Sheep and Goats

Month: November 2025

  • Come Now and Let Us Reason Together

    “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD.” It was M.D. Craven’s favorite Bible quote. Or at least, he sure did use it a lot. I can hear him now. “Come now, and let us reason together,” he would say. It was sort of his mission statement as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

    It is not particularly a good rendering of Isaiah 1:18, but it’s how the King James Version of the Bible translates the verse. By the time I’d met Merrill, the New World Translation had been out for only a dozen years. Witnesses had previously used the King James Version in their personal study, meetings, and ministry. Merrill had stuck with what he knew. 

    The NWT much better conveys the thought, with it’s: “‘Come, now, and let us set matters straight between us,’ says Jehovah.” (‘LORD’ in all caps is always a fill-in for the divine name “Jehovah”—sometimes rendered “Yahweh” or something similar. It is the consonants that matter. The vowels are anyone’s guess.) “Set matters straight” is plainly what has to be done. The rest of Isaiah chapter 1 (and the preceding) makes that clear. It will not be just a matter of “reasoning.” Changes will have to be made. 

    “Though your sins are like scarlet, They will be made as white as snow; Though they are as red as crimson cloth, They will become like wool,” says the rest of verse 18, in any translation. For that to happen, Israelites must not just “reason.” They must “return to me [Jehovah] with all your hearts, With fasting and weeping and wailing.  Rip apart your hearts, and not your garments,” as Joel 2:12-13 puts it. It’s not an intellectual effort called for. It’s an effort of the heart. But if they made that effort, the rift between them would heal: Though their sins were like scarlet, they would be made white as snow.

    “Let us reason together” still prevails among Bible translations. Such is the influence of the KJV. I counted 24 translations at BibleGateway that do it that way. But more recent translations (the KJV is 400 years old!) are given to variants as “settling” (7), “discussing,” (5) or “talking things over.” (8) A few invite those Israelites to “argue” (5) and you get the impression that this is not an argument God is going to lose. Still, it is humble for him to phrase it that way, consistent with offering to “settle,” “talk things over,” or “discuss.” “Let us have it out,” says Byington, as though inviting those renegades to a barroom brawl. And NET ominously invites them to “consider your options.”

    It’s like how I would “consider my options” when Merrill himself would ask to borrow my car because his was in the shop. In normal circumstances, the answer would be “No way!” for he was a horrible driver. He had once been a good driver, presumably. In his working days, he’d driven the Bangor to Boston route for Greyhound Bus and, when asked what the M.D. stood for, he would reply, “Master Driver,” a title he would explain was “self-assumed.” But that was long ago. Unbeknownst to him, but painfully obvious to everyone else, his skills had slipped. “Forget about it!” is what I wanted to tell him.

    But he had been so good to me, taking me under his wing at a crucial time, that had he said: “Tom, I’d like to borrow your car and wrap it around a tree,” I would have still felt compelled to lend it to him. I “considered my options,” and then handed him the keys. Despite my misgivings, it always came back to me in one piece. 

    not like this

    ******  The bookstore

    Some kickback from those who preferred “reason” for Isaiah 1:18 sent me cracking the books, but not before offering a glib: 

    “Excuse me, sir, I’m taking a poll,” said a guy in sweats. I agreed, of course, and made ready to spout off opinions. “I’ll take that one,” he continued, and made off with the 10-foot pole behind me for his upcoming pole vault.

    Context is everything. Many words have multiple meanings & shades of meanings, even words spelled identically. Context indicates “set matters straight” works better.

    But then: One commentary (Grok) lists the key verb as “nivvakhah.” It has a judicial flavor. Primary meanings: to decide, judge, prove, rebuke, reprove, convince, arbitrate. In the times of King James, “reason” often carried that meaning, but today it just suggests an intellectual discussion. The upshot of the entire verse is that they will lose their case for sure, but God is offering terms to wipe that slate clean.

  • Reading Isaiah 2:1-11 at the Mid-Week Meeting

    If one is reading aloud the second chapter of Isaiah, it’s clear you have to put a long pause between verses 5 and 6. The thrust of the two is completely different:

    Verse 5:  “O house of Jacob, come, Let us walk in the light of Jehovah.”

    Verse 6:  “For you have forsaken your people, the house of Jacob.”

