I had literally "had it" with my parents by the time I was in 4th grade. I have a natural talent for sports had a deep desire to participate in sports at a very early age. They forbid me to pursue my talent and poo pooed my passion with little thought. On top of that, they displayed a lot of sociopathic behavior and as the oldest child I got treated to the very worst of it. I put up the "good son" front with them for years and maintained a shallow relationship, based mainly on obligatory interaction and small talk. This continued until after I moved out on my own at age 18. Then a couple years after I was out, my younger brother (who is extremely bright) got into some trouble in the congregation (messed around with a girl) and was df'd. I reluctantly shunned him in the regular JW manner (I was still an active dub) as did my parents. Even though he lived with them, they treated him as if they were doing him a huge favor and treated him like a 2nd class citizen (basically just making his life a living hell). For example if Jdubs came over he would have to leave the room and when JW family and friends visited from out of town, he wasnt invited out to dinner. It was at this point, witnessing this stuff, that I realized my parents are some sick bastards and that in my gut, I knew this whole situation was wrong. It was at this point that I really started examining the beliefs of the Jw's and easily and quickly figured out they were merely a business/cult and my parents sold me and my passion out for this shit. I felt as if I was robbed of the only thing I ever really wanted (to pusrsue my talent and passion). And after all they took from me, and subjected my brother too, they still thought we could play "normal". For me, this just didnt make any sense and I didnt like the idea of them around my own son (since I never enjoyed their bullshit, why should I allow it around my kid). I have forgiven and forgotten them and am better off without any interaction. My own son is very bright and well adjusted and is active in all sorts of "extra curricular" activities (i.e. soccer, tee ball, basketball). They have no part in any his accomplishments or the accomplishments that I am really proud of (i.e. a college degree, a happy and well provided for family). I am self made. They were an obstacle that I was able to seperate from and overcome. I understand that since becoming empty nesters, they have basically turned on each other and all the toxic JW propoganda and mentality they so dearly adore has been turned toward each other and every day is a psycho-drama that even Peyton's Place couldnt match. They can have it - just stay away from me. om
openminded
JoinedPosts by openminded
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22
Should I "ex JW" SHUN my JW family??
by curiouschristy ini haven't posted in a while... been very busy lately.
i am glad to be back though, i started reading the posts right away, and immediately felt comfort for how you guys are feeling, knowing i feel the same way.
not many of you know my story.... but for a quick run down... i'm a disf'd jw, for about 11 yrs now, i'm 28, disf'd at the tender age of 17... my mother and sister are still in the org... they only talk to me when they want to, it doesn't have to be an important event, life or death or anything.
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Sign Here For Death
by openminded inthe two biologicals signed on that dotted line.. putting my life in perspective by strokes of a pen.. this pocket-sized document heralds their premeditated.
crime.
with support from some elders, only a bloody.
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openminded
My younger brother wrote it. It sounds really good when he reads it.
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Sign Here For Death
by openminded inthe two biologicals signed on that dotted line.. putting my life in perspective by strokes of a pen.. this pocket-sized document heralds their premeditated.
crime.
with support from some elders, only a bloody.
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openminded
The two biologicals signed on that dotted line.
Putting my life in perspective by strokes of a pen.
This pocket-sized document heralds their premeditated
crime
With support from some elders, only a bloody
devastation ushers in when
What were they thinking?
What was their reason?
Can a holly rollers training
bring child killing in season?
To see a mom and a dad put love under such extreme
condition,
Makes me think of many others in a similar upside down
world.
Like my brothers and sisters, also slated by this
prolonged pseudo postpartum abortion.
This sickens my own paternal emotions seeing my own
son sleeping safely curled.
Where was their heart?
Where are they now?
Is a mental separation and an emotional freedom
possible that a physical distance will allow?
I have long been safe, but this shit still goes on,
To many innocent young children by their own
brain-washed tribe,
sitting like zombies all over the world in small
buildings called "kingdom halls",
together as one, they happily sign, pleasing a god
with this unconscienable crime.
IF I simply do nothing,
am I too to blame?
It seems that humans always suffer
in this ritualistic dancing-with-deities game.
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IF YOU COULD CHANGE 1 THING IN YOUR LIFE,what ??
by minimus inif you had 1 wish that you could have granted that would change something about your past,what would it be?
