Crisis of Conscience Read online

  Thus, after one discussion of an article by Fred Franz which presented the view that the “festival of the harvest ingathering” (celebrated, according to the Bible, at the close of the harvest season) pictured a circumstance in the history of the Witnesses at the start of their spiritual harvesting, sufficient members voted in favor for it to be accepted.1 Lyman Swingle, who had not voted in favor and who was currently serving as Coordinator of the Writing Committee, then said: “All right, if that’s what you want to do I’ll send it over to the factory for printing. But that does not mean that I believe it. It is just one more stone piled on the enormous monument of testimony that the Watchtower is not infallible.”

  A second reason for lack of real Bible discussion, follows obviously, I believe, from the preceding one. And that is that most of the Body were actually not that well versed in the Scriptures, for their “busyness” was not something of recent origin. In my own case, right up until 1965 I had been on such a “treadmill” of activity that I had found little time for truly serious study. But I think the matter goes deeper than that. I believe that the feeling prevailed that such study and research were really not all that essential, that the policies and teachings of the organization—developed over many decades—were a reliable guide in themselves, so that, whatever motion might be made in the Body, as long as it conformed satisfactorily to such traditional policy or teaching, it must be all right.

  The facts point to this conclusion. At times a long discussion on some “disfellowshipping” issue would suddenly be resolved because one member had found a statement related to the matter in the Society’s Organization book, or, more likely, in the book called “Aid to Answering Branch Office Correspondence,” a compendium of policies arranged alphabetically on a broad range of subjects—employment, marriage, divorce, politics, military matters, labor unions, blood and scores of others. When such statement was found, even though no Scripture was cited in support of the particular point of policy, this seemed to settle the matter for most of the Body members and they would usually vote without hesitation in favor of any motion that conformed to the printed policy. I saw this happen on several occasions and I never ceased to be impressed by the way that kind of printed policy statement could effect such a sudden transformation in the progress and resolution of a discussion.

  A final reason for the Bible’s playing little part in such discussion is that in case after case the issue involved something on which the Scriptures themselves were silent.

  To cite specific examples, the discussion might be to decide whether the injection of serums should be viewed the same as blood transfusions, or whether platelets should be considered just as objectionable for acceptance as packed red blood cells. Or the discussion might center on the policy that a wife who committed one act of unfaithfulness was obliged to confess this to her husband (even though he was known to be extremely violent in nature) or else her claim of repentance would not be considered valid, leaving her liable for disfellowshipping. What scriptures discuss such matters?

  Consider this case that came up for discussion and decision by the Governing Body. One of Jehovah’s Witnesses, driving a truck for the Coca-Cola Company, had as his route a large military base where numerous deliveries were made. The question: Could he do this and remain a member in good standing or is this a disfellowshipping offense? (The crucial factor here being that military property and personnel were involved.)

  Again, what scriptures discuss such matters—in a way that can be clearly and reasonably seen, in a way that obviates the need for involved reasoning and interpretations? None were brought forward, yet the majority of the Body decided that this work was not acceptable and that the man would have to obtain another route to remain in good standing. A similar case came up involving a Witness musician who played in a “combo” at an officers’ club on a military base. This too, was ruled unacceptable by the majority of the Body. The Scriptures being silent, human reasoning supplied the answer.

  Generally, in discussions of this type, if any appeal was made to Scripture by those favoring condemnation of the act or conduct, that appeal was to very broad statements such as, “You are no part of the world,” found at John, chapter fifteen, verse 19. If a Governing Body member personally scrupled against the action or conduct under discussion and could think of no other argument against it, often he would fall back on this text, extending it and applying it to fit whatever the circumstances were. The need to let the rest of the Scriptures define what such a broad statement means and how it applies often seemed to be considered unnecessary or irrelevant.

  A major factor in Governing Body decisions was the two-thirds majority rule. This produced some strange effects at times.

  The rule was that a two-thirds majority (of the total active membership) was needed to carry a motion. I personally appreciated the opportunity this allowed for a member to vote differently from the majority or simply to abstain without feeling that he was, in effect, exercising “veto power.” On minor matters, even when not in complete agreement, I generally voted with the majority. But when issues came up that genuinely affected my conscience I frequently found myself in the minority—seldom alone but often with only one, two or three other members expressing conscientious objection by not voting for the motion.2 This was not so often the case during the first two years or so after the major change effected in the authority structure (officially put in motion on January 1, 1976). In the final two years of my membership, however, a strong trend toward a “hard line” approach obliged me either to vote differently from the majority—or to abstain—with greater frequency.

  But consider now what sometimes happened when the Body was quite divided in its viewpoint, not nearly so uncommon an occurrence as some might think.