    Verse 5 belongs to the preceding verses of how “(2) In the final part of the days, the mountain of the house of Jehovah Will become firmly established . . . And to it all the nations will stream,” that (3 ) “many peoples will go and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, To the house of the God of Jacob.  He will instruct us about his ways, And we will walk in his paths,’” that “law will go out of Zion, And the word of Jehovah out of Jerusalem,” who (4) “will render judgment among the nations And set matters straight respecting many peoples.  They will beat their swords into plowshares And their spears into pruning shears.  Nation will not lift up sword against nation, Nor will they learn war anymore.”  

    Who wouldn’t get excited about that? Isaiah sure does, so he appends his own plea: (5) “O house of Jacob, come, Let us walk in the light of Jehovah!”

    But the next verse is addressed to God, not to “the house of Jacob.” God has “forsaken [his] people.” A list of their offenses follow, culminating in (8): “Their land is filled with worthless gods. They bow down to the work of their own hands, To what their own fingers have made.”

    I would not likely have picked up on this need for a long pause had I not been assigned that Bible reading (Isaiah 2:1-11) at the mid-week meeting. But I was, and so I looked for other areas to emphasize. It’s not a sure thing, but all the same, I stomped rather hand on the “becomes” of verse 9:

    “So man bows down, he becomes low, And you cannot possibly pardon them.”

    I mean, to bow down, you must physically get low. But, given that final clause, “you cannot possibly pardon them,” it probably ought be read as though man also becomes spiritually low when he does that—he becomes low. Imagine: bowing down to “gods” that you yourself made!

    Idolatry is a consistent no-no in the Bible. Witness groups speaking to Muslims point this out fairly early. It generally comes as a surprise to them, since they are conditioned by churches, especially Catholic churches, into thinking that Christianity and idolatry are one and the same.

    “We are walking by faith, not by sight,” says 2 Corinthians 5:7. How is it not “walking by sight” if one feels best connected with God only if they are holding something, even something so ubiquitous as a cross? 

    It’s like when Israelites leaned on Aaron to cast that golden calf and then tried to pass it off as though God would be cool with it. “There is a festival to Jehovah tomorrow!” they announced. (Exodus 32:5) Sure, they knew the calf was not God; it just represented God. Surely God would be okay with that. He wasn’t.

    Neither is he shown that way in the last verses of the assigned reading: 

    “And you cannot possibly pardon them. (10) Enter into the rock and hide yourself in the dust Because of the terrifying presence of Jehovah And his majestic splendor.  (11) The haughty eyes of man will be brought low, And the arrogance of men will bow down.  Jehovah alone will be exalted in that day.”

    There are plenty of critics who will carry on about God being mean, so that his “presence” will be “terrifying.” Instead, I usually figure that he is giving a friendly heads-up. Take note of what gets him going and don’t do those things. It’s not that hard.

    ******  The bookstore

  • “The Best Way to Respond to Injustice”-a Study

    I found that return visit at home who had previously told me he cuts back on the news because it gets him all cranked up. So I decided to show him that paragraph from Sunday’s Watchtower study (1/23/25: The Best Way to Respond to Injustice) which recommended exactly that course. I even left it with him. Given the choice of digital or print, he said he preferred digital, so I used that transfer feature on the app to email the article to him.

    I had commented on that paragraph during the study. There is a new Watchtower conductor now and I can’t lean into him so readily as I could with the old conductor, so I have to look comments over carefully before letting fly. For sure I won’t get in as many. But that’s not really a bad thing. It means other people do.

    That paragraph (12) went: “What can help us to control our feelings of anger over an injustice? Many have found it helpful to be selective in what they read, listen to, and watch. Some forms of social media are full of posts that sensationalize injustices and that promote social reform movements. Often, news agencies report information in a biased way.”

    Yeah. Anyone on social media knows that the political stuff encroaches like an invasive species. You have to keep pruning it back or it will take over. Some Witnesses just uproot it on sight, or more thorough yet, avoid social media altogether. I’m not one of them but I do understand the response. It gets you all worked up. One sis even recalled a visit to a U.S. city much in the news lately for a certain protest. A few Witnesses had been there, she said, and they got their faces on TV! Like that commercial, I told her afterward, where the guy helps himself to the cotton candy of the kid in the stadium row before him and it is captured by the Kiss Cam and displayed on the Jumbotron! Yeah, like that, she agreed.