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openminded
I would have told my parents at age 10 to find some other kid's life to fuck with and went ahead and joined the football team. om
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10
Are you the black sheep?
by sleepy in.
theres got to be quite a few here who, like me are the only onbe to turn "apostate" in their family.. although you know you've done the right thing, all your family think either you have been mislead by satan or you have turned evil.. how do you feel around your family,and do you wonder what they think of you?
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openminded
STOCKTON, CACiting numerous examples of ostracization and failure to fit in, all of Paul and Martha Klessig's three children see themselves as the black sheep of the family.
Above: Self-proclaimed black sheep Tim, Jack, and Anna Klessig (L to R) with their parents. "I've always been the outcast," said son Jack Klessig, 21, a video-store assistant manager and aspiring musician. "Everybody else in my family, they're all, like, these total straight arrows and super-responsible. I'm the only one who's wandered off the traditional path."
Continued Jack: "Mom and Dad are so proud of Anna and Tim. See, Tim is engaged and is co-owner of a landscaping business, and Mary is actually using her art degree to do her metal work. I got a history degree, but I'm just doing my thing, hoping the band takes off. They think I'm wasting my education and going nowhere."
Tim, at 29 the oldest of the three Klessig children, feels a similar sense of alienation from the family.
"I am definitely the odd man out," Tim said. "Mom and Dad know that I'm the only one who smokes pot. You'd think that being in a band, Jack would be a big pot guy, but he doesn't do any drugs. Same with Anna. You gotta be straitlaced to fit in with the Klessigs, and I'm anything but."
"It also doesn't help that I'm the oldest but still the least responsible," Tim added. "Jack always remembers birthdays and is really good about keeping in touch with phone calls and e-mails, even though he lives in another city. Anna gives Mom and Dad the most thoughtful gifts. Shit, I'm lucky if I can remember my own goddamn birthday. I mean, they're my family, and I love them, but I'll never really belong the way Jack and Anna do. I swear, sometimes I think I'm adopted."
Anna, 27, said she has felt vaguely disconnected from her family since she was a teenager.
"Even when I was 14, I knew I was different," Anna said. "Mom and Dad spent way more time with the boys. We'd take family camping trips, and while everyone would be off fishing together, I'd hang back at the campsite and do something creative by myself. And now that I make my living as an independent jewelry designer, that just confirms their suspicions about me being some artsy, loner weirdo."
Anna also feels that her status as a single woman in her late 20s has increased her marginalization.
"I'm happily unmarried, and that really blows my parents' minds," Anna said. "Tim is getting married in October, and it's okay for Jack not to be married, because he's a guy, and he's only 21. But not me. Mom thinks I should have a husband and a bunch of screaming babies at my feet. I'm sorry, but if not wanting that puts me on the outside, so be it."
Told of her children's feelings, Martha Klessig expressed confusion.
"I'm not sure why they feel that way, " Martha said. "We don't have a judgment scale for our offspring. They're all our children, and we love each of them equally. It's not like my family growing up: I stuck out like a sore thumb because I read poetry and dropped out of college while my brothers got business degrees."
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United Nations is NOT the beast
by Praetorian inall witnesses need to sit up and take notice of this message.
the united nations is not the beast that is taked about in so many publications.
the wt has got it completely wrong.
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openminded
Funny that Australia and New Zealand get their own points on the 10 point star.
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I personally would like to thank JanH
by zenpunk inyour series on the history of the blood issue was amazing.
my husband left the organization before i did but he always held on to the belief that blood transfusions were just wrong.
so one night we read your series, parts 1 through 6 together.
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openminded
I would pay money to hear Jan debate a dub person to person. om
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Hmmmm
by openminded ini am reviewing my notes for a psych.
exam and am going over the syptoms of mental illness and schizophrenia in particular.
i am noticing something that may be well known to most of you educated folks.. symptom 1. delusions of grandour(god has me on his speed dial)(miracle wheat).
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openminded
If the Org is truly the marketing machine most people here believe it to be. What segment of society do you think are the most prone to accepting the Jdub worldview?
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Why we need Heaven
by openminded inwhy we need heaven
in troubled times, the afterlife beckons with visions of dark-eyed virgins, gardens and palaces, the bliss of gods eternal presence and the joy of uniting with loved ones.
how can the promise of paradise inspire so many to goodness, and few to murder?
