Saturday, May 8
Watch that among you there is no one who is sexually immoral. —Heb. 12:16.
Jehovah God hates all forms of wickedness. (Ps. 5:4-6) How he must hate child sexual abuse —an especially repugnant wicked deed! In imitation of Jehovah, we as his Witnesses abhor child abuse and do not tolerate it in the Christian congregation. (Rom. 12:9) Any act of child abuse is absolutely opposed to “the law of the Christ”! (Gal. 6:2) All that Jesus taught both by word and by example is built on love and promotes justice. Governed by this law, true Christians treat children in a way that makes them feel safe and genuinely loved. But child abuse is a selfish, unjust act that makes a child feel unsafe and unloved. Sadly, true Christians have been affected by it. Why? “Wicked men and impostors” abound, and some may try to enter the congregation. (2 Tim. 3:13) In addition, some professing to be a part of the congregation have succumbed to perverted fleshly desires and have sexually abused children. w19.05 8 ¶1-3
Most people “abhor child abuse.” Christians, Muslims, atheists, whoever, realize that lying, stealing, and murder are wrong too. It is said that pedophiles that are imprisoned may even be reviled and punished by their fellow inmates. So, hating child abuse is no reason for the Governing Body to congratulate itself.
Child abuse among Jehovah’s Witnesses presents several problems. First, it exposes the fundamental teaching of the Watchtower as a lie. What teaching is that? The doctrine that Christ has come and set matters straight and that Jehovah’s Witnesses are living in spiritual paradise.
According to the Bible, the condition that the Watchtower calls “spiritual paradise” is described as a place characterized by the total absence of evil persons. The prophecies contrast good and evil persons by likening them to lambs and lions. And according to the Holy Bible when Christ comes a spiritual estate will come into existence where wicked people will not be allowed. It is described in Isaiah as a Way of Holiness: “And a highway will be there, yes, a way called the Way of Holiness. The unclean one will not travel on it. It is reserved for the one walking on the way; no one foolish will stray onto it. No lion will be there, and no vicious wild beasts will come on it. They will not be found there; only the repurchased ones will walk there.” — Isaiah 35:8-9
Pedophiles are described as sexual predators. They seek out, stalk, and prey upon weaker, innocent creatures. By the Watchtower’s own admission Jehovah surely hates child abuse. Since no predatory human beasts of any kind will be allowed on the Way of Holiness, and no one will cause any harm in all of Jehovah’s holy mountain, how is it that thousands of children have been set upon by beast-like men and have had their innocence devoured by cunning sexual predators? The Watchtower even betrays itself in their comment above by acknowledging that wicked men and imposters have free access to menace the flock in spiritual paradise. Either Jehovah’s Way of Holiness is a sham or the Watchtower is lying!
In order to deceive the flock, the Watchtower has redefined spiritual paradise to be merely a place where everyone believes the same thing. That could be said of any cult though. But as any honest Christian can see, that is not what is portrayed in the Bible. Just as when God’s angels drove Adam and Eve out of Eden and powerful cherubs with perpetually revolving flaming swords guarded the way to the tree of life, so it is with the Way of Holiness. Only clean and meek persons who trust and obey God will be allowed entry. No “wicked men and imposters,” no lying boasters, no predators of any stripe will be allowed entry—none!
Secondly, here is the bigger problem. God holds elders responsible for those whom they oversee. Over the past roughly 40 years there have been several tens of thousands of children who have been abused in the congregations. Is anyone responsible besides the pedophiles? Yes, indeed. Someone will have to answer to God.
God’s law requires those in positions of oversight to protect the vulnerable—the proverbial fatherless boy. Has the Watchtower pleaded the legal case of the abused? Far from it! The Watchtower has become the legal adversary of the victims. Jehovah knows it is true.
The Watchtower has become thoroughly marinated in hypocrisy. Now they claim that child abuse is a crime and pedophiles should pay the price, but for several decades it had been the policy of the Watchtower to shield such criminals from the law. To underscore that ugly fact, in Australia a government commission investigating the policies of various organizations in their handling of cases of child abuse revealed that in over 1,000 instances of child sexual abuse that were brought to the attention of congregation elders, not one crime was reported to the police. Not a single one. That is not coincidental. As all of Jehovah’s Witnesses surely know, the WT wields total control over the congregations. The fact that not one crime committed against a child was reported to the police reveals a policy position.
The GB boasts that no one protects children like Jehovah’s organization. With feigned indignation, they dismiss the cries of complaint against them as “apostate-driven lies.” But it is undeniable, elders were strong-armed by the WT’s legal department into bullying and intimidating victims and their families from reporting. Elders were instructed not to cooperate with the police. The WT has ordered elders to destroy records of judicial hearings. And all the while the Governing Body boasts of abhorring child abuse.
Yes, Jehovah must surely hate child abuse, but he is most incensed by the nauseating hypocrisy and double-talking duplicity on the part of those placed in positions of oversight who are expected to do everything in their power to protect God’s tender lambs.
Because we are made in the image of God the Creator entrusts godlike powers to judge to those within His organization on earth. But Jehovah is the ultimate Judge of the judges—the God of gods. The 82nd Psalm is a rebuke addressed to those who are given powers to judge as sons of God but who fail, causing the foundations of the earth to be shaken, that is to say, the earthly organization.
“God takes his place in the divine assembly; in the middle of the gods he judges: “How long will you continue to judge with injustice and show partiality to the wicked? Defend the lowly and the fatherless. Render justice to the helpless and destitute. Rescue the lowly and the poor; save them out of the hand of the wicked.” They do not know, nor do they understand; they are walking about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are being shaken. “I have said, ‘You are gods, all of you are sons of the Most High. But you will die just as men do; and like any other prince you will fall!’”
Rise up, O God, and judge the earth,
For all the nations belong to you.
