Daughter (15) recently told my wife and I that she has a huge crush on this boy (17) from school who’s hanging out with her friend group a lot these days. She said he can’t date because he’s a Jehovah’s Witness. All wife & I knew before is that they’re some Christian group. From what we read online they seem to be pretty radical & abstract stuff like 144000 (?), Armageddon. They even get called a cult.

  • lemmylommy@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    I care very little about people’s peculiar beliefs, however you should know about Jehovas witnesses:

    • they are absolutely a cult and dangerous.

    • they believe joining their cult is the only way to achieve eternal life. Everyone else is doomed.

    • they put a very high focus on „saving“ people, aka bringing them into the cult. In fact, how many people you brought in is a big factor in determining your worth. Members are absolutely convinced they are doing good and actually saving souls. At least the normal folk who don’t abuse their brothers and sisters.

    • members are discouraged from forming bonds and meaningful interaction with non-members, unless it serves bringing them into the cult.

    • if someone leaves the cult, other members are forbidden from interacting with them, even within families. Except for the purposes of stalking and harassment of course.

    • obeying authority without question is very important. The children obey the parents. The wife obeys the husband. The husband obeys those above him in the pecking order. This creates a fertile breeding ground for domestic and sexual abuse, which are dealt with „internally“, aka swept under the rug.

    That said, most of them are normal people trapped in a very bad system. They can be kind, absolutely lovely people, or huge pricks, or pure evil, everything people outside the cult can be. It’s just that every single one of them needs to pull you inside, for your own good.

    A JW to non-JW relationship is not possible in the long term. Either your daughter will be absorbed by the cult (because he can’t let his wife and their children be condemned) and distance herself from you and her former friends or he will leave and be shunned by his family and friends inside the cult. Anything else will not be tolerated by his community.

    The best you can do is to find out about their methods and dangers and also prepare your daughter to never give up thinking for herself. I hope she is level headed enough to understand that it is not going to go well, even if he is a genuinely good person.

    • _thebrain_@sh.itjust.works
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      13 hours ago

      It’s the pyramid scheme of religion: you only get saved if you brought a bunch of people to the religion cult. Only 144000 people will be saved. At a certain point there are no more people to bring to the cult and the bottom ones/newest initiates won’t have anyway to make money get saved

      • Anti-Face Weapon@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        The two are genuinely not comparable. Organized religions are often terrible, abusive superstitions, but there are degrees to the thing. Jehovah’s Witnesses are at the degree of public danger