Sheep and Goats

Author: tomsheepandgoats

  • Sociologists Recognize the Practice of Religion is Rational–it Only Took Till 1987 (Stark and Baimbridge)

    When an LDC couple moves into town, or any person of the full-time-servant variety, there is some flexibility as to which congregation they will attend. I try to woo them into mine. ‘Frankly, in some of those other congregations,’ I tell them, ‘I’m not sure they even believe in God.’ It’s a joke. Everyone knows it’s a joke. They laugh.

    But in the world of theologians, it’s no joke. Theologians may not. And if they do not, their credentials as theologian are not diminished. Rank-and-file religious believers may assume a theologian believes in God as much as they, the only distinction being that they know more, having made the divine a special topic of study. They are wrong. Theology is a study of humans, specifically, of their interaction with what they regard as the divine. As such, it does not even assume that there is a divine. It is a study of humans interacting with the concept of one, whether that concept be real or not.

    Theologians occupy themselves with arguments as to God’s existence, arguments categorized as ontological, cosmological, and teleological—usually finding flaws with each one. James Hall considers numerous examples of each argument and in every case arrives at what he calls a ‘Scottish verdict’—undecided.

    Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the believers who don’t fret about such things. Few of them even know the terms. Instead, they present God according to his attributes and personality revealed in Scripture. If people like those attributes and personality, they take care of the theology all on their own. If they don’t, all the theology in the world will not sway them.

    In short, the worship of God is not an academic discipline. It need not hold to the latest standards of intellectual rigor, standards which change over time. It is enough for the believer to be ‘reasonable’ and ‘sound in mind.’ Accordingly, while a few bones are thrown to those who insist on evidence, such as how the Bible conveys knowledge far ahead of its time—the shape and position of the earth in space, an understanding of the water cycle, the value of sanitation and quarantine—the primary draw will ever be on God’s attributes and personality. When God passed by Moses’s face, it was not to explain that the earth is round and hangs upon nothing. It was to declare, “Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in loyal love and truth, showing loyal love to thousands, pardoning error and transgression and sin, but he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, bringing punishment for the error of fathers upon sons and upon grandsons, upon the third generation and upon the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7)

    That last phrase, which sounds ominous, is best explained in terms of people inheriting the consequences of their progenitor’s prior actions. Since concepts of normalcy originate from observing our parents, a parent decidedly abnormal sabotages his children for generations to come. Many people know the determination to do things ‘not like my old man did,’ succeeding to a point, and then one day realizing to their dismay that beneath the veneer, they are just like the old man.

    There is also the unsettling findings of epigenetics, which upends the universal understanding of my youth that acquired characteristics cannot be inherited. Ruin your health—say, through alcohol or tobacco, and it was once thought the damage stops with you—your children would not inherit the defect. In fact, they can. The epigenome may not change the genome—the genome is inherited intact, except for evolution’s deft touch—but it does change whether various genes will be expressed or not. Again, the Exodus 34:7 passage is validated.

    It is the attributes and personality that draws one close to God, including the attribute implied by that final passage—that God would have requirements for us. For the longest time, Jehovah’s Witnesses used in their ministry the brochure What Does God Require of Us? That God should have that attribute immediately resonates with some and immediately repels others. It either ‘tastes’ good or it doesn’t. “Taste and see that Jehovah is good,” says the psalm. Taste is not a provable topic. Some people think he tastes bad. The head has little to do with it. Yet, today’s philosophical theologians focus almost exclusively on the head. One might imagine a mechanic approaching auto repair with its least applicable tool.

    Up till now, I have been sloppy with terms such as theologians, philosophers, and sociologists. If I rectify this only to a degree here, it is due to a conviction that they are mostly like that ill-equipped mechanic. Little useful about God is derived from them; humanity is their specialty, not God. The terms are important only for the sake of speaking about them and distinguishing among them. Their fields bear relationship to each other. At times, as with P.D.Q Bach, the name of that relationship is identity, but at other times, they are quite diverse. Think of a Venn diagram, with disciplines sometimes overlapping and sometimes not. Thus, theologians can approach their topic from a philosophical, sociological, or psychological orientation.

    It took until the 1980s for sociologists studying religion to admit that religious believers were even engaged in a rational activity. Since the time of the Enlightenment, the prevailing assumption had been that religion was ‘irrational’ and, as such, it would eventually be crowded out by scientific advance. But in time, that premise came to be viewed as a recipe for failure. What if one approached economics, for example, with the assumption that the use of money was irrational? The feeling grew that prior ‘theories’ were really just metaphors—that the worship of God was a neurosis (Freud) or the opium of the people (Marx). Begin by insulting those you wish to study; just how much might you expect to learn with that approach? A Theory of Religion, by Stark and Baimbridge (1987) posited for first time among sociologists that religion was a rational endeavor.

    Well, it’s a nice concession. Believers will appreciate knowing they are no longer presumed nuts. But don’t think the concession extends too far. The academics are simply willing to dignify their objects of study as not the irrational loons their colleagues made them out to be. Any recognition that God exists remain well beyond these fellows; no one has broken ranks to that degree. Some have only opined that, given certain assumptions, the very practice of religion is not hogwash.

    The Stark-Baimbridge team framed religious belief as though it were goods rationally bought and rationally paid for. Suppose you want to live forever but you are discouraged by the fact that it’s not possible. In that case, the team posited, as a thoroughly rational decision you might accept an IOU from a religious figure who promises that in an afterlife. Suppose you want to up the ante and not only live forever in an afterlife, but also enjoy good health, community support, and family support in the present life. Well, then you might join the Mormons and pay a rather high cost in terms of tithing, time, and ridicule incurred from defending the ‘third testament’ called for by that religion. (Stark uses the Mormons a lot in his research, they being especially numerous in his neck of the woods)

    They even think their theory explains why Christianity spread in early times whereas Roman and Greek religions died out. Christians accepted the IOUs of everlasting life. The Roman and Greek gods had nothing to compare with these IOUs—their Hades, the abode of both the meritorious and villainous deceased, was a miserable existence. The Christian community cared for and supported one another through good times and bad; their God encouraged that. The Greek and Roman gods didn’t give a hoot about people, and thus their worshippers tended not to either. Self-reliance is a useful thing, but it may not get you through hard times as much as neighbor helping neighbor.

