Posts by Yr Wyddgrug

150

How many people watched "The Princess and the Frog?"

by garyneal in

how many christians?.

how many jehovah's witnesses?.

what do you all think of it?.

Yr Wyddgrug

I thought the Princess and the Frog was not based on the traditional Grimm's fairytale "The Frog Prince" - the one where the Princess loses her golden ball and the frog gets it back for her, but on another book called "The Frog Princess."

My elder daughter and I like the film, but reading this thread has really made me consider it from another viewpoint. I like the story, but I think Disney decided to introduce a black princess to its line and found a story to justify that. Why does having a black Princess need justification? It's almost giving the message "Hey, only white girls are real princesses, but look, you black girls can be one too, sort of, aren't you lucky."

I take the point most well known fairytales are european in origin. Well, Disney has a perfect opportunity to take some African stories and make them well known. (And there's a wealth of amazing stories there) Look at Mulan, a little-known Chinese legend, suddenly accesible to everyone(Though there was a bit of a furore over making her too european looking at the time I remember)

I didn't know Prince Nazeem was Brizilian though. I thought he was a prince from an unspecified middle-eastern land who had been cut off from his money because of being lazy, thus looking for a rich american to marry. He definately is an official prince though, rather than just a bloke, even though he doesn't act in a typical "Disney prince" manner.

Thanks for giving me a new way of seeing it. I don't think I'd ever even seen someone who wasn't white until I was in my teens. In fact, I knew nothing of the transatlantic slave-trade/antebellum south/american history/african history until I came across the late, great Octavia E Butler. Her novel, "Kindred" about a modern black woman married to a white man who gets sent back in time to the antebellum south to save a white plantation owner's son time and again is still the best novel I have ever read twenty years after I first read it, and it opened up history to me. Until then I thought history started and finished in Britain.

44

Should cult members be allowed to adopt or be foster parents?

by Mad Sweeney in

jw
friends

i'm wondering what you all think..

Yr Wyddgrug

From what I know, potential foster carers/adoptive parents in this country (UK) are made to jump through hoop after hoop to be allowed to adopt. One of the questions asked is concerning a child's sexual orientation (when they grow up) Any sniff of a prospective parent believing that being gay/lesbian/bisexual is somehow wrong and there's no chance of proceeding further. A JW family would be grilled on this I think. There have been cases of Christians being refused fostering because they couldn't assure social services that they would teach a child that being gay is OK.

18

They NEED this system to be rotten... and why they can't wait to die.

by Aussie Oz in

jw
friends

after visiting my jw mother i came away convinced she is just as hard core as she ever was.

oh, she may bend the rules a little in not shunning her children but at heart she is jw through and through.

i had wondered if perhaps she was wavering but i doubt it.. during our visit, when i was out of the house, she had an attempt to inform my wife that the end was close...my athiest wife shot that down as nonsense much to mums apparent dislike i think.. however, it was while the tv was on in the backgound that i realized how deep she is still.

Yr Wyddgrug

Seriously Mad Sweeney? What do they do with Romans 13 then? Skip over it? It's fairly explicit.

18

They NEED this system to be rotten... and why they can't wait to die.

by Aussie Oz in

jw
friends

after visiting my jw mother i came away convinced she is just as hard core as she ever was.

oh, she may bend the rules a little in not shunning her children but at heart she is jw through and through.

i had wondered if perhaps she was wavering but i doubt it.. during our visit, when i was out of the house, she had an attempt to inform my wife that the end was close...my athiest wife shot that down as nonsense much to mums apparent dislike i think.. however, it was while the tv was on in the backgound that i realized how deep she is still.

Yr Wyddgrug

Breakfast of Champions - I totally agree. In the 14th century Britain lost an estimated third of her population to plague. So many that most of the dead were just buried in pits and covered with lime. Anyone living then must have thought it was the end of the world. If we lost one in three people today can you imagine what that'd be like. But society survived it.

18

They NEED this system to be rotten... and why they can't wait to die.

by Aussie Oz in

jw
friends

after visiting my jw mother i came away convinced she is just as hard core as she ever was.

oh, she may bend the rules a little in not shunning her children but at heart she is jw through and through.

i had wondered if perhaps she was wavering but i doubt it.. during our visit, when i was out of the house, she had an attempt to inform my wife that the end was close...my athiest wife shot that down as nonsense much to mums apparent dislike i think.. however, it was while the tv was on in the backgound that i realized how deep she is still.

Yr Wyddgrug

As a non-JW I can't quite get my head around the idea of wanting "this system" to fall apart. All responsible people, Christian and otherwise should surely want to have a positive imput on their communities and countries. If everything degenerates I don't want to say I helped it happen by standing back and doing nothing. Even litter-picking, volunteering to help with clean-up programmes, weeding public green spaces makes a difference.

As Christians we're told that all governments are appointed by God, are God's servants and are answerable to him for the messes they make. We're supposed to submit to them and pray for them, not enjoy watching them go down the toilet.

Ever since the WTBTS first came onto my radar I've been surprised that they don't do things like build universities or hospitals or run homeless shelters - things to try and make life better for everyone. Now I'm starting to see that they don't give a fig about any society. That's very sad.