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openminded
Why We Need Heaven In troubled times, the afterlife beckons with visions of dark-eyed virgins, gardens and palaces, the bliss of Gods eternal presence and the joy of uniting with loved ones. How can the promise of paradise inspire so many to goodness, and few to murder? By Lisa Miller
NEWSWEEKAug. 12 issue Hagar Zar is sure her husband, Gilad, is in heaven. Perhaps thats why she looks so serene and clear-eyed when she talks about the gruesome way he diedgunned down by Palestinians early one morning while he was at work. Auctions at uBid Personals Channel Professional Tips
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There is nothing at all unusual about Hagar Zars religious beliefs, except for the theological puzzle they present: can her enemy be in heaven, too? Just months before Gilad Zar was killed, Akram Nabiti blew himself up near a bus stop in a tony residential Jerusalem neighborhood, injuring at least 20 people. And though his grieving Muslim father, Ishaq, says he would have locked up his son in a cage had he known about Akrams plans, I have no doubt whatsoever that he is in paradise.
WHOSE HEAVEN?
In the 00s, a decade known so far for its calamities, the question of what heaven is and who gets to go has taken on new urgency. Suicide bombers and terrorists, similar to those who killed seven people at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem last week, often invoke heaven before they act, and, afterward, the survivors invoke heaven to guide them forward. On the West Bank and in the States, visions of heaven separate religious fundamentalists from moderates. And for all its use as a political and theological lever, heaven is also a matter of the most urgent personal importance. Can I still play with Casey, even though shes in heaven? 6-year-old Zachary Fikar asked his dad when he was told that his friend Cassandra Williamson was abducted from her neighborhood near St. Louis last month and killed.
For believers, heaven can be inspiration, incentive, comfort or ballast. It can be metaphoric, or concretebuilt to last, as Billy Grahams daughter Anne Graham Lotz puts it in her popular little book Heaven: My Fathers House. According to a NEWSWEEK Poll, 76 percent of Americans believe in heaven, and, of those, 71 percent think its an actual place, but after that, agreement breaks down. Nineteen percent think heaven looks like a garden, 13 percent say it looks like a cityand 17 percent dont know. In the peaceful, prosperous West, visions of heaven are increasingly individualistic; a best-selling new novel, The Lovely Bones, is narrated by a 14-year-old girl who has gone to heaven, and her paradise contains puppies, big fields and Victorian cupolas.
The urge for heaven is universal; we need it the way we need love. Its threatening to ones entire sense of self to imagine the end of life, says Sherwin B. Nuland, author of How We Die: Reflections on Lifes Final Chapter. So essentially we have to convince ourselves that there is an afterlife. Even those of us who dont believe in one sneakingly wish there was one. For more than 2,000 years, theologians and children have been asking the same, unanswerable questions: Do we keep our bodies in heaven? Are we reunited with loved ones? Can we eat, drink, make love? Can you go to my heaven? Can I go to yours? How do you get there? And though they answer these questions in varying ways, the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims share some common ground. Heaven is the home of the one God, who is just and merciful, and at the end of life metes out rewards and punishments. Heaven is a perfect place, devoid of anger, lust, competition or anything like sin. In heaven, you live forever.Audio: Lisa Miller and Ken Woodward on The Power of Heaven-and Hell Audio: Listen to the complete weekly On Air show Join this week's online discussion. Submit questions anytime Your Question Your name
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Even when clerics insist that heaven is symbolic, most people continue to think about heaven in terms of what they want. Thats why dog-lovers think theyll be reunited with their pets in heaven, and the poor think of heaven as a place where theyll never have to work. Smart political and religious leaders know this. In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformers, tapping the vein of popular outrage over the materialism and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, offered their recruits a version of heaven that focused on the individuals meeting God. Before he sent his soldiers on the First Crusade, Pope Urban II implied that if they died in the name of Christ, they would ascend to heaven and dwell in the company of the Lord. At its worst, heaven can be an effective tool for manipulation, says Paul Knitter, emeritus professor of theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati. If you can get people to believe in a certain heaven, you can get them to do anything. David Koresh told his followers in Waco that if they died with him, they would go directly to heaven. // do nothing for browsers that don't support SRC tagDo you believe in heaven? Yes No I'm not sure
Vote to see resultsDo you believe in heaven? * 44543 responses Yes No I'm not sure
Survey results tallied every 60 seconds. Live Votes reflect respondents' views and are not scientifically valid surveys.
