Sheep and Goats

Month: July 2025

  • Hymenaeus and Alexander, and Escaping the Control of Paul.com

    If “shipwreck of faith” is the modern synonym for those who go “woke” from the Witnesses, what can be expected from that crowd—at least from some of them? The “shipwreck” passage itself provides an answer, where Paul counsels Timothy [today spun as though trying to “control” him] to “go on waging the fine warfare, holding faith and a good conscience, which some have thrust aside, resulting in the shipwreck of their faith. Hymenaeus and Alexander are among these, and I have handed them over to Satan so that they may be taught by discipline not to blaspheme.” (1 Timothy 1:19)

    “Blaspheme?” Why would they do that? Well, I guess in an actual shipwreck, one might imagine someone doing this: “I pray to you 24/7 and this is how you do me!???”* But why would you blaspheme a “shipwreck of faith?” And what form would your “blasphemy” take? And how would one hand such a one over to Satan that he might be “taught by discipline” not to do that? Is Satan known to discipline people?

    Maybe Hymenaeus and Alexander just started saying bad things about God—cussing him out for things that didn’t go their way. But it seems more likely that they started cussing out the ones who sold that way of life to him, when that life failed to meet their expectations. To put it in today’s screwy vernacular, they “woke” from those seeking to “brainwash” and “control” them. As they spread that bit of gangrene through the congregation, Paul counted it has choosing the world that Satan controls—there are numerous Bible verses that says Satan controls it—and censured them in some way, perhaps even removing them from the congregation, same as that ne’er-do-well at 1 Corinthians 5:13.

    Pay attention and you will see this sort of thing a lot. When Demas forsook Paul “because he loved the present world,” do you think Demas would have phrased it this way? Or would he have phrased it that he had escaped Paul.com, a high-control group he had been brainwashed into following? He may not have, for such lunacy was not embedded into the fabric of society as it is today. But the sentiments to foster that thinking was in place:

    “Furthermore, God made you alive, though you were dead in your trespasses and sins,  in which you at one time walked according to the system of things of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” (Ephesians 2:2) The “the ruler of the authority of the air” is yet another reference that Satan controls the world, through “air” that has “authority”—try swimming upstream to appreciate the “authority” of our surroundings. It only operated then in the “sons of disobedience’—it was not universal. But in “critical times hard to deal with” it IS said to be universal, and is chief among the reasons those times are “hard to deal with.” (2 Timothy 3:1-2)

    If, in an age where people had to be counseled to “be obedient to those who are taking the lead among you”—people who were used to the concept of obedience and just had to transfer it to a new authority—how much near-hopeless is the task of giving that counsel in an age where people think obedience is anathema—where “woke” people will spin it as someone trying to “control” them!

    At the end of the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes: “Tell Archippus: “Pay attention to the ministry that you accepted in the Lord, in order to fulfill it.” (Ephesians 4:17)

    Who was this fellow Archippus? Almost nothing is known about him. In an obedient era, he would have responded to Paul’s nudge to get his rear end in gear. But had the “sons of disobedience” gone “woke” in his crowd, he would have told Paul that he is done with Paul.com seeking to control him.

     

    *the actual tweet of a 2012 Buffalo Bills player who dropped the game winning pass in overtime. I mean, it was a picture perfect pass and it just flew through his fingers.

     

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  • Replace “Woke” with “Shipwreck of Faith”

    Out of nowhere comes a brand new definition of a very old word: woke. When applied to faith by someone who has left there’s, cannot one wonder why? There already is a fine phrase that means exactly the same thing: shipwreck of faith. “Woke” is not found in the Bible. “Shipwreck of faith” is. The two terms are synonymous. Plus, there are dozens of closely related terms—all permutations of the same thing. Some of them, from the Letter to the Hebrews alone, I dealt with in a post reminiscent of the song: “It’s Almost Like 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” You just walk out the back, Jack.

    Is “woke” really not a term found in the Bible? Actually, it is. But it means the exact opposite of today’s meaning! The biblical meaning is found at Romans 13:11

    “You know the season, that it is already the hour for you to awake from sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than at the time when we became believers.”

