Sheep and Goats

Author: tomsheepandgoats

  • Jesus Arose in the Synagogue

    Jesus arose in the synagogue to read. He was handed the scroll of Isaiah. He did not say, “Aw, man, not THIS reading! Why do they have to hand all the turkeys to me?!” Instead, he spun gold out of it.

    However, when they handed me a scroll for an upcoming Bible reading, I did say what Jesus did not. I said, “Aw, man, not THIS reading! Why do they have to hand all the turkeys to me?!” I thought it, that is. I didn’t say it out loud. What I said out loud was, “Thank you for this Bible reading assignment, brothers. What a wonderful privilege!” Then I got to work.

    Time will tell if the work pays off. It’s looking grim at the moment. However, many times I have had similar sentiments, but upon going to work, the reading transforms itself into a keeper. It becomes something to file away that contributes meaningfully to an accumulating grasp of Scripture with its resultant effect of drawing closer to God. To what degree this one will do the same remains to be seen. So far it reminds me of that NFL ad of a little girl describing the (American) football game to her dad. “Pow! Bam! Kapok!” she gesticulates to papa, before settling into an irresistibly cute pose. Will that be my experience? The reading (Jeremiah 50: 24-40) is entirely about the enemies of God getting their comeuppance. Pow! Bam! Kapow! I mean, how long can that aspect be maintained?

    It helps to know, as was explained at the outset of the congregation’s diving into the Book of Jeremiah, that the book is not chronological. That’s good, because payback to those enemies occupied all of last week, too. Last week it was Moab getting its comeuppance.

    The thing is, Moab was family, which made its departure particularly disheartening. God even says he weeps over it (Jeremiah 48:31-32). Moab wasn’t an Assyria, or Egypt, or Babylon, that never was. It was family (Moab—the son of Abraham’s nephew Lot). Accordingly, it had “been undisturbed since their youth, Like wine that has settled on the dregs. They have not been poured from one vessel into another, And they have never gone into exile.” (48:11)

    As family, they had been [relatively] undisturbed since their youth. They had not been poured from one vessel into another. They had chosen to pour themselves! They had never gone into exile. They had chosen exile of their own free will! Hopefully, some of them would return. The chapter goes on to entertain that possibility. But it does not speak glowing of those who do not. Instead, it speaks their being hardened and … “We have heard about the pride of Moab—he is very haughty— About his arrogance, his pride, his haughtiness, and the loftiness of his heart.” (48:29) Imagining he has the inside story, he obsesses over it and becomes oblivious to the concerns of normal people. North Korea launches its nuclear missiles and normal people run for the hills. Moabites run to their keyboards to point out that their former family members just changed their blood policy.

    It is a test of loyalty in these last of the last of the last of the last days. Some buckle. Even Baruch was at risk of doing so. However, the Bible devotes an entire chapter of Jeremiah (a short one—sorry, Baruch) to his readjustment, and he responded well to it. But I just had to play with the idea of what if he had not—in answer to a Moabite who had not.

    You remember Baruch, serving by Jeremiah’s side for decades, leading up to Jerusalem’s overthrow by Nebuchadnezzar. He got tired of it at one point, though, and the 45th chapter of Jeremiah is written for him: “This is what Jehovah the God of Israel has said concerning you, O Baruch, you have said: “Woe, now, to me, for Jehovah has added grief to my pain! I have grown weary because of my sighing, and no resting-place have I found.” “This is what you should say to him, ‘This is what Jehovah has said: “Look! What I have built up I am tearing down, and what I have planted I am uprooting, even all the land itself. But as for you, you keep seeking great things for yourself. Do not keep on seeking. For here I am bringing in a calamity upon all flesh,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘and I will give you your soul as a spoil in all the places to which you may go.’”  (Jeremiah 45:2-5)

    And Baruch proceeded to say: “You got a timetable on that?”

    You Got a Timetable on That?

  • A Failure to Go Beyond the Law

    In 2015, a Jehovah’s Witness spokesperson testified before the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Three times he pleaded for consistency in laws relevant to reporting child sexual abuse:

    Witness Spokesperson: “I think very clearly Mr. Toole pointed out that if the Australian Government, in all the States, was to make mandatory reporting, it would make it so much easier for us. . . . “ [1]

    Witness Spokesperson: “The point being, here, another aspect that an elder needs to consider is he does not have the authority to lord it over or take over control of a family arrangement, where a person – let’s say it is a victim who is 24 or 25 years of age – has a right to decide whether or not they will report that incident. They also respect the family arrangement that the appointed guardian, who is not the perpetrator, has a certain right, too.  So this is the spiritual dilemma that we have, because at the same time, we want to make sure that children are cared for. So if the government does happen to make mandatory reporting, [2] that will make this dilemma so much easier for us, because we all want the same goal – that children will be cared for properly.” …

    Council Assisting (Stewart): “Leaving aside the question of overriding mandatory law from the civil authorities, do you see the possibility within the scriptures as you have identified them for a change in the practice of Jehovah’s Witnesses?  In other words, would it be within the scriptures for the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization to adopt a policy which says that in cases where there are others at risk, a report must be made to the authorities?”