THIS HEAVEN IS MINE
And so visions of heaven divide peopleeven those who worship the same God. When a religious community feels endangered or at odds with the mainstream culture, a vision of heaven can be like a badge of belonging. This heaven is mine, believers say. If you dont join me, you cant come. And when that feeling of oppression turns to war, heaven can be a flag waved in battle. Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader who lives in Gaza, says Palestinian youth believe much more strongly in heaven than they did 20 years ago. They believe that if killed fighting in the name of Islam, they will go straight to the seventh level of heaven and delight in the company of beautiful virgins. Abu Shanab says that this idea of heaven gives the martyrs comfortand power. It gives Palestinians the advantage over Israelis, he says.
Heaven was designed inpart to bolster constituencies under stress. Until the Greeks desecrated the Jewish temple in 167 B.C., for example, the Jews had a largely inchoate idea of the hereafter. They called it Sheol, and it was a kind of numb darknessnot an end, exactly, but not existence either. But when the Greeks, with their many gods and their decadent habits, began to threaten the Hebrew way of existence, Jewish leaders came up with a powerful incentive to stay faithful and fight back. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt, says a passage in the Book of Daniel, written around 165 B.C. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. This is the first full-blown reference to resurrection in the Bible, an enormously dramatic historical event and an act of incredible theological chutzpah, says Neil Gillman, professor of philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Over the centuries, the mainstream Jewish concept of an afterlife has evolved into something like a spiritual journey; Jews also believe that at the end of time, paradise will exist on earth and souls will be reunited with their bodies. Theologians stress, though, that the here and now is what matters for Jews, not the hereafter.
The New Testaments fullest descriptions of heaven were also battle cries. After the Romans crushed Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Middle Eastern cities were teeming with festivals honoring the Roman emperors, and the earliest Christians were in a very modern assimilationist dilemma. To what extent do we join the mainstream culture? they wondered. Do we attend without participating, participate without believing, believe without embracing? The Book of Revelation drew the battle lines, says L. Michael White, professor of classics at the University of Texas at Austin. Revelations mythic descriptions of thunder and lightning and burning torches, as well as its familiar promises of pearl gates and jeweled walls, were exhortations to the earliest Christians: Do not worship the Roman emperors. Stay faithful to your God and Jerusalem will be restored and you will live in a magnificent city forever. Based on the images in Revelation, thinkers from Augustine on began to conceptualize heaven as a celestial city, a wonderful Oz.
Why We Need Hell, Too
Through the years, Christian visions of heaven changed as society evolved. Dante saw heaven as the universe, and Thomas Aquinas thought of it as a brilliant place, full of light and knowledge. In the 18th century, Emanuel Swedenborg imagined heaven as a tangible world, with public gardens and parks. Jennifer Vavrek, 14, a counselor at Vacation Bible School, in Monroe, Conn., takes the contemporary, mainstream view. Heaven, she says, is whatever you dream it is. For Vavrek, heaven has angels and white clouds; her grandparents are there.
TWO KINDS OF EVERY FRUIT
If you were writing a travel brochure, hoping to entice a group of poor, hardscrabble desert people to spend their last dime, you would describe your destination the way the Quran describes paradise. Sura 55 is a song devoted in part to the rewards of heaven. It refers to two kinds of every fruit, upholstered couches, palm trees and pomegranates, and green, green pastures. The Quran also says that the faithful will benefit from the attentions of houris, which many Western scholars translate as virgins, who have very white skin and very dark eyes. (The exact number of houris available to the faithful is not specified; the number 72 or 70, popularized in recent news stories, may originally have come from early commentaries that most scholars believe to be unreliable.) As John O. Voll, associate director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, points out, the houris appear mostly chronologically early in the book, when the first Muslims were living in Mecca, being persecuted and exiled for their monotheism. The promise of rewards had to be stronger than in the days when the Muslims were a cohesive, growing society, he says. Most contemporary mainstream Muslims stick to the Quranic notion of heavens being a bountiful garden full of sensual pleasure and spiritual bliss beyond what mortals can possibly imagine. Detail of the "Apotheosis of St. Ignatius" by Giovani Gaulli, which shows the saint being carried to heaven by a group of angels
On the West Bank and in Gaza, talk about heaven is as common as dust. In the Dahaishe refugee camp near Bethlehem, youngsters who have spent most of the past month indoors confined by the Israeli curfew are roaming the streets, waiting for tanks to rumble by so they can vent their anger with stones. They talk about being martyrs the way other children talk about being doctors or firemen. Everyone here wants to be a shahid [martyr], everyone has a friend who died and went to heaven, says Salem, a genial 10-year-old. Everything I could wish for is in paradise, says Abdullah, who is 13. I would have green gardens and fresh fruit trees and we would have freedom. Not like here.