    Okay, okay—so Stark and Baimbridge have jumped light-years ahead of their contemporaries, who will still be muttering as they are lowered in their graves, ‘Faith is irrational’—but it is still all wrong to look at faith as though it were a series of economic exchanges. No true believer would ever look at it that way. To explain religious faith in terms no person of religion would ever employ—isn’t that more than a little contemptuous? It is all wrong to focus on the benefits of faith while ignoring the source of it. It smacks of savoring the peel of a banana while ignoring the interior. It also smacks of committing the grand faux pas of equating correlation to causation, something we are told one never must do, though the ones who tell us that do it all the time. The question as to whether God exists is not irrelevant but forms the very core of belief.

    This ass-backwards approach correlates with why you don’t get all excited when you hear Hollywood is making a movie about the Bible. You know they won’t do it right. You know they will turn out some product in which Moses pops Pharaoh in the nose and gets the girl; that approach is just so much sexier and in accord with popular values. So is the product of the sociologists, examining religion from the premise that humans created god rather than the reverse.

    I would have liked it had Stark chosen Jehovah’s Witnesses as his ‘hard-core’ religious example, but he didn’t. He chose the Mormons. The Witnesses, too, are a high-cost, high-commitment, high-benefit faith and occasionally the two faiths are mistaken for one another. But, he may have chosen the Mormons because the bar of credulity is higher with them, thus putting his theory to greater test. With the Mormons, you must explain the Book of Mormon. He also likes it that they have solved what he calls the free-rider problem (the name speaks for itself) with their insistence on tithing. Solving the free-rider problem is another key element in his theory of economic comparisons, a problem which must be solved for the religion to survive. But, the Witnesses have not worked to solve such a problem. If someone wishes to ride free, so be it. They are convinced that not enough people will choose to do that so as to sink the entire enterprise. ‘Let the giver give freely,’ says the scripture. (2 Corinthians 9:7)

    In recent years, Mormons have rebranded themselves as Latter Day Saints. I don’t wish them ill on this, but I think it will not take. Jehovah’s Witnesses changed their name, too, in 1931, from that of the International Bible Students. That name change did take. No one calls them International Bible Students anymore. But the Mormon name change is heading from specific (Mormon) to general (Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ), whereas the Witnesses went from general (International Bible students) to specific (Jehovah’s Witnesses). You can go in one direction but not the other. People don’t trade the specific for the general, particularly if they want to deride you as a cult.

    Are either religions ‘cults?’ The criteria for cult classification used to be: If you fell under the spell of a charismatic leader, withdrew from society, and began doing strange things, you just might be a member of a cult. By this definition, neither faiths are cults. Their leaders are anything but charismatic—some are an acquired taste to listen to. They don’t withdraw from life, but continue in work and school in the greater community. Do they do ‘strange things?’ It’s in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, but there was a time when speaking about one’s faith was not considered overly strange. They are not cults by the old standard. Scholars of religion call them ‘new religions’ so as to avoid the incendiary connotations of ‘cult.’

    The definition of cult has changed dramatically over the years, expanded to include unpopular, out-of-the-mainstream, groups, attributing that out-of-the-mainstream aspect to ‘undue psychological influence.’ Accordingly, some faiths that were once on one side of the C-word are now on the other. Mormons must speak for themselves, but Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t really care which side of the word they are on so long as the Bible is on the same side. And they believe that it is. If they are a cult, it is because the Bible is a cult manual. If it is, they are. if it is not, they aren’t. When Demas abandoned Paul because “he loved the present system of things” (2 Timothy 4:10), would Demas himself have chosen those personally unflattering words? ‘These guys are a cult,’ is what he probably said—if not immediately, then with the passage of time.

    The latest manifestation of a ‘freedom of mind’ obsession that derides religion, and particularly organized minority religion, is found in a recent commentary on the young, which summarizes it thus: “They. Really. Don’t. Like. Organized. Religion.” That sentence (if it is one) says it all. I know the following is symbolic, but as symbolism goes, it doesn’t get any better. Today’s ‘freedom of mind’ people are so fiercely independent they can’t even stand for words to be organized properly, lest one unduly influence another.

    You organize to get things done. If you don’t care about getting things done, you don’t organize. To spread the news of God’s kingdom worldwide in a way that does not quickly devolve into a theologian’s quagmire of individual opinion seems to Jehovah’s Witnesses a project worth organizing for. So they do it. And they put up with how in any organization, there will be flaws, since everything humans touch is flawed. “We have this treasure [of the ministry] in earthen vessels” [us—with all our imperfections] the NT writer advises. (2 Corinthians 4:7) But cast aside such organization and one presently becomes indistinguishable from the evolving and declining standards of the greater world. So Witnesses hang in there, repeating if need be the Rolling Stones lyric, “You can’t always get what you want.” It works so much better than the Stone’s other mantra: “I can’t get no satisfaction.”

    (See: Introduction to the Study of Religion–Charles B Jones, Great Courses, Lecture 9)

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  • The Theodicy that No One Takes Seriously Today: Is it Because it Works?

    People run in herds and theologians are no different. New ideas replace old and these fellows jump ship en masse. New ideas come along and they abandon the old for the new. It is today almost taboo to mention what was once widely accepted. ‘Functional dualism,’ the notion that there is not just a good supernatural being (God), but also a bad supernatural being (Satan) to oppose him—it is as unpopular an idea as could be today. “Nobody takes this kind of thing very seriously anymore,” Hall says of it, even though he acknowledges that, as a theodicy, it makes sense. He does this after considering several theodicies in his preferred ‘ethical monotheism’ realm and finding fault with all of them. None of them work. The ‘functional dualism’ one that does work, theologians don’t like. Sometimes you suspect that is the reason they don’t like it—because it works. They don’t like the source of evil being outside their grasp. They want it strictly in the human realm where it can be fixed. Assign it to Satan, and human efforts to reform and remold are largely doomed.

    Everything boils down to the universal question of, ‘Who will rule the earth—God or humans?’ The theologians of today want it to be humans, hopefully humans molded by the fine morals that religion may instill, but they want it to be humans. Hall speaks of the current trend in theology “that wants to put satanic powers, and anything that has to do with them, sort of in the attic of theological memories, to be forever forgotten and ignored because they're part of our theological childhood, or something of the sort.”

    Theology is not a study of God, as the uninitiated may think. It is a study of humanity’s relationship with the concept of God. It is primarily a study of humanity, not of God. It makes no assumption as to even whether God exists or not. Following the herd of today, theologians may conclude that he doesn’t. They are not like me, trying to sway the new visitors to choose our congregation over others, telling them, ‘Frankly, in some of those congregations, I’m not even sure they believe in God.’ It is a joke. Everyone knows it is a joke.