Can I ask a really stupid question? What then is the POINT of living if one is a JW. If (and I might be wrong because I'm not hot on JW theology) one's death pays for one's sins, what is the point in this system at all? In fact, if one's death pays for one's sins what's the point in following a grueling programme and living hand-to-mouth if you just die and get resurected the same as millions of non-JW's? It all seems very odd to me.

20

Hello there everyone.

by Yr Wyddgrug in

jw
friends

i'm a long time lurker here.. i'm not and never have been a jw, but i am trying to get an understanding of what it means to be disfellowshipped for the sake of someone i know.. my husband and i pastor a small church, we're nothing special, just a group of people who get together to seek god.

we're open to everyone and people pop in as they want to.

recently a woman in her early twenties has started turning up.

Yr Wyddgrug

Again, thank you for all your advice.

Curtains, yes, I know that believers are certainly challenged here. Personally I have no problem with this, I like diversity of belief, and most of my best friends are not Christian and we've had some good and heated discussions - but it never affects our friendship or mutual respect. I take the position that God made these amazing, human minds and they were designed for deeper things than a basic, "thou must/must not do this."

My friend seems to find theology very important for the moment, even though I would say the theology she accepts is not WT theology. I know she finds it difficult to accept that people without a belief in God can be good, honest or loving. I assume that's a JW thing. But for now, it's important to her.

She does visit a website that's supposed to be an ex-JW Christian board, but she says that the theology there is "all over the place." Apparently there's some sort of belief that, although the WT is not good, the WT's basic theology is correct and they just need God to come and "refine" them. I don't know if that's an ordinary ex-JW belief or not. As far as I know, it was a shift in theology that led to her leaving the WT in the first place, rather than anything else.

I don't know, I just want the best for her. I'm still floored by the idea of "shunning" someone for any reason. Its like playground behaviour only with more unpleasant consequences.

Heather.

(AnnOmaly, yes, Yr. wyddgrug is the name of the Welsh town in which I grew up, I took it as a name because it literally means "Heather covered hill" and my name's Heather. )

20

Hello there everyone.

by Yr Wyddgrug in

jw
friends

i'm a long time lurker here.. i'm not and never have been a jw, but i am trying to get an understanding of what it means to be disfellowshipped for the sake of someone i know.. my husband and i pastor a small church, we're nothing special, just a group of people who get together to seek god.

we're open to everyone and people pop in as they want to.

recently a woman in her early twenties has started turning up.

Yr Wyddgrug

Thank you, you're all making a lot of sense. I definately agree she needs to be in contact with other ex-JW's, because I admit its beyond my comprehension that a family could ever just treat someone like they're dead. I've read enough threads here to know it happens all too regularly within the JW world. It seems like a "world within a world" to me. An alternate dimension where people look normal but their minds work differently.

How can someone just turn off their feelings like a tap? Or do they just surpress them in the hope their loved one will come back to the JW's?

20

Hello there everyone.

by Yr Wyddgrug in

jw
friends

i'm a long time lurker here.. i'm not and never have been a jw, but i am trying to get an understanding of what it means to be disfellowshipped for the sake of someone i know.. my husband and i pastor a small church, we're nothing special, just a group of people who get together to seek god.

we're open to everyone and people pop in as they want to.

recently a woman in her early twenties has started turning up.

Yr Wyddgrug

Hello everyone. I'm a long time lurker here.

I'm not and never have been a JW, but I am trying to get an understanding of what it means to be disfellowshipped for the sake of someone I know.

My husband and I pastor a small church, we're nothing special, just a group of people who get together to seek God. We're open to everyone and people pop in as they want to. Recently a woman in her early twenties has started turning up. She's very pleasant, reserved, obviously a private person and i respect that.

A couple of weeks ago we were having a cup of tea after the meeting and she stayed behind this time and started to chat to me. She told me she was an ex-Jehovahs witness and that none of her family, mum, dad, granddad, sister and niece, will talk to her or have anything to do with her any more. She was obviously really emotional. She said it feels like being dead only without the oblivion. She's a really lovely person. As far as I know (and I'm not pushing for information) she's been feeling the WT's doctrines are wrong for a few years, and she got to the point where she couldn't believe they were God's only church any more, so she's basically been looking for a new place to come.

I want to help her, but the pain of being cut off from her family needs more help than i can give. I'm happy to chat to her and listen to her story at her pace. As a Christian I do believe God is already at work in her life, but I feel trite, spiritual answers are nowhere near enough when someone has lost their family.

So how can I best help? I've read here a while and I chose this site because there is such an eclectic mix of personalities and beliefs. She is positive in her own mind that God called her away from being a Jehovah's Witness, and I have seen amazing glimpses of joy of being "free" to worship as she wants to, but that joy is matched by grief, like a berevement only she says there isn't the chance to move on because her family are all still alive.

I feel out of my depth. I'm a mum and a primary school teacher and a pastor - I'm not a psychiatrist or any sort of therapist. I can't just pat her shoulder and tell her I understand because patently I can't understand what it must feel like to have the people you love and trust suddenly treat you as if you're dead. I have kids myself and I would love them if they became full-blown satanists. (I wouldn't be madly happy about it mind you) I don't have all the answers she needs, I wish I did. Sometimes a hug seems to help, and we're becoming friends too, she doesn't seem to have many of those.

Any advice would be really appreciated. Thank you.