  An issue might be under discussion involving conduct that had, somewhere in the Society’s past, been designated a “disfellowshipping offense,” perhaps a person’s having a particular blood fraction injected to control a potentially fatal ailment; or possibly the case of a wife who had a non-Witness husband in military service and who worked in a commissary on her husband’s military base.

  At times in such discussions the Body might be quite divided, sometimes even split right down the middle. Or there might be a majority who favored removing the particular action, conduct or type of employment from the “disfellowshipping offense” category. Consider what might happen because of the two-thirds majority rule:

  If out of fourteen members present, nine favored removing the disfellowshipping offense “label” and only five favored retaining it, the majority was not sufficient to change the disfellowshipping label. Though a clear majority, the nine were not a two-thirds majority. (Even if there were ten of them favoring change this was still not enough, for though they would be two-thirds majority of the fourteen present, the rule was two-thirds majority of the total active membership, which during much of the time was seventeen.) If someone from the nine favoring removal of the disfellowshipping category advanced a motion it would fail, because twelve votes were needed for it to pass. If someone from the five favoring retention of the disfellowshipping offense category advanced a motion that the policy be maintained, the motion would, of course, fail also. But even the failure of the motion in favor of retaining the category would not result in the removal of that disfellowshipping category. Why not? Because the policy was that some motion had to carry before any change would be made in previous policy. In one of the first of these instances of such a divided vote, Milton Henschel had expressed the view that, where there was no two-thirds majority, then “status quo should prevail,” nothing should change. It was quite uncommon in these cases for any member to change over on his vote and so a stalemate usually resulted.

  That meant that the Witness taking the particular action or having the particular employment involved would continue to be subject to disfellowshipping, even though a majority of the Body had made clear their feeling that he or she should not be!

  On more th
an one occasion when a sizeable minority or even a majority (though not two-thirds) felt that a matter should not be a disfellowshipping offense, I voiced my feelings that our position was unreasonable, even incomprehensible. How could we let things go on as before, with people being disfellowshipped for such things, when right within the Governing Body there were a number of us, sometimes a majority, who felt that the action involved did not merit such severe judgment? How would the brothers and sisters feel to know that this was the case and yet they were being disfellowshipped?3

  To illustrate, if five congregational elders forming a “judicial committee” were to hear a case and three of the five did not believe that the person’s action or conduct called for disfellowshipping, would the fact that they were only a three-fifths majority and not a two-thirds majority make their position invalid?4 Would the person then be disfellowshipped? Surely not. How could we, then, let a mere procedural rule of voting cause a traditional stand on disfellowshipping to prevail when most of the Body members felt otherwise? Should we not at least take the position that, in all disfellowshipping matters, when even a considerable minority (and especially a majority, however small) felt that there were not sufficient grounds for disfellowshipping, then no disfellowshipping ruling should be sustained?

  These questions put to the Body brought no response, but again and again in such cases the previously-established traditional policy was kept in force, and this was done as a matter of course, as normal. The effect on people’s lives somehow did not carry enough weight to make the members feel moved to set aside their “standard” policy in such cases. Somewhere in the past history of the organization a disfellowshipping policy had been formulated (often the product of one man’s thinking, a man all too often pathetically isolated from the circumstances being dealt with) and that policy had been put into effect; a rule had been adopted and that rule controlled unless a two-thirds majority could overturn it.

  In all these controversial cases the “disfellowshipping offense” was not something clearly identified in Scripture as sinful. It was purely the result of organizational policy. Once published, that policy became fixed on the worldwide brotherhood for them to bear, along with the consequences of the policy. Is it wrong in such circumstances to feel that Jesus’ words apply: “They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them”?5 I leave that to the reader to decide. I only know what my conscience told me and the stand I felt compelled to take.

  Nonetheless, I feel that in these various disputed issues the Governing Body members favoring disfellowshipping generally believed they were doing the right thing. What thinking could cause them to hold to a disfellowshipping stand in the face of objection from a sizeable minority or possibly from half or more of their fellow members?

  In one case where prolonged discussion had made such a situation predictable, Ted Jaracz voiced a view that may well reflect the thinking of others. Of Slavic descent (Polish) like Dan Sydlik, Jaracz was different both in build and in temperament. Whereas Sydlik often was moved by a “gut” feeling as to the rightness or wrongness of an issue, Jaracz was of a more dispassionate nature. In this particular session he acknowledged that ‘the existing policy might work a measure of hardship on some individuals in the particular situation being discussed,’ and said, “It is not that we don’t feel for them in the matter, but we have to always keep in mind that we are not dealing with just two or three persons—we have a large, worldwide organization to keep in view and we have to think of the effect on that worldwide organization.”6

  This view, that what is good for the organization is what is good for the people in it, and that the interests of the individual are, in effect “expendable” when the interests of the large organization appear to require it, seemed to be accepted as a valid position by many members.

