by Marvin Shilmer 10 Replies latest jw friends
Watchtower and the Woodshed
Today I uploaded to my blog an illustration from 1957 that had a serious impact on children at the time. I remember those days. It was awful.
My article is titled Watchtower and the Woodshed and is available at: http://marvinshilmer.blogspot.com/2011/07/watchtower-and-woodshed.html
Marvin Shilmer
It continued to have an impact over 20 years later.
Mummatron,
That’s one tragedy of stuff like that Watchtower illustration. It’s created and published one time, and then it’s out there. It lingers.
Marvin Shilmer
A fine elder/ pioneer duo in our cong. with older children so lovingly provided my mother with the wooden paddle they used to beat their kids with so she could beat the living shit out of me! Thanks guys!
To be fair . . . many non-JW parents of the day were similarly disposed. My father used to leather me frequently . . . and occasionally my sisters. Life at school was one where if you transgressed it was normally a formalised leathering or caning.
Having said that . . . the counsel of the good lord never changes . . . unlike social norms. And there are those in WT world today who still have the same approach . . . even though it is now illegal in some countries. If they wanted to be "Christian" and "different" they should have found the appropriate scriptual precedents and banned it instead . . . I cannot for the life of me conjure up the image of Jesus beating a child.
It's child abuse at any time and in any context . . . religious or otherwise. Any adult who takes delight in it is a disgrace to humanity.
I remember a CO who had to leave the circuit work because his wife was pregnant. He hated that child called him circuit breaker. Kid grew up all screwed up. Sick Cult. Totally ADD
That explains where my parents got there ideas about child 'discipline'.
I hate this cult!
No wonder so many witnesses disapproved of Dr. Spock.
Having grown up in that era, I agree with Sizemik that corporal punishment was very much the norm, rather than the exception. It was often very severe, too - the expression that I remember often hearing at home was a "thrashing."
In the schools, beatings were often administered simply because the teacher had become frustrated with his students (or her students - some of the worst excesses I observed were carried out by female teachers). Nothing at all, of course, to do with the fact that their teaching methods might be badly wanting!
However, advocating corporal punishment in a religious work raises matters to an entirely new level. It tends to make parents think that they are violating Divine Law if they don't flog their children. It tends to become a "take what a 'worldly' parent would hand out by way of punishment, then add 50% on top of that again" type situation.
No wonder ther eare so many screwed up people amongst the JWs.
Bill.