    It’s the overall world that needs waking from. Its goals and dominant thinking are writing its epitaph. How would you not need to wake from that? Instead, someone would choose to go back to that? Describe what the current crowd calls “woke” in the more graphic terms of 2 Peter 2:22: “The dog has returned to its own vomit, and the sow that was bathed to rolling in the mire.”

    Too harsh an assessment? “Wokism” today almost exclusively resides in the West. It’s a culture committing mass suicide! How can you spin it any different when collectively  it kills off the most basic instinct known to humankind: that of producing enough children to replace itself?

    Is it selfishness—people gots to pursue career and fun, don’t want to crimp their style? Is it inhospitality—people can’t afford to raise children? Is it fear—“I would never bring children into a world like this!” is a line heard all the time. Take your choice. Whatever the dominant reason be, put them all together and it amounts to mass suicide.

    Isn’t it like sawing off the limb upon which you once sat and whooping for joy as you come crashing down to earth? At last one is “liberated!” Though, to be sure, sometimes it’s not sawing off the limb. Sometimes it’s dropping down to a more conventional form of Christianity, the kind that allows that the kingdom of God is “within our hearts” and thus allows the overall world to call the shots. This arouses the ire of the anti-cultists far less than do the Witnesses, since the goals of such ones are pretty much the same as the world, absent only awaiting a final verdict from “the man upstairs.”

     

    a man cutting a tree
    Photo by Jacky on Pexels.com

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  • Adapting to PIGS

    There is even some report that one of the apostle Paul’s brash assistants wanted to meet “cult” accusations head-on. He remembered how the college kids from the 60s taunted police, calling them “pigs,” doubling down when they saw it got under their skin. In time, however, one innovative officer rebranded the word as an acronym: PIGS—Pride, Integrity, Guts, Service.

    ‘Can’t we do the same, Paul?’ he asked. ‘Huh? Can’t we?’ He even ordered up a few hundred banners from the printer: “CULT—Courage, Unity, Love, Truth.” This definitely happened. But scholars are divided on whether Paul nixed the idea from prison or whether the delivery men were drowned in an aqueduct break. The banners were never used.

    It seems clear that the same type of accusations made against Witnesses today were made against Christians in the first century. “We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one,” wrote Paul at 2 Corinthians 7:2. Why would he have written this if not to counter charges that he and his colleagues were doing such things?* If you don’t want to be lukewarm, you must apply the faith in your life—even if this stirs up the ire of those who do like lukewarm:

    Says Jesus: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or else hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth.”(Revelation 3:15-16)

    Play it safe (lukewarm) and live only for the present. Be hot or cold (stimulatingly hot or refreshing cold is how Witnesses put it) and you choose life goals based on the future. You can’t ignore the present—but neither can you ignore the future. Join those ”safely treasuring up for themselves a fine foundation for the future, so that they may get a firm hold on the real life.”  (1 Timothy 6:19)

    Dicey to do it that way? Yes. “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are to be pitied more than anyone,” Paul says at 1 Corinthians 15:19. He knew it going in. All must know it. Expect people to come along, the ones who live solely for the present, to claim it was “brainwashing” and “manipulation” that made you think outside of the box. Not to worry. Those who carry on the most vociferously about brainwashing are mostly upset at being deprived the opportunity to do it themselves.

    Why don’t these detractors just mind their own business? Because Witnesses and those first century Christians intrude themselves into their affairs, continually recommending their way of life. It separates people. It nettles some. Worse, some who once embraced the faith give it up. In some cases they turn against it. “How do you know this life is not really all there is?” they say as they renege of their former faith. “Shipwreck of the faith” is the term the Bible employs. Any criticism from that quarter should include that disclaimer. They still have the right to do it; their gripes are not necessarily invalid. But “shipwreck of faith” should be the term in the resume.