PARADISE AND PROPAGANDA
This isnt the first time Muslim extremists have immolated themselves in the name of heaven. As recently as the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war, tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers died walking headlong into Iraqi artillery and land mines, certain of their rewards in the hereafter. Many were heeding a book, written by an Iranian religious leader, called Maad (literally, Resurrection), which made paradise sound something like a deluxe Vegas hotel: There is a castle in Paradise made of marble. In that castle there are 70 houses made of rubies and in each house there are 70 rooms made of emeralds ... In each room there are 70 female servants. An Iranian field commander who served in battle for five years calls this heavenly vision propaganda, written expressly for young, unmarried men living in material poverty and sexual repression. Detail from a painting in a book of poems by Nizami that shows the heavenly ascension of the prophet Muhammad, as described in the Qur'an
Moderate Muslim scholars vehemently dispute the fundamentalist view. For one thing, descriptions of heaven are metaphorical, human attempts to describe the indescribable, these scholars say. For another, Muslim teachings contain strict injunctions against suicide. And while Islamic texts do promise heaven to soldiers who give their lives for Allah, they require those soldiers be engaged in what contemporary Westerners would call a just war. Theres a verse in the Quran that says, If youve killed one innocent person its as if youve killed all of humanity, says Basit Koshul, a lecturer in comparative religion at Concordia College, in Moorhead, Minn. To kill someone unjustly and then say to yourself that youre going to go to heaven and wont have to submit to judgment, its very problematic.
On The West Bank, Jews and Arabs are engaged in a life-and-death political struggle. In America, our anxieties are more personal. Lotz looks around her and sees a world devastated by sadness and fear. Her beloved parents are ailing. Her brother-in-law died last year of a brain tumor. Disease, the economy, drive-by shootings, school shootings, kidnappings and other perils of contemporary society have left us in need, she says, of assurance and hope. Her book Heaven: My Fathers House was in the works before the September 11 attacks, but afterward, her publisher rushed it into print. The book, which describes in detail what heaven will be like based on her interpretation of Revelation, has spent the past six months on the Christian Bookseller Association best-seller list.
THE PRECISE SIZE OF HEAVEN
The book appeals because its like the theological version of comfort food. Lotz compares heaven to a dream home, one that is safe, thats all paid for, that shelters your loved ones. In Lotzs heaven, God is the head of the house, the kind father who leaves the porch light on for the arrival of his beloved children. Lotz even gives the dimensions of heaven. Its a cube, 1,500 miles on a side, as large as the area from Canada to Mexico, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rockies. It could easily accommodate 20 billion residents, each having his or her own private 75-acre cube or room or mansion. This would still leave plenty of room for streets, parks, and public buildings.
More-progressive Christian theologians go crazy when they hear someone give the coordinates for heaven. Theres no specific teaching on where heaven is or what it is, says Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College and author of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven ... But Never Dreamed of Asking. The Bible doesnt give directions from downtown Cleveland. But Cynthia Machamer likes Lotzs specificity. She has had some financial problems, and shes still grieving over the loss of her brother, who died accidentally two years ago. Although Machamer, 39, didnt necessarily agree with the books every word, she found it reasonable and comforting. It reminded her, she says, that theres more to life than suffering.
So does heaven, as a concept, actually motivate people to action? Well, yes, but not by itself. There is no doubt that the heaven being promoted on the West Bank provides disaffected youth with powerful visions of a better place. Georgetowns Voll doesnt think that the virgins carry much weight with the Palestinian martyrs; unlike the Iranians in the 1980s, teenagers on the West Bank do have access to sex. More seductive is that you would have a house, regular food, prosperity, he says. You would have flowing water; someone wouldnt be bombing your well. If you had lived without all that stuff for the first 15 or 20 years of your life, heaven would sound pretty good with or without 72 virgins.
