Posted by Gedanken [Gedanken] on October 31, 1999 at 09:16:01 {MDPAlM8llYHdgEG/iekYGxDfYXLgH2}:
In Reply to: **LoyalorHypocrite?: Friend posted by WorldlyWitness on October 30, 1999 at 15:03:10:
WW,
We all progress in different ways. For example, many fundamentalists refuse to honestly examine the facts about evolution and the (im)possibility of a global flood. Such ones go around trying to preach their own particular message but they too are avoiding the facts. That makes them qualitatively the same as JWs. They too are guilty of hypocrisy. This ostrich like tendency is probably what causes some JWs not to see even the most obvious contradictions in their religion until relatively late. That I will concede. I am not interested in arguing for or against any particular doctrinal position. So it doesn't bother me at all if people worship God in their own way or not at all. What does bother me is when people are induced to ruin their lives through following an organization that it is easy to show is totally bogus. Anyone who tries to convert someone to being a JW without telling them the whole truth about the organization is guilty of deliberate deception if they themselves know the truth about the Society. That is different from accusing a single individual of being a hypocrite based on incomplete knowledge of the facts.
My point in regard to Friend is that, while we can condemn the organization, and condemn its so-called evangelizing work, we also have to take into account that extricating oneself from the WTS can be very difficult, particularly for older ones. I would have thought that even the most basic sense of Christian charity might have allowed one to distinguish between the individual and the organization. Intolerance, which seems to be a dominant characteristic of fundamentalist Christians is one reason the WTS is the way that it is; ever ready to beat their neighbor over the head with Jesus's words and the word "hypocrite" always on the tips of their tongues.
Gedanken