    Witness Spokesperson: “That is a possible thing for us to consider, and I think, already, the assumption is there, that if any elder was to see that there was some definite risk, that their conscience should move them to do that. But the point I was trying to make, Mr. Stewart, is there are other scriptural factors that maybe make that a little complicated, and it would certainly be a lot easier if we had mandatory laws on that.” [3]

    What would be “easier” for the Witnesses—three times that word is repeated as well—is their investigating wrongdoing within their midst for the purpose of applying discipline. The discipline administered involves corrective counsel up to and including removal from the congregation. This they consider necessary in order to comply with Romans 2:21-24:

    “You, the one preaching “Do not steal,” do you steal? You, the one saying “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You, the one expressing abhorrence of the idols, do you rob temples? You, who take pride in law, do you by your transgressing of the Law dishonor God? For “the name of God is being blasphemed on account of you people among the nations”; just as it is written.”

    In the absence of internal discipline, “the name of God is being blasphemed . . . among the nations.” For this reason, Witnesses look into reports of wrongdoing within their ranks. It is not a task all churches undertake. Consequently, when police nab a criminal, it is usually as much a surprise to the church pastor as to the general public. Not so with Witness elders, who may already have discovered his criminality and taken action. But lately with the Witnesses, when the wrongdoing is the wickedest of all wickedness, that of child sexual abuse, they have been bewildered by a patchwork of laws that here mandates reporting, there does not—and where it does not, it may turn out to be illegal if it violates privacy concerns. When legal chaos becomes the norm, a new “gold standard” arises—that of going “beyond the law.” The Witness spokesperson suggests universal reporting requirements so as to avoid that ridiculous situation. Can you imagine if “going beyond the law” became the norm in other situations? It would not be enough to assume that one of the ten cars already stopped at an accident scene were handling matters. You would have to stop and check yourself or suffer rebuke for not going beyond the law.

    With Witnesses criticized for following the law, but not “going beyond it” where they have no legal mandate to do so, I naturally assumed that compliance of those who DO have legal mandate is near universal. Isn’t that a reasonable assumption? Silly me.

    Studies consistently show that the failure rate of those who ARE charged to report child sexual abuse is nearly two thirds! For example, a 1990 American survey of mandated reporters found that only about 40% of known/suspected maltreatment cases (and ~35% of the most serious ones) were reported to child protective services

    Sixty percent! Sixty percent of those REQUIRED to report suspected abuse to police don’t do it! So how is it that Jehovah’s Witnesses elders, who are usually NOT required, became the special object of wrath?

    During that same Australian hearing, an elder who testified was clearly flummoxed at the suggestion that he is responsible “for all the children of Australia.” He plainly is not. He is a shepherd of a relatively small faith and is responsible to members of that faith, including its children. Really, isn’t the one questioning him, the one who represents both Australian government and judiciary—isn’t he the one responsible for “all the children of Australia?” And if his people are like the Americans, they fail them 60% of the time!

    Council Assisting (Stewart) responded to the Witness Spokesperson (as previously quoted): “Leaving aside the question of overriding mandatory law from the civil authorities . . . “ One might wish he would not leave that matter aside, for it is the solution to the problem. Witnesses are well-known for obeying the law. They certainly would not flub it up 60% of the time!

    Why ISN’T universal reporting the law? Then it wouldn’t matter if for any reason some family member or the victim himself as an adult didn’t want it reported. The law would override them. Seemingly, nothing could be easier, since everyone says they hate child sexual abuse. So why haven’t they amended the law to reflect that hatred? That way, there would be no need to grill unpopular parties who did meet the law but failed to go beyond it. Why, after 50 years of proclaimed all-out war against child sexual abuse, have they not changed the law to mandate reported for anyone, no ifs, ands, or buts? One can only conclude that they prefer pointing fingers to taking action.

    And no, they still have not changed the law to solve the problem. However, Jehovah’s Witnesses HAVE changed their child abuse policy to address issues brought to light at that Commission Hearing:

    The remainder of this post is from AI:

    “Here are several well-known studies (primarily from the 1990s–2000s, with some later reviews) that document substantial non-reporting or underreporting of suspected child maltreatment by mandated professionals such as teachers,physicians, social workers, and others:

    • Zellman, G. L. (1990). “Child Abuse Reporting and Failure to Report among Mandated Reporters: Prevalence, Incidence, and Reasons.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence. National survey of professionals (physicians, psychologists, social workers, school staff, etc.). Nearly 40% admitted they had suspected maltreatment at some point but decided not to report. Consistent reporting was the most common pattern, but discretionary non-reporting was common; the top reason given was insufficient evidence.
    • Zellman, G. L., & Bell, R. M. (1990). The Role of Professional Background, Case Characteristics, and Protective Agency Response in Mandated Child Abuse Reporting (RAND report). Same national survey data. Confirmed that about 40% of respondents had failed to report suspected cases at least once; roughly one-third were “discretionary reporters” who reported some cases but not others.
    • Delaronde, S., King, G., Bendel, R., & Reece, R. (2000). “Opinions among mandated reporters toward child maltreatment reporting policies.” Child Abuse & Neglect. Survey of social workers, pediatricians, and physician assistants. 58% had not reported all suspected cases of maltreatment over their careers. Those who failed to report all cases were more likely to support alternative (less strict) reporting policies.
    • Kenny, M. C. (2001). “Compliance with Mandated Child Abuse Reporting: Comparing Physicians and Teachers.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. Compared recently trained physicians and teachers using vignettes and self-reports. Found differences in reporting rates and knowledge; both groups showed incomplete compliance, with teachers generally reporting less frequently than physicians.
    • Alvarez, K. M., Kenny, M. C., Donohue, B., & Carpin, K. M. (2004). “Why are professionals failing to initiate mandated reports of child maltreatment…?” Aggression and Violent Behavior. Review synthesizing prior research. Notes that approximately 40% of mandated professionals have failed to report at some point, with some studies showing even higher rates of non-reporting of known or suspected cases (citing Zellman and others). Discusses common barriers (lack of knowledge of signs, fear of consequences, doubts about CPS effectiveness).
    • Webster, S. W., O’Toole, R., O’Toole, A. W., & Lucal, B. (2005). “Overreporting and underreporting of child abuse: Teachers’ use of professional discretion.” Child Abuse & Neglect. Factorial survey of teachers using vignettes. Teachers underreported (recognized abuse but said they would not report) in about 33% of cases; overreporting was rare (~4%). Discretion was more likely to produce underreporting than overreporting.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • That Slave of Yours that Took Off? Fogetabboudit.

