kierkegaard

I was raised in the Way, and the idea that children should be sacrificed for their parents (no doubt craig channeling vpw) was ingrained in my mind at an early age. When my fifth grade teacher (going back to '91 here) asked the class what they would do as parents if faced with the choice of their own death or the death of their child, I said they the parent should of course sacrifice the child because the parent is presumably a valuable human being whereas the child could turn out to be anything (serial killer, catholic, homosexual--the usual suspects). Why choose the risk over the safe bet? Met with horrfied looks from my teacher and classmates, I later put the question to my mother, who said she would sacrifice herself for me and that the Way would never teach otherwise. Sigh. The constant rewriting of history by Way leadership and members is like a Stalinist nightmare. At 24 years old, I have such an impoverished sense of history, even family history. Every time a doctrine changed, it was as if it had ever been thus. And every time people we knew left the ministry, it was as if we had never known them, even when they were family members.