    But in the world of theologians, it is not. They may not believe in God at all, and if they don’t, this does nothing to downgrade their credentials as theologians. In the cases high-brow churches in which pastors hold degrees in theology, you can almost take it as a challenge to your faith, as though George Bush III landing on the aircraft carrier and saying of terrorists, ‘Bring them on!’ It is hard not to draw parallels with religious leaders of Jesus day, who elevated tradition over the ‘Word of God.’ It is even harder to not do it upon learning that they are embarrassed but the very expression ‘Word of God’ and strive to avoid it.

    Mind you, the theodicy of ‘functional dualism’ that works, according to Hall, he does not flesh out—and without fleshing it out, it really doesn’t work. It just shows potential as a viable idea. Hall says nothing about how this ‘dualism’ came to be or why God puts up with both it and the mischief it causes. He leaves it untouched, it being “very unpopular,” a topic that “nobody takes . . . very seriously anymore,” a matter tucked away and “forever forgotten.” If I didn’t know better (and I don’t), I would call it an example of ‘the god of this system of things blinding the minds of the unbelievers,” just like Paul does at 2 Corinthians 4:4, as though making them blind to his very existence—all the better to flimflam the learned ones so they can flimflam everyone else.

    Let us posit another reason that Hall and his cohorts flee from the Devil as a means of explaining anything. It is because the Devil to them (Hall states his upbringing as evangelical Lutheran) is the one who stokes the fires of hell! Hellfire—the teaching that Isaac Asimov called “the drooling dream of a sadist.” Even human justice knows that punishment ought be proportional to the crime. Even human justice knows that wanton cruelty ought be disallowed. The Devil and Eternal torment are bound together forever in Hall’s mind—he cannot separate them. To admit the one is to admit the other. If only he had been exposed to C. T. Russell, popularly known as the founder of what is today Jehovah’s Witnesses. The man was known within his lifetime as the one “who turned the hose on hell and put out the fire.”

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  • Theologians Delight: the The Priestly and Prophetic Traditions

    If you get involved in politics and make a big stink over some issue so as to fix it, you are following the prophetic tradition of biblical writings. Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah—all those fellows are your forebears. Whereas, if you just want to keep the stuffy status quo—“what is good for General Motors is good for the United States”—you are operating in the priestly tradition. So it is that theologians apply biblical writings to the modern world, whereas Jesus says that you ought not get involved in politics. “My kingdom is no part of this world,” he told Pilate.

    Theologians, however, are heavily a part of it; they are all in for fixing it. It is part of human evolution—upwards, hopefully. The idea that God might one day replace governments with the rulership that is God’s kingdom makes all their efforts pointless, and for that reason they ignore that interpretation. Instead, the prophetic tradition back then warred with the priestly tradition back then, setting the template for societal struggling today. Don’t think for a moment that evolutionary theory is confined to science class.

    So, why didn’t the Israelites listen to the prophets who warned of destruction at the hands of Babylon lest they mended their ways? Because they operated in separate spheres and, locked into a survival-of-the-fittest power struggle, they related to each other even less than the political parties of today. Everything is disunity in the eyes of theologians, who assume the prophetic and priestly writings were fused together later by canon editors, where they present as a frozen-in-time struggle for Darwinian theology—theologies developed entirely separately via the evolution model applied to social settings. It does not occur to them to integrate the contrasting traditions into a whole.

    In contrast, see how the Watchtower puts it, in a study article designed for the congregation, an article entitled, ‘Keep Following Jehovah’s Guidance.’ (February 2024) All meetings of Jehovah’s Witnesses incorporate Bible study. You can prepare for them:

    “Years later, Jehovah raised up judges to guide his people. Afterward, during the time of the kings, Jehovah appointed prophets to guide his people. Faithful kings heeded the counsel of the prophets. For example, King David humbly accepted correction from the prophet Nathan. (2 Sam. 12:7, 13; 1 Chron. 17:3, 4) King Jehoshaphat relied on the prophet Jahaziel for guidance and encouraged the people of Judah to “put faith in [God’s] prophets.” (2 Chron. 20:14, 15, 20) When in distress, King Hezekiah turned to the prophet Isaiah. (Isa. 37:1-6) Each time the kings followed Jehovah’s guidance, they were blessed and the nation was protected. (2 Chron. 20:29, 30; 32:22) It should have been obvious to all that Jehovah was using his prophets to guide his people. Yet, the majority of the kings as well as the people rejected Jehovah’s prophets.”​—Jer. 35:12-15.

    There. Isn’t that better? Here, there is the prophetic tradition interacting with the priestly tradition on the same plane. The latter is not really the priestly tradition per se, but is the authoritarian tradition which the priestly tradition took good care not to cross, for therein lay its power base, so in a sense the two are synonymous. It is not inherent that they fight like cats and dogs. The Watchtower paragraphs highlights times where they did not, though concluding, “the majority of the kings as well as the people rejected Jehovah’s prophets.” But they were same time, same place. They didn’t have to be shoved together after the fact by revisionist theologians.

    Historians might assume it was the kings leading God’s people, at that time, the Jewish nation, back in the day—David, Solomon, Rehoboam, and so forth. Nah, even then, that was politics. God was never keen on there being kings in the first place. Judges, forerunners of the prophets, had worked just fine from his point of view:

    “It displeased Samuel when [the Israelites] said: “Give us a king to judge us.” Then Samuel prayed to Jehovah, and Jehovah said to [judge] Samuel: “ . . . it is not you whom they have rejected, but it is I whom they have rejected as their king. They are doing just as they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day; they keep forsaking me and serving other gods, and that is what they are doing to you. Now listen to them. However, you should solemnly warn them; tell them what the king who rules over them will have the right to demand.” (1 Samuel 8:6-9)

    Whereupon, Samuel went on to point out what pains in the neck politicians would be.

    It was the prophets (the prophetic tradition) leading his people back then, sometimes even correcting the kings (and sometimes not; riled kings were known to toss prophets into the hoosegow; just ask Jeremiah down there in the cistern). God hadn’t welcomed kings; they weren’t his idea, though he worked with it. So today there is also politics—not exactly the same, but close enough—often honorable people who want to solve problems (though as the world gets more and more polarized and crazy, so do they).

    Now that Christianity has spread throughout the earth and there is no longer one nation to contain them, Jehovah’s Witnesses remain neutral to politics and instead focus on ‘the prophetic tradition.’ They don’t imagine that prophetic tradition exists to reform politics. They assume it exists to replace it, once the obscene experiment of human self-rule comes to its end.