    When was the last time a Watchtower Study centered on the interchange of Paul, Philemon, and Onesimus? Has it ever happened? Not that I can recall. But it did with the study of October 25, 2026.

    So here is Philemon doing his best to nurse a grudge toward Onesimus, his runaway slave, and it’s just not going his way: “The lout,” he’s muttering. “Just took off! Left me just like that! After I was so good to him! Pinched my silverware, too!” he fumes to himself at the congregation meeting in his own home. Whereupon, not only is the scripture “If anyone has a cause for complaint, continue to put up with one another and forgive freely” read before all, but he even must suffer a letter from the apostle Paul, specifically about Onesimus, being read aloud! Seems that Onesimus is now a spiritual brother and that he, Philemon, should let bygones to bygones!

    What!!? He has already heard through the grapevine that his runaway has come into the faith and become Paul’s right hand man. Probably gave Paul my silverware and he’s eating off it right now! he sputters. And now Paul writes me to just forget about it? He’d better not order me about, and he better not play the “love” card, either, Philemon grumbles, before Paul sidesteps the first and does the second:

    “For this very reason, though I have great freeness of speech in connection with Christ to order you to do what is proper,”  Paul writes, “I am exhorting you rather on the basis of love . . “ (Philemon 1:8)

    “Proper? Proper! Next thing he’ll play the old man or the hardship card!” Philemon grumbles before Paul does just that.

    “. . . seeing that I am such as I am, Paul an aged man, yes, now also a prisoner for the sake of Christ Jesus; I am exhorting you concerning my child, to whom I became a father while in my [prison] bonds, Onesimus . . “ (vs 9)

    “formerly useless to you but now useful to you and to me.” (vs 11)

    Useless!!??? He used to set my table! With MY silverware!!

    “This very one I am sending back to you, yes, him, that is, my own tender affections,” continues the letter. “I would like to hold him back for myself that in place of you he might keep on ministering to me in the [prison] bonds I bear for the sake of the good news. But without your consent I do not want to do anything, so that your good act may be, not as under compulsion, but of your own free will,” Paul writes, continuing to twist Philemon’s arm before the whole congregation. (12-14)

    “Alright, alright, alright, I’ll do it! Sheesh!” he caves as he pictures eating off plastic from this point on. What else can he do?

    “Perhaps really on this account he broke away for an hour, that you may have him back forever, no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, as a brother beloved, especially so to me, yet how much more so to you both in fleshly relationship and in [the] Lord.” (15-16)

    “ If, therefore, you consider me a sharer, receive him kindly the way you would me. Moreover, if he did you any wrong or owes you anything, keep this charged to my account.” (17-18)

    This is where my little witticism comes from that maybe he pinched the silverware. “Charge it to my account,” the Watchtower noted, was wording “commonly used to agree to repay a debt, as proved by other documents from the first century C.E. On the basis of this verse, some commentators suggest that before fleeing, Onesimus might have stolen from his master, perhaps reasoning that he could not survive long without some means to purchase food or to buy passage on a ship.”

    This remark was followed by: “Paul’s desire to reconcile these two Christians was so strong that he was even willing to do so at his own expense.” And that was what the gist of the study was about: how to pursue peace with others and draw out the best response from them—gleaned from examples of all three of these characters, each in in very different circumstances.

    What is Philemon to do, with that letter being read aloud and the eyes of all upon him? He did the only thing a guy could be expected to do. He gives in.

    Maybe it didn’t happen that way. Probably not, actually. But it is within the range of possibilities, so I thought I’d play with the idea a little. Just envisioning congregations in which there were free persons and slaves takes some getting used to, yet commentators all assure us that it was that way. They qualify it with caveot that a lot would have depended on just who that slave’s owner was.

    Slavery was a universal degradation that the Hebrew law managed to turn into a beneficial social institution, easily superior to any “safety net” existing today. Get yourself in a horrible bind, and you could always sell yourself into slavery. That slavery was not permanent, but was a seven-year stint, following which your owner set you free with a gift to start again. It’s not everything, but it beats anything seen today. It ensured there would never become a permanent underclass. It ensured the obscene condition of “the rich get richer as the poor get poorer” could not take root in that society. Sometimes I wonder if some variation of it won’t appear in the new system, at least at its beginning.

