Witnesses honour Matthew 18:6 and often quote it when criticising other
religions for scandals. The verse is understood as a warning against
individual sin that harms children, particularly sin that draws a child
away from Jehovah. It is rarely applied to institutional or structural
failures within the organisation itself.
This argument is the scriptural weight under every child-protection conversation, including the Royal Commission discussion. Do not start with the Royal Commission or SBC — start with the verse. Open your Bible (or their NWT, even better) to Matthew 18 and read verses 1 through 6 together. Ask three questions in order. First: what is the setting? (Jesus has placed a child in the midst of the disciples.) Second: what is the Greek word skandalizo doing — what does "cause to stumble" mean in a first-century context? (It means to trap, to ensnare, to set a snare in the path.) Third: does Jesus put a limit on who this warning applies to? (He does not. It applies to anyone — kings, priests, apostles, elders, Governing Bodies, pastors.) Only then, gently, introduce the institutional question: what does Jesus' warning mean for any structure — Catholic, Protestant, or JW — that has shielded abusers? This is a verse for every church. Let the Witness draw their own application.
is Jesus' most severe warning in the Gospels on institutional responsibility. The Greek skandalizo describes setting a trap — and any policy that traps a child with an abuser meets the description. A policy that produces victims who "stumble" out of the faith is itself the skandalon Jesus warned about. This verse belongs in every honest conversation about child safety in any denomination, not only the Watchtower.
This verse is about leading a child away from Jehovah, not physical harm.
Read it again slowly. Jesus does not narrow the verse to spiritual stumbling only. The Greek skandalizo covers any action that traps or ensnares, and in the wider Matthew 18 context Jesus is concerned with the protection of "little ones" — children in the literal sense. The Watchtower's own translation footnotes acknowledge the breadth of the term. Sexual abuse is the clearest possible example of ensnaring a child — physically, spiritually, and psychologically at once.
The Governing Body takes Matthew 18:6 very seriously.
I am glad to hear that — can we think together about what taking it seriously looks like in practice? Jesus said it would be better to be drowned than to cause a little one to stumble. If a policy has, over 65 years in Australia alone, coincided with 1,006 alleged perpetrators and zero proactive police reports, is that policy being weighed against Jesus' warning? I am not asking you to condemn your elders. I am asking you to read the verse and ask the question yourself.
Other churches have done worse — why do you only apply this to us?
I do not only apply it to you. I apply it to every church, including mine. The Southern Baptist Convention commissioned the Guidepost report because this verse applies to them. The Catholic Church has been publicly confronted with it for decades. When I mention at your door, it is the same verse I would read to a Catholic bishop or a Baptist pastor. The question is whether the response to the verse is repentance and reform, or deflection.
Jesus' words here are about eternal judgment, not civil action.
The millstone image is earthly — literally a heavy stone and literal drowning in the sea. Jesus was not speaking only of the last day; he was describing the moral weight of the act in categories his hearers would feel in their bones. And the very next chapters of the New Testament (Romans 13) teach that civil authorities are God's servants to punish evildoers. Jesus' warning and Paul's teaching are not at odds — they run together.
Individual elders who fail cannot invalidate Jehovah's organisation.
This is an important distinction, and I want to honour it. The question in is not whether individual elders have failed — individual failures occur everywhere. The question is whether a written policy itself, uniformly applied, has caused children to stumble. That is no longer an individual question. And only the organisation can answer for its own policy documents.
I have never heard of this Royal Commission you are talking about.
That is one of the most important things you have said today. The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Case Study 29, 2015 to 2016, is a matter of public record. Commissioner Peter McClellan's findings are freely available online. I am not asking you to trust me — I am asking you to go and read the Commission's own report and then come back to with what you have learned. That is not apostate research. That is Berean research ().
If I started questioning the Governing Body, I would lose my family.
I hear that, and I want to say it back to you so you know I heard it: the cost of asking questions inside the organisation is very high, and I do not take that lightly. I am not asking you to question the Governing Body today. I am asking you to read one verse — — and to let Jesus himself be the one who speaks into your conscience over the weeks ahead. That is between you and him.
Matthew 18 itself lays out the procedure for handling sin in the congregation — verses 15 to 17. We follow that procedure: speak to the brother privately, then with witnesses, then before the congregation. The two-witness rule is part of that biblical pattern.
Read carefully: "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone." That passage is about a personal grievance between two believers — a dispute, an offence, a relational breach. Now read verse 6: "but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." The same chapter, ten verses earlier, addresses something qualitatively different: not a brother offending you, but a predator harming a child. One is a dispute that calls for the three-step pastoral process; the other is a crime that calls for the millstone. Jesus does not say "first try a private conversation with the predator, then bring two witnesses." He pronounces judgement directly, and tells us how that judgement is administered in this age — through "God's servant" the magistrate, who "does not bear the sword in vain." is the procedure for grievance; is the warning about predation. Conflating the two has cost children sixty-five years of unanswered abuse.
Do not quote the verse as a weapon. Do not raise your voice. Do not use the verse to "trap" the Witness the way you are accusing a policy of trapping children — the irony would undo everything. Do not rush to the Royal Commission before the verse has been read slowly. Do not imply that Witnesses personally approve of child abuse — they do not, and they need that said clearly.
Read Matthew 18 up to verse 6, in the NWT if you can, until you can retell the scene from memory: Jesus places a child in the midst, then speaks the millstone warning. Check whether your NWT has a footnote or study note on "stumble" in verse 6, and set it beside skandalizo — to set a trap or snare. Read the Royal Commission's Case Study 29 findings before you ever mention them, and read prayerfully; the person in front of you, or you yourself, may carry this wound. Practise the doorstep question aloud gently, then stop. Prepare for the response: read on to verse 17 so you can show that verse 15 concerns a sin "against you", a personal grievance, not a crime against a child.