Help? Response about freeminds

mpatrick

Can anyone help me respond to this post. I have to say there are far more knowledgeable people here than I. It can be found at:

* http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/message_list.asp?boardID=2437&discussionID=72677

EveryGrainOfSand
8/14/01 6:11 AM 7 out of 8

MPatrick, first off, I want to thank you for being so couragious as to open up and describe your own life experiences. I am sure that wasn't a very easy thing to do. Also, I want to commend you for being so very evenhanded in your descriptions of your feelings. Although you discussed your mom and some of your feelings about her example, you did not speak of her disrespectfully or with anger. In this last long post, you also conveyed a very personal description of your own feelings, what you felt were your shortcomings and how you feel those led to your decision to not pursue the faith in which you were raised. I would be the very 1st person to shout that this is YOUR right.

However, in many of your other posts, you do not treat others with the same respect you feel you owe your parents, your former congregation and indeed, yourself. I am extremely familiar with the Freeminds site you frequently refer to and I would point out to you that virtually ALL the material on that site is derived from the point of view of an individual who converted to "The Truth" as a confused young adult and then spent virtually no time in a congregation or in field service before going off to the somewhat insulated atmosphere at Bethel and this during the huge societal upheavals of the 1970's when many men his age were finding fault with organized religions. This same man chose to leave his new faith in barely 8 years of active participation. Sheesh, Mpatrick, I was a Vegaterian for longer than that. Also, since leaving, this same author has been actively involved in the highly controversial matter of "de-programming" which he now calls "Exit-counseling". While I am happy to see that he disassociates himself from the folks who believe in kidnapping adult children who choose religions their parents don't like, "exit-counseling" is not yet an objective field. Finally, this same individual has hopped from church to church since then and seems unable to find any stable community in which he can participate. Now, you and I might say, well, I guess he's just a perpetual searcher after the truth and we could probably find a few dozen solid scriptures to support this hippity-hoppity spiritualism. My own feeling is that I am not responsible for his salvation and he must do what he reasonably believes will bring him what relationship he wants with God and I cannot know what that is. Certainly I have been unable to really get a handle on what it is he is seeking although it seems he would like to find "The Perfect Truth". Well, my friend, so would I but I doubt I will here on this earth under this arrangement! At one time in my life, I might have had more in common with the Freeminds folks, but I cannot spend my whole life scrutinizing and finding fault with every single Christian organization on the planet in my valiant pursuit of complete wisdom. I honestly think that engaging in such behavior and by constantly joining, participating for a while, discovering fault with, criticizing and then abandoning one Christian Sect after another is exhausting and prideful. I can't do it and few others could either.

However, I cannot yet be completely assured on every front that I would be up to the challenges full membership often requires of a Baptised member of a JW Congregation. So, you and I have far more in common than we have in difference. Even so, Mpatrick, you must be very, very wary of Disgruntled ex-members of ANY FAITH. I have tremendous anger towards the Faith of my upbringing, however, I would NEVER ask anyone to take MY judgements of MY experiences and extrapolate them out as being typical and ordinary within the faith. To be continued...

mpatrick

He does not believe who does not live according to his belief.-Thomas Fuller

Mishnah

Yep, that freeminds guy is very confused. But you nuts keep listening to people like him and AF, another loon who was in couch-therapy. I heard that Randy of freeminds no longer believes in God and is a homosexual. Can anyone verify this?

bboyneko

I heard that Randy of freeminds no longer believes in God and is a homosexual. Can anyone verify this?

What does that matter????

larc

I heard that Mishnah lost his job because he is a cross dresser. Can anyone verify that?

ChuckD

Larc,

From what I have been told it wasn't from the cross-dressing itself. I understand that the real reason he was terminated was because he had been embezzling company money to buy the women's clothes he used for this. Can someone please verify this? I don't want to spread any rumors without having facts to back it up. I could be wrong, though. Perhaps the stolen money was just used for tiaras and feather boas - not the hosiery.

hillary_step

Larc,

My left foot is very slightly smaller than my right, a naturally recurring phenomenon in 70% of the population of the earth. This has been verified by the use of standard measuring tools and is irrefutable evidence that verified information posted on on-line discussion boards in verifiable.

Verified insane by non-standard wife, I remain yours - HS

Tina

Boy,the worms are really turnin in the dirt here. The WTS must be really nervous......after Kent Farkel,Af,et al. Randy is now being targeted by the discreditors... it's all comin a little too fast and hard lately...... isn't gonna work tho.

AlanF

I'll point out that there are a number of inaccuracies and misunderstandings in this guy's post, concerning the evolution of Randall Watters:

First, the guy says that Watters was "a confused young adult" when he became a JW, and implies that this implies that Watters' subsequent judgments were not to be trusted. He doesn't actually explain why normal young-adult "confusion" about life and other important matters should apply as a person matures, but leaves it as a dark smear. This sets the tone for the poster's obvious bias.

Next he uses a dark implication about the amount of time Watters spent in Bethel and as a JW -- as if "barely 8 years of active participation" is not enough to make a sound judgement about the validity of "his new faith". The idea seems to be that one needs decades of experience to make a proper judgment. What being a vegetarian for awhile has to do with making judgments about a religion is not clear.

Then the poster equates "de-programming" with "exit-counseling", and darkly hints that both are both are flawed merely because the latter "is not yet an objective field". Well of course, any young field of endeavor with respect to human relations goes through such a phase. What the poster ignores is the fact that Watters, and especially people like Steven Hassan, have been extremely effective over the years in this "exit-counseling", which in fact is just getting people to think about the cult aspects of the cult they're in. Some years ago, after I first met Watters, I contacted a man who had successfully "de-programmed" his two teenage children with some help from Watters and associates. All they did was to go on a vacation with the kids, get friendly with them, and convince them to look at things about the JW religion that they had never before considered. They had never considered such things for the simple reason that the JW cult insulated them from facts. One of the major factors in the success here was that the man spent several weeks at the Library of Congress researching the lies and misrepresentations in the Society's 1985 Creation book. He produced a booklet with full photocopied references and, after his kids had become receptive to looking at JW-critical material, gave it to them. Once they saw how their dad had done his homework and exposed that even in such a straightforward area as presenting arguments about creation/evolution the Society was thoroughly dishonest, they split. So these "exit-counseling" techniques are nothing more than gently presenting real facts to people who have been lied to.

Next the poster claims that Watters "has hopped from church to church since then". I don't believe that's true. I know that shortly after leaving Bethel he joined the Four Square church and eventually became a Pastor. In the early 1990s he quit, and I don't think he's regularly attended any church since. Then the poster implies that Watters ought to find some "stable community in which he can participate". After leaving abusive or foolish religions, why would anyone want to get involved in another?

From conversations with Watters I can attest that he is quite settled in his religious views, and is hardly a windblown "perpetual searcher after truth" etc. that the poster again darkly hints is reason to dismiss everything Watters has his fingers in.

The poster continues to get his facts wrong, and so his conclusions are worthless. I think that you should tell him to first get his facts straight, and then he might be able to advise you, and perhaps Watters, on a proper course of life.

AlanF

I recently discovered Mishnah's true identity and discussed his sexual perversions with his buddy Ted Jaracz. Seems Mishnah swings both ways. He has coital sex with female and male horses, and gives blow jobs to male horses. He seems to like the large quantity of semen.

AlanF

jonjonsimons

Mishnah,
You said: "I heard that Randy of freeminds no longer believes in God and is a homosexual. Can anyone verify this?"

Oh my goodness, could this really be true? I don't know. I'll turn on my GAYDAR and get back to you.

Who cares,
jjs

Help? Response about freeminds

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