January 2013 WT Article is Cruel to JW Parents

by NoRegrets 22 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  NoRegrets

  While looking at the PDF of the new "reduced in size is a blessing from Jah" WT for January 2013, I noticed this latest sickening "How the Bible changed my life" article. Under the history banner is listed "prodigal son". (I also noted the person was born the same year as me.) The article was very sickening in being a one in a million article of a JW child growing up and leaving the org. This of course took the young man down a path of addiction, using, and selling drugs. The "before" picture is even a hilarious, stoner-looking faced expression of the young guy wearing *gasp* a stocking hat and having LONG HAIR! Anyway, the whole article smacks of urban legend and complete unreality. We, on this forum know that the odds of people genuinely going back to the WT because a person realizes "it was the truth all along" are slim to nil.

  So getting back to my title for this thread, I do think this is a blatantly cruel article for the brainwashed JW parents who have children who have left. The article tries to "soothe" them by having the young man go out of his way to say that the parents didn't do anything to deserve him leaving and that the parents were good and decent! What this really is doing is trying to wipe out the idea that maybe the child was onto something in deciding to leave at great consequence. And is most cruel in instilling false hope in the parents that their child would ever return when we all know what an extremely rare occurence that is once you break free of the mind control.

  Lastly, perpetuating this false hope helps to goad the parents along to hopefully continuing to shun their own flesh and blood, which is a tall order but one which the Watchtower Society seems insidiously good at somehow. How tragic for these naive people to be manipulated and reduced down to infant-level at the behest of a group of old men in New York City pretending to be god!

  NR
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  SunnyDays

  The vast majority who leave the JW's, do not become drug addicts, prostitutes or criminals. That's just what they want JW's to believe.
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  Sulla

  Totally agree. I was never technically "addicted," anyway. And getting paid a couple times for sex does not make you a "prostitute," or anything.
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  transhuman68

  This is an unusual experience- but it’s probably safe to assume that somewhere in the world it has happened. All religions and many organizations can recite this story- it is one of the oldest in history: the story of the prodigal son. Many kids rebel against their parents; start doing dead-end things, and live an unsustainable lifestyle; until they realise that it isn’t working, and go home to what is safe & familiar to them. But it doesn’t mean they have made the best decision- just that they have grown up a little.
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  2+2=5

  Haha nice one Sulla.
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  Cagefighter

  Leaving the JW's doesn't make people turn to prositution, crime, and dope... Growing up with out the full love and support of one's family does.
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  WTWizard

  And I am not involved in the kind of crap the washtowel claims happens when you leave. I found the true Satan, and there is no promoting people going around committing ritual murders, defacing things, drug use, and whatever other crap they blame on Satan. Rather, it is about using the spiritual powers that the washtowel doesn't want you using (that is, whatever is left after it has been trashed by joke-hova and his filthy angels). Rituals involve nothing worse than burning small slips of paper in a controlled situation (and we do advocate using a good burning bowl to prevent a more serious fire). No mutilation, no torturing animals (we are, in fact, against torturing animals for no good reason), no sacrifice of children, no coercing children to dedicate at age 6 without being able to learn the consequences, no going against nature.

  And NO WASTING YOUR TIME GOING DOOR TO DOOR!
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  yadda yadda 2

  Yep, they are indeed a cruel religion. The leaders of the Watchtower Society are a group of heartless, authoritarian, legalistic, souless power-hungry men who are concerned with one thing and one thing only - unity at all costs. They have no conscience about children dying out of refusal of a blood transfusion, cold-hearted shunning of children and parents, convincing kiddies that birthdays are evil, that weekends sports with worldlies is wrong, etc etc etc. It is not a Christian organisation, it is a modern-day incarnation of the Pharisees.
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  sd-7

  I know what it is to hope and wait for someone to come back into the organization. (I guess compared to how hard that time was, it's actually a relief to be married to her, to be honest.) I had no idea just how painful this situation was for people until I had to deal with it myself. And just how cold the elders can be as far as this issue is concerned. I found no comfort at all in anything the Society published on this issue. My one ray of hope came from something Paul wrote at the end of 2 Corinthians 12, a scripture I'd never seen discussed in its context before in any WT literature, about how he mourned for those who hadn't repented.

  They hold out this hope to parents, but the fact is, people are never really forgiven once they get booted out. You can only hope to live long enough that no one still alive remembers and never speak of it again, but it'll be in your file long after you're cold in the ground.

  It's nothing new, though. Manipulating people's emotions--more like taking an ice pick to them--is something they're experts at.

  --sd-7
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  BluesBrother

  "This of course took the young man down a path of addiction, using, and selling drugs. The "before" picture is even a hilarious, stoner-looking faced expression of the young guy wearing *gasp* a stocking hat and having LONG HAIR! Anyway, the whole article smacks of urban legend and complete unreality."

  I would not be too quick to dismiss the truthfulness of the account, especially since it has a name, and photo's of the subject. The story mirrors exactly the experiences of an old friend of mine who , sadly enough, is a J W Elder