Remembering Tony

This blog is dedicated to my cousin Raymond Anthony "Tony" Burns who passed away on July 11, 2014 at the age of 53.

Being a few years older than Tony, I actually remember when he was born. I remember him being around eight months old and crawling around on the floor. Although his first name was Raymond, no one ever called him that except his mother, who was my Aunt Lucy. It seems that my Aunt Belen who was her older sister decided she wanted to call him Tony. And so the name Tony stuck. My younger sister Jeanette would occasionally hear our Aunt Lucy calling "Raymond" whenever he was in trouble. And Jeanette always wondered, "Who is Raymond and why is she calling him?"

My father used to call Tony "Antoine", by the French version of Anthony.

Christianity Created to “Control” People?

On my Facebook page recently, I had posted a video about the high control practices found in the Watchtower Organization. The video showed how the person trying to do the outreach to Jehovah's Witnesses was totally ignored as though he were not there. The host kept asking various Jehovah's Witnesses if they have "the truth" and they just refused to answer and did not acknowledge his presence. He was "invisible" to all the JWs who were there to attend their convention at the Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Many of us former Jehovah's Witnesses know very well the shunning practices used by the Watchtower to control their people from talking to any of us who have the organization. The video can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eln4CzqcUl4&feature=youtu.be

Although some sects of Christianity can be considered very high control, in my experience all the denominations (six major evangelical denominations) that I have been associated with in the past 32 years do not practice high control procedures.