baptising minors

Marilyn

Tonights news has made me think even harder about baptising minors. It's one thing to hold adults accountable for breaking WT rules, but it's not right to subject kids to the harshness of shunning for doing what their parents encouraged them to do - get baptised. When ever my kids screw up, I'm not that thrilled but I ultimately blame myself for my inadequate parenting - and yes I've been fairly inadequate at times. Jehovah's Witnesses must be the only religion that expects their kids to always get it right. And if they don't, blame it entirely on them and make them suffer the humiliation of shunning just to rub their noses in it. It really is quite unrealistic to expect young people to never make serious errors of judgement. Surely this is another good reason not to baptise anyone before the age of 21, if not 25. Any parent whose child does something serious enough to be disfellowshipped needs to take a good hard look at themselves and their inadequacies.

Marilyn

Amazing

When I first studied in the late 1960s, Jehovah's Witnesses boasted that they do not baptize minors, but expect that when a person gets baptized they are old enough to fully understand what they are doing ... and be able to make an adult committment to Jehovah. They especially boasted in comnparison to how the Roman Catholic Church baptized babies. Now it seems that the JW religion in the last 20 years has been pushing young and younger JWs to get baptized ... to get them when they are young.

Oddly enough, though I was baptized as a baby in the Catholic Church, I have had little or no trouble from that religion ... yet young baptized JWs suffer so much under the heavy hand of the Watchtower Society.

metatron

The Watchtower hypocrites KNOW that teenagers are too young and immature
to make a good decision on a MARRIAGE VOW but they push them into baptism
anyway.

Does anyone in this stupid organization really think teenagers are mature adults?
The first to complain about them probably see no problem with baptizing kids.

metatron

Sentinel

Marilyn,

I find it so interesting in the way that JW's deal with baptism. As it was posted, they condeme other relgions but have not removed the rafter from their own eye.

Jesus, who's example Christians are supposed to follow, wasn't baptised until he was thirty. If most of the younger offspring of active JW's waited until that age, no doubt, they would NOT choose to do it. They would be making their own adult decision.

Children and young adults have no business getting baptised. But JW's are all about numbers and so they highly encourage it, so the member can survive Armageddon, be accepted in the congregation and not labeled as weak; and parents use it as a guide, for who their son or daughter can or cannot associate with.

Sentinel

RunningMan

JWs have always ridiculed the Catholic church, and others for baptizing infants. However, it appears that control is more effective if it can be implemented earlier.

Younger persons are less skeptical. They are more willing to accept the views of those around them. So, they can be pressured into baptism. Once baptised, the organization is then able to exert greater pressure on them through the use of their tools - fear and social pressure.

So, it doesn't really matter what is good for the individual. Only what is good for the organization is considered.

TTBoy

Ummmm how can anyone rationally debate that the WTS does not push young people into marriage? They most definately do! They do it with baptism also.

ON MARRIAGE:

You can't masturbate, no sex before marriage, you can't even date unless you are thinking of getting married. But yet you go to public schools (if you're lucky) and see everyone you know "doing it". A child is faced with God's laws (as presented their whole life by the WTS) or freedom.

Then there are the strict rules on sex after marriage. I have seen so many witness youth marry young (17-20) because they aren't allowed to have sex before marriage. I may have agreed with getting married at 15-20 in the 1300's because of life expectancy, but not in this century.

What's a greater evil? Breaking God's law about fornication or following WTS polocies? I'd rather take my chances with God.

From my JW friend's experiences many find they are uncompatable because of never "getting to know each other" because of the chaperone policies. Most have NO sex education because of the taboo the society has placed on sex and your genitals. In the process they have had a child. Now everyone suffers because husband and wife don't get along not that this doesn't happen all the time but atleast you aren't forced into the situation.

ON BAPTISM:

I'll have to congradulate Catholics. At least they baptise them as babies when they have no idea what's going on. JWs place an adult decision on a teenager or an uninformed, newly Duped person.

I would have never gotten baptised if I could have made an objective, non-JW biased, decision.

Everyone else is doing it. I only know WTS teachings. It must be right.

TT

Edited by - TTBoy on 24 September 2002 14:4:15

freedom96

My ex recently encouraged our child to get baptized. He does not nearly realize the seriousness of this action. To say the least, I am sooooo pissed. He cannot seriously understand the magnitude of what is expected to being a Witness. He is not old enough to clearly understand the consequences of what the Society expects out of him, and the punishments that would follow. At least he has a parent who will accept him no matter what.

The argument of baptizing young, infant style, or older, has many different sides that it is difficult to put just into one post, or thread. But as some religions baptize at birth, those same religions don't kick you out like the Witnesses do.

I agree with what was posted earlier. The fact remains that Jesus himself did not get baptized until 30. As far as I am concerned, that settles it. At least then one can make an intelligent decision, not being forced into it.

FiveShadows

Something i just heard the spirit say: "Truely I say to you today, a prideful and hypocritical Jehovah's Witness commits just as bad sin as a 'worldly' person that has commited adultery. Those that live by the law are judged by the law and those that live by the ransom are forgiven by the ransom." :-D ~FS

RandomTask

I totally agree. I know I got baptized at 16 because 4 other kids around my age were going to. I didn't want to get left out and shunned as being "not spiritual". I never really had the desire to get baptized, only that it was something that I had to do and was expected to do. Had I waited until I was an adult I would have never done it.

I do agree that witnesses push kids into marriage early indirectly, but officially they are counseled to wait before getting married until they are older and able "to make an adult decision". Isn't getting baptized just as weighty a decision as getting married? How hypocritical!

blondie

I think part of the push to get young ones baptized is the nebulous idea of the age of accountability. Children are supposedly protected by their parents' (or parent) righteous standing but at some point the children are responsible for their own actions and can be destroyed at Armageddon unless they are baptized. I can remember one sister going from elder to elder trying to get them to commit to an age (10, 13, 14, etc.). She was so afraid her 9 year old was going to die (this was pre-1975). There have been a few articles about this under "family merit." At a convention this summer, one of the speakers painted a horrible picture of children dying because they were not baptized.

The community at large places age limits for driving, drinking, and getting married because these ones aren't ready for these responsibilities.

When my grandparents were witnesses, children didn't even have to go to the meetings.

baptising minors

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