    All the same, slavery is bad, we are assured today. Why did God just banish it?

    It’s probably because if God banished an injustice the moment it came to his attention, there wouldn’t be anything left. Injustice was part of the package that Adam chose in declaring his independence; it’s an inevitable result. God will take care of glitches in his own rule, should any arise, but he should clean up after Adam’s mess? No. He’d never be able to do anything else. He’d be sticking band-aid after never-ending band-aid upon a system of things that is inherently flawed, in which “flawed” is built into the design.

    He allowed Adam time to make good on this claim of self-rule. Slavery is part of the rule-book Adam’s offspring devised. What choice does God have if he is to play be the rulebook he has already allowed the wayward rebels to devise? Frankly, I think the same goes for warfare. Warfare is part of the package devised by Adam following departure from God’s sovereignty. It didn’t occur to him that if they all pursue a course of independence, it might result in people who didn’t get along with each other? “Alright, I guess that’s the way it must be done,” Jehovah says, as he clears out the land where bestiality has become a thing in order to ensure his seed can take root.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Regarding the Recent Update on Blood Transfusion: Part 7

    A consequence of the Witnesses’ long-time no-blood stance, dating back to the 1940s, was the gradual emergence of a new field called “bloodless medicine.” Here and there, courageous doctors had taken up the challenge of treating them in accord with their religious beliefs. A New Scientist Magazine article of April 26, 2008, states that bloodless surgery “was originally developed to enable Jehovah’s Witnesses, who shun transfusions, to undergo major surgery.” The article even opens with the Leviticus 18 scripture underlying the Witnesses prime rationale: “‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood. No soul of you shall eat blood.”

    Since then, I have several times made the assertion that the number of lives saved through such medicine, now adopted by the greater world, must surely outnumber those lost by a few members of a relatively tiny religious group that stuck to its principles despite much opposition. Can this assertion be proven?

    That New Scientist article quotes Dr. Gavin Murphy, a cardiac surgeon at the Bristol Heart Institute in the UK: “There is virtually no high-quality study in surgery, or intensive or acute care, outside of when you are bleeding to death, that shows that blood transfusion is beneficial, and many that show it is bad for you.” One study citied in the article is from the journal Circulation, vol 116, p 2544. The New Scientist article stated:

    “For almost 9000 patients who had heart surgery in the UK between 1996 and 2003, receiving a red cell transfusion was associated with three times the risk of dying in the following year and an almost six fold risk of dying within 30 days of surgery compared with not receiving one.”

    There were 8598 patients in that study. 57% of them were transfused, for a total of 4,909. 43% were not transfused, for a total of 3,689. 212 of the transfused group died in-hospital. 9 of the non-transfused group died in hospital.

    One might easily charge that only the sickest patients would receive a transfusion in the first place—for example, those with the lowest hematocrit. This would make the entire study a worthless comparison of apples to oranges. But the authors of the study recognized that, and specifically made adjustments to take those risk factors into account. Even so, the results were dramatic.

    With AI kicking and screaming all the way (since it generally seeks to validate the majority opinion) I asked it to extrapolate those figures worldwide. There’s too many variables, it said, healthcare and transfusion practices differ widely, it said. You don’t know, for any given person, what would have happened were the opposite treatment applied, it said. Yes, yes, I know, I replied—do it anyway.

    It said: “Bottom line: If the Bristol absolute rates and the extreme concentration of early deaths among transfused patients had applied uniformly worldwide, one would expect on the order of 200,000–300,000 in-hospital deaths after cardiac surgery in 1996–2003, with the great majority occurring in patients who received red-cell transfusions.“

    The “great majority” of 200-000-300,000 deaths worldwide—duplicating the 212/9 ratio of the British study! And you at least have to times it by five (if not more) to reflect 35 years of bloodless medicine, not just the 7 years of the study. That brings the total to 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 in-hospital deaths of that same 212/9 ratio!

    However, the study went beyond in-hospital and tracked outcomes up to a year later.. Summarized AI: “The quoted finding (from the 2006 Circulation study of nearly 9,000 UK heart-surgery patients, as reported in the New Scientist article) shows a strong association between receiving a red-cell transfusion and markedly higher mortality: roughly 3× higher risk of death in the following year and nearly 6× higher risk within 30 days, compared with patients who did not receive one.”

    Incorporating this expanded timeframe doubles the worldwide death figures once again to 2,000,000 – 3,000,000!

    Witness deaths since 1945 from refusing blood transfusion have been estimated at 30,000. Thus, even allowing for an enormous margin of error, the assertion is easily corroborated that “the number of lives saved through such medicine, now adopted by the greater world, must surely outnumber those lost by a few members of a relatively tiny religious group that stuck to its principles despite much opposition.”

          ….

    The “kicking and screaming” of AI, mentioned earlier, was mostly insistence that, since so many variables were involved, extrapolations were not to be taken literally but were only for purposed of scale. Very well. That is all I have used them for. They may BE literal. But even if taken just to indicate scale, the results are so overwhelming as to accommodate an enormous margin of error.

