Hello everyone. This is the second to last video in this series on shunning. Thank you for your patience as it has taken a while to get to this point. For those of you who haven’t seen the previous videos on shunning as practiced by the Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses and would like to see them, I’ll put a link at the end of this video to the playlist. I’ll also put a link in the description as well.
When one of Jehovah’s Witnesses is asked to justify their policy of shunning people, what do they say? Inevitably, they will defend this practice by claiming they’re simply doing what the Bible tells them to do. But is that the case?
Well, consider this: They will also claim that they are the only true Christian religion on earth. If you have watched the videos on JW.org broadcasting, you’ll hear the speakers refer to their belief system as “pure worship” over and over. So, if they’re the only ones with pure worship, then their shunning policy must be from God and no other religion—remember, the rest are all false—would be doing shunning the same as Witnesses do, right?
Witnesses are taught that the Catholic Church was the start of false Christianity. Given that belief, how ironic it is to learn that the Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses has followed in the footsteps of the Catholic Church with its historic practice of excommunication. Just five years before the Governing Body, then under Nathan Knorr and Fred Franz, instituted the JW equivalent of Catholic excommunication, which they called “disfellowshipping,” they wrote this about the Catholic Church:
“The authority for excommunication, they claim, is based on the teachings of Christ and the apostles, as found in the following scriptures: Matthew 18:15-18; 1 Corinthians 5:3-5; Galatians 1:8,9; 1 Timothy 1:20; Titus 3:10. But the Hierarchy’s excommunication, as a punishment and “medicinal” remedy (Catholic Encyclopedia), finds no support in these scriptures. In fact, it is altogether foreign to Bible teachings.—Hebrews 10:26-31. … Thereafter, as the pretensions of the Hierarchy increased, the weapon of excommunication became the instrument by which the clergy attained a combination of ecclesiastical power and secular tyranny that finds no parallel in history. Princes and potentates that opposed the dictates of the Vatican were speedily impaled on the tines of excommunication and hung over persecution fires.” – [Boldface added] (January 8, 1947 Awake, pg. 27)
What the Church practiced then was to drag men and women into secret tribunals at night, deny them outside support, legal representation, and witnesses, and summarily condemn them based on rulings by the priests who outnumbered the accused, leaving them with no recourse but to suffer the consequence of the church’s decision. If you disagreed with the teachings of the Pope, you could find yourself tied to a stake and burned alive after undergoing many gruesome and horrific trials. The public had no way of knowing what people were being tried and condemned for, since no one was allowed to witness the trial or bring the evidence.
Does any of that sound familiar? Secret night trials? Accused without recourse to outside support and witnesses? People thrown out without the rest even knowing why?
The judicial system that the Catholic Church used to control its flock lives on, codified in the inappropriately named manual JW elders use: Shepherd the Flock of God.
If you are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, you may have reached the stage where you now understand how wrong and unscriptural this is, but you don’t view it as your problem. It’s what the Governing Body does. It’s what the elders do. It has little to do with you. But you couldn’t be more wrong.
Here’s why I say that. Up till now, they’ve been getting away with their shunning policy because of the authority they possess. Religious authority is a powerful and dangerous weapon. An 18th century scholar had this to say about Church Authority.
“Authority is the greatest and most irreconcilable enemy to truth and argument that this world ever furnished. All the sophistry—all the color of plausibility—the artifice and cunning of the subtlest disputer in the world may be laid open and turned to the advantage of that very truth which they are designed to hide; but against authority there is no defence.” (18th Century Scholar Bishop Benjamin Hoadley)
In other words, you can argue till you’re blue in the face using all the truth and reasoning found in Scripture, but the authority of your church’s leadership will always win out. The Governing Body have enjoyed that authority for far too long. But where do they get it from? Certainly not from God.
If you are a member of the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, or for that matter, the member of any religion, and you obey the authority of your leaders, then if they sin, you sin. If they tell you to do something that violates God’s law, and you do it, then you have become a participant in their crime, their lawlessness.
