Thanks Trillaz. Without a doubt it is encouraging married couples not to have children and demonstrates they have their support to the empth degree by not having them. They specifically point out that they have (what they consider) very privelaged positions. They have certainly lost the plot.
Are many couples having babies in order to be less zealous?
by trillaz 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Broken Promises
Not having kids in order to "put first the Kingdom" has been around since the days of Rutherford. It's not a new idea, and one that they have actively promoted throughout the 20thC.
Not that all married couples listen to their "counsel", obviously, lol.
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Medina
Not having kids is something I find to be Unnatural if you decline having them because of some ''religious'' reason.
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nugget
Just before we were married there was an assembly talk entitled "Responsible childbearing in this time of the end". The gist of the talk was that if you had children you were showing a lack of faith and diverting energies better utilised in the preaching work. Those of us who married about that time seemed to delay having children and all of us started our families about the same time approximately 12 years after the talk.
I think what swung it for us was that we realised that children would not prevent us doing anything important and that if we hadn't pioneered or been missionaries by now it was unlikely we would be. Also we saw many elderly ones who had chosen to give up children expecting to raise them in the new system, only to reach the end of their lives with no hope of the dream ever being realised. It takes tremendous faith to remain childless, the society discourages it I feel because it is a way of exerting control, when members get beyond childbearing years they have to stick with the promise, they have lost everything. The society is the expected beneficiary of their estates and whilst these people are alive they can get donations and work from them for nothing in return. But perhaps having children also has a tendancy to change your perspective and causes you to re evaluate what is important there is a real danger that the mind control will slip.
The act of having children is a betrayal and a sign of weakness. If the couple are zealots then the baby is merely an accessory that allows them 1 hr a week of service with minimum effort. The child will have to adapt to the regime. If they were weak, the child is the perfect excuse. If they were once stonger the child gives them space to think.
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dozy
A couple were interviewed at our circuit assembly who used to be pioneers before they had children. The father heavily implied that the children were "an accident" and the brother interviewing them spoke about how "of course , you don't regret that the children "came along"".
Many in the congregation who knew the couple's history were surprised by the interview. I spoke to the brother who interviewed them afterward & told him that the whole interview had been a farce and that a deliberately false impression had been given. The couple had for many years been wanting to have children and the sister had suffered a few miscarriages , including one that was late term.
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fokyc
I was zealous at making the babies;
much more enjoyable than 'door to door' work!
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garyneal
My wife use to say that babies were NOT a blessing from God. She and I never agreed on this point and it cause a lot of arguments between us when she tried to apply that thinking to my son. Of course, the witnesses we knew were falling all over themselves and apologizing for my wife's remarks and demeanor and assuring her that babies were indeed blessings from Jehovah.
Still though, given the Society's attitude about a lot of things, I am pretty convinced that a lot of her bad thinking came from this cult. It is my sincere hope that she one day breaks free from it.