Posted by Rick [Rick] on April 05, 1999 at 23:26:48 {6.uz.4vynMgIYA54YD7QFMFBt36Xyc}:
I read Kristin's post to you. I couldn't have given you better advice. I thought you had to be decades older because I have never seen a young man post so intelligently, and I'm very sorry to have questioned your credibility and not accepting you at face value.
> I want to apologize not only to Rick for being overly harsh
I accept that apology.
> I still stand by my views of Rick
That hurts not understanding why you believe I'm the kind of person you judged me as. One of these days, if someone believes you're a bad person when you know that you're a good guy, then I hope you will understand my feelings better.
> but I have tempered them with rationality, and I now have the common sense to word them in a manner more suitable for this forum.
My concern, truly, is not seeing anyone more stessed than myself or less emotionally stable run away from H2O because someone believed they weren't a good person and told them that. Although I got over it, some people carry scars from being told they're basically not good people. Quite often we as JWs have guilt trips placed on ourselves and are manipulated into feeling intense guilt and inadequacy as humans. We who fall into judicial snares are convinced that we are genuinely "wicked" people who really got what was coming to us, and who don't deserve life (much less happiness). When someone rejects us in the world, we often overreact because of having been rejected as worthy people by the organization.
That is why I never want to see any personal judgments against others in this forum even if the one doing the judging feels completely justified. Sometimes this is inevitable because we all evaluate others (consciously or unconsciously), but I don't want anyone who came here to heal have their personal wounds deepened. If I could overreact just on burnout, lack of adequate sleep and a little emotional instability it caused, then imagine the permanent damage and possible self-inflicted injury someone might suffer because of even one unkind word in this forum toward them personally. Even if you felt they deserved it because they posted some "sanctimonious drivel," it's so important to remember there is a real and possibly suffering person under the "sanctimonious" vaneer they constructed as protective armor.
If you could learn the lessons then maybe sometime in the next century, if God is merciful, then someone like you will take the helm of a reformed organization for the betterment of mankind.
I want to clarify that I'll post when I'm ready, and my lack of posting no longer has anything to do with you. (It did in the beginning because you seemed to represent for a brief time all those who have ever turned on me for reasons I couldn't understand, or imputed bad motives to me where there were none, but that is behind me.)
Again I hope you'll take Kristin's advice in that post and grow into someone who will stand firm for what is right no matter what the price.
Rick