mikepence posted this article over at bboy's forum and it's well worth bringing over here.
if i offend anyone - it's not my intention.
it is my intention to continue with helping to shed new light on this hideous crime.
It all makes me wonder if pedophilia might be THE defining characteristic of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Maybe pedophilia and child abuse and the domination of women is what this religion is really all about.
And the rest is just a lot of smoke and mirrors and some nice and extremely naive people thrown in just for distraction.
inspired by ozzie's report on "wts reaffirms salvation only by works":be rich in fine works because it's fun, dammit!
"undeserved kindness" is it really?play with jehovah each dayrevelries that refresh jehovah's peoplemaking room for polyamory"the kingdom of god is within you no, really!homosexuality god's gift to ten percent of us got any more?
gently feral
Pedophiles Among Us - Let He Who is Without Sin Cast the First Stone
Smokers Among Us - Never! How Disfellowshipping Keeps Jehovah's Organization Clean
Murderers Among Us - We All Have our Weaknesses
Hypocrites Among Us - Judge Not That You Might Not Also Be Judged
paraphrase of the watchtower 1955, page 607:.
quote from the watchtower august 1st 1974 issue, page 465:.
quote from the watchtower august 1st 1980 issue, page 19:.
'...we are forbidden to kill them EVEN THO they be members of our flesh and blood family...'!?
I now have visions of Big Bird speaking 'educationally' to a group of JWs...
'Now, here are the people and here is the P-R-O-P-E-R-T-Y.
Are they the same? N-o-o-o-o. They are not the same.
They are D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-T.
Can you say, 'different' boys and girls?
Different.'
just had a good phone call with a friend i met on this board...got me to thinking about my life as a jw.
he's been "out" almost as long as i was "in.".
i was a reg pub at 6 years old, decided (yes, a very deliberate decision) to go to bethel when i was 8 years old, and was baptized at 10 years old (in 1962).
Wouldn't it be nice if all of us could get together in a 'meet-up'?
I hope the meet-up thing grows and finally reaches that point.
We need each other.
this woman's insight into sexual abuse is astonishing!
thanks for reading...donald
the compulsive reader (http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/)
You are so generous to share both the book and this extraordinary feedback that you are getting from it - and then your feelings, too, about all of it.
Thank you for letting us all share in this with you.
i think it just really hit home with my nine year-old son that this time we are not going to go back to meetings.
he's been asking a lot of questions, and reminiscing about past events nostalgically, yet he is really looking forward to celebrating holidays this year and playing organised soccer next summer.i try to answer his questions to his satisfaction, yet i can sense the confusion he feels and i'm not quite sure how to make him understand ( he seems to think that he shouldn't believe in god because he's not going to meetings anymore,although i've told him that he of course can believe in god).
i imagine all of my kids are going through a similar process as myself right now-good days and bad.some of them wanted to leave before i did, and are handling it pretty well.one of my teenage sons was reluctant about my decision, but i explained to him that my decision to da was my own, and that if he wanted to continue going, i wasn't going to stop him.my daughter, however, discussed the whole silent lambs issue with him, and he was shocked, to say the least,and not so keen on continuing when she told him about this(he told me this himself).. so, for you parents who have been there-do you have any tips for easing their transistion?did you do anything that seem to help your kids?how do you handle kid's questions about religion, when you're not sure of the answers yourself anymore?.
PS - Halloween can be a really bizarre time to be trying on new religions.
It might be useful to know that Halloween was begun as a Christian celebration of faith.
In the fall, everything is dying. Plants, trees, the harvest. It's all disappearing. The days are getting colder and shorter; the nites are growing longer. In former times, this was a frightening experience for people in many cultures.
But people of faith (even before science) knew and believed that spring will come again. That this dark time was only temporary.
They were unafraid and to prove and make a statement about their faith, they celebrated the harvest, the passing of the souls of their friends and relatives (in Mexico they even sit graveside overnite with their family and neighbors, picnic and all, on the 'Day of the Dead'.)
Separately, again to celebrate the comfort of their faith, they also engaged in a mockery of fear. A kind of game of 'You can't Scare Me!'.
And so Halloween was born.
Today in America, Halloween is out of control and much too frightening for very young children.
