with the ability to bind and loosen, and this is in connection with the Church’s ability to excommunicate/Expel unrepentant sinners, as some would attest, it is more an ability in the realm of Church Discipline. Jesus actually instructs it as the appropriate course of action to be taken in the case of certain unrepentant sinners resulting in Shunning, which isn't too far off from another thing we are instructed to do, of which Paul had to say in Romans 16:17 when it comes to avoiding false teachers.

On 11/30/2018 at 10:01 PM, JW Insider said:

In other religions they might still beat their children, beat their wives and servants, promote racism, divorce on any ground, and promote a lack natural affection, too.

The action in of itself would have to come down to the individuals of that religion rather than the religion itself, unless it is the extreme ones like Christian Militants, who not only beat their children, but teach their children to beat others, even going about using some objects to cause harm to do so. But, there is but a few who do this (Christian Militants are only a small group, then again you have the small few who want to end the lives of atheists - literally), but they do not start off this way, they spread the influence to their members and those who enter them, like pollution to a body of water. Some religions proclaim that a person who sins can never change and or repent, hence why I mentioned the second item and briefly explained it.

Other than that, when it comes to sin, Expelling can be used, mainly if the person is caught, willingly sinning and is shown to be unrepentant, therefore, he or she can no longer be of the church, unless he or she takes the steps to repent for their sins done by their own hand.

That being said, I believe Expelling is indeed Biblical and it is an action entrusted to the Church, an it is a mercy to someone who sins, especially if that sinner wants to be right with God and take the steps necessary to repent for his or her sins and misdeeds, be it great or small. Although sure repentance takes time, the sinner who commits the action is not left in the dust or damnation as some would consider because with God, whatever sin ones does, God will forget it as if the sin in question is that of a spec of dust in the wind - gone; is no more, for God our Father is always read to forgive (Psalms 86:5).

[Space Merchant]

@JOHN BUTLER You reminded me about something. Rarely do I see UK officers use guns. Most of the time, well a number of times when confronting an armed suspect, mainly if someone has a knife and or machete, they cannot do much against them but throw things at the threat in question.

In the United States, toy gun or real, or suspected to having a firearm will result in a case of shoot first, ask questions later, the situation tends to be more grave if you are not Caucasian and are of a different ethic group or race, with a background that is clearly not the like of common American folk. Anyone who has a fire armed, be it killed or captured, if of a race and or background it is seen as terrorism and or the the person is spoken of as the villain in this case, however, if it the latter, it is seen as being mental ill and or sick.

People tend to get away with things regarding firearms, and outside of all that, you have gang members who get the guns, you have children who somehow get the guns and thinking shooting at people is a game, and you have those who are bullied to the point where they will come to shoot up a school.

Right now, the United States is confused on what to do with guys because no one trust the Government with guns at all, and we have a foreshadowing of Libya, Syranic Christians and a list of other events whereas you trust the government with guns and you end up as a target with a large read blinking light sign on your back and your house.

@James Thomas Rook Jr. Just be careful. Although I am not a fan of firearms, there are those who have the license to carry and take up the second amendment end up as targets for those in the government and law enforcement. A day will come whereas the government with the aid of the United Nations will come to disarm you and they will say they will shower you with protection, but later on, you will realize that this so called UN and Gov't protection was only means to desolate you.

 

Other than that, this is why most people in American shouldn't have or be trusted with guns:

 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

9 minutes ago, Space Merchant said:

@James Thomas Rook Jr. Just be careful. Although I am not a fan of firearms, there are those who have the license to carry and take up the second amendment end up as targets for those in the government and law enforcement. A day will come whereas the government with the aid of the United Nations will come to disarm you and they will say they will shower you with protection, but later on, you will realize that this so called UN and Gov't protection was only means to desolate you.

I am far less worried about all your paranoid agenda driven irrational ranting than I am about being hit by a meteorite.

I have "packed heavy" for over 50 years now, every day ... and never had a real problem from "the authorities".

People that know what they are doing don't either.

 

[Space Merchant]

@James Thomas Rook Jr. Then you are aware of what went down a few weeks ago regarding a pro-gun owner and a politician? Even before that the shootings that took place when people are not using their firearms and or having been disarmed rendering helpless to a disgruntled police officer and or a criminal?

It is not paranoia, for what is stated is actual truth, for if one isn't careful, they will end up like several examples we had already, for what took place with the Syranic Christians and a list of others, even Libya is merely a foreshadowing of what is to come here for we have brief instances in the US as it is. Moreover, it is going to take a support of a generation of children who are against guns who have already painted you as an enemy for having a gun, recall the Parkland Protest? But such will be a topic for another day because the last source I posted in this regard got wiped out for an obvious reason.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

24 minutes ago, Space Merchant said:

Other than that, this is why most people in American shouldn't have or be trusted with guns:

I disagree .... Most people SHOULD be trusted with guns.

...just not the evil, insane, and stupid.

I think you need a better, more responsible, smarter group of friends.

[JOHN BUTLER]

@Space Merchant Yes the whole situation is a bit worrying. Of course we know where its all heading, we just don't know when. 

God's word has given us plenty of warnings. Plenty of scriptures about the 'last days'. 

As for guns in the USA, I suppose there are reasons for and reasons against.  I am honestly glad i do not live there, and I would not visit there in this 'system of things'.  And now France too has many problems. But I'm not denying the UK has problems too, I'm just lucky to be in the 'quiet area'.  I hope you keep safe too.