     

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  • What Axiom to Start With—Unity or Disunity: A Starting Point for Theologians

    Why don’t those theologians from the previous post see the exile to Babylon as a consequence of violating the covenant? Why do they put cart before the horse and carry on as though that covenant was remembered (if not concocted) much later? Is it not because theology as a field assumes disunity? Yes, there may be a tradition that says that, they will acknowledge, but that was a different people with a different theology. When you model your view of religion upon evolutionary theory, you do not see worship devolving from one-time purity. You see it gradually assembling itself from chaos.

    When you assume disunity, it never occurs to you to put the puzzle pieces together. After all, you didn’t find them in the box at the craft store. You found them in the landfill. What are the chances they might fit together? It never occurs to you to try. Such is the case when disunity as an opening axiom.

    Assume unity or disunity; it makes all the difference in the world. G. K. Chesterton, author of the Father Brown short stories, sides for unity. He doesn’t really care how the unity comes about, whether “[1] achieved by some supernal spiritual truth, or by [2] a steady national tradition, or merely by [3] an ingenious selection in aftertimes, the books of the Old Testament have a quite perceptible unity. . .” (I believe he would extend this perception to the New, but he does not here do so, this excerpt being taken from his commentary on the Book of Job.)

    Jehovah’s Witnesses, too, assume unity. Witnesses are known to observe how 40 different writers were used to compile the Bible, that they came from every conceivable background, social, and economic class, yet their writings all harmonize with a steady development of God’s purpose—and what are the chances of that happening? But you have to look at the puzzle pieces as a whole to discern that. You have to make a study of the Bible itself as a whole. Relatively few of these theologians have. They have only studied the individual pieces, assuming them from the landfill. Whereas, there was a time when most everyone assumed the unity that Chesterton and JWs assume, the new crop of critical thinkers does not; they assume disunity. Should they come across something that implies unity, they either attribute it to coincidence or maintain after-the-fact editing made them that way.

    Some of these theologians come from religious backgrounds that themselves incorporate disunity. In short, they wouldn’t know unity if it bit them in the rear end because they have never seen it. Bart Ehrman comes from that school, that fellow I have called ‘the Bible-thumper who became a theologian, but you can still see the Bible thumper in the theologian.’ You can. ‘Why did the early Christians do this and not do that’ he asks? “Because they didn’t want to go to hell!” Coming from such shallow theology, it is no wonder that when he turns scholar, he continues that shallowness. Note here, his book entitled ‘Heaven and Hell,’ in which he has painstakingly uncovered what every child of Jehovah’s Witness knows, though he seems entirely unaware of their existence:

    James Hall, another theologian, does the Great Courses lecture series entitled ‘Philosophy of Religion.’ He, too, relates his evangelical origin. He thinks that the opposite of going to hell—that is, anticipation of heavenly bliss—works equally poorly as a Christian motivation. Neither Hall nor Ehrman seem aware that Jehovah’s Witnesses have said nearly their entire existence. Hell just makes people mean; if enemies will get torment in the hereafter, where’s the harm in giving them a little foretaste of it now? And, just hanging in for the reward has all the depth of nasty children being nice as Christmas and Santa approaches.

    Jehovah’s Witnesses, on the other hand, have said from their beginning that the sanctification of God’s name is the all-important issue before creation, not human salvation. The later is a pleasant consequence of the former, but it does not usurp it in importance.

    The point is that when theologian come from a religious background incorporating chaos and disunity, they may not know unity when they see it. And, theologians from a non-religious background are even less likely to look for it; all their background tells them it is a ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ world out there. It is not a once-united world breaking down. It is a naturally disunited world trying (in vain) to build up. They won’t expect to find unity in ancient writings, and hence, will never look for it.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Witnesses and Higher Education—Coming Up on the GB Update List?

    Huh! Ocala invites me on a Bible study he is conducting for about a month. Turns out to be a ‘textbook’ study, exactly what HQ would enact if they wanted to demonstrate one.

    Unprompted, the man said how, in a moment of spiritual desperation, he had got to his knees and prayed. ‘God, if you exist, please—I only seek to be happy.’ Within the hour, Ocala had knocked on his door and made his acquaintance.

    So, I said to Ocala later, ‘Had you prayed for a Bible study?’ He told me he had. ‘I’ve read about these things happening, but it never happened to me,’ he added.

    Ocala asks me at the study if I have anything to add. I put in some remark, something grounded to the theme that does not launch off into another direction, upon which he says, “Thank you for that personal expression.” If the student thinks that a little stilted (he may not), he attributes it to Ocala’s African background. He does not connect it to the mannerisms of the Witness broadcast channel.

    Ocala appeared out of nowhere a year or two ago as a full-blown graduate student on scholarship at the local university. So unusual is this among the congregations that some did not quite know what to make of him. The brother I have dubbed ‘Barnabas,’ in answer to one of his public meeting comments, mentioned his publisher cards had arrived from the home congregation and elders in African. Congregations keep such minimal records. That way, no scam artist can just breeze in and pull the wool over everyone’s eyes (as they can most anywhere else). Since then, Ocala has established himself as solid in every way, now pioneering and a ministerial servant. Few have a more steadfast ministry. He doesn’t overcomplicate things.

    ***

    They’re all rather trivial matters—all these GB updates of late—adjustments to the ministry, changing norms of dress and grooming. Still, they are changes to long-standing policy, so people make a big fuss over them. A brother at our hall, commenting on fast-moving changes we all must adjust to, mentioned “sisters wearing pants,” (did he also mention no ties?) as though aghast that someone had run the chariot into a ditch.

    With several of such updates in a row, people start anticipating the next one. What other thing that we have not done will we start doing? Might it be a lightening up over ‘higher education?’ Not that such has ever been outlawed—how could it be?—but you can find yourself running a gauntlet of peer pressure should you choose to go there. Might there come an underlining that it is a decision of the family head, leave him be to make it, and don’t think everyone else has to put in their two cents on whatever that one decides.

    Witness publications have not had a kind word for higher education. Just this past week, the Watchtower study included a paragraph of Marcia, who “was offered a four-year scholarship at a university. But I wanted to pursue spiritual goals.” She didn’t throw caution to the wind. She “chose to attend a technical training school to learn a trade that would support me in my ministry,” and counts it “one of the best decisions I have ever made.” (Feb 2024 Wt) It is an example of the article’s title: ‘Keep Following Jehovah’s Guidance.’ That’s not really trashing university, of course, but it certainly is not presenting it as the preferred goal.