But I think it can be helpful to understand the roots of the holiday. And to explain it to your kids.
i think it just really hit home with my nine year-old son that this time we are not going to go back to meetings.
he's been asking a lot of questions, and reminiscing about past events nostalgically, yet he is really looking forward to celebrating holidays this year and playing organised soccer next summer.i try to answer his questions to his satisfaction, yet i can sense the confusion he feels and i'm not quite sure how to make him understand ( he seems to think that he shouldn't believe in god because he's not going to meetings anymore,although i've told him that he of course can believe in god).
i imagine all of my kids are going through a similar process as myself right now-good days and bad.some of them wanted to leave before i did, and are handling it pretty well.one of my teenage sons was reluctant about my decision, but i explained to him that my decision to da was my own, and that if he wanted to continue going, i wasn't going to stop him.my daughter, however, discussed the whole silent lambs issue with him, and he was shocked, to say the least,and not so keen on continuing when she told him about this(he told me this himself).. so, for you parents who have been there-do you have any tips for easing their transistion?did you do anything that seem to help your kids?how do you handle kid's questions about religion, when you're not sure of the answers yourself anymore?.
Some things I have enjoyed over the years....
If you're up for such a thing, Huston Smith is a very well-respected author and professor. Because his family travelled a lot, he was raised as a Christian in a Chinese environment.
His early exposure led to his becoming quite an expert, teacher and author on world religions.
His books are wonderful. Particularly, 'Religions of the World'. He even did a multi-segment series with Bill Moyers for PBS. (You can find a whole lot on Amazon).
Of course, these things will give you an essence of world religions including, but also beyond Christianity and Judism (like Hinduism and Buddhism). But it is a fascinating and respectful look. (Particularly at Islam, right now, but that's another story).
Currently, I'm really enjoying 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Catholicism'.
Rodney Stark, who I am currently very angry with (as he is featured for some reason - God only knows what - on a JW press video), wrote many books, two of which I can recommend highly.
'The Rise of Christianity' is the history of the early church and some thoughts on why it grew so rapidly after Christ's death. It gives a very palpable sense of what it was like to live in Rome at the time of Christ and immediately after. (An early chapter on the diaspora was very hard to grasp - for me - but can easily be overlooked with no loss to the main story).
Another is, 'The History of Religion in America' (Rodney Stark again), which looks at many denominations and how they got started in America and what kinds of circumstances helped them flourish. It will give you a really good 'sense' of various religions.
Tho, Mr. Stark's current position with the WTS has hurt his credibility somewhat in my eyes.
Last I heard, he was an agnostic, wishing he could find faith.
I wish he could find faith, too.
For a wonderful faith experience, I highly recommend 'Closer to the Light' by Dr. Melvin Morse. He's a pediatrician who had a profound experience with a very young patient who was recovering from a near-drowning/near death experience. Dr. Morse was so moved by that event, he decided he wanted to talk more to lots of kids who had near death experiences and that is his book. It's fantastic.
And very beautiful.
I wish you luck and hope and faith in your search. Don't push your kids one way or another but acknowledge their faith experiences - and your own, too. You're the grown-up. And you don't have to have all the answers. Just be honest.
It sounds like you're doing a good job of that already. Every religion is about seeking God and communing with God.
As the first chapter of the Catholic Catechism states, 'man is a religious being'. And throughout all of history, man has nurtured a communal relationship with God.
I am very moved by the fact that Mohammed, in trying to bring the concept of 'one God' to a desert people who had no access to art or music or other religious 'things', looked to the sky for evidence of God's handiwork. (It's always there!)
In the midst of your faith journey, which can become noisy and cluttered sometimes, I hope you will also find a guiding evidence of God in nature.
Don't forget that you're the parent and don't burden your kids unnecessarily with concepts that are beyond their grasp.
It sounds like you're off to a wonderful start.
My best to you all.
ousted members contend jehovah's witnesses' abuse policy hides offenses.
by laurie goodstein.
william bowen always considered himself a devout jehovah's witness.
I agree.
kazakstan: muslim villagers lash out at sect .
the recruiting tactics of the jehovah's witnesses are bringing them into conflict with muslim villagers in the southern oblasts.
by olga dosybieva in shymkent (rca no.
This is so sad.
we read of recent events, 5 jw children killed in a car accident, jw's caught and beheaded and be-tongued (and not necessarily in that order) in the phillipines, a busload of witnesses burnt to death in spain on the way to the district convention (some years back).
and so on and so on..... yet the wt and bible too tell us "have no fear because jehovah and his myriads of angels are watching over us and will protect us.".
well, they do a pretty crappy job at it!
(If I can stop laughing long enough to ask a serious question....)
Who got their tongues cut out?
