If you have a family, do you make it a point to provide companionship for those unmarried?

by Theocratic Sedition 36 Replies latest jw friends

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  Theocratic Sedition

  Quote from this week's Congregation Bible Study. Ch.8, para 15, 16.

  One sister opened her heart this way: "I've since left the world and do not desire to go back. However, I still need to be cared about and loved. I pray that Jehovah will provide additional spiritual food and encouragement for us single Christians. We're not invisible, and not all of us are eager to get married. Yet, in a way it seems that we're on our own. Yes we can always turn to Jehovah, but when we need human contact, can we talk with our spiritual family?" Thousands of single brothers and sisters can honestly respond yes. They do enjoy such human contact in their congregation. The circle of friends extends beyond brothers and sisters their same age. Being people oriented, they enjoy friendships with those of different ages, including older ones or youths in local Christian families.

  16. With some forethought, you can be a source of refreshment to single ones by sometimes including them in your family activities, such as your evening of Family Worship. Sharing a family meal with an unmarried brother or sister can mean far more than a plate of good food. Could you take the initiative to make an appointment to share in the ministry together? What about inviting a single Christian to work with your family on a Kingdom Hall maintenance project or occasionally going shopping together? And some families have invited a widow, widower, or single pioneer to join them on a trip to a convention or a vacation spot. Such association has proved to be mutually refreshing.

  Sighhhhhhh.
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  cult classic

  double sighhhhhhh
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  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  Would I like to come over to enjoy Hamburger Helper with your family, and then join you for your "Family Worship" reading litteratrash?

  
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  LostGeneration

  They do enjoy such human contact in their congregation

  ^

  Please tell me you slipped in this line on your own and its not actually something they printed.

  Big laughs at paragraph 16. I'm sure the single one would be plenty happy with a plate of food, minus all of the rest of the religious bullshit they would have to go though to get it.
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  Julia Orwell

  That's pish tosh because when I was single and all my single friends got married and I had no one to hang with, and no Jw family, I was overlooked almost as much as a single mother! With no family connection I never got invited by association and when I cried at an assembly because I drove there myself and was lonely because everyone else had someone to go with, the sisters in my cong said, 'why didn't you ask if you could hitch a lift with someone?"

  I replied, "I shouldn't have to beg for an act of charity! This is supposed to be a Christian org! I've been in thiscong for years, everyone knows my situation therefore someone could have taken the initiative with out me begging for charity."

  That day I got a heap of offers for a lift for the next day. If you're single you're invisible, unless you're doing something wrong!
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  villagegirl

  A dollar short and a life time too late. I hear you Julia and I

  don't mean this as invalidating your experience.

  Single women and single men usually had no

  social problems in my congregation.

  It was the SINGLE MOM, that

  suffers the most in my observation.

  She is last on the list. She probably works and has all the home

  responsibilities and her children are considered "bad associations"

  because they do not come from a squeaky clean Theocratic Family

  Model #34589200-01-89

  I remember being a single Mom, snubbed in the congregation,

  I was young and attractive, wives did not want me around their husbands,

  Single men wanted "no baggage" and they had plenty of single women to

  choose from. My daughter needed clothes, I needed clothes, I was working and

  paying all the bills, and going to college, exhausted most of the time, turning down

  dates with "worldy" men - what an idiot I was. My daughter lonely, no witness mom

  wanted to include her, she is of mixed race, it was the seventies, in a white town,

  I was viewed with suspician. Yet I thought these people were my "family" what delusion.
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  Julia Orwell

  Yes. These ones who need the most help and encouragement are at the bottom of the heap. I used to be friends with the single mums in the hall, but who else was?
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  Amelia Ashton

  Single Mums were the lowest class of human in our KH. I even did most of my field service alone but pushing a buggy. I felt shunned and excluded unless some-one wanted something from me.

  I wish now I had faked the hours and just gone home to watch teletubbies.
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  prologos

  A family is a family, even imposing a "worship the watchtower night" is an intrusion. How would you accomodate a potential irritant into that, unless it is a spontaneous - felt and good deed?

  so much possible good happenings are killed by the watchtower mentality, the idea to control, organize everything.

  In the 50s watchtower suggested to special pioneer couples in foreign language territories to only speak their new adoptive language AT HOME. well ---- no, a family is a family, not a sub branch of the WT BtS inc, FADS.

  It is not in the cliques interest to help the lowly ones, yet

  jesus will judge (as the story goes) according what you did in a human way to the LEAST of his, lowly self, brothers, sisters, not the big cheeses locally or across from manhattan.
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  clarity

  Funny isn't it ... doesn't matter how sick or stressed,

  or broke, or overworked or lonely a single sister is,

  the elders never notice this! Too much trouble!

  >

  Buuuuutttttt the minute the elders think something

  is 'going on'... they are there like a shot!!!!! LOL

  hahahhahh

  clarity