My mom was born to a Jewish family on Staten Island, New York 50 years ago. She learned "the truth" from a group of sisters who told her that the Jews were not God's chosen people and that she needed to be baptized. She went through most of her life not following the society to a "T". She shirked responsibilities, field service, married a catholic (my dad) but despite being labeled a bad influence, a weak woman, and an overall bad witness she taught her kids about the Bible, God and the resurrection with a sincerity and depth that I think few people could experience. She taught her kids it was wrong to displease God, and brought us up under a firm hand. However? She also approved my brother take a ?worldly? girl to a prom, that we should only go out in field service if we wanted to and that her kids go to college. My mom was a "bad" witness... and she didn't care.
It cannot come as news to you that all of us had have mothers and yet, in some way, maybe it does. I read the other day that the commonalities that make us all, in some way, family, often get overlooked. People on this site somehow get turned into caricatures -- not real people, but virtual cardboard cutouts, complete with labels: liberal, conservative, red, blue, Dub, as if life was one of those TV shows where you have to be one thing or another, never a bit of both.
I often like to think that you will never truly know what another person is like on this board until you meet them a few times. A poster on this board that I know of (who use to post a lot) once said you only see about 20% of what that person is like. I use to keep in contact with several people on this board over a long period of time. I noticed that after I met some posters our keeping in contact decreased. There was always some part of me that didn?t want to admit they preferred the caricature aspect of me, rather than the real me.
Whenever there?s a political discussion or a devout Jehovah?s Witness comes to this site I never see more responses in people?s threads that dehumanize. What strikes me about these responses is how many of these writers pay little attention to what other people have to say. Instead, they prefer to deal with a caricature -- someone who belonged to a movement, a conspiracy and was taking orders in the service of some vast, nefarious cause. After the election I received an e-mail from a list serve that suggested that I cut ties with all my republican friends who supported politicians who wanted gay marriage outlawed. I?m in a marriage with a person of the same sex, and?I just couldn?t do it. I have too many sincere friends who disagree with me on political issues. I couldn?t sacrifice my friendships with people who disagree with me on some level. E-mails are the drive-by shootings of the common man. The face of the victim is never seen.
Its like talk radio. No one is ever merely mistaken. They are ``wrong'' in a moral sort of way -- flawed human beings at best, downright evil at worst. It's all nonsense, of course.
The reason I started with my mom is that often, like on this board, it is easier to avoid such humanizing touches than to deal with them. It is easier by far to characterize devout Jehovah?s Witnesses from hapless human beings, into (surprisingly) mere celebrities.
But they usually never make big money, they almost always work very hard, and when they screw up they often get publicly criticized because of it. Sometimes, when things are dark and people are being shunned, or isolated, or dying, they sit before the computer and read what they have done -- and cry. They do, and I know this for a fact.
The year is ending, and this is my final post of 2004. I have taken my share of potshots and dealt in caricatures -- and I am sorry for that. I still try to keep in mind that people on here are not malicious or evil, but are good people trying to do their jobs.
I would like to wish you all a merry christmas and a happy new year, including my mother, Ruth Dougherty, of Scottsdale, AZ.
- Preston