Guns are dangerous because the potential for wreaking havoc and killing is enormous. Hence gun-toting individuals hold a dreadful power. For this reason developed societies do not recognize acts performed at gunpoint as acts of freewill.
Watchtower’s Weapon
The Watchtower organization has implemented an organized communal shunning program whereby any of Jehovah’s Witnesses who fail to meet minimum standards are isolated from social interchange with members. They are to be completely shunned. Members who do not comply with this shunning are, as a result, also subject to the same ostracism.[1]
The organization uses the terms disfellowshipped and disassociated to identify members who are to be isolated by shunning. (Of Watchtower's usage of the term disassociation, readers should not conclude the resulting isolation is by choice of the individual. The organization has adopted a procedure where certain acts are considered as disassociation whether the individual wishes to cease association with the religion or not.)
Resulting isolation is enforced by Watchtower appointees known as elders. It is a particularly harsh variety where even a person’s closest friends and family are not to have any contact with them. The Watchtower organization urges members not to have “even the slightest communication” with a disfellowshipped friend or family member, not even a “small dose”.[2-3]
The Dreadful Power
The potency of Watchtower’s shunning doctrine is acknowledged by the organization depicting it as “a dreadful power,” and sufficient for intimidation and threat.[4]
The lethality of its shunning doctrine is recognized by Watchtower’s acknowledgement that there is “no more potent killer than isolation.”[5]
So we have an organizational instrument that is powerful, admittedly useful for intimidation and threat, and is a potent killer by means of the isolation it orchestrates.
Freewill
The exercise of freewill (autonomous decision-making) is important in all developed societies.
Shunning is practiced by all peoples to one degree or another. But its practice runs the gamut potential from inconsequential to lethal. It is when shunning is orchestrated to socially isolate a person from their friends and family that it breaches the threshold of lethality and becomes a proverbial “gun”. As a practical matter, freewill ceases in the cross-hairs of a gun.
Religious Freedom
Like freewill, the exercise of religion is also a freedom respected by all developed societies. But when the exercise of this freedom by an organization or individual effectively holds another person at gunpoint then decisions made by that person cannot be taken as freewill regardless of what the gunman says otherwise.[6-8]
The Gunpoint
When the Watchtower organization defends its practice of isolating individuals by means of its organized communal shunning program it tacitly argues that society should take decisions made by Jehovah’s Witnesses as freewill despite them being held under the lethal threat of social isolation.[9]
Because of its known lethality, to hold members to account by threat of communal isolation from friends and family is no less than holding members at gunpoint. Under this threat decisions cannot be taken as acts of freewill.[8]
Though one of Jehovah’s Witnesses can choose to leave the Watchtower organization, they are forced to make that decision knowing they will be isolated by friends and family shunning them or else face the same consequence themselves. Making such a decision is tantamount to the risk of pushing away from a gunman without suffering a lethal result. As Watchtower acknowledges and everyone should remember, there is “no more potent killer than isolation.”
Marvin Shilmer
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References
1. Letter from Leslie Long, a Watchtower lawyer, dated December 20, 1988, p. 8. (Entire letter available in the article Lawyer’s Response — Resigned and Withdrawn Elder
2. The Watchtower, April 15, 2012, p. 12.
3. For more detail on this see the article:
● Watchtower Shunning – Deadly by Design
4. The Watchtower, March 15, 1959, p. 179.
5. Awake!, published by Watchtower, May 22, 1983, p. 15.
6. Doctors and medical providers in particular should recognize this assault on freewill by making sure choices made by Jehovah’s Witness patients in their care are made outside the knowledge of friends and family members who are also in the religion. For more see the articles:
● Coercion to Refuse Blood
● Respecting Patient Autonomy Means What?
7. S Wooley, Jehovah’s Witnesses in the emergency department: what are their rights?, Emergency Medicine, 2005; 22; 869-871.
8. Guichon et al, Free and informed choice in medical treatment: making it safe to choose for Jehovah’s witnesses, International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Oct. 2009, Vol. 116, Issue 11, p. 1540.
9. On this point it is important to know the Watchtower organization does not construct its doctrine based on a representative consensus of belief held among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Rather, it is a completely top-down process where doctrinal positions are created, instituted and enforced regardless of whatever consensus is held by the larger community of Jehovah’s Witnesses. On this point the following articles are helpful:
● Watchtower Teaching vs Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Belief
● Watchtower — Modeled after what?
● Governing Body Represents Who?
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