    A sunken ship partially submerged in the ocean near the Greek coast.
    Photo by Damien Wright on Pexels.com

    *Perhaps the same reasoning can be applied to this verse: “You know that we never used flattering speech or put on any false front with greedy motives; God is witness!: (1 Thessalonians 2:5)

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  • The Muslim Man I Spoke With in the Ministry

    The Muslim man I spoke with in the ministry was a retired college professor. He responded to the query of what ill would he fix had he the power to do so. Peace, he said. It was humankind’s greatest need; however he was quite sure the world was “regressing” in that department. He remembered warfare well from surviving it in his native Bangladesh before fleeing to the United States decades ago. He still had nightmares about it, he said. He could identify with the 120th Psalm, where it says at the end:

    “I have been dwelling far too long with those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.”

    He had assured me at the outset that he was all set in the religion department, doubtless confusing us with churches who would call upon him to be “saved” that very day. I told him on the 200th time I called, I would ask him if he wanted to be a Jehovah’s Witness, but it wouldn’t happen until the 200th time—and what were the chances anything would go on for so long a time? In the meantime, it was just conversation. With that, I was able to introduce the above psalm about peace.

    To his concern that mankind was regressing, I pointed out the reason: God did not create humans with the ability to govern themselves. No more than he created them to fly—it’s an ability they do not have. All efforts to rule invariably end in some variation of Ecclesiastes 8:9, in which “man has dominated man to his injury.” It is mankind’s entire history, through countless variations in government.

    It’s why the Bible speaks of God fulfilling that need, of his ruling over the earth, rather than man-made governments. And that people tend to cringe when they hear such terms as “government by God” for fear that whoever tells them this also view themselves as the enforcers, a hair’s breadth away from pulling out guns to coerce anyone not on board. In the case of God’s kingdom, however, humans can do nothing to bring it about, I assured him. All they can do is advertise it and live according to its principles now. God has to bring it. If he doesn’t, we’re stranded out there on a limb. But we’re convinced he will.

    He was fully involved in the discussion at this point. He observed how people must live their faith, it must be truly in their heart, rather than the carry-on baggage that amounts to ‘Say one thing but do another.’ It’s a noble thought, I agreed with him, and plainly true. However, even when people do this it does not negate “man dominating man to his injury.” Not all governments are mean. Some are nice. None—mean or nice—can overcome the inability of man to rule. It has to be a superior arrangement, not of men, but of God.

    We’ll see where this goes. Possibly, nowhere. But it might. I handed him one of those cards with the QR code leading to the home Bible study offer—he could look it over if he wished. There was also written in my personal contact information, in case we don’t meet up again anytime soon (or at all). I also told him he must not be put off by how very simply it was written. He was a college professor and anyone taking his courses had a certain level of rigor they had to meet, but this way not true of people in general. He had no problem with this at all; he had lamented how hard it was to get his American students to work, many of them, as though they thought they were still in high school.

    Often when I speak with college students, I will say the same. “Now, you’re in college. That means you’re smart. (It’s a good sign when people demur at this; if they puff out their chest and take it in stride, that’s a bad sign—but few do that.) But most people are not in college and they’re not especially smart. If they are, they’re consumed with the everyday affairs of life. If you write over everyone’s head, what have you accomplished? Think of the text simply as the glue that binds the Bible verses together—for they are the real sources of knowledge.

    Oh, and back to that “man dominating man to his injury” downside of human self-rule? It’s in that context that the “new heavens and new earth” of 2nd Peter is best understood. Heavens are an apt analogy for human government in those Bible times. They might scorch you one minute, drench you the next, freeze you the moment thereafter—and there wasn’t a thing you could do about it. In most respects that is still true of human governments today, even participatory ones, in which your input is not exactly zero but close to it. The “new heavens” is God’s just government to come and the “new earth” is those constituents who will benefit from it.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Putting Lipstick on a Pig: Paul to the Philippians

    Nobody in Bible times was better than Paul at putting lipstick on a pig. Nowhere does he do it more than in his Letter to the Philippians. Here he is in the hoosegow, enough to discourage anyone, and those at ‘TheWaySucks*com’ and the liars at ‘WeLovetheWay*com’ are saying it’s his own fault. They’re hoohawing and making catcalls over his imprisonment, saying his brothers sold him out and so forth. They even say the Way is hemorrhaging members!