    They are not wrong to be leery of the place. Moreover, who else has the guts to discourage it? Most faiths think it an honor to have churches bristling with lettered people. Most faiths say, ‘Christians may have started ‘uneducated and ordinary,’ (Acts 4:13) but look at how they pulled themselves up! Most faiths replace Paul’s encouragement to be a ‘workman, with nothing to be ashamed of’ (2 Timothy 2:15) with ‘a professional—so you don’t have to be ashamed.’ Not many are like the Witnesses, who expect the passage of 1 Corinthians 1:26 to hold just as true today as it did then: “For you see his calling of you, brothers, that there are not many wise in a fleshly way, not many powerful, not many of noble birth.” They don’t care if people sneer at them for it. Train yourself for a skill that is both portable and scalable, they recommend. That way, you have time for the ministry.

    Their caution is validated in the remarks of Great Courses lecturer James Hall, who covers the topic, ‘Philosophy of Religion.’ A university professor himself, he relates how, “I have parents who come to the university perplexed and amazed that young Susie or young Johnny, who has gone off to the university and has come home for that first holiday, isn't the same that they used to be. And all I can do is lower my glasses to the end of my nose and look over my glasses and say, Why did you send them to university in the first place?”

    Got it? The purpose of university is not to accept a student’s childhood values as a given. The purpose is to overhaul them. It’s all agreeable to Hall, who says you send them there “to grow up . . . to be exposed, to expand their horizons, to increase the scale of their life,” with the implicit understanding that he, as faculty member, he, who “lowers his glasses to the end of his nose and looks over those glasses” at the plebian parents, is just the one to do it.

    Now, no problem here with growing up. Who doesn’t want that? Go for it. But, is this the setting in which to do it? Here, Hall sits atop the repository of knowledge that has collectively made the world what is—and he should be the one to expand those horizons and increase those scales? Only the educated can look upon the trainwreck that is modern society and congratulate themselves on their understanding. Spit back what Hall tells you if you want a passing grade—not necessarily verbatim, but you’d better not stray too far from it. The ‘safest’ correlation to his remarks will be what was said of P.D.Q. Bach, that his music bore a relationship with that of a certain great composer, and the name of that relationship was ‘identity.’ He wasn’t one for plagiarizing, but he did believe in recycling.

    Ocala doesn’t know anything about this. It is not something he has encountered, or if he has, he weathered it so effortlessly that he does not remember encountering it. In his homeland, he tells me, additional education after primary school is common, common enough that Witness youths encourage and stabilize one another. Some go “off the rails,” (his expression), to be sure, but some go off the rails in any setting. Jobs are scarce where he comes from, he tells me, and employers take full advantage of the fact, reminding their workers at every opportunity that they are easily replaceable. He doesn’t yet know if he will stay in the States or return home upon graduation. He has a quiet confidence about himself and does not appear to be one easy to shove around. But, he is hurt when people think he does what he does ‘because he wants the good life,’ and he tells me sometimes people do think that.

    He did not come straight from African school to the United States for college. He worked secularly in an office for a year. Whereupon, it occurred to him that he might work less overall if he could land a scholarship in the U.S. That he did. He now considers college his full-time job and all he has to do is pass. It is less demanding than his secular life back home and, while attending to it, he is also able to serve Jehovah more fully than he could have back home. As to his landing a scholarship from afar, Yogi Berra advised, “When you see a fork in the road, take it.” They didn’t leave it there for you. They left if, as often as not, to advance their own careers in some way. Take it. As long as you can clear whatever hoops have been laid out for you, take it.

    Hall and the Witness organization are in agreement on one thing, though for different reasons. That answer to Hall’s question as to why parents sent their youngsters to university? He continues, “I'm afraid sometimes the only answer is, ‘Well, because that's what you do,’ or, ‘Well, all of our neighbors were sending their children to university so we figured maybe we [had] better too.’” Going with the crowd, in other words. Hall doesn’t want children to go for this reason. He wants them to purposefully go so he can mess with their heads, expanding them beyond whatever parochial values they absorbed from back home, such as Bible training. The Witness organization doesn’t want them to go because ‘everyone else is doing it,’ either. They’d rather the parents not give Hall and his cohorts their shot; head youngsters off into the full-time ministry instead. For all the furor of ‘anti-cultists,’ it is the university, not the Witness world, in which newbies are cut off 24/7 from all that once stabilized them—a classic technique of ‘brainwashers.’

    You can look like roadkill when you stand against the common stampede. Witness HQ will never stop cautioning about university, I don’t think. They will never recommend liberal arts degrees. They will never stop recommending technical training and trade schools. But they may yield more to the view that secular education is a family decision, not something to be second-guessed by others, much less micro-managed. There is just too much variety in people and circumstances. Maybe that will be on one of those future updates. It may be happening already. Another youngster in the congregation went off to college about the time Ocala arrived and nobody had anything to say about it at all; I checked with his mom. Will he evade Hall or even stand up to him? Maybe. Maybe not. But it turns out that Hall has cousins in all walks of life, trying to shoot down biblical values wherever you happen to be.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • My Meeting Notes: Week of May 9, 2024

    Think of a deep intimate, heartfelt connection—how can good not emerge? The phrase itself all but guarantees it.

    Sigh….not with this lout:  “Transgression speaks to the wicked one deep within his heart. Ps 36:1

    “There is no fear of God before his eyes.” (vs 1b) That’s half of the problem.

    “For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect and hate his error.” (vs 2) That’s the other half.

    1b and 2: Therein lies the remedy. If he learns to fear God and gains a realistic view of himself, even this character can turn around.

     

    Peter entering Cornelius’ home after three times having the vision of unclean foods descending from heaven. (Acts 10:9-16)

    This is like Ananias being directed to bring Saul in. ‘No way, Lord—the guy’s an animal!’

    “Be on your way” (9:15) says the Lord. The man is a chosen vessel to me.

    “Be on your way”—Andy Laguna the CO’s said long ago at the Pioneer School—Andy loved this scripture that typified his own life. He didn’t say it, but he may as well have: ‘Don’t give me any bunk! Be on your way!’

    I remember working with him in service one 10 degree day on an endless street. Didn’t take a break. Only a handful answered. When they did, they may as well not have because I was too cold to speak coherently.

     

    They’re all rather trivial things—all these updates of late. Still, they are changes to long-standing policy, so many make a big fuss over them. A bro at our hall, commenting on fast-moving changes we all must adjust to, mentioned “sisters wearing pants,” (did he also mention no ties?) as though aghast that someone had run the chariot into a ditch.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Who Wants the Same Religion as Fred Flintstone? What Happens When You Subject Faith to Theological Scrutiny.

    Babylon invades Jerusalem, exiles its residents, razes its temple, and a long-held Jewish paradigm is destroyed: that God will fight for his people.

