Not letting the kiddies get baptized as minors is key.
Exactly. So what does he say to that? What did he answer to your marriage-comparison? Will he agree to wait with the baptism decision until the children are adults?
Posts by Zana
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28For My Kids
by myjourney ini haven't been on here much, but every so often i try and keep up with the discussions.
i'm sure this topic has been talked about before, so my apologies in advance if i'm repeating.. a little about me.... i'm a non baptized jw married to a devout jw.
both my husband and i were raised in the organization.
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Zana
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Need Suggestions/examples: Guide to helping family & friends break free
by LisaRose ini was going through my copy of steve hassan's combating cult mind control and it occurred to me that it would be great to have something like this specifically for us ex jehovah's witnesses.
while this is a great book, the examples he uses are mostly from people that were moonies, as steve is a former moonie and many people that have contacted him for help were relatives of moonies.
while cults all work basically the same, it would be nice to be have some ideas on things that are specific to jehovah's witnesses.
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Zana
Adding to #2:
Figure out the main reasons why they stay in the cult. This is probably easier with people who converted, because you can ask them why they joined in the first place.
Do they focus on the scripture? Is it the social aspect? Is it the paradise earth promise? ...
Another thing:
The GB is very clever in brainwashing JWs towards thinking that GB = Jehovah. Try to break that thought. If you leave the JWs, that doesn't mean that you leave Jehovah, too (although many eventually will). The GB just offers their interpretation of the scripture. But they are imperfect men. They can be wrong and obviously they were wrong many times in the past.
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For My Kids
by myjourney ini haven't been on here much, but every so often i try and keep up with the discussions.
i'm sure this topic has been talked about before, so my apologies in advance if i'm repeating.. a little about me.... i'm a non baptized jw married to a devout jw.
both my husband and i were raised in the organization.
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Zana
There isn't any balance in my children's lives. It's a repeat of my childhood all over again.
It's not. You know TTATT. Your parents didn't. You can give them balance in their lives. And you can demand the right to do so from your husband without separating from him.
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For My Kids
by myjourney ini haven't been on here much, but every so often i try and keep up with the discussions.
i'm sure this topic has been talked about before, so my apologies in advance if i'm repeating.. a little about me.... i'm a non baptized jw married to a devout jw.
both my husband and i were raised in the organization.
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Zana
Am I crazy to be considering this drastic step?
No, you want what is best for your children. But don't forget about the negative consequences a seperation can have for your kids, too.
I am with freddo. Why don't you first start living a non-JW life more openly? Limit your meeting attendance. Spend time with your kids with non-JW activities. You love your husband, give him a chance to wake up (have you read one of Steve Hassan's books?), or at least - as a family - try to find a way to arrange your lives in a home where people have different beliefs. But first you need to show your disbelief more openly, I think. And voice your opinion, that too much JW exposure is bad for children (violence in bible books, talking about sex / armageddon in meetings, ...). To me it looks like that talking about separation would come very much out of the blue for your husband.
Myself I am lucky that my wife is not a very devout JW. Family comes first in her order of priorities in life (although she wouldn't admit that Jehovah is not her number one priority). What about your husband?
