My daughter recieved this email from one of her Witness "friends". She is counseling my daughter (indirectly) about her choice to date a "worldly" guy.
Hey, So, we had a talk recently that was about Love & Respect in Your Marriage. The brother brought out that this was more for us Witnesses rather than worldly people, because it seems that even in the truth now marriage has lost it's correct place. He went on to say that even single people don't want to wait for a good Christian brother or sister...that they're dating and marrying worldly people... And that made me think of some news that I heard recently . See, it turns out that someone I thought was one of my closest friends, despite the fact that we don't see each other that much anymore , has been dating a worldly guy for quite some time now. And this isn't the kind of case where you'd say, maybe she just didn't know better...because she does. She certainly does, because if she thought it was something OK then she would've told me about it. But the fact that she knew not to tell me, shows that she knows just how wrong it is. She knows that I wouldn't, or couldn't, just shut my mouth about it . S ee, she had dated this brother for a while, but things didn't turn out the way she hoped. And then it seemed that all of her friends were getting married, when she had hoped that she would be too. And I know that's a really hard thing to deal with. But that's absolutely no excuse to go and date a worldly guy. What also may have led to this was that she used to be a pioneer, hanging out with other pioneers and strong Witnesses. Then she stopped pioneering and started working, which, isn't necessarily wrong. Some people aren't cut out to be pioneer s . But they can still be a good Witness. But see, she started hanging out with some Witnesses who weren't very strong . And soon, her strong Witness friends stopped seeing her. And when they did see her, she just wasn ' t the old friend they remembered. S o, what do you think I should do? Do I tell her that I can ' t really be her friend, knowing that she's been lying to me for so long? Or because she's been doing things with her life that aren't fitting for a Christian? Or do I stick around, trying to be there for her like I have been, hoping that she'll smarten up and do the right thing? I just don't know what to do because it seems that over the years I've lost a lot of friends to this type of thing. And I try my best to help them and it doesn't seem to work. And then I kick myself thinking "what else should I have done?" But you know what? All of my friends are grown ups, most raised in the truth, baptized because they chose to devote their lives to Jehovah. So although I can be there to try and help them with problems, ultimately, they're the ones who have to make the decisions, whether right or wrong. I just have to sit here, hoping they'll make the right one and stick around so we can be friends forever. And if they've sometimes made the wrong one, then I can still hope that at some point they'll realize what a mistake that decision was and fix it. So, if you want to, let me know your thoughts on this...