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Goodbye Jesus

Mennonite Leaders Accused Of Beating Young Man


R. S. Martin

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I don't know what to make of this. I find it shocking. Mennonites are supposed to be nonviolent and honest. Yet this video of Mennonites in Latin America raises some really serious questions. I don't know Spanish but the visuals and words like torturo speak for themselves. I also used Google Translator for an approximate English translator that is better than my Spanish. 

 

I'm not sure how to post a YouTube but here's the url; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqvXOb2RXWw

 

Spanish Title: 

Joven denuncia que fue torturado por escuchar radio en colonia menonita 14/07/15

 

Google translations: Young claims that he was tortured by Mennonite colony listen to radio

 

Spanish Description: Published on Jul 14, 2015

Un joven denunció que fue golpeado por dirigentes de la colonia menonita Nueva Durango, por el solo hecho de haber escuchado radio. Según el joven, fue castigado por trasgredir las normas que imponen en la colonia
Los dirigentes negaron tal hecho y manifestaron que solo los quieren perjudicar.

 

Google Translation: A young man reported that he was beaten by leaders of the Mennonite colony New Durango, by the mere fact of having heard radio. According to the young, he was punished for transgressing the rules imposed on the colony

The leaders denied this fact and stated that only want to harm.
 
I take it by this translation the leaders claim the young fellow is just trying to cause trouble with his accusations. But where, I ask, did he get the scars?

 

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Just more of the same, religion is dependent upon ignorance to perpetuate.

 

My wife has this odd fascination and reverence for the Amish in their simple ways and willful ignorance. Granted, they are some of the nicest people I have ever met but at the same time they are some of the dumbest people I have ever known.

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I used to be taught with various Mennonite material in the home (homeschooled). Though Mennonites, Amish etc. are some of the nicest people you could meet, they rely on fear to control their community. Children are told lies about the world and often beaten. It's just more of the same, as Sybaris said.

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I don't have much experience with Mennonites. I worked with one such young man for about a year and he seemed very normal; nice, smart and hard working. I imagine they, like any other religion, have a variety of differing beliefs and behaviors among their subsets.

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And then Mennonites are interviewed by a television station ... that uses radio waves. OMG!

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I used to be taught with various Mennonite material in the home (homeschooled). Though Mennonites, Amish etc. are some of the nicest people you could meet, they rely on fear to control their community. Children are told lies about the world and often beaten. It's just more of the same, as Sybaris said.

 

What you are showing here is the two distinct faces of these people: public face and private face. They want to be seen as nice people, the salt of the earth, an example to the world, a city of light set on a hill, as per Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. To do this, they strive to appear as good, honest, unworldly, hard-working and peaceable people.

 

But to retain this public image, they use fear and lies. Does anyone think that feels good to be treated to fear and lies all one's life? 

 

My experience of working as live-in hired help in more than a dozen different families was that some are more peaceable and happy homes than others. However, being one's brother's/sister's keeper is seen as a divine calling and makes for constant judgmentalism even in the most relaxed and casual situations. If the ministers don't use excommunication and the parents don't use corporal punishment, hell awaits. So yes, fear rules. 

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And then Mennonites are interviewed by a television station ... that uses radio waves. OMG!

 

I fail to understand that. I saw a LOT of videos online showing Old Colony Mennonites in South America going about their daily lives, including an older couple in their home. My own people, Old Order Mennonites in Ontario, are not easy to find visually represented online except when some photographer snapped a picture of a buggy or group of people on public property from behind.

 

I suspect the difference may be that, while both have similar rules regarding technology, the Old Colony people in South America are so isolated that they don't realize they are being photographed for TV while my people live among everyone else and may be more aware of what happens when you get into contact with reporters. Because my people get the local newspapers they see the pictures and articles while the isolated Old Colonies in South America possibly do not. That's just a guess on my part. 

 

Then again, surely no reporter can ethically tape an interview without at least informing them of it. So another guess is that people like that older couple believe they are witnessing to the world via the interview. Likewise, the men in the YouTube linked above may think they are warning the world about the bad church they left behind and moved away from, or perhaps in their minds it is an appeal to the Human Rights Tribunal, since they feel their human rights were violated when the church leaders beat them as adult men.

