FAQ for that JW Post I Made
Original post
-"Can I give them water/coffee/other small kindness before sending them on their way?"
I mean, I guess. I can't stop you. But JWs are not there to be friendly - they are there to prey on you. They have been taught to look for signs of weakness, and other emotional 'ins', and going out of your way to be kind to them is one of those things. It betrays a sense of altruism, which is a big factor in why people join the cult. The cult promises you they have the answer to why there is suffering, and a promise it will end, and that you can have a hand in that mission. If you're handing out water bottles to the cult members on your doorstep even after you've been warned of the danger of their presence, you sure sound altruistic.
-"Can/should I debate them?"
Again, I can't stop you, but I can tell you it likely won't work. Actually 'in' JWs have been taught 'thought-stopping', ie they deal with actual thought policing, that they enforce on themselves and fellow members, mainly to do with doubts about the religion. This shit is hardcore. It took. LITERAL YEARS. for me to even let myself have the smallest doubts without immediately sending myself into a guilt-ridden panic attack. It took further years to let those thoughts sit long enough to form solidly into something I deemed worthwhile and meaningful enough to throw my whole life away over. Your Bible quote hypocrisies and Watchtower scandals, talked about for 5 minutes on a Saturday morning, will more than likely have next to no effect. Not to say that an exJW has never begun their deconversion on someone's doorstep, but that you will likely not be so lucky. It is hard, grueling, painful work undoing such ingrained indoctrination, and it is work the cult member must start themselves.
Also JWs have their own Bible translation. There is that. You probably don't know the in and outs of their theology well enough to argue against it effectively, considering exJWs, often ones who have been deeply faithful and well read on theology, struggle for years, even decades, trying to 'wake up' loved ones.
I know all the arguments. I can not save my father.
-"You said not to try saying you're an apostate, but what about disfellowshipped? What does disfellowshipped even mean?"
Disfellowshipping is the JW version of excommunication. It's a punishment, meant to keep members in line and in fear of losing their entire support network, since current members (other than elders, which is a JW priest) are not allowed to interact with disfellowshipped members, on pain of being disfellowshipped themselves. You can be disfellowshipped for extramarital sex, for smoking, and for 'apostasy', among a long, long list of sins.
Apostates are the JW boogeyman, former members who were punished or left on their own accord (which would be 'disassociation' rather than disfellowshipping) because they disagreed with the theology. It is the greatest sin imaginable to a JW, since it is the only one that you can't really be forgiven for. You heard the 'truth', and yet you turned it away. It also makes them, in JW eyes, particularly potent enemies.
So here's the thing about claiming either of these things about yourself: JWs often harass former members to get them back. They're viewed as 'lost sheep', who simply need to be led back into the fold. But that can't be dealt with by your rank and file member - no, that's a job for elders, or even higher ranking members if they're available. So yeah, you scared off some JWs, but now you might have the guys in charge of them coming your way. These are the people determined especially loyal to the cult and are further trained in 'counselling' (emotional manipulation to keep members toeing the line), by the way.
-"Well, I live in an apartment building with a building access code! I'm safe, right?"
:) You'd think so, huh?
When I was in, I lived in a dense downtown area with a lot of apartment buildings. Most of them have access codes. We had those codes, a lot of the time. I'm still not sure how we got them - most of them had been gathered well before they reached my family. My only guess is a JW, somewhere along the line, had a 'study' (in the works convert) in the building and was given the code to visit them and, like JWs do, saved that information it for future use.
