Uh-oh! Looks like little Caleb has brought home some competing fiction! Mom knows that her Bible fiction won’t survive against it — it’s far more interesting — so it’s time for a guilt trip at the family table! (Fast forward to 2:58 for the video.)
Maybe AC Grayling was wrong — he suggested substituting ‘God’ with ‘Fred’ or some other name, just to show how silly the whole thing is. But ‘Jehovah’ sounds pretty silly to me, and they’re still buying it.
I imagine this is intended to help JW parents remove unwanted elements like ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘critical thinking’. It’s really terrible parenting, but it’s disguised as good parenting. Notice that Mom doesn’t yell or scream, or throw the toy in the trash. What she does is much more sinister: she manipulates the boy into caring for the feelings of an invisible bronze-age Hebrew deity, and acting accordingly. Check him out; he’s absolutely gutted.
How stupid! Jehovah’s a big guy; he can look after his own feelings. Or is that a not-so-subtle threat? You don’t want Jehovah to be ‘sad’ with you, do you? Remember how we read about the Midianites? Jehovah was ‘sad’ with them, too.
Even creepier is how the kid is encouraged to be Jehovah’s ‘friend’. People sometimes talk about having a ‘relationship’ with their favourite deity, but what they don’t realise is that it’s hard to make a relationship work when there’s a significant power imbalance. When the other person in the relationship has all the power in the universe, knows everything you do and think, imposes arbitrary moral demands on you, and will ultimately decide your eternal future, that’s not a relationship. It even goes beyond ‘abusive relationship’; it’s a hostage situation. How is this a model for successful relationships?
Hmm. Something about her seems familiar.
Nah.
Afterwards, they sang “I Am a Slave of God”.
UPDATE: Hey, look what the Internet made! A Sparlock t-shirt!
Best of all, Café Press will give you a 25% discount if you use the order code 3XNEYLRKATMK. Apparently.
Celebrate this, the best of all possible worlds!
30 May 2012 at 7:10 am
The JW 'Warning Message'.
How and why Jehovah Witnesses perform like a terrorist group.
As an impressionable child I was phobic indoctrinated with doomsday preparations about the Watchtowers coming 'warning work'.
That we would some day 'soon' be required by Jehovah our God to go door to door and declare to every home with a judgemental proclamation,'that every man,woman,child is about to die horribly' and the only salvation is the JW who are no longer allowing anyone into their 'ark of salvation'.
This very inflammatory hate message would incite jealous non believers to 'attack God's anointed' and provoke his wrath to bring about Armageddon with only JW who were obedient and trusting in Jehovah permitted to survive.
—
Tell the truth don't be afraid-Danny Haszard http://www.dannyhaszard.com
30 May 2012 at 2:54 pm
Meanwhile, the powers-that-be push civilization towards world war three and outright collapse – as the Hebrew deity long ago foretold. http://e-watchman.com
31 May 2012 at 7:44 am
What does WW3 got to do with an obnoxious phobic inducing cult propaganda clip?
28 October 2013 at 7:59 am
Your a sad little man Danny. If you hate the JW so much, why dedicate your life writing about those you hate? Just saying.. Seems like you go OUT your way and waste your life when it can be spent more productive and fruitful making others happy and yourself as well 🙂
28 October 2013 at 12:37 pm
Point of order: I don't hate people; just religions. And telling the truth about religions is the happiest, most productive thing I could be doing. Thanks for looking out for me, though.
One thing I've noticed since deconverting, Sol, is how little difference there is between the Mormons and the Witnesses. The Mormons say the exact same thing, and they do it for the same reason you did — it's a tactic to silence non-believers.
Say, Sol: do JWs say "Critics can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone"? If not, you should get the phrase going among the Witnesses. It's a very successful meme in some circles.
30 May 2012 at 4:52 pm
Two things to highlight. The way Mommy talks about 'you got it from your friend' … yes, friends are not to be trusted. Likewise, the misrepresentation of biblical emotions. Where in the bible do we hear of Jehovah being sad? He has regrets from time to time ("repented that he …"), get angry a lot of the time, but where is he ever written up as being sad?
31 May 2012 at 5:58 am
Shit, that was disturbing. Having fairly recently realised that the religion of my childhood (mormonism) was also a load of hogwash, I was thinking that my distaste for JWs was probably part of my mormon "testimony". Having watched that, I realise that my distaste for JWs is perfectly justified.
That actually made me feel physically sick.
And besides, since when does Jehovah hate magic? He magics up heaps of cool shit.
31 May 2012 at 9:24 pm
That is completely creep-tastic. I love the Coraline reference–great movie, brilliant book.