My 12 year old son is being pressured by our PO and other elders to get baptized. I was right there with them until I realized the WTS was a big scam. Now I'm trying to tell my son to wait until he's much older, but now that his scumbag mom is reinstated, I'm sure she'll rush him to get baptized so she can take the credit and look like a "wonderful, spiritual mother" to all in the bORG.
Do you guys remember the big push to baptize kids?
by isnrblog 14 Replies latest jw experiences
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keyser soze
My parents never pressured me into it, but the elders did. I remember when I had just graduated high school and still hadn't been baptized. An elder stopped by the house and told me that my life was in danger, and that there must be something wrong with me spiritually, because I hadn't yet, at 18, made the decision to get baptized.I still believed it was the truth at the time, and became extremely self-conscious about the fact that I hadn't yet been baptized, especially when I saw all the kids in the circuit being baptized at a much younger age. I finally made the regrettable decision to get baptized.
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FreedomFrog
My parents started pressuring me into it when I turned about 13. Something about being "a teen" was the turning point for them. I'm not sure if they got others to chime in but I had this friend that was much older than I was (I was about 14 by then) and as we were driving to her sisters house, she pulls out the book "Organized...something, something, book"...the ones with all the questions to know before you are baptized and she basically "tested" me. Then when she was finished, she said, "you're ready, what's holding you up?" Almost every meeting, I was approached by the elders or an elder's wife asking when I was thinking about getting baptized. So yeah, I was very much pressured into it.
Edit to add: I was baptized 1986..maybe '87, don't remember which now...lol...just know I was 15.
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GentlyFeral
My son, at the age of 17, was still not baptized. He had never expressed any interest in it, although he was a believer then.
One day a sister took me to task about it: "If your son really loved Jehovah, he'd be baptized by now." I didn't dignify that with an answer, but I firmly believed that to force an unready or unwilling child into baptism was to make him a hypocrite - you know, a liar, one of those people who is "thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur" -- Rev. 21:8 and all that.
GentlyFeral
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dawg
Jesus was 30 when baptised, yet they take a child and pressure them to do somehting that can have a huge impact on their lives.. this issue is what led to me coming out as an apostate...went to a Funeral last year, Uncle died, went to dinner with the whole family afterwards... I had a hard time believing that they'd allow me to go, but I've never been DF'ed so they allowed it... AT dinner they tell me Dillon, my nephew was already baptised, at 13 yoa.... I went ballistaic after that.