    I would have thought that just common sense would have enabled the conclusion—that when you expand a beneficial new therapy developed for a small group to a population 1,000 times greater, of course the lives saved in the greater with outnumber those lost in the smaller! But this is not a world that runs on common sense, so it is necessary to run the figures. Even I am surprised by how huge they are. It means that those mocking memes awarding Jehovah’s Witnesses a Nobel Prize for spurring bloodless surgery are no joke! They actually should get such a prize! (or at least an honorable mention. The innovating doctors themselves would get the prize. But surely, it should be noted somewhere who put them on the right track to begin with.)

    These results present an entirely new way of looking at deaths resulting over the decades from the Jehovah’s Witness policy of refusing blood transfusions. In the event that someone refuses to acknowledge that dying in accord with one’s religious conscience represents a regrettable but nonetheless noble sacrifice, one can always shift focus to dying for the advance of medical science. Dying so that SCIENCE may be advanced—why, there is nothing in today’s world more heroic than that! It even eclipses dying for one’s country, universally spun as heroic even after one tallies up the staggering death count.

    It means that the greater world is massively indebted to Jehovah’s Witnesses for safer medicine.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Regarding the Recent Update on Blood Transfusion: Part 6

    (Yes, yes, I said the last one was final, but I’ve thought up two more to address things unanswered)

    Usually, when a policy is reformed for the better, the reformers are lauded as heroes. But in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the update on blood transfusion policies, this has not been enough to satisfy detractors. Those detractors want “accountability.”

    Well, I suppose you could always blame the prior policy on someone now dead and be done with it. That’s what most everyone else does; why should only Witnesses be expected to do it differently? The old policy, favoring collective conscience rather than individual conscience with regard to “abstaining from blood” (Acts 15:29) has now been reversed to individual over collective. It dates from 1945. Surely, everyone involved in its formation is now dead. Most institutions routinely employ this strategy. Woes are always the fault of the previous administration, not the current one. Nor does everything change on Day 1. It invariably takes a long time to turn the ship around.

    Nothing happens in a vacuum. World War II put blood transfusions on the front page. No longer was transfusion an occasional or experimental thing. It instantly became routine, a large-scale medical technique. Its new-found popularity quickly moved from the battlefield to that of civilians. It would have been enough to trigger anyone alert to the Acts 15 stricture. It would have been analogous to Thomas Bartholin (professor from the 1600s) sounding the alarm when experiments first began in transfusing blood from one being into another:

    “Those who drag in the use of human blood for internal remedies of diseases appear to misuse it and to sin gravely,” he wrote. “Cannibals are condemned. Why do we not abhor those who stain their gullet with human blood? Similar is the receiving of alien blood from a cut vein, either through the mouth or by instruments of transfusion. The authors of this operation are held in terror by the divine law, by which the eating of blood is prohibited.”

    So, in their own context of World War II, Jehovahs Witnesses began implementing the policy that has only now been changed. Might the old policy have triggered some deaths among members? If so, it was dwarfed by the price the greater world was fully prepared to pay with regard to World War—or at least it was prepared to draft its young men and make them pay it. Their deaths became societally acceptable—even laudable. It is in this context, not the one in which death of a young person is an unimaginable horror for which someone ought be held accountable, that Jehovah’s Witnesses determined blood transfusion violated the Bible prohibition on blood misuse.

    Consideration of context opens one up to charges of “what aboutism.” That is, it opens one up to charges evading the question by shifting the focus to a greater example. I realize that the retort of “what aboutism” is considered an intellegent answer today, but, C’mon! When you ignore the iceberg to obsess over the ice cube, what does that say about you?

    ******  The bookstore

  • Back to the Queen of the Heavens

    “I had it up to here with you characters. If you don’t shape up, I’m sending in the Babylonians. They’re a nasty bunch. They’re chomping at the bit. I’ll just take down the Stop sign—that’s all it will take.“

    Israelites: “Nice bluff. Forget it. We’re holding.”

    God: “Okay then, make way for them. Some people have to learn the hard way.”

    Israelites: (upon checking the internet news and starting to pee their pants): “Whoa whoa whoa!—not everyone here is slobbering over idols. Some are behaving.”

    God: “Got it. Too late to stop the falling ax. Tough times and all. However, anyone behaving, staying true—just go out and surrender to the Chaldeans. You’ll be okay.”

    Israelites: “What!? No way! What about fighting for the Fatherland—for God and country?!”

    God: “I’m the Father. And God. The country’s gone when I say it is. Do it.”

    Babylon does invade. Pretty nasty, too.

    When King Zedekiah of Judah and all the soldiers saw them, they fled, going out of the city by night by way of the king’s garden, through the gate between the double wall, and they continued by the way of the Arabah. But the Chaldean army chased after them, and they overtook Zedekiah in the desert plains of Jericho. They captured him and brought him up to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he passed sentence on him. The king of Babylon had the sons of Zedekiah slaughtered before his eyes there at Riblah, and the king of Babylon had all the nobles of Judah slaughtered. Then he blinded the eyes of Zedekiah, after which he bound him with copper fetters to bring him to Babylon. (Jeremiah 39:4-7)

    The ones that had surrendered to the Babylonians, did okay, not counting inconvenience. The connected ones among them were taken to Babylon where they could no longer connect—but they could live and even thrive there. The lowly ones got to remain in the land and the Babylonians appointed a king for them: Gedeliah.