But while heaven talk is motivating and justifying, and an integral part of the rhetoric of jihad, its not the sole impulse behind any terrorist act. The suicide bombers as well as the Qaeda terrorists are also motivated by baser passions, whether they be political beliefs, personal hatreds, financial concerns or yearnings for notoriety. We have to see some sort of personal motivation on the part of these terrorists, says Jonathan Brockopp, assistant professor of religion at Bard College. Theyre in this in some ways for themselves. Indeed, on the West Bank, a new breed of secular martyr is emerging, young men and women who use the rhetoric of politics, not religion, to justify their acts.
CAN ANYONE GET IN?
It wasnt that long ago that the majority of Americans still went regularly to church or synagogue and could probably recite the catechism or the Ten Commandments. And to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the nature of their faith, believers saw these acts of devotiongoing to confession, giving to the shul, helping other people, saying your prayersas assurance of rewards in the hereafter. Now, among mainline Christians, hardly anyone in the pulpit preaches about heaven anymore, and among the faithful theres a demise of the conviction that actions have real consequences, says Randall Balmer, professor of American religion at Barnard College. Even evangelical Christians, who do preach on heaven, eschew the idea that a lifetime of good works guarantees entree to paradise. The only thing you need to do to get to heaven is accept Jesus Christ as your savior, says Lotz. With that simple act, murderers can get in, she says, and terrorists can, too.
Part of our peculiarity as humans is that we believe what we want to believe, and if thats illogical, we dont care. (In a letter, Ernest Hemingway wrote that he thought of heaven as two lovely houses in town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.) While most of us have ceased to correlate specific behaviors with rewards in heaven, we still think that if were good, well go there. Seventy-five percent of Americans believe that their actions on earth determine whether theyll go to heaven, according to a NEWSWEEK Poll. The optimistic view is that, as a culture, weve grown up and are able to tell right from wrong without needing a cosmic carrot or stick. The pessimistic view is that weve lost our points-and-rewards system and our moral compass as well.
What kind of paradise was Mohamed Atta imagining when he anointed himself with cologne the night before he boarded the bomb that was American Airlines Flight 11? He believed himself to be a martyr, and according to the letter the FBI found in his luggage, he was certain of his life in the hereafter. It will be the day, God willing, you spend with the women of paradise, he wrote. But the appeals to heaven as the planes struck the towers must sound to God like some kind of Babel. The hijackers thought they were destined for heaven, and who knows how many of their victims prayed for salvation in the moments before death?Newsweek.MSNBC.com Click on a section below for more News: National News World News Business & Money Technology & Health Lifestyle & Family Entertainment Opinion Live Talk Lineup The Tip Sheet Periscope & Conventional Wisdom International Editions
As many of the victims families lean on the promise of heaven to help them through the rest of their lives, political and terrorist leaders continue to use visions of heaven to justify their opposing views. But as innumerable and compelling as they are, visions of heaven are just that: visions. Good, compassionate behavior is not a matter of historical necessity, political perspective or cultural bias. If one can make the mental leap to imagine God in heaven, meting out judgment at the final hour, its not so much more of a stretch to believe that, in his or her wisdom, God must be able to sort out the bad guys from the good, and twisted rationalizations from what is true.
With Dan Ephron and Joanna Chen in the West Bank, Anne Underwood, Julie Scelfo and Margaret Williams in New York and Christopher Dickey in Paris
2002 Newsweek, Inc. -
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Marrying a cousin
by A_Revelation ini was wondering if this is seen as wrong in the eyes of jehovah and wether it would produce unusual children.
i was just interested.
also wether it is legal in britian (where i live).
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openminded
I could be wrong but I think I remember reading that the increase in birth defects is a myth and that the real reason for banning inter- famile marriages is to eliminate competition within a family unit.
Does Jehovah disagree with it? Well if you read and believe the Bible, you will see that he's pretty much cool with the idea. Check out the story of Cane (Adams boy) and Lot (and his daughters). Just dont let your kids see you naked (Noah) or Jehovah might kill you or somthing. OM