    Theologian Peter Berger (1929-2017) cites this as an example of a gnomos, a coherent system of understanding the world. People must have one of those if they are to stay sane. The Jewish system of understanding the world being destroyed, it had need of emergency repair. What would it consist of, according to Berger?

    He tips his hand. Wasn’t there some ancient contract that stipulated the Israelites were to behave if they expected God to back them? Wasn’t there a clause in that contract that if they didn’t behave, neither would he—in fact, he would abandon them to enemies? Yes, there was! And so, that must have been what happened! God could have protected them, but he chose not to. Gnomos restored! Too bad for them, but gnomos restored.

    Save us from the world of critical thinking theologians. It is as though someone runs a stop sign and a horrific accident results. Thereafter, survivors are desperate to impart meaning to the event, to understand how such a horrible thing could happen. Whereupon, one of them recalls a long-ago contract that you are supposed to stop when you see one of those things, as though no prior connection had ever been imagined before.

    Why not just say we ran a stop sign and got creamed? Why not just say we reneged on God and, as a consequence, he reneged on us? He even said that was going to happen. Just like, in the U.S, you can’t come across a stop sign that is not preceded by a ‘stop sign coming up’ sign emblazoned with the shape and color of that sign. So, that, if you run a stop sign, having also run the stop sign coming up sign, it’s a little lame to pretend you don’t know what is going on. So it is, in ancient Israel, there were plenty of prophets running around with ‘Babylon coming up’ signs. Why do theologians not make that obvious connection, instead spinning it that the Babylon coming up signs, maybe even the stop sign contract itself, was concocted after the tragedy to preserve gnomos?

    Don’t flock to religious leaders if you learn they have theological degrees appended to their name—for fear they will engage their flock like George Bush engaged the terrorists upon landing on that aircraft carrier: ‘Bring them on!’ For all their so-called weapons—bring them on! So it is that these theologically-trained leaders are likely to view you, with your weapons of faith: ‘Bring them on! We’ll fizzle all their weapons! Are there warnings in the scriptures? We’ll convince them they were written after the fact! That way, religion can grow! Do any of them think they’re doing things the first-century way? Forget that! Religion must evolve. Who wants to have the same primitive religion as Fred Flintstone?’

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Dragging Along the Circuit Overseer on My Call on the Educated Mr. Strawman

    The circuit overseer was visiting. It was a week of special activity. We reconvened to plan our afternoon. Nosmo Jones had unexpectedly cancelled his study to bail one of his kids out of jail, so I was open. “Does anyone have any calls?” the circuit overseer asked. “I have – Mr. Strawman out on Pretensia Pond Road,” I said. “You remember him from your last visit.” 

    “Does anyone else have any calls?” Silence. I knew Bill Ding had several, and also Sally Shinspits, but they would likely not be home at this time of day. “Are you sure nobody else has any calls?” the circuit overseer repeated. I reminded him again about Bernard Strawman. “He’s told me since our last call that he could believe in God!” I said. “We could build on that foundation.” He’d also said something about climate change in hell, but I hadn’t understood what he had meant by that.

    “Check carefully. Nobody has any return visits?” the circuit overseer asked again, looking desperate. “Maybe we can do street work,” he pleaded. But Brother Bruno’s wife, Brunette, had done street work all morning and her feet were sore. She wanted to ride around for a while.

    Twenty minutes later we pulled into Mr. Strawman’s driveway. A Mercedes was already there, in addition to the Jaguar that Mr. Strawman drove. I rang the doorbell with the circuit overseer in tow. Mr. Strawman answered. He invited us in, told us to take off our shoes, and introduced us to his visitor, Dr. Adhominem. I’d never met Dr. Adhominem, but I’d heard Mr. Strawman speak of him glowingly.

    Mr. Strawman asked us to be seated. He asked us if we would like some orange juice. When we said yes, he explained that he didn’t have any. I settled in my chair for a stimulating discussion that was sure to come! The circuit overseer mentally reviewed his notes for the talk he would give that evening: “Are You Following the Lead of the Angel in Your Ministry?”

    Mr. Strawman and his visitor explained to me the research paper they were preparing to submit to Wonderful Scientist Magazine. It was to be their contribution to the exciting field of evolutionary psychology. “Much of the cutting-edge work in science is in this field,” Mr. Strawman told me. The paper he was co-authoring with Dr. Adhominem, he explained, was on the evolutionary origin of boisterous flatulence. “Back in the stone-age eat-or-be-eaten days,” Mr. Strawman explained, putting the concept in a nutshell, “you wanted to evolve everything you possibly could to scare off predators. And nothing would do the job like boisterous flatulence. It quickly cleared the area, the same as it does in modern times.”

    I was very impressed with this crock of insight. But the circuit overseer said: “Got any evidence of that?” He had heard of something called the Scientific Method. I was so embarrassed. Dr. Adhominem smiled and explained that to become obsessed with such matters was to chase a red herring. The very reason such rapid progress was being made in evolutionary psychology, he continued, was that researchers could work without that sort of distraction. He asserted the time for his breakthrough had come because similar research had been accepted by the scientific community. To tell the truth, I was becoming more than a little mortified by that circuit overseer. Clearly, the man doesn’t know much about science.

    For example, Dr. Adhominem told us about the evolutionary origin of faulty reasoning, something which had long puzzled scientists because it seemed to fly in the face of survival of the fittest. But the April 5, 2010 issue of Newsweek summarized the latest scientific thinking. “Faulty reasoning is really our friend! It enabled our ancestors to learn argumentation!” If there was no cockeyed reasoning, Dr. Adhominem explained, nobody would have anything to argue about. Throw any issue before the masses, and they’d all instantly agree! How could survival of the fittest take place? Smart people can only evolve if they have blockheads to stomp into submission with their clever argumentation. So stupidity has proven to be essential to our evolutionary advancement!

    The circuit overseer said: “That doesn’t make any sense to me at all.” Dr. Adhominem gently suggested the reason: evolution had selected people like the two of us to enable people like himself and Mr Strawman to become brilliant. I felt privileged to have such a role in science! The circuit overseer asked to use the bathroom. “Eighth door on the left,” Mr. Strawman said.

    The three of us remaining strolled out into the back yard. Next door, Mr. Strawman’s neighbor was drooling over his curvaceous girlfriend prancing about in a micro-bikini. I instantly turned away. “Interesting how evolutionary psychology accounts for this phenomenon,” Mr. Strawman remarked. “Indeed,” Dr. Adhominem said. I drew a blank, so he patiently enlightened me. “You’re not going to get far in the struggle for survival if your wife keeps dropping your babies and killing them, are you? Decidedly not!” Pleased with himself, he continued: “But that knockout bombshell of a competitive wife has convenient shelves upon which she can balance as many babies as you can give her. Thus, over the eons, our ancestors began to prefer curvy women and to think them beautiful.” How could I have been so stupid for so long?

