Posts by Silence

12

Celebrating Christmas in Secret with "Apostates" Comments Please?

by ARoarer in

jw
friends

i hope you all enjoyed your christmas

Silence

The first article was an interesting read, although in itself quite contradictory in some of its assertions.

I felt that the second article was a little insignificant and has no relativity to why I chose to not reintroduce xmas stress into my life.

The third article did not load.

I think the main objection I would have is simply that, as stated in the first article, and I do agree with, worship should really be something we do every day if it is to be regarded as sincere.

Throughout my life I?ve always found ?Sunday Christians? to be the most offensive bunch of hypocrites around. Who do they think they?re kidding when they say, ?Oh dear Lord please forgive me for beating my wife on Monday, sleeping with the neighbors wife on Tuesday, getting drunk on Wednesday, gambling my wages on Thursday, swearing at my children on Friday and stealing from my employer on Saturday, but I?m here today Lord so my wife won?t leave me and if you forgive me then she has to because she?s a good Christian woman. Psst ? Hey Lord isn?t that bit of skirt in the back a fine looking piece of flesh? Can I apologize for my sins with her next week??

I thought it was apparent in what I wrote that I haven?t returned to following the masses purely on the basis of seeing how meaningless it really is for most people.

If it has a deep and meaningful significance for you and you need a particular day of the year to acknowledge your Christian faith and love for family and friends ? more power to you. I do realize that my opinionated way of expressing myself may leave a few wondering if I believe my choice is right and theirs is wrong. In actual fact though, I simply feel that my choice is different and I have my own personal reasons why. Very few of those reasons have anything to do with the JW religion.

14

Silentlambs: Letter from an Elder

by Nosferatu in

dear bill

recently, we had our two-day circuit assembly.

some points for you to note.

Silence

I found this whole topic one brought out quite an emotive reaction in me.

Two of my five children are sexual abuse survivors. The abuse against them was committed by the same person who was and still is in fact a JW. The most difficult aspect of the situation was that it was my ex husbands mother who perpetrated this crime against our children. We were still married at the time and both of us were still practicing Witnesses at the time. We went to the elders of our congregation with this information and following their advice my ex husband wrote a letter to the body of Elders in the congregation his mother belonged to detailing what the children had told us.

After many meetings between her Elders and ours (which we were not invited to attend) they decided that the matter was better dealt with by not even telling her what we had accused her of. I was told that I needed to work on forgiveness over this and learn to move on. My reaction was one of utter rage as any parent can imagine and I very loudly and forcefully expressed my disgust at how they couselled me regarding this matter when this woman was among Witness children unchecked.

The reason they gave us for not confronting her with our accusations was simply that there had to be two witnesses to such a thing and because she had abused the children on separate occasions and not in the presence of each other then there was nothing they could do.

These children, who were then 5 and 7 years old and now are 14 and 16 years old, have recovered from what they went through for about 4 years at the hands of this woman I trusted with them. It is however not due to any support or validation or help from anyone within the organization. My ex husband and myself took measures to see to it that she never had contact with them again and we sought help from so called worldly counsellors and support groups to help us with their healing process.

As far as the Elders were concerned, Jehovah's "good name" was more important than my children's well being and the safety of other children within any congregation this evil woman is part of. I know of other evil doers who have committed such crimes against children and always it has been the experience of the victims that the burden of protecting the name of Jehovah requires their silence and allows these evil people to hide behind their facade of "Christianity" and continue on hurting the innocents.

It has been said by Elders and CO's and DO's and at assemblies that Jehovah will bring about justice and repair all the damage from such things. I ask, "How will he do that for the many who have left his so called 'chosen' organization because they have been hurt so badly by the ones he allows to remain in it? If I have not survived 'the end' because I have since become inactive and my children are executed because of my having left then how will justice be served? If we are to believe that the perpetrators of these disgusting crimes against our children are forgiven by Jehovah and therefore we must forgive them also and they get to walk among the survivors into the new system yet due to our inability to 'let it go' we die, how is that just?"

Much is said of the pedophile Catholic priests among Christendom and it is too often that I've heard the words that JW's would never tolerate such goings on. This is not true. They not only tolerate it - they enable it just as much as the hierachy within Christendom.

To this day I will not go to any other organization because doctrinally speaking I cannot tolerate the BS. I no longer am an active Witness because I cannot tolerate the BS that covers over the evil deeds within.

12

Celebrating Christmas in Secret with "Apostates" Comments Please?

by ARoarer in

jw
friends

i hope you all enjoyed your christmas

Silence

I must say I did find this thread interesting.