    But Paul says,

    “Now I want you to know, brothers, that my situation has actually turned out for the advancement of the good news, so that my prison bonds for the sake of Christ have become public knowledge among all the Praetorian Guard and all the rest. Now most of the brothers in the Lord have gained confidence because of my prison bonds, and they are showing all the more courage to speak the word of God fearlessly.” (Philippians 1:12-14)

    I mean, the guy wasn’t easy to discourage. But, was the Way “hemorrhaging members?” Apparently (allowing for the hyperbole), it was.

    “For there are many—I used to mention them often but now I mention them also with weeping—who are walking as enemies of the torture stake of the Christ,” he says at 3:18. He wasn’t happy about it. He mentioned them with “weeping.” But it didn’t change the big picture. Do you think some of these new “enemies” were included in 1:15-17?

    “True, some are preaching the Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter are proclaiming the Christ out of love, for they know that I have been appointed to defend the good news; but the former do it out of contentiousness, not with a pure motive, for they are intending to create trouble for me in my prison bonds.”

    And so he pulls out some lipstick and applies it to the pig:

    white pig
    Photo by mali maeder on Pexels.com

    “With what result? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is being proclaimed, and I rejoice over this. In fact, I will also keep on rejoicing.” (1:18)

    Thus, one might think of the modern slogan that goes: “All publicity is good publicity.” A middle ground is evident in 1:15-17. Some were outright enemies, but others were only sort-of enemies. The sort-of were doing it, preaching the Christ. Only, not with “a pure motive.” What would have made the motive pure? Apparently, recognizing an organized arrangement, in this case centering on Paul and his companions and on who sent them. Rather than loyally support these ones, they were “intending to create trouble for [him] in [his] prison bonds.” 

    You don’t hide that you have enemies. You advertise it. They validate you.

     

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  • The Two Ancient Web Forums

    So here is Paul visiting the synagogue in Rome and he says, ‘Anyone been talking trash about me?’ They hadn’t been, he was told, however this “sect” that he represented—wowwhee! were people ever saying nasty things about that!

    Specifically, “they said to him: “We have not received letters about you from Judea, nor have any of the brothers who came from there reported or spoken anything bad about you. But we think it proper to hear from you what your thoughts are, for truly as regards this sect, we know that it is spoken against everywhere.” (Acts 28:21-22)

    How seriously was it “spoken against everywhere?” To the point where first-century Roman historian Tacitus described Christians as “haters of the human race.” I mean, can you get any worse than that?

    Now, it occurs to me that if they were “spoken against everywhere” then, they should be “spoken against everywhere” now. Unless, all the world has swung around to the Christian message. That clearly has not happened has it?

    The following is still debated by scholars—especially the dumb ones—but it seems a slam-dunk to me: It turns out that Tacitus ran an anti-Way forum back then on Bunny*com where Christians were “spoken against.” But, they weren’t spoken against “everywhere,” so Jewish historian Josephus ran another anti-Way forum called ‘WeLovetheWay’ in which he posed as though he was of the Way instead of just being a liar. Between these two anti-Way Bunny forums the people of the Way hung suspended like Jesus between two thieves, taking shots from both sides. It was even worse in their case, since neither side repented.

    The constant attacks got so bad that those of the Way took it to the Lord. “Haters of the human race??” they said to him. “What did we ever do to deserve that?! They even call us a cult!!”

    ‘Don’t worry about it, the Lord said. In fact, you can almost be happy about it. Didn’t I used to tell you: “Happy are you when people reproach you and persecute you and lyingly say every sort of wicked thing against you for my sake?” It’s going to happen.’

    holi festival portait
    Photo by Samar Mourya on Pexels.com

     “The game is the same; it’s just up on a different level.” Bob Dylan

     

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  • The Tesla that Drove Itself

    There was someone recently who bought a Tesla and the Tesla drove itself to his home. That’s a selling point. Usually, if you buy a car, you have to go fetch it. This car fetched itself. It comes to you; you don’t have to go to it.

