blessing before meals

Raoul

I am having some friends over for dinner in the near future who are Jehovah's Witnesses. Is there anything I need to know before I ask the blessing over our food? I don't want to ruin our evening before it has begun.

Quotes

Hello Raoul, welcome to this discussion board.

I would suggest you do whatever you would normally do when you don't have JWs as dinner guests.

They are guests in your home, and should respect your traditions, if indeed you have any.

If you normally pray, do it the way your normally would. If you don't normally pray before meals, don't.

BTW, from your chosen post name at this board, does it have any relation to what you will be serving your dinner guests? (see Eating Raoul)

~Quotes, of the "God, we paid for this food, so thanks for nothing" class

AK - Jeff

I assume you are not or have not been a witness?

1- Jw's address the Father as Jehovah in prayer

2- They pray in Jesus name

3- They will most likely not consider your prayer as 'acceptable to God' if u are not baptized witness

4- They will most likely presumptously ask to say the prayer themselves if that is the case

5- if u are not a witness, they will not bow thier heads or say amen to your prayer, as they consider all prayer that is not from witnesses to be addressing the demons or satan

That about sums it up! As long as you follow the theocratic rules of jw-land you will be ok - swallow hard and know that cults will be cults!

Jeff

AK - Jeff

Why does that happen? The grey-highlights on some of my posts?

Sorry

tetrapod.sapien

that is some pretty good advice. oh, yeah, one more thing: don't tell them you came here for advice!

Raoul

Thanks guys for being johnny-on-the-spot with some suggestions. No I'm not a JW, have no plans of becoming one.

I had planned to do as we normally do, which ask a blessing that goes something like this-

"Heavenly Father, We ask that you bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies, our bodies to your service in Jesus name, Amen."

for what its worth, I know that JW's are opposed to "vain repetions" when you pray and the above blessing is one I and many others use (give or take a word or phrasing). But I believe I heard somewhere that when the Hebrews prayed before meals, they all said the exact same prayer, the same way,every time they ate, including Jesus....

Mac

I'm not giving thanks for anything until I've tasted it...that's just silly!!!!

mac

Quotes

Raoul, don't worry too much about the "repition prayer" thing.

Yes, JWs, do give lip service to not having repititious prayers (that is why they don't repeat the Lord's Prayer, they say it is an example of HOW to pray, not boilerplate text for exactly what to say each time).

But in fact, despite their rejection repitition, in my experience most elder's say pretty much the same prayer, over and over. Or at least, the same couple of prayers. My dad had the "meal time prayer" which was always almost exactly the same each time; he also had the "start the family study prayer" and the "meeting close" prayer. 80-90% of these prayers were identical; they remaining 10-20% was different between each scenario; but that portion was always the same within the same scenario.

So don't worry about the prayer thing; they are as repititious as anyone else. Oh, and don't let them give you a hard time about your prayer. They expect other people to respect their religious beliefs, so you should demand they do the same when inside your house.

Hey, ask them about why Watch Tower Society became affiliated as an officially recognized NGO (non-governmental organization) with the United Nations (their sworn enemy). Might make some interesting dinner conversation!

fahrvegnugen

Of course it's your home and you are entitled to do as you wish, but since you asked the question, I'm assuming you care about putting them at ease. You can simply ask them what they prefer. Since individual JW's are all over the map on these sorts of things, it's impossible to know whether they would be comfortable with having someone else offer a prayer or not. Maybe they would feel better just saying their own prayers to themselves.

nicolaou

I like Bart Simpsons approach to blessings at mealtimes;

[1] ".. rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub!"

[2] "Dear God, we paid for this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing,"

Seriously, if you usually ask a blessing then do so again - I'd just try to put the religion thing to one side for the evening.

blessing before meals

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