  Additionally, some might advance the argument that any softening of position could “open the way” to a floodtide of wrongdoing. If one or more extreme examples of bad conduct were known that could be related to the issue under discussion, these were presented as strong evidence of the potential danger. The ominous specter of such danger was usually brought forth in those cases where, even before a motion had been offered, it was fairly evident that a considerable number of the Body inclined toward a change. In one such case, Milton Henschel seriously urged caution, making the point that, “If we let the brothers do this, there is no telling how far they will go.”

  I believe that he, and others who made the same point on other occasions, doubtless felt convinced that it was necessary to hold firmly to certain longtime policies in order to ‘keep people in line,’ to hold them within a protective “fence” so that they would not stray off.

  If the protective “fence” of these policies had actually been one plainly outlined in God’s Word, I would have had to agree and would gladly have voted accordingly. But so often that was not the case, and that it was not was clearly indicated by the fact that the particular elders (often men on Branch Committees) who had written in about the subject had found nothing in Scripture dealing with the matter, and by the fact that the Body itself had not found anything either. Thus the members had to resort to their own reasoning in a prolonged discussion, in many respects, a debate.

  On the occasion earlier mentioned, following Milton Henschel’s expression, my comment was that I did not believe that it was up to us to “let” the brothers do anything. Rather, I believed that God is the One who “lets” them do certain things, either because his Word approves it or because it is silent on the matter, and that He is the One that prohibits, when his Word clearly condemns the action, either explicitly or by clear principle. That I did not believe that as imperfect, error-prone men we were ever authorized by God to decide what should be allowed or disallowed for others. My question before the Body was, “When the matter is not clear in Scripture, why should we try to play God? We do so poorly at it. Why not let Him be the Judge of these people in such cases?” I repeated that view on other occasions when the same line of argument was being advanced, but I do not feel that the majority saw it in that light and their decisions indicated that they did not.

  To paint a foreboding picture of potential unrestrained wrongdoing on the part of the brothers simply because we, as a Governing Body, removed some existing regulation, appealed to me as saying that we suspected our brothers of lacking true love of righteousness, of inwardly wanting to sin and being held in check only by organizational regulations.

  An article published some years earlier in the Society’s magazine Awake! came to mind. It described a police strike in Montreal, Canada, and showed that the absence of the police force for a day or so led to all kinds of lawless deeds by usually law-abiding citizens. The Awake! article pointed out that genuine Christians did not have to be subject to law enforcement in order to act in a lawful manner.7

  Why, then, I wondered, was the position taken by the Governing Body that it was dangerous to remove a traditional regulation, in the belief that this could “open the way” for widespread immorality and misconduct on the part of the brothers? What did that say about our attitude toward, and our confidence in, those brothers? How different did we feel that these brothers were from those individuals who violated laws during the police strike in Montreal, and how deep and genuine did we believe their love of righteousness really was? At times it seemed that the prevailing sentiment within the Body was, trust no one but ourselves. That, too, did not seem to reflect commendable modesty to me.

  The results that came out of these divided decisions were by no means inconsequential. Failure to conform to a Governing Body decision once published or made known could, and did, bring disfellowshipping, being cut off from congregation, family and friends. To conform, on the other hand, might require giving up a certain employment, sometimes when jobs were scarce and costs of caring for a family were great. It could mean taking a stand against a marriage partner’s wishes, a stand that cou
ld, and sometimes did, lead to divorce, the breaking up of marriage, home and family, separating children from father or mother. It could mean feeling compelled to refuse to obey a certain law and then being arrested and sent away from family and home to a place of imprisonment. It could, in fact, mean loss of life itself, or what can be even more difficult to bear; to see loved ones lost in death.

  To illustrate the difficulties that might arise even when a change was made in some earlier ruling, consider the organizational position taken regarding hemophiliacs and the use of blood fractions (such as Factor VIII, a clotting factor) to control against fatal bleeding.

  For many years inquiries sent by hemophiliacs to the headquarters organization (or its Branch Offices) received the reply that to accept such blood fraction one time could be viewed as not objectionable, as, in effect, “medication.” But to do so more than once would constitute a “feeding” on such blood fraction and therefore be considered a violation of the Scriptural injunction against eating blood.8

  Years later this ruling changed. Those staff members who worked at answering correspondence knew that in the past they had sent out letters to the contrary and that hemophiliacs who had taken their “one time” injection were still under the impression that to do so again would be counted as a violation of Scripture. They could bleed to death because of holding to such a stand.