I just asked, “From where does the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses get their authority?” If you are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses watching this video, then the answer is, “From you! They get their authority from you.”
The men of the Governing Body can only intimidate people into compliance with their rules because they have millions of credulous participants willing to obey them. They control you through fear. If you all said, “We’re not going to play this game anymore”, then they would lose all their power. They’d just be a bunch of rich, old men sitting around a boardroom table every Wednesday cooking up schemes that no one was willing to follow anymore.
The countless disfellowshipped Jehovah’s Witnesses who have been so distressed by being shunned to the point of taking their own life, didn’t do so because the Governing Body shunned them. They did so because their closest friends and family members, even parents, abandoned them by shunning them, often when they were weakest and most vulnerable.
I shunned people because I was fool enough for a time to trust in the interpretation of the men who led the congregation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and to not do the research myself. We have much to repent for, my brothers and sisters. Fortunately, our heavenly Father can make all things right. But it is one thing to sin in ignorance, and quite another to do so knowingly. Now that we know this shunning practice is unscriptural and therefore wrong, we need to act on that knowledge.
In the previous videos in this series, we’ve shown why the way Jehovah’s Witnesses run their so-called judicial system is unscriptural. But knowing how not to do something isn’t the same as knowing how to do it. We are still left wondering about how to apply Jesus’ words recorded at Matthew 18:15-17 which we’ll read in a moment. What do we need to properly understand Scripture? We need what the Governing Body has been lacking all this time: Holy Spirit.
So, let’s get on with it. The proof is, after all, found in Scripture. Let’s go back to square one and reread what Jesus instructs us to do to keep the congregation free from the corrupting influence of sin.
We’re going to read Jesus’ words on the topic found in the 18th chapter of Matthew. Since Matthew’s Gospel was originally written in Aramaic, we’ll read this passage from the Aramaic Bible in Plain English.
“But if your brother wrongs you, reprove him between you and him alone; if he hears you, you have gained your brother. And if he does not hear you, take one or two with you, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word will be established. But if he will not hear them, tell the assembly, and if he does not hear the assembly, let him be to you as a tax gatherer and as a heathen.” (Matthew 18:15-17)
Now that seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? How could anybody get that wrong? And yet, all the Christian churches have got it wrong one way or the other. Either they’ve been too lenient or too harsh in dealing with sinners in their midst.
Why is that? Again, the Bible isn’t a simple textbook. It was written in such a way as to hide truth from those who don’t deserve it. With that in view, let’s get into what Jesus meant by treating an unrepentant sinner as “a tax collector or a heathen.” In Jesus’ day, the Jews viewed all non-Jews as heathens since all non-Jews worshipped pagan Gods. The term, Gentile, came to mean, non-Jew.
This is not how you and I would view a tax collector or a Gentile nowadays. It’s important to understand these words in light of how one of Jesus’ disciples in the first century would feel about such a person.
Tax collectors were viewed as traitors to the Jewish people. They were men who collaborated with the hated Roman occupiers by extorting oppressive taxes. As for Gentiles, Peter told the Roman army officer, Cornelius, that it was unlawful for a Jew to associate with or approach a man of another race. Doing so would make the Jew ceremonially unclean. (Acts 10:28) We have confirmation of this from the way the Jewish leaders acted when they were trying to get the Romans to execute Jesus. They had to plead their case before the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate.
“Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the governor’s palace. It was now early in the day. But they themselves did not enter into the governor’s palace, that they might not get defiled but might eat the Passover. Therefore Pilate came outside to them. . .” (John 18:28, 29)
Just entering into Pilate’s palace would have required those men to go through a time-consuming process of ceremonial cleansing.
This Jewish attitude toward Gentiles and tax collectors has served as the foundation for the way Jehovah’s Witnesses treat sinners. Of course, their view of what constitutes a sinner is quite broad. If you smoke a cigarette, you are a sinner in their eyes. If you decide to leave the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, you are treated as an apostate, the worst of sinners.