    Then, there was the sister cited in paragraph 9, recalling her former protest days, who the paragraph quoted: “When I was at protests, I would question whether I was on the correct side,” contrasting that with “Now that I support God’s Kingdom, I know that I’m on the right side. I know that Jehovah will fight for every victim of oppression better than I ever could.” 

    I commented on that paragraph too, ramming it past the new vigilant conductor. “Sure. Just once I would like to see a war in which one side or the other says, ‘We are the bad guys.’ But it never happens. Always, both sides fob themselves off as the good guys. Social reform is like that too. You can wonder if you’re on the correct side.” One person’s reform is another person’s pouring fuel to the fire.

    a man in red and black sweater
    Photo by Anton Bohlin on Pexels.com

    2 Peter 3:13 was quoted in the final paragraph: “But there are new heavens and a new earth that we are awaiting according to his promise,and in these righteousness is to dwell.”

    The “heavens” make an apt analogy for human government. In those Bible times, they would 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.

    They even slipped in that verse about how Jesus so wowed the crowds that they wanted to appoint him king. (John 6:15) He couldn’t get away from that bunch quick enough—for the same reason that he later told Pilate: “My Kingdom is no part of this world. If my Kingdom were part of thisworld, my attendants would have fought that  should not be handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my Kingdom is not from this source.” (John 18:36) 

    Exactly. They would have fought. Get yourself too cranked up fighting over the current “heavens” and it will be at the expense of looking to the “new heavens.” That was the overall thrust of the article.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Evolution Row: A New Take on Desolation Row

    In the late 1970s, Bob Dylan went full-blown born-again, an intense period but it didn’t last. When he leaned rather hard into his producer, the guy said, “Bob, you’re dealing with a 60-year-old Jewish atheist. Let’s just make a record.” They made a fine record, with one song, “Gotta Serve Somebody” winning a Grammy.

    Now, Dylan at no time has struck me as a person who, when a scientist says “Jump!” responds “How high?” Can one spot a foregleam of his religious temperament in Desolation Row, written 15 years earlier? That song contains ten verses and run over eleven minutes. For verse eight, call it Evolution Row and try this interpretation on for size:

    At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew

    Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do

    Anyone familiar with the Bible, as Dylan is, will know who is “all the agents and the superhuman crew.” At the darkest time, they round up everyone “who knows more than they do.” Well, nobody knows more than does the “superhuman crew,” so it must be a reference to those who think that they they know more than others, who think that are very smart indeed and that take great pleasure in parading their knowledge before everyone else, who do not hesitate to talk down to the masses should the need arise, which it often does.

    Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine

    Is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene

    Despite their self-heralded knowledge, they are “rounded up” and processed, as though in a “factory.” The knowledge that they take such pride in is nevertheless death-dealing, like a “heart attack machine strapped across their shoulders,” with “kerosene” thrown in for good measure. 

    Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go

    Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row.

    Despite their knowledge being death-dealing—settling for a few dozen years lifespan at best and then eternal nothingness—nobody must escape this stuff. “Insurance men” see to it, descending from institutional “castles” for that purpose. Nobody escapes from Evolution Row. 

    A dimly lit street scene titled 'Desolation Row' featuring vintage storefronts, a mix of pedestrians, and moody atmospheric lighting.

    Naw, I don’t really think Dylan had that in mind. Other verses don’t so readily lend themselves to that interpretation. But it’s not a bad interpretation all the same. Dylan often writes in a stream of consciousness and doesn’t necessarily have any underlying message. It’s like decrypting Kafka. The tone is distinct, but the underlying words can be taken any number of ways. He is not inclined to pose as a great man cryptically recording deep truths for all humanity if they can but prove worthy by unraveling the message. Instead, he presents himself more like a modern Aaron, who throws stuff into the fire and “out came this calf.” (Exodus 32:24)

    ******  The bookstore

  • “You Always Have the Poor with You”

    As fine as helping the poor is and it is well to do it, Jesus said the following to those wishing to do it at the expense of attending to the Lord’s interests at that moment: (Matthew 26:11): “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” It sounds kind of callous but serves to show that the two activities are not the same.

    Even more significant than the plight of the poor and needy is that there should be so many of them, 2000 years after Jesus said what he did. Does it not show the utter failure of human government, which supposedly exists to alleviate such suffering? That being the case, the work Jehovah’s Witnesses are best known for, announcing the incoming kingdom of God, the same one Jesus taught his followers to pray for in ‘the Lord’s Prayer’ becomes an important component of Christian activity. It’s what gives people hope.