    Someone at the congregation meeting (was it me?) said this is kind of like our Bible study offer. The circuit overseer recently recommended everyone explain its good features; don’t be bashful about it. That it comes to you is surely one of them. You can be wearing shorts and slippers, just like on Zoom. In fact, you can do it on Zoom. I had a really fine study on Zoom and—let me tell you—that is convenient.

    Living forever on a paradise earth sounds like a fairy tale; why expect anyone to waste their time chatting about that? But it also sounds good. If the time involved was substantial or the cost-prohibitive, you could expect everyone to dismiss the notion instantly. But if the time involved is an hour a week, and the cost is free, what’s not to like? Some will decide to investigate. They’ll appreciate that someone has gone to a lot of trouble to bring that message to them.

    Once a person has the satisfaction of putting the puzzle pieces of the Bible together, seeing the completed portrait of a puppy dog or a mountain range reconstructed, same as on the box cover, they change. It’s hard to put that puzzle together outside of the JW realm, where they have altered too many pieces and they don’t fit anymore.

    Once you have looked upon your completed puzzle, you’re immune to the critic who says your interpretation is wrong. You are especially immune if his puzzle lies unassembled in the box on his closet shelf. And if you’re cruising down the highway at 55 miles per hour, even the atheist on the radio telling you your car doesn’t run needn’t be a cause for concern. You don’t have to prove to him that it does.

     

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  • He Could Have Played with HankWilliams

    A brother died not long ago—and I attended the memorial talk—who once toured with Hank Williams. He’d been a roadie, one of the support team. It was a plus when they discovered he could sing. One evening when, according the memorial speaker, Hank didn’t show up and he was pressed into service. How did it go afterwards, family asked him. “Well, nobody asked for their money back,” he replied.

    Actually, the reason Hank did not show up was that he was dead drunk. There is no better way to authenticate a Hank Williams story than to say he was dead drunk because he so often was. Nonetheless, stories sometimes get exagerated in the retelling, so I ask family members afterward about it. ‘Oh yes,’ they assured me, ‘it absolutely happened.’

    John (let us call him John) was born Native American in the 1930s. His formal education took him through the third grade. He thus said ‘irregardless’ a lot. This factors into my first book, ‘Tom Irregardless and Me.’ He related to me ages ago how he was helped to break free from that word. After a certain public talk, kindly Kermit approached him to ask if, as a favor, he would look up the word ‘irregardless’ in the dictionary. “I never found it,” John told me. He never used the word again.

    This story excited me to no end because another brother was saying irregardless all the time and it was driving me nuts. I approached him. “Do me a favor,” I asked kindly. “Look up ‘irregardless’ in the dictionary.” He did so. Much had changed in 30 years. He found it. True, the word was qualified as “irregular,” but believe me—that was a qualificaton far too subtle for our boy. If anything, he doubled down on it. Thus it is that my Bible student, Ted Putsch attends his first public talk, this brother is the substitute speaker, and I slink down in my seat as he launches into a discourse that employed the word so frequently that Sam has downloaded an app that keeps count.

    At the end of the book, this brother leaves for another congregation and I am so thrilled. I like him and all—who doesn’t?—but I am so sick and tired of hearing ‘irregardless.’ If I never hear that stupid word again, I will . . . “OH NO!!! Ike Incumbantuponus just moved into the congregation!”

    John’s son, at the memorial talk, was interviewed about his dad. He said Pop “never sweated the small stuff.” As proof, he told of when he cut his Dad’s hair when the latter had fallen asleep after a day’s exhausting work. He had been playing with his son, but then he fell asleep. “You weren’t watching your son, were you?” said his wife when she returned, the woman who had first made the observation that he needed a haircut. John looked in the mirror and broke up laughing, the son related. It was a horrific job. “I just wanted to help the guy out,” the son told me after.

    “Come to think of it,” he related, “Pop didn’t really sweat the big stuff either,” thus anticipating the reaction—speaker included—of those who knew him best.

    And no, he didn’t permanently stay with Hank. Sometime early on he figured that if he did, it would be the only thing he would do. Other interests that he held more dear would suffer.

     

    ******  The bookstore