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I don't have much experience with Mennonites. I worked with one such young man for about a year and he seemed very normal; nice, smart and hard working. I imagine they, like any other religion, have a variety of differing beliefs and behaviors among their subsets.

 

Absolutely they have a variety of differing beliefs and behaviours among their subsets. I mean, I don't know how many subsets of Mennonites there are, or what the rules and regulations of each group are. There are too many to count.

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Just more of the same, religion is dependent upon ignorance to perpetuate.

 

My wife has this odd fascination and reverence for the Amish in their simple ways and willful ignorance. Granted, they are some of the nicest people I have ever met but at the same time they are some of the dumbest people I have ever known.

 

Yeah, if you take kids out of school at age fourteen, teach them in your own school with teachers who were taken out of school at age fourteen, keep them among your own people for life, forbid access to the internet or social mingling with outsiders, you very seriously limit their knowledge base. But the world idealizes them for their close-knit communities and for retaining their culture in an ultra-modern world and people tell them, "We respect you for your way of life." I know about it because I used to hear it in sermons on Sundays. All of this meshes with their goal to be a light to the world and salt of the earth so I guess it goes to their heads. They believe people around them really do think highly of them. 

 

I will never forget what an elderly preacher used to say in his sermon, "We are NOT an uneducated people!" 

 

The guy had perhaps six years of formal education. He could read the Bible and do business in two languages. But recently I saw a photograph taken of some of these church leaders in the 1960s when they attended a public meeting in Ottawa and I was shocked. All my life I had looked up to these guys seeing them as akin to God and the prophets and Jesus. Now they just looked like lost little boys, bewildered by a world they didn't understand. In other words, dumb. Their so-called spiritual knowledge does not make up for their lack of practical knowledge about the world we live in and the people around them.

 

Sorry, I'm really going on and on in these posts. It feels really good to discuss these people who kicked me out for asking too many questions, who accused me falsely of so many things. 

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Just more of the same, religion is dependent upon ignorance to perpetuate.

 

My wife has this odd fascination and reverence for the Amish in their simple ways and willful ignorance. Granted, they are some of the nicest people I have ever met but at the same time they are some of the dumbest people I have ever known.

 

. All of this meshes with their goal to be a light to the world and salt of the earth so I guess it goes to their heads. They believe people around them really do think highly of them. 

 

 

I came to know them because I had a lot of furniture made by them. Been to their houses and woodshops and they're not foolin' anyone. They get around the telephone thing by having it in a separate 1 person house of it's own in the side yard. They pay English to drive them everywhere and they run their machinery with a gas motor instead of electricity. I don't live around them but a lot of people I work with do and don't care for them much. They are notorious for puppy mills.

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...they run their machinery with a gas motor instead of electricity.

 

Gas motors run on electricity. But that small irony is lost in the huge sea of stupid.

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...they run their machinery with a gas motor instead of electricity.

 

Gas motors run on electricity. But that small irony is lost in the huge sea of stupid.

 

 

Sounds like the kind of inconsistency I would point out to my mother (not re engines and electricity but stuff in the women's world) and she would say dismissively, "Ach well..." and go on with whatever she was doing. At that point, I knew I'd better shut up but I felt it was only because I was too utterly stupid to understand the obvious that I didn't know why one (e.g. gas engine but not electricity from grid) was okay. After all, everyone else seemed able to understand. Even today I've got at least one sibling who will say, "Oh [my name], you just didn't understand." But nobody ever explains. 

 

What I am finally learning at this late date is that making me look like the stupid retard is their defence against questions they can't answer and don't want to contemplate. It is so much easier for them just to accept what parents, teachers, and preachers say. My brain just doesn't operate that way and I was/am unable to do that.

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Just more of the same, religion is dependent upon ignorance to perpetuate.

 

My wife has this odd fascination and reverence for the Amish in their simple ways and willful ignorance. Granted, they are some of the nicest people I have ever met but at the same time they are some of the dumbest people I have ever known.

 

. All of this meshes with their goal to be a light to the world and salt of the earth so I guess it goes to their heads. They believe people around them really do think highly of them. 

 

 

I came to know them because I had a lot of furniture made by them. Been to their houses and woodshops and they're not foolin' anyone. 