    To be sure, it is a specialty. Nobody works that specialty as the Witnesses do, and most don’t do it at all. Those who respond to the good news correspond to the man who learns how to fish, instead of eternally needing a fish supplied him. The good news imparts hope. Thus, two huge factors causing neediness and homelessness are eliminated. Preaching the good news is an activity not to be minimized.

    That said, I never criticize those who do run soup kitchens and such projects. They are undeniably alleviating suffering and it is something Witnesses don’t make their main focus.

    Given all the criticism directed at Witnesses for their focus on preaching, sometimes taking the form of spiritual one-up-mans-ship, one might assume that everyone else in the Christian world IS fully devoted to alleviating suffering and hunger. If so, why so little result? Given that Witnesses are but the tiniest sliver of the overall religious population, and that they are generally of modest means themselves, if they forgot all about preaching to devote themselves fully to rendering physical aid, how much of a dent do you think it would make? The problem is structural, gets worse with time, and will be fully solved only with the coming of God’s kingdom.

    Meanwhile, there is nothing to stop Witnesses as individuals from donating to local charities focused on neediness and hunger if they wish. I have done so. I assume there are others, according to their means.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Angels Desiring to Peer

    “Well, here’s another clue for you all. The walrus was Paul.”

    We might wish it were all laid out definitively—every particular addressed. But clues are all we’re going to get. The walrus was Paul.

    “Into these very things [outworking of the things of Christ], angels are desiring to peer.” (1 Peter 1:12) I like to picture them crouching, as though trying to squint through a hole in a solid fence. Anyone up for telling them to knock it off and get back to work?

    It’s not that prophesy is bad stuff. It is very good stuff. It’s just that prophesies are best understood after the fact. Beforehand, they work as do clues. They might be fulfilled in any number of ways.

    “Predictions are hard. Especially when they are about the future.” – Yogi Berra

    It’s why it’s good to focus simply on declaring the good news. Whether the finale is tomorrow or many years out, it is not a problem. The record numbers I meet saying they avoid newscasts since they’re “disgusting” suggests it is soon indeed. (Not to mention my neighbor who likens the news to a bad accident—“you know you should look away, but you can’t”) But it comes when it comes.

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Secret of Contentment-Philippians 4:11-12

    Congregations going through the Book of Ecclesiastes in their mid-week meetings, two chapters at a time. It’s good for its descriptions of the curves life can throw at you regardless of your spirituality. Solomon writes how “I have seen everything—from the righteous one who perishes in his righteousness to the wicked one who lives long despite his badness, (7:15) and “that the swift do not always win the race, nor do the mighty win the battle, nor do the wise always have the food, nor do the intelligent always have the riches, nor do those with knowledge always have success, because time and unexpected events overtake them all. (9:11) This reality lends the present life a certain “futility,” a continual theme of the book.

    There is no scriptural correlation between spirituality and material wealth. Sometimes the latter works out. Sometimes it doesn’t. It is sort of like winning or losing in a game that is part skill and part dumb luck. In neither case is it the “real life” of 1 Timothy 6:19 that Witnesses make their primary hope, life in God’s new system under Christ’s reign.

    A previous Sunday’s Watchtower study (Have You Learned the ‘Secret of Contentment’? – October 2025) focused on how to be content. Philippians 4:11-12 was the theme, in which Paul said: “I have learned to be self-sufficient regardlessof my circumstances. I know how to be low on provisions and how to have an abundance. In everything and in all circumstances I have learned the secret of both how to be full and how to hunger, both how to have an abundance and how to do without.”

    He had had periods of both in his life. He had “learned the secret” of how to adapt to both, to be content. It’s something people very much need today—all people, not just Witnesses. There was a lot in the study article on cultivating a spirit of gratitute. It is healthy to do that. Viewing the glass as half-full rather than half-empty helps. Both descriptions are equally accurate. But they evoke different attitudes. You can be grateful for a glass half-full but we never hear of people being grateful for one half-empty.

