I couldn't help myself...I started to cry. It just got me so frustrated. So I told him, "You know I was raised in a faith, that told me we were the only ones who would be saved, and I remember being five years old and bursting into tears because I knew all my little friends in school, and my grandparents were going to die and not be with me, because only my family and those who believed like us would be saved. Don't you realize how damaging that kind of thinking is?"
It's worse than damaging.
You know, one day the JW woman who was studying with me was looking at the Bible Stories book with my 6 year old daughter, and she was pointing to the picture of the people dying in the flood. My daughter took one look at it and said, "That is so sad. All those people are dying! That is terrible!"
The woman told me later, "You know, none of my children ever saw it that way. They never expressed any concern for the ones dying in the flood".
I think way too many Witnesses are just perversely thrilled with the belief that they will survive while billions of others will be slaughtered. I absolutely hated the district conventions when they would have those pathetically ridiculous drramas, and the audience would applaud thunderously when the "bad" people bit the dust. It was sick, sick, sick.
Beryl