I saw a video where a Christadelphian speaker compared preaching Christadelphian beliefs with selling insurance. It’s an interesting analogy - but I don’t think it ends well for Christadelphians.
I have thought for many years that the ChristoSafe Insurance Company should be prepared to make changes. I think it is wrong for the children of shareholders to automatically be made shareholders without first being allowed to reach the age of reason and so be enabled to look into what the Company`s insurance cover is supposed to protect, its promises of payout, and what the ongoing conditions are should they become shareholders, if they (they alone) decide of their own volition to do so. The Insurance Company shareholders should on a regular basis at all of their branches be sitting down and looking at the original basis for their existence, to honestly determine whether their principle beliefs still hold good, based on what information is now available which might in fact now have a relevance to what was first thought to be correct.
I really don't know what to do about childhood indoctrination. I mean, yes, I was subject to it, and I can see various harms it caused me, and I've written about some of them. At the same time, I'm not sure how much it can be avoided. If there are beliefs that parents think important, and a view of the world that parents think is "reality" (even though many around them disagree...), I don't know how you avoid children being aware of that, and how you make sure they're truly aware of mainstream alternatives (which I certainly wasn't, and I do believe the bubble I was raised in is part of the reason I kept belief into my twenties rather than finding problems with it earlier).
Largely what I say is that being baptised when I was was the right thing for who I was then. And leaving when I did (and then staying out) was also the right thing for who I was at that point in time (or, realistically, for who I was several years earlier...), and still is the right thing for me now. That to me seems more important, the thing that Christadelphians were meant to be about - seeking out truth where it leads you, no matter if the final result is different from where it led you five or ten or twenty years ago.
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I have thought for many years that the ChristoSafe Insurance Company should be prepared to make changes. I think it is wrong for the children of shareholders to automatically be made shareholders without first being allowed to reach the age of reason and so be enabled to look into what the Company`s insurance cover is supposed to protect, its promises of payout, and what the ongoing conditions are should they become shareholders, if they (they alone) decide of their own volition to do so. The Insurance Company shareholders should on a regular basis at all of their branches be sitting down and looking at the original basis for their existence, to honestly determine whether their principle beliefs still hold good, based on what information is now available which might in fact now have a relevance to what was first thought to be correct.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know what to do about childhood indoctrination. I mean, yes, I was subject to it, and I can see various harms it caused me, and I've written about some of them. At the same time, I'm not sure how much it can be avoided. If there are beliefs that parents think important, and a view of the world that parents think is "reality" (even though many around them disagree...), I don't know how you avoid children being aware of that, and how you make sure they're truly aware of mainstream alternatives (which I certainly wasn't, and I do believe the bubble I was raised in is part of the reason I kept belief into my twenties rather than finding problems with it earlier).
DeleteLargely what I say is that being baptised when I was was the right thing for who I was then. And leaving when I did (and then staying out) was also the right thing for who I was at that point in time (or, realistically, for who I was several years earlier...), and still is the right thing for me now. That to me seems more important, the thing that Christadelphians were meant to be about - seeking out truth where it leads you, no matter if the final result is different from where it led you five or ten or twenty years ago.