    Being content is the key. Witnesses by and large are. Even when they are not, their discontent seldom rises to the greater world’s level of discontent. It is a very tragic thing to lose faith in God’s promises because then one joins them in discontent. For whatever reason, those who have lost faith tend to gather on social media. There, I read descriptions of my own faith that I do not recognize. It is as what Paul writes to Timothy of those who have come to think materially, those who suppose that “godly devotion is a means of gain.” They immerse themselves in “things [that] give rise to envy, strife, slander, wicked suspicions, constant disputes about minor matters.” (1 Timothy 6:4-5) To hear some former Witnesses carry on at the venues they have chosen, you might not even realize that there is a Bible. Faith has been shipwrecked so all people have are the minor matters to stew about, matters of human interaction reframed as “control” and “manipulation.”

    When it is said that Witnesses are getting by “just fine” it’s referring more to their overall state of happiness than their material state. Materially, some do well. Others do not. The same as is true with the greater world. On the ordinary matters of life, Witnesses are as likely to say what is commonly said everywhere else: “If I knew then what I know now…” or “if I had it all to do over again….” People say such things all the time. Witnesses are people. They say it too.

    They seldom say it regarding their spiritual outlook, however. They call their set of beliefs “the truth” on account of how it all dovetails together. It sees them through both good times and bad. If they have made some moves in life that, in hindsight, didn’t work out so well, it doesn’t change the tenets of faith that anchors them. I doubt there are fewer children among Witnesses than anywhere else, in a Western world that has decided not to have many, nor would home ownership be lower, in a world where some rent and some own. College, I concede, is lower. Witnesses are very much top-heavy with “workmen,” which is probably why Paul used that word in at 2 Timothy 2:15. He could have said elite or scholar, or even student. He said workman.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Psalm 139:1-2

    Some things in service that didn’t go the way I wanted, and I was short on that account with a totally uninvolved party. But later on, I felt bad about it and apologized. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘I know you.’ And, you know, that is sort of reassuring.

    Even more so when come across Psalm 139:1-2 in last week’s Watchtower study:

    “Jehovah, you have searched through me, and you know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • Save Us from Critical Thinking: Part 6

    For best results, start here.

    Of course we should think. Of course we should be reasonable. Of course we should (God help us) use “critical thinking” if that term does it for us. But don’t go thinking you’re getting to the bottom of anything that way. In the end, were stuck with what Solomon described at Ecclesiastes 8:17:

    “I considered all the work of the true God, and I realized that mankind cannot comprehend what happens under the sun. No matter how hard men try, they cannot comprehend it. Even if they claim that they are wise enough to know, they cannot really comprehend it.” 

    They can’t really comprehend it, no matter how hard they try. When people carry on that their thinking is so sharp as to put aside emotion, it just makes things worse. It “locks in human bias under a veneer of science.”

    Witness the “faith, hope, and love”—all emotions of 1 Corinthians 13:13, “but the greatest of these is love.” Contrast that with some of the baser emotions Paul mentions at 1 Timothy 6: 3-4: 

    “If any man teaches another doctrine and does not agree with the wholesome instruction, which is from our Lord Jesus Christ, nor with the teaching that is in harmony with godly devotion, he is puffed up with pride and does not understand anything. He is obsessed with arguments and debates about words. These things give rise to envy, strife, slander, wicked suspicions, constant disputes about minor matters.

    The power is in the emotions; faith, hope, love on one end and “pride, envy, strife, wicked suspicions” at the other. One can discuss either using all their powers of critical thinking, but that does not change that the first are noble and the latter are base. So use your critical thinking, but don’t let it go to your head. in matters involving God, it is like showing up at the job with a toolbox stuffed with wrenches when what is required is a screwdriver. And, by all means, don’t think it a virtue or even within your power to divorce emotions from thought. Humans are not built that way. They can blind themselves to think they are but they are not.

    Most Witnesses describe their faith as the most rational of religions. They have a sense with the Bible of having put a jigsaw puzzle together. But that doesn’t mean it will satisfy the standards of “critical thinking,” which considers only that which is provable. The stuff wouldn’t be called faith if it was provable. Says Luke Johnson, “The historian cannot take up anything having to do with the transcendent or the supernatural. Therefore, the historian cannot talk about the miraculous birth of Jesus, his miracles, his walking on the water, his transfiguration, his resurrection from the dead and so forth. Well, fair enough, the historian can’t talk about those things, but that methodological restraint . . . very quickly becomes implicitly an epistemological denial, that is the historian can’t talk about these things, therefore they are not real.”

    Consistently, we read that those who embrace stick with faith do so on factors other than their critical thinking. Acts 13:48 simply calls it being “rightly disposed for everlasting life.” (“When those of the nations heard this, they began to rejoice and to glorify the word ofJehovah, and all those who were rightly disposed for everlasting life became believers.”) It is hard to envision that as a function of their critical thinking.