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Evolution is a Fact - Index for Numbers 1 - 30
by cofty in#1 protein functional redundancycomparing the sequences of amino acids in ubiquitous proteins confirms the relationship between all living things.. #2 dna functional redundancycomparison of the dna that codes for the amino acids of ubiquitous proteins predicts the tree of life with an astonishing degree of accuracy.. #3 ervsendogenous retroviruses that infected our ancestors are found in the same place of the genome of our closest primate cousins.. #4 smelly geneshundreds of broken genes that used to code for olfactory receptors in our ancestors are still found in our genome.. #5 vitamin cwhy humans can no longer make their own vitamin c and what that tells us about our species' history.. #6 human chromosome 2our second biggest chromosome is made up of two of our ancestors' chromosomes stuck end-to-end.. #7 human egg yolk genehumans and our primate cousins have the genes for making vitellogenin and they are all broken in the same way.. #8 jumping genesbits of parasitic code called alu elements prove our common ancestry with primates.. #9 less chewing more thinkinga broken gene for a type of muscle fibre we no longer have tells a story about our evolutionary past.. #10 non-coding dnain common with many other species huge amounts of our genome originated as copying errors.. #11 tiktaalikan amazing fossil discovery illustrates the transition of life from sea to land.. #12 lenski's e.coli experimentan experiment with e.coli, now in it's third decade, demonstrates the power of natural selection.. #13 morris minor bonnetsevolution has to make do with building on existing designs as illustrated by the recurrent laryngeal nerve.. #14 joey goes to ozfossil evidence for the origins of marsupials found in antarctica exactly as predicted.. #15 robinson crusoethe biogeography of oceanic islands presents an impossible dilemma for creationism.. #16 aquatic mammalsan excellent sequence of fossils illustrates the evolutionary journey of whales from land to sea.. #17 belyaev's silver foxesa 50 year breeding programme demonstrates the amazing power of selection and the interconnected nature of genes.. #18 fish fingersthe evolution of limbs is mapped out in an amazing sequence of ancient fish fossils.. #19 goosebumpsa vestigial reflex bequeathed by our hairier ancestors.. #20 lucy in the sky...an exceptional fossil of a 3 million year old hominid.. #21 footprints in the sand...footprints at laetoli show our australopithecus afarensis ancestors were bipedal 3.6 million years ago.. #22 the hillocks of hiss...a vestigial feature if the human ear shared by 10% of the population demonstrates our evolutionary history.. #23 faunal succession...the consistent sequence of fossils found in the rocks can only be explained by evolution.. #24 the origin of your inner ear...how the bones that reptiles eat with became the bones that we hear with.. #25 deep time...scottish geologist andrew hutton discovered the proof of earth's great antiquity.. #26 colour vision...how gene duplication - new "information" -and mutation equipped us with trichromatic vision.. #27 monkeys, typewriters, shakespeare, 747s etc...evolution is a combination of random mutations and non-random selection.. #28 something darwin didn't say...a long term study of pigeons demonstrates how natural selection acts on a local population.. #29 use it or lose it...fossil genes reveal the history of modern species.. #30 your third eyelid...the remnants of a nictitating membrane reveals our evolutionary history..
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Zana
cofty, I haven't even read a third of your list, but I already do appreciate your compilation very much. Not that I needed convincing about evolution, this is just really interesting stuff.
The title story of last weeks "Economist" http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21699116-how-combat-dangerous-rise-antibiotic-resistance-when-drugs-dont-work is about the rise of antibiotic resistance. Maybe a worthy addition to your list? This is how the article starts:SOME people describe Darwinian evolution as “only a theory”. Try explaining that to the friends and relatives of the 700,000 people killed each year by drug-resistant infections. Resistance to antimicrobial medicines, such as antibiotics and antimalarials, is caused by the survival of the fittest. Unfortunately, fit microbes mean unfit human beings. Drug-resistance is not only one of the clearest examples of evolution in action, it is also the one with the biggest immediate human cost.
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Raising kids in a split faith household
by rathernotsay inhi guys, don't know if this is the right place to ask but id like to hear other peoples experiences with raising kids in a household with split faiths.
just for a bit of a back story, my wife and i have been married for comming up 6 years.
we have 3 kids, 2 boys aged 5 and 3 and a 8 week old girl.
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Zana
Similar situation here: Two kids, aged 5 and 3, wife a JW. Kids go to meetings maybe once every three weeks. No graces but usually a bedtime prayer for the kids.
The last time my wife and I had a discussion about religious education, it was because she didn't like me telling our son about reincarnation that some people believe in. He likes the JW idea of paradise earth very much and I was trying to tell him (rather awkwardly and unsuccessfully) that this is not a fact but just some belief and other people believe other things.
I like your indirect approach: show them the stars and the dinosaurs. Also try to offer them as many possibilities to do non-JW activities and make non-JW friends as possible. When I tell my son that some believe this and others believe that, and you will figure out what to believe yourself one day, he doesn't quite understand. But he gets it, when I tell him Grandma thinks she will go to (catholic) heaven when she dies. Or that his kindergarden-friend doesn't eat pork because an old book (and his parents) say so. People are different, people can believe and do different things. That doesn't mean they are bad people.
In general I am not too concerned. I mean normal 5-year-olds believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, too. And nobody is afraid that as adults they will still wait for Santa to bring the presents. I did put up some rules about JW-topics in the house though. For example no talking about Armageddon or that Daddy won't be in paradise with us. And no door-to-door with the kids. So far we as a family are doing ok. But I am always suspicious and ready to jump into action when I get the impression that someone is trying to influence others through fear and guilt (my wife on our kids, or other JWs on my wife).
