Ha your funny tell that to the young girl in nearby cong that gets baptised and one year later because of sexting at 9 gets df and is shunned by all her playmates at the kh .Do you honestly think she was fully aware that she could not play dolls because of her sin?
PORTUGAL: Filed a petition to the parliament to erase the legal entity of the Jehovah's Witness
by EdenOne 127 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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poopie
Choice was that her personal choice or was she afraid to die at armegeddon
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poopie
Jw witnesses must obey ceaser unless it conflicts with God's law. -
poopie
Do you mean wait till there conscience kicks in after 30 yrs are you kidding me.
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poopie
I stand corrected the girl was 14 not 8 but same difference.
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poopie
14 and shunned.
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poopie
Now if the govt new that 14 yr olds were being physiologically tortured by members of a religion would they be ok with that ? If so humans are really done there twisted and sick.
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poopie
So if grownups ate fully aware that if they mesa up they will get shunned and experience psychological harm an need to get help from the state as a result of abuse by the loveing arangement then the state has right to at the least look into it. It's not persecition
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EdenOne
73 signatures and the press is already sniffing around ...
There are technical reasons why the request to dissolve the legal entity that represents the Jehovah's Witnesses in Portugal was necessary in order to get them to lose their legal recognition. It's the only possible legal avenue, and even so it's not a straight arrow. The reasons are too technical and specific to our legislation for me to explain here, and in a language that isn't my first language anyway.
Again, the objective is NOT to forbid their religion (that would never happen anyway), but to curtail their legal status, so that they are forced to review their anti-constitutional shunning policies and only then they can file again for legal recognition.
And in the meantime, there is press and public awareness ....
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carla
When my jw joined he was NOT told many things! I told him many things, printed out from the old Quotes site, many of your stories here, news stories, etc... He would then go to the elders about some of it and they would minimize what I had said, said it was out of context, refused to let him see the actual books the quotes came from and on and on. It was like WW3 here between me, the elders and a very confused and gullible (?) man. I then spent a small fortune buying a few old jw books and some reprinted (example-Millions book) from Freeminds and elsewhere but by then he wouldn't look at them and he and the elders claimed an apostate probably made them and changed them to make jw's look bad.
Let's take his baptism for example, they had already changed the wording to being baptized into the org and not Father, Son and Holy Spirit only. I brought this up to my soon to be baptized jw and what the real implications would be. He naturally brought it up to his 'study' guy and they again downplayed it because I was a ubm, a spiritual danger, etc.... not only that, but satan was in me according to the elders. They also told him that he may have to separate from me and the family if it continued, meaning my trying to tell him the truth about jw's. So yes, maybe he was not told all the rules because they were too busy trying foil my attempts to get him to think and question. As you well know they held out a carrot even his wife could not compete with, a chance in paradise earth.
Is shunning coercive? yes, I believe it is. If the choice is to follow a written rule/law of an organization or to possibly lose all your loved ones, job and even your home then you are being coerced.
From online dictionary- coerce-persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats.
obtain (something) by using force or threats."their confessions were allegedly coerced by torture"If the organization has only an unspoken rule about shunning then there is not much one can do. If a country bans such practices and a person loses everything due to organizational policies at least the person may have some recourse in at least retaining their job and home. Not much luck with loved ones though.
Baptism as a minor with all that entails for a jw is unconscionable. In other churches that even practice infant baptism it is not such an issue. For example, a person was baptized in say a Methodist church and later left to join a non denominational church there would in all likelyhood be no repercussions for that person at all in either the family, job or home situation. Clearly not the case with a jw.
While I agree that love and human decency cannot be legislated I still applaud the negative publicity the petition will bring upon jw's as small as that may be.