    Even passages that do call for analytical thinking ability—call it “critical thinking” if you must—make clear that such thinking is not the motivator. Rather, it is the tool that one employs with motivation, but would not do so otherwise. For example, a choice was thrust upon the Boreans when Paul and Silas paid a visit in the first century: 

    “Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica [where the two had been run out of town], for they accepted the word with the greatest eagerness of mind, carefully examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” (Acts 17:11)

    That they were rational is evident in that they carefully examined the Scriptures daily to see that what Paul and Silas were telling them was so. But from where does the eagerness come? That one will be emotion, not logic. That one will be heart, not head. That one will be people conscious of their spiritual need, and so determined to fill it. That one will be people who intuitively know they have a spiritual need and that it is analogous to their need for vitamins, without which one gets very ill and never quite knows why. Nobody hungers for vitamin C or vitamin D. Instead, they make themselves conscious of that need. That those of Borea put such a premium on spiritual matters explains that they are called noble-minded. It’s a nobility that has nothing to do with the intellect, the head. It has everything to do with emotion, with what a person is at heart.

    It is high time to wrap up this series. It has spanned six parts. It doubtless includes redundancies which need be edited out if I ever combine the six. The stuff called critical thinking is fine as a seasoning, but disastrous as a main course. You would think that would be evident as the ship goes under while co-captained by luminaries all claiming to excel in such thinking. But it is not.

    Isn’t “critical thinking” the prime tool of those who “think they are wise?” The holy writings have no use for that type of person: “Have you seen a man who thinks he is wise? There is more hope for someone stupid than for him.” (Proverbs 26:12) Emphasis on critical thinking gives rise to the mantra that more understanding will solve all problems. How is that one working out? Humans don’t need more of the stuff. If anything, they need less. Moreover, they need it to stand aside so that higher qualities may shine through.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Save Us from Critical Thinking: Part 5

    (for best results, start here)

    In recent years, the term “reason” has been upgraded to “critical thinking,” as though to imply increased potency. It’s the same stuff. It’s just that the latter was not the buzzphrase then that it has come to be today. Like “fake news” or declaring things “unacceptable,” it’s a term that came out of obscurity, if not nowhere, and becomes ubiquitous. I sometimes wish it would suffer the same fate as that politician whom everyone knew should be hanged, and finally he was. “Any last words?” they asked him on the gallows. “This is unacceptable!” he cried as the trap door swung open and the rope snapped taut.

    It’s hard to get the point across that “critical thinking” is not the same as “thinking.” Nor is it the same as “criticism.” It is a particularly narrow brand of thinking that, when applied to biblical studies, means you can’t consider the virgin birth of Christ nor his resurrection since those things don’t happen today and are not repeatable, thus violating the scientific method. I admit that if I had not heard Luke Timothy Johnson describe its derivative “higher criticism” as a Trojan horse which outwardly impresses but inwardly carries the seeds of destruction, I might not have come to regard the expression as bull does a red flag.

    It morphs, however. It becomes a term that everyone likes for outward appearance—after all, nobody wants to be “sloppy” in their thinking—and so they adapt it to their own ends. Says an AI commentary, with regard to biblical commentary:

    “Some scholars use critical thinking and arrive at traditional views of authorship and dating

    • Others use critical thinking and conclude Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch
    • Conservative evangelical scholars apply rigorous critical thinking while rejecting many higher critical conclusions
    • The same critical thinking skills help you evaluate whether higher criticism’s assumptions are sound”

    Exactly. Everyone’s brimming over with the stuff, but it doesn’t help in resolving problems. It just results in more entrenched positions that are less open to agreement because everyone imagines their thinking is THE sound way to do it. It’s as though you can trump any conversation with a “Excuse me. I have concluded otherwise and I used critical thinking!” Since it can be applied any which way, just drop the term and stop being so pretentious.

    Increasingly, Witness literature doesn’t cater AT ALL to those who take pride in their critical thinking skills. Instead, they cater to those who feel like a gut punch the travesty of human rule, largely a product of that critical thinking. Few world leaders have not been trained in universities that specialize in it. Accordingly, people don’t need more of it. They need less of it.

    The heart makes a grab what it wants and then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale for it. This leads to the appearance that the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along.

    ******  The bookstore