Carnival Mirrors

7. (THE WATCHTOWER VERSION OF) A BIBLE STUDENT Rich Mayfield, mentioned in the previous chapter, had graduated from high school with a Jehovah’s Witness classmate. At the time I contacted her, she was attending the Gilead Bible School, a Watchtower school that trains students for missionary activity. The girl and I wrote letters as our method of contact. I found that a Witness uses every opportunity to get off the subject under discussion and to get into all types of beliefs about the evils of other churches, the faults of Catholicism, and the savior status of the Watchtower organization. My question to the girl involved the matter of dishonest representation in quoting a writer out of context, so that it made the author appear to say the opposite of what he really meant. I believe the question concerned a quote from The Encyclopaedia Britannica about the Trinity. Instead of answering my question, she sent me a Watchtower magazine, Should You Believe in the Trinity? and wrote mainly about the Watchtower teaching of the Trinity instead of about quoting others out of context. I tried again, the second time giving more examples of quotes out of context. This time she replied there was nothing wrong with what the Watchtower had done, because it simply was writing the facts. This is not an explanation, but a way to dodge the full truth, just like the bishop’s meaning in the phrase of wishing the Witnesses well. If some authors can prove the Trinity or any other teaching is scripturally correct, and the Watchtower’s writers choose to disregard those proofs and quote only portions of the works which seem to support Jehovah’s Witnesses, and, thereby, seem to refute what the authors actually believe, then this method of support cannot be honest. Here are two examples of this method used outside religion. They will very easily show how partial truths can distort what the reader reads or what the hearer hears. Even though I cannot remember the exact words, the gist of the incident is presented. A theater/movie critic of a New York TV station panned a play. However, his opening remark was something like, One good thing about this play is that it has a superb cast. It is a shame it is wasted on such a dull, boring play that goes nowhere. The rest of the critic’s remarks let the listener know that the play was not worth wasting one’s time or money on. The next morning one of the newspapers advertised the play. Since the producers wanted all the favorable comments they could find, they lifted part of the critic’s comments. The part they used was, “…a superb cast,” and credited it to the critic. Just that one partial quote, along with other partial quotes of critics who actually liked the play, made it appear that this critic gave his approval, when the real truth was that he disliked the play. Now, the paper did report a fact uttered by the critic, namely, that the play had a superb cast. But, the ad tied the critic’s name to that one fact and omitted many other facts. The result was a false impression (The critic liked the play.) which was believed to be true by the readers of that ad.