    As if from an ex/Israelite website, schemes arise to overthrow Gedeliah—all from self-styled “reformers” and “whistleblowers,” intent on bringing back the old days. Gedeliah, a decent chap, but also just as naive as a guy could be, can’t believe people could be so scheming as Ishmael and his bunch prove to be. He gets a report of evil underfoot, but dismisses it:

    “Then Johanan the son of Kareah secretly told Gedeliah in Mizpah: “I want to go and strike down Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and no one will know. Why should he kill you, and why should all the people of Judah who have gathered to you be scattered and the remnant of Judah perish?” But Gedeliah the son of Ahikam said to Johanan the son of Kareah: “Do not do this, for what you are saying concerning Ishmael is a lie.” (Jeremiah 40:15-16)

    It wasn’t a lie. Ishmael did kill him and led the remaining Jews either into Egypt or back to idolatry. Back in idolatry, they started to think that their woes had not been Jehovah at all, but that they had eased up on the idols in the first place:

    Israelites: “We shall [continue to] make sacrificial smoke to the ‘queen of the heavens’ and to pour out to her drink offerings, just as we ourselves and our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, when we used to be satisfied with bread and to be well off, and we did not see any calamity at all. And from the time that we ceased to make sacrificial smoke to the ‘queen of the heavens’ and pour out drink offerings to her we have lacked everything, and by the sword and by the famine we have come to our finish.” (Jeremiah 44:18)

    God: “NO, NO, NO, NO! How can you be so stupid!? This has nothing to do the queen of the heavens. Did the queen tell you that you’d be toast? Didn’t I tell you upfront through Jeremiah and even other prophets like Isaiah that this was going to happen?!”

    Israelites: “Correlation is not causation. Do you have any evidence?”

    ******  The bookstore

  • “Never has Jehovah ever Popped up on my Social Media Notifications”

    One sister commented yesterday, in one of the social media paragraphs of the Watchtower Study, that if she mentions sports, soon her feed fills with sports. If she mentions vacations, soon her feed fills with vacations. If she mentions tableware, soon her feed fills with tableware, and so forth. She followed this with: “We talk about Jehovah all the time in my household. But never, ever has “Jehovah” popped up on my media notifications. Not even once.”

    It wasn’t stated as proof of anything, but whatever it was not stated as proof of, it sure did prove it.

    That social media paragraph made me think of a certain journalist commenting on the democracy that we are all used to in our neck of the woods: He described it as “the pathetic belief that individual ignorance adds up to collective wisdom.” Nothing is more democratic than social media, in which a truly thoughtful remark is immediately followed up by one from a complete moron, who nonetheless has equal time.

    Then there was material on how easy it is to distort with half-truths, and how social media slams us all with ideas undercutting Christian values, so that one must be on the alert lest they be swept along with the tide.

    It all brought to mind for me the public speaking brother who played up being honest with your children, even in areas parents don’t usually think about. He told of the child who, when young, asked her parents if Santa was real. The parents assured her that he was. There were some kids down the street, however, who told Sally the truth.

    When she lost her baby teeth, her parents told her that there was a tooth fairy who would leave some cash under her pillow. The kids down the street told her the truth.

    When Easter came, her parents told her about the Easter Bunny….a generous rabbit who would fill your basket with chocolate eggs. The kids down the street told her the truth.

    Sally reached adolescence and her responsible parents told her about sex.

    But she‘d never gotten a straight answer from her folks. It was always nonsense. The kids down the street, on the other hand, had never been wrong. And so, with regard to sex, they had a different explanation, and the boys among them offered to demonstrate. She really came to resent them later—but also her parents, for have always served her garbage.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Making My Peace with Erhman

    Making My Peace with Erhman

    Been posting lately about Bart Ehrman. People say, ‘Hey! Why are you beating up on the poor guy?’

    I’ve been too hard on this fellow. Aren’t I ashamed of myself? He is doing no more than what he said he would do—lecturing without regard to faith but only with regard to critical thinking. If he was doing it with any other author, from Homer to Hawthorne, I would commend him. It is just the perception that he ends up treating diamonds as salt that gets under my skin, that he misses the forest for the trees. 

    I prefer instead the Church of Christ fellow who invited me into his home, one time when I was in the door-to-door work. I could see in a second that he truly was a student of the Bible—an instantly likable man of good humor, hospitality, no pretentiousness whatsoever—a man with multiple translations. As we zeroed in on passage in Corinthians and he saw that I meant to read it aloud, he said in a faux panic: “No, no, let me read it—you’ll mess it up!” at which both of us laughed.. Still, he was extracting reasons for faith out of the book, even if I did think he had some things backwards—he wasn’t stripping it of faith to extract the extraneous that he knew the university crowd would eat up.

    Still, I’m starting to warm to this fellow Ehrman. I like this line from one of his Great Courses lectures, that he “always tell my students that if there is a perfectly good English term for a concept, you are better off using the Latin term so everyone will know you’ve been to university.” It is just a quip but in that quip lies all the pretensions of our ridiculous times. “How can you believe, when you are accepting glory from one another and you are not seeking the glory that is from the only God?” says Jesus. (John 5:44)

    It’s not his fault that he’s an unpretentious guy in a pretentiousness field. That is a plus for him, not a minus. Another plus: how can you pick a fight with a guy who has seen through the church-taught-nonsense of all the good going to heaven and and the bad to hell? (as Jehovah’s Witnesses did long ago). That makes him a hero in my eyes, not a villain. 