    We seated ourselves again inside and the circuit overseer said something about God. Mortified, I slid down into my chair! Mr. Strawman had already explained to me the evolutionary origin of God: “See, any group of individuals will have some riffraff who must be kept in check so as not to disrupt the clan. The trouble is, the riffraff doesn’t like being kept in check. They fight back, and this spills the primordial soup of even the most peaceful clan, spewing evolutionary ripples everywhere. What you need is a superhuman cop, one with whom you can’t fight back! Then those ne’er-do-wells will behave. That’s how the concept of God evolved, with all its quaint notions of right and wrong.”

    “Homosexuality? Surely that has to be a fly in the ointment of your race to procreate,” the scientifically ignorant circuit overseer said, much to my dismay. “Not at all,” Bernard Strawman replied with a smile. “Homosexual men tend to be nurturing, and so they nurture everyone in the tribe, including themselves, giving the entire tribe a competitive advantage,” he said.

    We discussed other interesting things as well. Seeing that he was getting underneath the circuit overseer’s skin, Mr. Strawman asked us as we were leaving how we knew that we were there? “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, how do we know that it makes a noise?” What a fascinating question! “Because the squirrels go crazy!” the circuit overseer said. “I’ll be in the car, Tom.” He’s a fine brother but he really doesn’t know anything about science.

    “What a wonderful experience in the field ministry!” I exclaimed to all as we entered the Kingdom Hall after field service was over. I suggested that the circuit overseer might use it for his upcoming part in the circuit assembly, but he said he already had participants.

    [The boisterous flatulence hypothesis is (for now) made-up nonsense, but all the other ideas have found acceptance among evolutionary psychologists. I predict boisterous flatulence will also be embraced one day soon, since it is only slightly more ridiculous than what has already been accepted by these characters.]

    The circuit overseer said he would never ever EVER go back with me on this call and changed the title of his talk that evening from ‘Are You Following the Lead of the Angel in Your Ministry?’ to ‘Look, Sometimes You Have to Learn How to Take a Hint.’

    However, three years have just about elapsed. He is soon to depart for a new assignment; a new circuit overseer will soon arrive, hopefully one with better appreciation for science. He will thus be the ninth one to aid me in assisting Mr. Strawman in his progress.]

    “The first effect of not believing in God, is that you lose your common sense.” G K Chesterton

  • The Philosophy of Humor

    Can you believe that philosophers have undertaken to analyze humor? Of course they have—they analyze everything else. This should not have come as a surprise to me, and yet somehow it did. The very name philosophy is a marriage of ‘philo’ (love) and ‘sophia’ (wisdom). Their modus operendus? Put anything under the scope, subject it to enough thought-power, and it will yield its secrets.

    New disciplines, once they reach critical mass, split off from philosophy to become entities of their own. What is known today as ‘science’ was once known as ‘natural philosophy. James Hall, the lecturer, tells of spying test tubes and bunsen burners advertised as ‘philosophical instruments.’* A more recent breakaway from the mother ship of philosophy is ‘psychology.’

    Will humor also one day yield its secrets to philosophical scrutiny? Let us not sell these people short, but for now, we encounter few ‘humorologists.’ For now, we can content ourselves with people who know how to tell a good joke. For now, my self-description stands as one who not only appreciates self-deprecatory humor but also the kind of humor where you make fun of yourself. For now, no humorologist undertakes to explain why that statement is funny (or not).

    Humor is not a favored child of philosophy. That, I learned in ‘Philosophy 101,’ a book by Paul Kleinman. Plato took a savage view toward it, as the lowest form of human interaction that did nothing but detract. His ‘philosopher kings’ were not allowed to engage in any humor at all! This seriously messes with my premise that the Jehovah’s Witnesses Governing Body is today the most manifest application of Plato’s ideals. Those guys joke all the time. True, some of the humor is lame—raising or lowering the mic for short or tall speakers, for example, a modest humor exists throughout JW-land. At our Assembly Hall, the human mic-adjusters have been replaced with a mic stand that does the job sans hands, being remote controlled from afar! Our crazily tall circuit overseer creates a disturbance when the auto-mic seeks to adjust for him, inching up, pausing, then inching up again, each time emitting a hum, because someone forgot to mute the thing. He just grins, being long used to it. That’s the kind of collective humor we’re used to, though individually, there are no end of brothers who just live to tell knee-slappers. Pause for just a moment to consider that there are far few sisters who do this. Is this variation an attribute of the sexes in general?

    No one has sought to banish humor in the JW-world, least of all individual GB members themselves, but according to Plato, they should. They should become dour sourpusses who never crack a smile. Every time they do crack one, they destroy my theory that they are the modern day application of Plato’s philosopher-kings. So, they should stop doing it.

    What grabs me is that church history is replete with sourpusses—stern-faced men who take everything with life-or-death seriousness, men to whom a joke would have been the ultimate sacrilege. Think the iron-faced Puritan leaders of ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ for example. Yet, such a revulsion to humor is not a Bible product. The Bible is fine with humor. The revulsion is a Greek philosophical product fused into the early Church when that Church ‘broadened out’ to increase its appeal and thus gain new converts.

    Every Witness knows that the spread of ‘apostasy’ in the early centuries added ‘immortality of the soul’ to the belief system of Christians—it wasn’t there originally and must be read into the Bible to find it there. The immortal soul was infused in order to increase Church appeal to the educated philosophical class, the Greeks who prided themselves on their pursuit of wisdom. ‘Maybe some of these desirable fellows will come our way if we yield a little for them,’ Church fathers reasoned.

    What I didn’t know was that a humorless view of life is also among the Greek imports. It is not a biblical product. It is a product of human philosophy! Yet, a life of devotion to God today is assumed by overall society to be a humorless one. It is anything but. Granted, you don’t cackle over everything under the sun. There is a time to be serious. But there is a time for laughter.

    On a roll as to human philosophy infusing Christianity, whereupon Christianity itself is blamed as the source of it, one might consider resistance to investigative science itself. The notion that Christians are loathe to examine and look into things does not stem from Christianity. It stems from Aristotle—Greek philosopher of the 4th century BCE, whose views on the revelation of anything worth knowing was adopted into the early Church in order to increase its appeal to that ‘educated’ class.