But here’s the problem. While Jesus did speak those words about treating an unrepentant sinner as the Jews would treat a Gentile or a tax collector, Jesus, by his actions, was sending a different message. He spoke with a Roman Centurion and even healed his paralyzed servant (Matthew 8:5-13). He healed the Canaanite woman’s demon-possessed daughter (Matthew 15:21-28). He talked, at great length, with a Samaritan woman (John 4:1-42). Remember, the Jews had no interactions with the Samaritans. They treated Samaritans much the same way as they treated pagans, Gentiles. They hated them.
As for tax collectors, Jesus was accused of associating with them and eating with them. “At this the Pharisees and their scribes began murmuring to his disciples, saying: “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”” (Luke 5:30)
He tells his disciples to treat sinners in their midst just like they treated tax collectors and Gentiles, then he turns around and eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners and he speaks with and heals Gentiles. That sure seems like something of a mixed message, wouldn’t you agree?
His disciples were often confounded by his teachings and his actions. They complained to him about the way he taught them.
“So the disciples came up and said to him: “Why is it you speak to them by the use of illustrations?” In reply he said: “To YOU it is granted to understand the sacred secrets of the kingdom of the heavens, but to those people it is not granted…For the heart of this people has grown unreceptive, and with their ears they have heard without response, and they have shut their eyes; that they might never see with their eyes and hear with their ears and get the sense of it with their hearts and turn back, and I heal them.’” (Matthew 13:10-15)
The thing is his disciples didn’t get the gist of his illustrations either. Not at first. They were missing something. What were they missing and how does that relate to our topic on shunning? To answer that, consider one time when they thought they understood, but as it turns out, they still didn’t.
“Then his disciples said, “At last you are speaking plainly and not figuratively. Now we understand that you know everything, and there’s no need to question you. From this we believe that you came from God.” Jesus asked, “Do you finally believe? But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when you will be scattered, each one going his own way, leaving me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me.” (John 16:29-32)
Neither the crowds nor his disciples fully grasped the meaning of his parables or illustrations, but that was going to change for his disciples. But what would bring about that change? Not even plain speaking would do that, because even then they thought they understood, as we’ve just read, Jesus knew they did not. He knew they still lacked the faith to stick by him in his most difficult hour, and so it was. They all scattered when he was arrested.
They were afraid, but then everything changed. Less then two months after he died and was resurrected, his fearful disciples suddenly became fearless, courageous and unstoppable. What happened? They received the holy spirit. At Pentecost, they were filled with the spirit of God.
This is what Jesus foretold would happen, but the holy spirit did not give them just faith and courage. It gave them the means to understand all that he had taught them.
“I still have many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them now. However, when that one comes, the spirit of the truth, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak of his own initiative, but what he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things to come. That one will glorify me, because he will receive from what is mine and will declare it to you. All the things that the Father has are mine. That is why I said he receives from what is mine and declares it to you.” (John 16:12-15)
So, if we are going to understand exactly how we are supposed to deal with unrepentant sinners, we have to read how the spirit-guided Bible writers, like the Apostles Paul and John, understood Jesus’ teachings.
Once the early disciples were filled with holy spirit, they were guided by that spirit into all the truth, just as Jesus said would happen. They could then truly understand what Jesus meant when he spoke of treating a sinner like a tax collector or a heathen.
The same is for us today. Because even though the spirit guided apostles were able to correctly apply Jesus’ words about how to treat an unrepentant sinner, we can still get things wrong if we lack the holy spirit.
We read the same Bible that all the church leaders read, from the Pope on through to the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but we all come away with a different understanding. Most churches today are way too lenient of sinners and so have gone to one extreme and have suffered for it. Others, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, have gone to the other extreme and so have incurred blood guilt by driving people to the point of suicide by their unloving, harsh, and unscriptural interpretation of the words of Jesus, Paul, and John.
We must therefore pray for holy spirit and approach this subject with humility and love. Not just love of neighbor but love of God. After all, the first and foremost fruit of the holy spirit is love.
We will look into the words of Paul and John in our final video of this series on shunning to understand what Jesus really meant us to do when dealing with sin in the body of Christ, the congregation of the holy ones.
May the peace of God be with all of you.