    He sure doesn’t give stuff away on his website. On the other hand, he can’t. As the site says: “Leading seminaries cost upwards of $55,000 a year.” He grants access to them for a fee only billed annually $395/year. He must have icensing deals with these academics.

    He is granting entry to a model based upon $55,000 a year annual tuition. That’s a good deal—even if there are a lot of gasbags among them.  Imagine the product that must come out of a $55K/year club. Who do you think more likely to have $55,000 a year in disposable income? The poor? Or the wealthy? You don’t think that hurdle is not in itself going to skew the product that comes from these seminaries? What did Jesus say about challenges facing the rich? Yet, all you have to do to enter one of these seminaries is to pony up the dough. Money counts—nothing else. And it is from this head-only model that churches hire pastors to head their congregations? 

    Contrast that with the way Jehovah’s Witnesses teach their congregations. It is through training elders who come directly from the rank and file. Few of them will be wealthy. Some of them will not have two nickels to rub together. No matter. The training given them is free. Additionally, much of it is done before a person ever qualifies for the station. It happens by means of being a thorough student of the Bible beforehand, and through years of living the faith. Granted, these elders will not be up to snuff on the latest in the historical critical method that Ehrman represents. But they will be far closer to the actual apostles, described in Acts 4:13 as “unlettered and ordinary.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • Good is Bad, Bad is Good, Dark is Light, Light is Dark—Isaiah 5:20

    Good is Bad, Bad is Good, Dark is Light, Light is Dark—Isaiah 5:20

    On X, captivating videos catch my eye. Some monumental news is breaking! I look at the comments. Invariably, someone will ask Grok, the AI agent, ‘Is this true?’ Half of the time, it seems, the answer is no. It is a “deep fake.”

    Not only do people live in echo chambers, consuming news only palatable to them, but now the chambers are reinforced 5-fold. They even consume it knowing it is fake, thus locking-in bias.

    Thus, the following, written just six years ago in ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses: Searching for the Why’ has aged well:

    “Fake news: the term was unheard of one year and inescapable the next. Outlets pledge to search for and destroy fake news so that others are not misled. Unfortunately, fake news may be in the eye of the beholder. Real news may be but another manifestation of, “History is written by the victors.” It is written by the interests that have outmaneuvered the competition. An unnamed tweeter posts: “Right now, everyone believes news which doesn’t fit their preconceived agenda is fake,” a situation he describes as “mental.”

    “From the advent of filmmaking, countless dramatic movies have ended with the whistleblower testifying before important people, and the mighty press finally publishing The Truth! The people at last come to know! It almost will not fly anymore, since the next day the villain can easily say, “It is Fake News! People, can we move on?”

    “It will only get worse. The New York Times writes about an app that makes it “relatively easy to create realistic face swaps and leave few traces of manipulation. . . . It’s not hard to imagine this technology being used to smear politicians, create counterfeit revenge porn, or frame people for crimes. Lawmakers have already begun to worry about how such deepfakes might be used for political sabotage and propaganda.” The anonymous developer cheerfully helps the Times reporter try his own hand at it. “I’ve given it a lot of thought,” he [says], “and ultimately I’ve decided I don’t think it’s right to condemn the technology itself.”4 Of course not! They never do. It’s on to the next advance of science! Let the ethicists figure out what he has just dumped in their laps, something “which can of course be used for many purposes, good and bad.” It’s their problem, not his.

    “Already, news sources show an eagerness to rely upon unidentified sources that frequently turn out to be wrong. Will they handle this new advance responsibly? Not only must we anticipate dubious proven by video character assassination to become routine, but the more lasting consequence of this new technological advance may be that even genuine video evidence will be dismissed as fake news. It is Isaiah envisioned: “Ah! Those who call evil good, and good evil, who change darkness to light, and light into darkness, who change bitter to sweet, and sweet into bitter!” The guileless one so slandered will explode in moral indignation, and thus appear guilty as hell. The professional liar will shrug it off with the feigned saddened dismay that his enemies could sink so low. It may be that “the wrath of the Lord blazes against [this] people,” but not before they have enjoyed their substantial day in the sun.”

    I like to quote my non-Witness neighbor, who likened the watching the news to “a bad accident. You know you should look away, but you can’t.”

    It is a runaway train that you think cannot get more out-of-control, and then it does. Now, when I write something with future publication in mind, there is a very good chance that it will obsolete by the time that happens.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Regarding the Recent Update on Blood Transfusion: Part 5

    See Part 1

    Part 2

    Part 3

    Part 4

    Part 5)

    Few Witnesses will buy that Acts 15:29 has no conceivable connection to blood transfusion therapy. They won’t buy that it is merely an OT dietary law imposed upon Christians. The counsel of apostles and older men preserved only four out of over 600 OT laws. Why would “abstain from blood” make the cut? Other dietary laws were not preserved. Something else is involved. What can that something else be other than the Leviticus 17:11 stipulation that blood carries symbolic meaning, and not just dietary?

    Even fewer Witnesses will buy the shallow argument of people controlling people. “Those in charge used to not allow transfusion simply as a means asserting supremacy, but now they do?” No. According to evolutionary psychologists, the very concept of God originates as a mechanism of control. Threaten the ne’er-do-wells with hell if they misbehave, reward them with heaven if they toe in line, and you have solved the problem of keeping order in the clan—without which that clan will surely lose out in the evolutionary struggle to survive to other clans that have evolved that Superhuman Cop. Once you buy into one cockeyed notion, it readily extends to other superficial applications. Few Witnesses will buy into it.