    With these early, evolving, church leaders; It was not biblical writings that ultimately carried the day. It was the writings of the philosophers. Yet historians retroactively assign that role to those worshipping God, as though worship makes a person backwards. It came from philosophy, not Christianity! Christianity’s mistake was to adopt it. When the pig-headed church leaders lit into Copernicus and Galileo for writing the earth is not the center of the universe, scholars assign pigheadedness to worshippers of God, whereas they ought to look to their own forebears. Human thinkers contaminate the product and then the biblical writings take the rap!

    Back to the initial topic: humor. It’s not horrific in itself that philosophers should undertake to explain humor for the rest of us. It is more the eye-rolling dread at how they tend to get so full of themselves when they do that. But, even worse, it is the fear that it’s only a matter of time before they extend their research to other intangible qualities, such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so forth—determined to examine spiritual things through the physical lens. Watch out when they do that, as when love is said to ‘evolve’ since without it, back in primitive days, predators would be eating your offspring while loveless you just shrugged and twiddled your thumbs. Beware the field of evolutionary psychology.

    In recent years, much has been made by Jehovah’s Witnesses to identify these above qualities, listed at Galatians 5:22, as ‘fruitage’ of the spirit, rather than ‘works’ of the spirit. They contrast with the unpleasant traits listed just before (5:19), which ARE works: works of the flesh. The idea is that you can’t fully develop the former good qualities without God’s spirit, whereas yielding to the unpleasant traits is simply taking the path of least resistance. Anyone can do that. So, if they are fruitage of God’s spirit, good luck to human philosophers trying to analyze them. While you can put physical things on spiritual trial, you cannot put spiritual things on physical trial. You can achieve the knockoff imitation through physical means, and in many cases it is good enough. But if you want the variation that holds up through thick and thin, it is only through God’s spirit that such traits are developed. Sure—let the philosophers have at it—those fellows for whom it is pulling teeth to get them to agree that there even is a God. See what they have to tell us.

    *’The Philosophy of Religion’

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Getting to the Point in a Crazy World

    In America, one must get to the point quickly. Often I begin house-to-house visits by observing, ‘The world’s crazy. We think the Bible can help—how did it come to be that way?/what hope for the future?/how to best live in the meantime? I want to read you a scripture on that, you tell me what you think, and then I’m on my way. Good idea?’

    This is not some laid-back land where you must ask about family, tell about yours, and if you don’t, you are rude. No. Tell why you came quickly. One man responded that he was not a religious person. ‘That doesn’t mean that the world isn’t crazy,’ I replied. He agreed that it didn’t.

    His neighbor instantly agreed that it was—crazy—even repeating the words. What people had to do, she said, was to ‘stand up.’ Well, sure, it’s hard to disagree with that, and I didn’t. But it’s a little vague. Won’t people, when they stand up, stand up with different fixes and so work at odds with each other? Whereupon, she pointed out that she didn’t believe in any ‘second coming of Christ.’

    She was not like still another neighbor, who was concerned that we were ‘recruiting.’ I told him we were not. Or rather, that on my 200th visit, I would ask if he wanted to become a Jehovah’s Witness like me, but it would not happen until then, and what were the chances engagement would go on for so long? In the meantime, it’s just conversation. No. This woman instantly got that it was just conversation—though after ours, when I floated the idea of coming back, she did ask, ‘To what end?’

    I initially feared the call would be a clumsy disaster. When she first appeared at the door, so did a couple of noisy dogs, eager for engagement of their own. They weren’t mean or anything. They were more like, ‘Oh wow! Visitors! Lemme go check them out!’ Some people get crotchety trying to curb their dogs for a visit they never asked for in the first place and I thought she might be one of them. She wasn’t. She just wrestled with the creatures.

    ‘Did I ever tell you how much I like dogs?’ I said to one of them while petting it. That eased tension. It’s true. I do like them. Ever since the days my daughter moved overseas and left us Samson, a boxer/lab mix. Sometimes I would introduce it with, ‘Do you know the Samson from the Bible, who pushes apart the pillars? This the Samson that pees on them.’

    The scripture I read was the one some are already familiar with, ‘Let your kingdom come, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ from Matthew 6:9. It packs a lot in few words. God’s will is done in heaven, no doubt. He must have it all together up there, but it sure isn’t done on earth. And it won’t be until ‘thy kingdom comes’—so just what is that kingdom?  This is where she said she didn’t believe in any second coming. But in time, I suggested she might want to rethink that. She did believe in God. She did believe he cares for us. So will he really just leave humanity to go down the drain as they are so plainly doing at present?

    When she had mentioned chaos in her family over the last few years, I asked her what bad things had happened. Turned out it was all pandemic related; some family members were no longer on speaking terms over accepting the vaccine. As for her, she said she ‘reads scientific papers.’ If it helps, I told her—you get on the same page with your householder whenever you can—I also passed on the vaccine. (as had my companion) It was easy for me, being retired, and there were a few supplements I took instead. (which she also took). But, in answer to her question, the Witness organization mostly did get vaccinated. Here they were, sitting on their hands, and you weren’t allowed to do anything without vaccination, so they monitored those they found easiest to track—a few tens of thousands of other volunteers—detected nothing immediately unpleasant, and so went ahead with the program because they did want to do things.

    When she said she didn’t accept Jesus as God, but thought he was a man, it was time for another ‘if it helps.’ (The teaching that Jesus IS God all but dooms any attempt to understand either the Bible or God’s purpose—nothing makes any sense with that albatross strapped around one’s neck.) ‘If it helps,’ I told her, we also believe he was a man, and in a nutshell I told how only a perfect man can exactly counterbalance what Adam had lost—‘repurchasing’ what he ‘sold.’ She played with the thought, not sure how she felt about it. People need time to adjust to anything. I left her the card that has one of those computer things you can scan and bring up the Bible study course. It works best when you do it with someone to guide you, I said, but there’s no reason you can’t look it over yourself. I showed her the lesson that expanded on just how Jesus offsets Adam for those who put faith in the arrangement.

    I did caution her, though. She had said she reads scientific papers. Most people don’t. Don’t be put off to find the material is written very simply. It’s not the course’s intention to talk over the heads of the vast majority of people. As was true in the first century, it is the ordinary people most likely to respond, whereas the educated people are sometimes prone to be all full of themselves; there’s not much God can do with people like that, but with humble ones he can do a lot. The caution proved unnecessary. She offered up her view that university was mostly ‘indoctrination’ these  days anyway.

    People are busy. I’ve had so many discussions with someone I find once, and then I never find them again. So, these days I have my text number on that QC card. I’ll pop in eventually, but in the meantime, if anything grabs her attention, she has a text number to respond to.

     

    ******  The bookstore