TIFU by making children question their religion

Submitted by fairiefire t3_zwp67t in tifu

(obligatory "this happened many years ago") I used to work as an in-home counselor for families. My client was a kid living with his aunt and her 2 children, who were around his age, 10ish. The case was difficult as I was supposed to help the kid grieve his mother's impending death, but the aunt did not want him to know his mother was more than "sick" back in the Caribbean, while he was in the US.

The aunt was a devout Jehovah's Witness and the kids were being raised in that religion. No problem. I was sensitive to their beliefs and practiced cultural competence. We mostly focused on how he was settling into a new home/country/school/setting, how he was handling his mother's illness, and his homesickness as a result.

The week of Halloween, the kids asked if they could tell me a secret. As a counselor for children and families, you have to treat secrets carefully as I am mandated to report certain things and don't want to lie. I asked what sort of secret, if anyone was being hurt, something like that. They said it wasn't anything like that, but that the mother/aunt would be mad if she knew. I said I might have to tell, if it was serious, but probably I could keep their secret if they still wanted to tell me. They opened their backpacks to show loads of candy. I asked where they got it. In hushed voices, they said their school had a Halloween party. Ah, this was a secret I could keep! "Are you not allowed to eat candy? Is that why it's a secret?" They informed me that Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed to celebrate anything (not birthdays, and certainly not Halloween) in order to not be seen as seeing themselves as higher than God. I asked how they felt about having had a Halloween celebration that clashed with their faith. They said they thought candy was great and what's wrong with that? Fair enough. They went on to say that Halloween is Satan's birthday, so it's very bad to celebrate it, which is why this is a secret. I said I would keep their secret; the statute of limitations has run out since they're now all adults.

Here's where IFU: We're having a kind of surface-level conversation on religion and I'm a curious person. I asked "Satan has a birthday? And he was a fallen angel, right? So do all the angels have birthdays?" There was utter silence as they looked at each other and me. I think they realized that they were sold a bag of lies. I needed to blow this off. "Well, I guess they were created or born, so they must have birthdays. We all do." They kind of shrugged it off and we changed topics. I hope I didn't do any lasting damage, but I do hope they are critical thinkers and made the decisions that were right for them as they aged.

TL;DR: Asked if all angels had a birthday, since they were told Halloween was Satan's birthday, which made them fall silent.

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LeftStatistician7989 t1_j1w292v wrote

If this was your noteworthy tifu in all these years you’re a saint. It seemed an honest enough question to invite him to explore.

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[deleted] t1_j1xwqdv wrote

even asking questions can help make your faith and connection to become stronger

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Opus-the-Penguin t1_j1w0ct4 wrote

Why would that be a stumper or a faith-challenger? Obviously as created beings the angels had birthdays, no?

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gradxl t1_j1yxqah wrote

The thing that struck me is that, since people celebrate Satan's birthday, maybe the other angels also have birthday parties. Since the kids weren't allowed to celebrate their own birthdays they would probably see this as unfair.

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Opus-the-Penguin t1_j1zb9ob wrote

Given the premise that the righteous don't celebrate birthdays, it seems obvious to me that Satan would have a birthday celebration but angels wouldn't.

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RenzoARG t1_j1wg1nf wrote

Questioning a religion is not a FU, it can even strengthen their faith. Blindly following a beleif or faith is a dangerous thing.

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fairiefire OP t1_j1whifq wrote

I agree, but these were children and I was out of line in terms of my role with them.

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Jakubada t1_j1whur5 wrote

Or completely make them lose it. which isn't necessarily bad imo

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TucuReborn t1_j1yixly wrote

I'm a religious person, and discussions on religion with atheists were some of the things that made me dig deeper and questions things more. Every time they posed a question I didn't have a good answer for, I read and studied until I did.

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Elocai t1_j1wy7lh wrote

I love how Satan allways uses his common sense magic to trick believers into questioning their own religion.

Reminds of how God killed all of Jacobs animals, friends and family just to prove a point to Satan that people are so dumb and blind to his actions that they would still believe in him even when takes everything away from them.

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JejuneEsculenta t1_j1xui01 wrote

Making someone question religion is a boon, not a TIFU.

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TattooedWenchkin t1_j1y1n5q wrote

You didn't fuck up, you steered that child to the truth that he's landed in a cult.

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rhymes_with_snoop t1_j1x4or4 wrote

If your faith is so flimsy that such an innocuous question would make it fall apart, your faith isn't worth believing.

(Which is not to say their JW aunt wouldn't have a reasonable answer that would satisfy them, but simply to say I wouldn't worry overmuch about it)

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HezzeroftheWezzer t1_j1xa7kr wrote

>They informed me that Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed to celebrate anything (not birthdays, and certainly not Halloween) in order to not be seen as seeing themselves as higher than God.

This is not why. Any holidays or celebrations not celebrated are because of origins that are in direct conflict with Bible teachings.

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>Candy was great and what's wrong with that?

No. There is nothing wrong with candy.

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>They went on to say that Halloween is Satan's birthday, so it's very bad to celebrate it,

No. Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe that Halloween is Satan's birthday. (How would anyone know such a thing? Puh-lease!) Halloween has its roots in the festival of Samhain which is a pagan religious celebration - in complete conflict with Bible-based teachings.

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>I asked "Satan has a birthday? And he was a fallen angel, right? So do all the angels have birthdays?"

Yes, actually .... as you said. God talks about how his first-born of creation, Jesus, helped him create everything else thereafter ... including the millions (myriads upon myriads) mentioned in the Bible. So it stands to reason that they all must have had a "day of birth".

Regardless, it has nothing to do with why Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays or holidays. When a person looks into the origins of all of the secular holidays and sees how they have been adulterated by incorporating from other religions that were opposed and abhorred by God and Jesus, one does not feel bad or left out ... only relieved that they are not participating.

Origins matter. A delicious, shiny piece of candy loses its luster once you know that someone procured it from the gutter. Someone people would say "Oh, it still has its wrapper on it. It's safe to eat." And they do. I am not one of those people; I throw it away.

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fairiefire OP t1_j1xihks wrote

Thanks. I didn't say it was accurate - that is not my religion and I did not know the reason. But they were only 10.

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944335 t1_j1xjxcf wrote

Are you a JW?

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HezzeroftheWezzer t1_j20069r wrote

>Are you a JW?

Yes. However, I was raised by a Jehovah's Witness mother and Roman Catholic father.

Until I was a teenager, I had a foot in both worlds ... all the teachings from my Mom and birthdays, holidays, etc. with Dad and his family.

When I went to college, I walked away from everything on both sides. I wasn't following JW's, but I also wasn't celebrating holidays because I knew their true origins - and it was not in Christian or Bible teachings. It made no more sense to me than if I just started randomly observing Hanukkah or Kwanzaa.

In my mid-20s, after college and marriage, I started examining other religions, talking with various ministers, but in every case there were too many examples of their teachings in conflict with specific Bible principles and they could offer no explanation or reconciliation.

There was literally only one religion that followed the Bible completely, so I started studying the Bible again with them, as did my husband. We did for two years and were baptized. (My husband was previously Methodist and Baptist.)

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