i love to get into the whole christmas spirit thing, but i never take it to the point of lying to or deceiving children about it.
i try to teach kids that it is the spirit of christmas that matters... then i saw this thing.
parents are actively trying to deceive their kids by offering them "proof" that santa is real.
To see the look on a kid's face when they get that letter is priceless !
Perhaps something akin to seeing the look on a JW's face when he recieves a publication from the GB and thinks it comes from the desk of the Almighty Himself? After all, it's so magical to have a healthy fantasy life...
i remember a few years ago, i changed congregation, so the elders told me that they had to send my folder to the other congregation.
when i was baptized, i don't remeber them telling me they kept information on me, and that they would pass it around to other congregations if ever i moved.. i wonder what kind of information is kept in these folders.
probably everyone in the congregation has his hours listed and the privileges they had written in it, but maybe there is alot more written that we don't even know about.
Oh, I would kill to see what my intrroductory letter said when I last changed congragations.
"Brother Baobab has demonstrated an independent spirit opposed to Jehovah God by refusing to shave his sideburns another quarter inch to mid-ear length as we insisted. Suely he will be destroyed at Armageddon for such insolence, and should be treated as a walking corpse."
This would explain my warm reception and subsequent dismissal. Musta been marked.
last evening we went out with 2 other former jw couples a couple of guys and their wives i knew from the old days of bethel.
we were discussing the public apology that the catholic church just authorized to be made to the child abuse victims for their cases being mishandled as well as that $100 million dollar check they just cut.. .
and i will ask you all the same question .
To apologize would require humility, and humility is an elusive concept when you feel you speak for God.
it's just become general knowledge in a wsm congregation that the wife of the ex po was removed from the pioneer list for selling clothes.
..selling clothes along with the watchtower & awake whilst out in the ministry work!
apparently, she'd been doing this for about 30 years.
I know that in the Phillipines the group that was beheaded a year or so ago sold Avon during their ministry. Some sort of cover story in countries under ban? But not this freak, of course!
the human face is unique.
it is the window to the mind.
dogs wag their tales when they're happy and down their ears when they're afraid or puzzled but people, by their facial expressions, are able to transmit much more subtle and/or complex messages and are capable of doing so at will if we so desire.. .
GreenPalm: Facial expressions are not uniquely human. For example, you can determine a cat's mood by the posture of the ears and whickers. Haven't you seen a dog snarl when it feels angry or frightened? Is it all that different than the snarl on a human's face during similar emotional states? Chimpanzees even smile when they're happy.
Really I can't think of any emotions that are uniquely human, and a trained eye would always be able to read an animal's body language.
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do any of you have the matrix wish i could just forget all this attitude sometimes?
me and the wife were fightitng again and she asked why i can't just go back and pretend or just forget all this... she said as an athnostic you either don't belive in god or don't believe that god cares so why can't you just go and fake it... i was dumbfounded i ask her why can't you just get the f*ck out and stop faking it... she stormed out and i sat down here..... so i ask ya, if you could forget all the negatives about the wbts (i know thats a lot) and just go back like nothing had ever happened would you?
Brooooootherrrrr Aaaaanderson.... We're here on a shepherding call. We here you've been contacted by a very dangerous apostate called "Morpheus." Do not listen to his apostate reasoning, Brother Anderson.
did you always call the elders or talk to them about things?
did you have a favorite elder that you confided to about everything?
if someone was acting inappropriately, did you feel obliged to "report" them to the elders?
How much private and confidential information do you think gets leaked to overbearing, busy-body elderettes? Reminds me of that old Witness joke... Don't get your hopes up:
A publisher, mimisterial servant, and elder are out in service when they find a genie in a bottle. They have three wishes to split between them.
"I wish I had more knowledge about the God's Organization, to help run it," says the publisher. POOF! He becomes a ministerial servant.
"I wish I had more knowledge about the Bible, to help teach it," wished the ministerial servant. POOF! He's becomes an elder.
"I wish I knew everything that was going on in the congregation, to help influence it," wishes the elder. POOF! He becomes a sister!
i'm on a program called " tenncare" which is basically medicaid.. they send out a newsletter every month or so and i got one in today.
it had stats from last year which included child abuse.. .
quoting " sadly, last year more than 1,500 children in tennesee were victims of reported physical abuse.
One thing to be wary of is the definition of "sexual abuse." Is exposure to pornography sexual abuse? Then one must define "pornography" also. Is taking a picture of your baby in the bathtub child pornography? Some might say yes, then that can skew numbers.
That being said, there are many, many sickos out there. Too many.
sometimes, i think my husband is much more church oriented than i am.
i still get upset when i attend church, but lately he has been putting the push on me for us to go back to his church where he grew up in.
he would like to start taking our daughter so she has a somewhat structured religious belief.
Stinky where do you find all these hot mamas for your avatars? I liked Alicia Keyes, now who is this?
my wife and i got on a discussion about something i never would've guessed we'd need to.
she wants to teach our new baby about santa claus, easter bunny, & tooth fairy, but i don't.
of course, as witnesses we never would have taught that, and i have to acknowledge that i may only be reasoning using that old set of values.. i don't want to look into my kid's eyes and tell her something that i know for a fact isn't true.
Melba, I said parenting CAN be a condescending excercise, not that is "is such" a condescending excercise. And no, I have not done it, at least not to my knowledge! A parent must "assume an air of superiority" and not treat a child as an equal, and that is one dictionary definition of "condescend."
REAL baby deer are nowhere near as helpless as Bambi. The exagerrated helplessness of Bambi is what makes him cute, because it instills in us an exagerrated sense of, in this case, physical superiority. Actually, I'd argue that in terms of stamina and agility, deer are far superior to humans. Watching Bambi stumble on the ice is, at its core, sadistic. My sister learned to duplicate this by placing tape on the feet of our kitten so he would slip on our kitchen floor. She thought it would look cute.
Convincing children a preposterous story like Santa Claus is fact exagerrates their mental helplessness, like placing tape on the feet of a kitten to make him slip. The slip, in the case of children believing in Santa, is mental. It's sadistic. I agree that as "superior creatures" it is our duty to help children, is teaching them a lie and laughing at them for believeing us accomplishing that?
You mentioned a few muppets. Consider Elmo and Barney. Both are childlike, both teach how to be good people. Why is Elmo loved and Barney despised? Because Elmo is small, like a child, and therefore helpless. Barney is, in fact, larger than even adults, and this creates a sort of inherent dilemma of a giant child that cannot be controlled, something that annoys everybody. Like the expression, "Quit being such a big baby!" I should hope that parents do teach their children that Cookie Monster & company are just puppets. I'm not sure what you mean by "ruling them out." There's a difference between suspending your disbelief for a television show and believing it is real.
"I was the child in kindergarten that made many children cry because Santa wasnt real. Maybe I have some repressed guilt about bursting all their holiday bubbles."
Another interesting dilemma. Surely "apostate" sites like this burst many people's religious bubbles. Isn't truth more important than comfortable delusion? You should give yourself more credit than to call yourself "brainwashed" for telling your peers in gradeschool that they were being fooled. Wasn't it your classmates who were brainwashed?