    Instead, most Witnesses will take quite readily to the adjustment that avoidance of blood is a personal responsibility, not to be monitored by anyone else. It will make sense to them. Break blood down into an ever-expanding list of components, as medical technology has done, and the principle that comes into play is, “You shouldn’t have to be a microbiologist to serve God.” Frankly, I didn’t know that two of the four “basic components of blood” make up less of a percentage than some components that already some Witnesses (including me) were willing to accept.

    It just becomes too complicated. Does the tiniest percentage make it blood or should the baker’s criteria prevail: “It’s not a cake until you mix the ingredients?” Each will have to figure it out on his/her own. Like with any matter of preparation, some will be quite exacting and others not so much. Some will work quite hard to find cooperative physicians. It’s been stated that liaison committees will continue to facilitate this. Others will put it off, thinking the need not likely to arise or more inclined to trust in the moment even if it should. Red cells and plasma looming large percentage-wise, my guess it that they will continue to loom large as items of conscience, with white cells and platelets demoted to the status of other fractions. How tenacious Witnesses will be in times of crisis will no doubt vary by the person.

    Will any Witnesses be as stumbled over this adjustment as those who oppose them seem to think? If so, I’ve heard no undercurrents of it. I would never claim to pick up every nuance of the grapevine but I’m as connected as anyone. If any do have a hard time over this, it will probably be those used to seeing Witness life as a collection of rules, and now some of those rules are changing. This is not just so with the update on blood transfusion, a truly significant change. It is also true with changes that are trivial, such as how Witnesses once counted their time in their ministry and now no longer do.*

    “Well, we shouldn’t think in terms of laws and rules,” will be the party line. We should think principles, not laws and rules. Principles are greater than laws and rules. Let your conscience be trained by Bible principles and you can derive laws and rules on the spot for unexpected situations. Many are the Watchtower articles elevating Bible principles over the laws derived from them. Principles are timeless. Rules are time or situationally sensitive. What applies in one time or place may not apply in another.

    Trouble is, having provided specific examples of what one with a Bible trained conscience might do in given situations, some of those examples snuck over Into the category of being rules. Not that they were rules, of course, but they so closely resembled rules that one might not be able to tell the difference. Lately, these situations are being looked at anew. Some are being unwound. If playing the cottage industry game of ‘What will come next?’ look for parallel situations where outcomes of Bible-trained consciences may have been too precisely defined.

    What are some of the items that may change? Already there are Witness opponents creating databases of potential last straws so that, should any of them arise, they can catcall, “Now are you ready to leave? Now are you ready to join me on the road to nowhere?” As for me, overhauling anything above the fold (to use the newspapaper metaphor) would make me do a double-take. Anything below the fold I could adapt to with minimal fuss. Above the fold includes the core components Witnesses are known for: Name of God, Jesus not himself God,, Kingdom is a real government, need to preach, no immortal soul, resurrection to paradise earth, explanation for why God allows evil and suffering, and so forth. Below the fold are items in which “a godly trained conscience” is defined. Were it reevaluated that it had been defined too narrowly, I could roll with that. That has been the tenor of recent changes.

    Even if some above the fold items were to undergo minor tweaks, I would adapt. For example, say, the 144K being a literal number. It’s not all THAT firmly established from scripture, methinks, it is just a reasonable conclusion. Not that I expect it to change, but if it did, I wouldn’t lose my cookies.

    Don’t make your dream list too long. Don’t expect more unwinding than was done in the first century. There must be enough impact on a person’s life to trigger Psalm 2 perceptions of the Kingdom. There, “high officials gather together as one against Jehovah and against his anointed one [to] say: ‘Let us tear off their shackles And throw off their ropes!’” (verse 3) There must always be ways that can be mischaracterized as intolerable “shackles” and “ropes.” The Psalm could never fit an “anything goes” religion.

    Similarly, consider the plea of Paul: “Make room for us in your hearts. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one.” (2 Corinthians 7:2) Why would he have written this other than to counter accusations that he had? There is nothing new under the sun. Accusations of shackles, ropes, wrongs, corruption, and unfair advantage made by enemies of the faith today find their full counterpart in the first century. Christians were well-known for refusing to burn just a pinch of incense to the Emperor, bringing intense persecution upon themselves. You don’t think there weren’t opponents trying to redefine the gesture simply as one of respect, posing as reformers devoted to preserving the lives of believers?

    Is Witness headship today petrified at being thought fallible, lest that undermine their authority to lead? That charge, too, has been made. I doubt it. They have previously acknowledged they can err. Perhaps they do not announce it with trumpets. However, there is a publicly available chronological list titled “Beliefs Clarified,” searchable on the Witness website, which documents changes and adjustments in understanding by year. So it is hardly top secret.

    The situation is probably more akin to how the airline pilot does not display a list of prior missteps on the cabin door for passengers to read. The contention that revealing they are human should threaten their authority is made by persons who once believed in Santa Claus and no longer do. They haven’t really grown up, though. They have just transferred the role of Santa Claus to God. Let there be any coal in their stockings and they begin to question the entire festive scenario. “He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for heaven’s sake.” It fits Santa Claus, but also God for many people.

    ******  The bookstore