I have been what would be classified as an inactive JW for approxamitely 3 years now. My ex husband was the type of JW that only really put in an appearance when our marriage was right on the edge of ending so his sincerity was never genuine to begin with. He introduced xmas to our children last year for the first time. For the children it was a bit strange because they'd never had anything to do with xmas celebrations before. When I explained it to them throughout the years it was never a case of "This is what Jehovah expects of us." It was along the lines of "Santa is not real and I have no intention of lying to you and pretending some fat man in a red suit is giving you gifts that come from me" and "Millions of people the world over celebrate this day of the year all at the same time and the only people it serves in the end are the shopkeepers who make lots of money when people buy presents they can't afford for people they nine times out of ten don't even like just because they'll be guilt tripped if they don't follow the masses by doing what everyone else does."

I try to raise my kids to be individuals with a mind of their own. To me - even though I'm no longer an active JW - It would be equally hypocritical to celebrate an occasion that I believe was introduced to make Christianity more palatable to the non Christians and has grown to become one of the most money raking ventures known throughout history. It is the time of year when people experience the highest level of stress, womens refuges the world over are full to overflowing, domestic violence drastically increases just to mention only a few side effects from this celebration of goodwill to all men.

Ohhhh yes please - Do sign me up!

One of the things I appreciate the most about my 14 years as a JW - I saw through the shallow traditions of such things for what they really are.

I still have what I call "Family love you days" for my children and it's when I can afford it and it's never at the same time of year or even only once a year. It is a genuine "Love you Day" and I would never want to trade what I have with them on those days for the shallow meaningless "Duty Day" that Xmas is for the majority of people.

Just one last note: I have 5 children ranging from 22 - 8 and for the last two years running all of them have expressed that they don't actually like xmas and can't understand their fathers insistence on them doing it. The 8 year old said quite plainly that he enjoyed having family days much more because he could see why we did it. He simply doesn't understand the fat man in the red suit thing and wonders whether or not people have heard of stranger danger and if they have then why on earth would they encourage their children to go and sit on a total strangers lap when he clearly wears a hairy mask over his face.

57

Verses that bothered you as a JW

by JH in

we find god's name "jehovah" so many times in the old testament, but not at all in the new testament.

jesus is called a "mighty god" in the bible.

jesus is also called "father".

Silence

I have a few issues which have already been addressed so I'll just touch on them slightly.

Firstly the issue of lots two daughters:

These two girls were apparently virgins. Well I'm not an expert on the subject but I do believe that it's a little hard to imagine that two virgins of that day and time who had never had sex with a man before - had the knowledge of when they would be ovulating in order for their impregnations to take place - were ovulating at the exact same time of the month or had the sexual expertise to not only arouse their father to erection (ever heard of drinkers droop) when he was catatonically drunk enough to not realise he was having sex with his own daughters but did it two nights running or perhaps they didn't have hangovers then?

They literally would have had to climb on top of their drunk unconscious father and assuming the man could hold an erection long enough to do the deed, they would have had to use considerable force to break their hymen so penetration could occur. A pretty amazing feat for two virgins to accomplish two nights running don't you think?

Also the imagination really would have to be stretched somewhat to imagine that they would flee a city with such haste that they leave anything behind that they didn't need for their imediate survival and yet they are able to carry enough alcohol to get their father pickled two nights running. Even if they took a donkey to carry what belongings they could, surely they wouldn't waste valuable space on that poor donkey to carry Daddy's booze.

The picture I've always seen in this little example of "Righteous Lot and his two daughters" is not as it is painted to appear. What I see is an Alcoholic father who's level of protection over his daughters is such that he'd offer them up to be raped by a pack of men who are trying to bang down his door to rape his visitors who he'd never met before that night. The girls had been raised in a city whereby deviant sex seemed to be the way of life. The expertise it would have taken to get their father to the point of ejaculation certainly does not indicate pure and innocent virgins sorry.

I could go on about a few things but I'll finish off with just one other item of annoyance.

The scriptural reference is that of 2 Kings 2:24

Elisha had just freshly been appointed as the one to take over the duties of Elija. He performs a miricle or two and then meets up with a number of small children who decide to jeer and taunt him with the words "Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!"

This prophet of God uses his God given powers to "call down evil upon them, in the name of God. Then two she-bears came out from the woods and went tearing to pieces forty-two children."

Now my understanding has always been that "God" has always tried to distance himself from evil things. James 1:13 points to this quite clearly. Yet it would appear that he will not only allow his chosen prophets to call down evil in his name upon a number of small children, he sanctified the evil when the two she-bears answered the call to evil and ripped 42 children into pieces.

How is it possible to teach our children not to retaliate when taunted at school etc if Gods chosen prophet unleashes Gods power to such an evil degree as is stated in this Biblical example?

Finally: I agree entirely with the viewpoint that the Bible does not bring any kind of honor or respect to women. They have been treated no better than cattle and in fact in many instances cattle are valued and treated better than most of the women in Biblical examples.