Why do churches still make me panic ?

by Aiesha Harley 36 Replies latest jw friends

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  james_woods

  Aiesha, will give you a persmsg later to avoid putting travelogue stuff on your good thread.

  Did have one other great cathedral story, though. My last trip to London was to meet up with our company sales guy at the office and then out to Cologne, G. to call on Ford of Europe. Well, the Ford engineer Rudi wants to take us all around to the big cathedral and it was very impressive. So I buy one of those strung together tourist postcard books and there is this really depressing B+W photo of downtown Cologne after WW2 with EVERYTHING blown to dust and atoms EXCEPT for the big cathedral. Ken Rowe (our salesman) made a big point with Rudi that "see there, we deliberately saved your beautiful artifact, but you guys blasted ours in Conventry flat as a pancake". Rudi (who had a devastatingly dry sense of humor) raised an eyebrow and replied "maybe, but I think that may be just because you guys could not HIT this cathedral)...but my point being I am glad it is still there for people to see.

  We also asked Rudi how far it was to Paris (kind of wanted to go on the weekend) and he replied "about three days - by tank"....BTY Rudi was really from Antwerp and just loved putting it to his fellow Germans as much as us.

  James
• 

  Aiesha Harley

  One book that really helped me was "The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse'......you would think it was written by people that were JW's, but it isn't.

  (Been out of PC action for a couple of days)

  Codeblue, can you remember who wrote the above book? I want to go shopping this week and purchase?

  I've already ordered Crisis of Conscience but it's going to take 3 weeks to get here !
• 

  seven006

  The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse. David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen
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  Aiesha Harley

  Thanks seven006.
• 

  seven006

  Glad I could help.
  
  If you want to read something that also might help and you do not want to wait for a book, this website page with articles written by Dr. Arthur J. Deikman is a very good one and you will find some answers about why you may have some psychological issues with religion and churches.
  
  http://www.deikman.com/eval.html
  
  Click on and read “Evaluating Spiritual and Utopian Groups” and “Treating Former Members of Cults.”
  
  This will give you a little insight on why you feel the way you do as well as an understanding of how your thinking got there.
  
  The answers you will get, will be answers you not only already know, but also may not recognize why. It will also let you exercise your ability to figure it out on your own and force you to think in a constructive manner using deductive reasoning.
  
  
  Take care,
  
  Dave
• 

  Aiesha Harley

  Thanks Dave

  I'll have a look at the site you suggested. Starting to get a little sleepy (it's 00.48 here) so forgive me if i don't respond straight away.

  By the way, thanks for the help and advice.
• 

  reaper

  Welcome James, Our Church was built in the 1800s by Ukrainian Catholics and one of our Guys was actually baptised in the Church when he was a baby, as his Dad was Ukrainian. He is now a Born Again Christian. The Church is not that big, but holds about 200 people. However when we get bigger we may have to rent a big unit on an industrial park, as thats what a lot of modern Churches do.

  We started to realise that something was resonating with us when we went to Rome in 1997 and visited the catacombes under the Church of Saint Sebastian. We noticed the Christian fish carved into the walls of that catacombes and it made us wonder about the fish sign seen on many cars etc.

  It took a while for us to get our of the borg, but the Lord was patient and kind with us. We started visiting other Churches after looking around St Peters Church in the Vatican, and gradually I would offer up prayers in a quite area myself. I even lit candles as a way of offering up a prayer.

  However we do not see Jesus Christ being worshipped properly in many of those places. Many of the Cathederals have become business enterprises, such as Lincoln and York. In Lincoln they even sell statues of IMPS which are like little Demons.