 

In talking with my siblings in recent years I've gotten the impression that some people misunderstand the meaning of the word respect. They think it means when people respect their way of life, people think highly of it. But I think "respect their way of life" can possibly mean to live and let live, to not impose one's own values on another. 

 

I don't think they understand that concept of respect. 

 

Another issue I have sort of run into in writing my book ( a novel, clearly stated as fiction) is when I write scenes that do not showcase the Mennonites favourably. They will say, "That is not how we want to be seen," meaning I am misrepresenting their values. Well, like you say, they're not fooling anyone who gets close to them. 

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...they run their machinery with a gas motor instead of electricity.

 

Gas motors run on electricity. But that small irony is lost in the huge sea of stupid.

 

 

Sounds like the kind of inconsistency I would point out to my mother (not re engines and electricity but stuff in the women's world) and she would say dismissively, "Ach well..." and go on with whatever she was doing. At that point, I knew I'd better shut up but I felt it was only because I was too utterly stupid to understand the obvious that I didn't know why one (e.g. gas engine but not electricity from grid) was okay. After all, everyone else seemed able to understand. Even today I've got at least one sibling who will say, "Oh [my name], you just didn't understand." But nobody ever explains. 

 

What I am finally learning at this late date is that making me look like the stupid retard is their defence against questions they can't answer and don't want to contemplate. It is so much easier for them just to accept what parents, teachers, and preachers say. My brain just doesn't operate that way and I was/am unable to do that.

 

 

Tradition for tradition's sake. And beatings in 2016 to uphold illogical technophobia . Kinda sad. I'm glad you got away from that, R.S.

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So am I, midniterider. Naturally, I feel nostalgia for some of the old ways but I am so glad for my life that I've got now. At the same time, this thread has been therapeutic. These are my people and I can't handle out and out mockery and hatred of them, but this mild disapproval and sharing of feelings has been good.

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I used to be taught with various Mennonite material in the home (homeschooled). Though Mennonites, Amish etc. are some of the nicest people you could meet, they rely on fear to control their community. Children are told lies about the world and often beaten. It's just more of the same, as Sybaris said.

What you are showing here is the two distinct faces of these people: public face and private face. They want to be seen as nice people, the salt of the earth, an example to the world, a city of light set on a hill, as per Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. To do this, they strive to appear as good, honest, unworldly, hard-working and peaceable people.

 

But to retain this public image, they use fear and lies. Does anyone think that feels good to be treated to fear and lies all one's life?

 

My experience of working as live-in hired help in more than a dozen different families was that some are more peaceable and happy homes than others. However, being one's brother's/sister's keeper is seen as a divine calling and makes for constant judgmentalism even in the most relaxed and casual situations. If the ministers don't use excommunication and the parents don't use corporal punishment, hell awaits. So yes, fear rules.

What you're saying is exactly what I was saying.

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Just more of the same, religion is dependent upon ignorance to perpetuate.

 

......

 

 they are some of the dumbest people I have ever known.

 

This helps me understand my sister whom I called today instead of one of my urban friends. I called her because my landlord carelessly trampled my squash plants that I have been carefully nurturing all summer in hopes of having nutritious food this winter and I needed to talk to someone who understood gardening. I thought she might have some advice for me re the plants. 

 

But it soon became obvious that she hadn't the slightest conception of what it's like to garden in my very limited space. Worse, she felt duty-bound to show by example that one should not let loose with anger when someone does something you don't like. I don't think she believed me when I said I was polite and decent. Later, after I had a good talk with the offending guy and come to an understanding and trust, I felt to call her back to assure her that things are going to work out. And she admonished me about the need to forgive. 

 

That showed me how very ignorant and confused she is about feelings. Here I was telling her how things had been made right, which equals forgiveness in my opinion, but she is too dumb to clue in for some reason, and still feels the need to admonish me on it. She also suggested that talking to Jesus about frustrations might help. I told her point blank that doesn't help me and that with this phone call I was informing her that forgiveness had happened. 

 

But religious certainly dimmed her ability to listen and understand her atheist sister to whom she believed she needed to be a good example. eek.gif Not that I expect her to be aware of how dumb and incompetent she came across but I will hardly call her again when I need a friend.

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  • 2 weeks later...

RS Martin - your book sounds interesting. Will it be available electronically?

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Probably depends on the publisher's decision, Wittyusername.

 
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