Fortunately JW life isn't very attractive to children (except for Caleb and Sofia). Boring meetings, no sunday school, no birthdays, too many stupid rules. That makes it easy for the non-JW parent to offer different activities (if you have the time of course).
btw here is a link to my thread from 2 years ago about the same topic: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/279456/raising-kids-jw-mother-agnostic-father -
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Why haven't you been to the meetings?
by Zana insome cong-member asked my wife this question (in the street, stopping her on her bicycle) in a rather police-like fashion.
i wasn't there so i don't know her immediate reaction and response, but she got very upset afterwards and one day later this still occupies her mind.
i believe it's an emotional mix of anger, sadness, shame and guilt.. she doesn't like this intrusion in her privacy from some jws and on the next occasion she will try to make this person respect her boundaries (or just ignore her).
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Zana
Thank you for your replies, especially millie!
My wife is actually spending more and more time with family and non JWs and less and less time with JWs and JW activities. "Breathing fresh air" and liking it, too. She doesn't know the word "fading", but to me it seems like she is maybe subconsciously doing just that. My concern is about what I read on here, some user experiences. That some JWs leave the Org but the org never leaves them. I fear that deep down she will always think that they are actually right, at least about the more fundamental stuff. I see my job is to show her that leaving the Org doesn't mean you have to leave Jehovah and Jesus, too. And that if the GB is wrong about some small things, or the elder/cong handles some local stuff badly, how can you still be sure that they are right about the important stuff and the big things.
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Why haven't you been to the meetings?
by Zana insome cong-member asked my wife this question (in the street, stopping her on her bicycle) in a rather police-like fashion.
i wasn't there so i don't know her immediate reaction and response, but she got very upset afterwards and one day later this still occupies her mind.
i believe it's an emotional mix of anger, sadness, shame and guilt.. she doesn't like this intrusion in her privacy from some jws and on the next occasion she will try to make this person respect her boundaries (or just ignore her).
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Zana
Some cong-member asked my wife this question (in the street, stopping her on her bicycle) in a rather police-like fashion. I wasn't there so I don't know her immediate reaction and response, but she got very upset afterwards and one day later this still occupies her mind. I believe it's an emotional mix of anger, sadness, shame and guilt.
She doesn't like this intrusion in her privacy from some JWs and on the next occasion she will try to make this person respect her boundaries (or just ignore her). It has happened before with other people, but she blames the individuals for their inappropiate actions and doesn't (want to?) see that it's mostly the JW corporate culture that promotes this kind of thinking and behaviour.
How can I capitalize on this (trying to wake her up just a little bit more)? And how can I make her feel less shame and guilt? There were several reasons she didn't go to some meetings recently. Either somebody in the family was sick or we had better and more fun things to do as a family (which I encourage of course).
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I COLLECT QUOTES. . . Here are some of my favorites
by Terry inplease post your favorites too.
my favorite quotations:.
you cannot change what you refuse to confront.. sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.. don’t think of cost.
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Zana
Twitch wrote:
I must not fear.
Yeah, Dune, one of my favorite books! I've been re-reading the first three books of the Dune series, this time concentrating more on politics and religion instead of plot and character development. Combined with my new awareness of JW and XJW themes I give you the following quotes from "Children of Dune":
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remainTo suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror; to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.
I realize humans cannot bear very much reality. Most lives are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick your head into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others use you for their purposes. Not once do you live outside the stable to lift you head and be your own creature.
And the last one seems to be known among the GB members because they handle these possible threats to their leadership quite well:
A large populace held in check by a small but powerful force is quite a common situation in our universe. And we know the major conditions wherein this large populace may turn upon its keepers: 1) When they find a leader. This is the most volatile threat to the powerful; they must retain control of leaders. 2) When the populace recognizes its chains. Keep the populace blind and unquestioning. 3) When the populace perceives a hope of escape from bondage. They must never even believe that escape is possible!
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Zana
I (UBM) went to accompany my wife. No big deal. Same way I go to church with my mother (a Lutheran) once a year on Christmas.
The talk this year actually was not too bad, if you can ignore the rubbish with regards to content of course. We had the CO present who gave the talk, and he can be quite a funny guy with good illustrations and stories.
Being there helps me in my discussions about religion with my wife, when I can slip in a thought provoking idea here or a little seed there. She herself sees some discrepancy there with the occasion being someones imminent death but many JWs only thinking about their new dresses and the nice restaurant food afterwards.
Now I am looking forward to our easter egg hunt on sunday where everybody is going to have a lot more fun than we had yesterday. What do you think will our children remember better? ;-)