Sheep and Goats

Author: tomsheepandgoats

  • An Insular People: No Part of the World: Part 2

    See Part 1

    Sweeping the Western world is a kinder, gentler view of minorities. More tolerance is in the air, less judgment, more fairness. There is more understanding of human quirks. The emphasis is on human rights; every person of every minority has them—unless that minority is in favor of separating from the world. That is something not tolerated. BitterWinter is running a so-far ten part series on the cult-reprogramming movement and the human rights abuses it itself commits.

    It is far too long for me to plow through (for now). If anyone else wants to read through, go for it. I posted part 10 because it has links to all the prior posts. JWs might not even be included in the discussion; rather its coverage is on ‘deprogramming’ from all ‘new religions.’ I won’t agree with any of these ‘new religions’, most likely, but neither do I agree with the mainstream status quo. The new religions just represent people trying to find meaning in life. If the status quo mainstream supplied answers, none of these ‘new religions’ (called such because religious scholars wish to avoid the incendiary term ‘cults’) including Jehovah’s Witnesses, would succeed in gaining a toehold. As long as they don’t break the law (and not law specifically designed to entrap them), leave them be, Bitter Winter says.

    On social media somewhere, one question designed to provoke asks: ‘What questions should one ask when meeting with someone from a cult such as ‘The Way’ or the ‘Hare Krishnas?’ ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘You should instead undertake to explain to this person how life in the mainstream leaves so little to be desired that it must not be allowed for them to deviate from the main road. Tell them why venturing outside the box is not permitted.’ All these newer religions, in their own way, strive to be ‘no part of the world.’ This is not allowed today. In contrast, if they want to become a new gender, that’s fine, because the overall world is moving to accommodate that.

    More specifically for Jehovah’s Witnesses, HRWF just ran an article to report that in Russia it is preferable to be a rapist or a kidnapper to being a Jehovah’s Witnesses, as judged by the sentences imposed for punishment. Rapists and kidnappers are given shorter sentences.

    This lack of all sense of proportion also tells me that the real crime of JWs is to be ‘no part of the world.’ It even tells me that their real prosecutor isn’t someone found in the ranks of humans at all—even though people can be crazy, they are not that crazy. In the past, remaining ‘no part of the world’ has caused the Witnesses trouble politically, as though all must participate in the issue of deciding which brand of human rulership will prevail; no one is allowed to sit it out. But now, in this new age of ‘inclusion,’ trying to become morally no part of this world becomes a crime as well. 

    Though it is dicey using the tactics of Russian courts, even the Russian Supreme Court, as an example of judicial tactics in general, it is also true that the lunacy of the anti-cultists tends to spread, and with it the methods they employ. Anti-cultism itself is a Western import to Russia, just as communism was a century before. The book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses: Searching for the Why,’ tells of how scholars employed by one Russian court found problems in the New World Translation Bible used by Jehovah’s Witnesses with Psalm 37:29: “The righteous will inherit the earth and will live in it forever.” This verse , the experts discerned, is actually an expressed threat toward unrighteous persons. It is “about dismissiveness (contempt, aggression) toward a group of persons on the basis of religious affiliation.” It furthers the “‘propaganda of inferiority’ on the basis of religious identity.” (The experts left untouched the matter of all Bibles saying the same thing.)

    In other words, they are sticking up for the unrighteous in that strange land!

    It is not allowed to be ‘no part of the world.’ If the world includes ‘unrighteous’ people, you had better work to accommodate them.

    To be continued: here

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • An Insular People—No Part of the World: Part 1

    There is a fine reality check in Deuteronomy to guard against Israel of old getting too big for its pants: “It was not because you were the most numerous of all the peoples that Jehovah showed affection for you and chose you, for you were the smallest of all the peoples.” (7:7)

    Got it. They weren’t a big deal on the world stage. So, when you read up on ancient history, as presented by anyone other than the believers, don’t be surprised that they are still not a big deal. You might be wowed, for example, by Jean-Pierre Isbouts relating the history of the ancient biblical world, and then say, ‘Whoa! Those Bible writers were so insular in their outlook! They saw everything in terms of their worship of God. They touch on secular events only insofar as it furthers their religious narrative.’

    Frankly, it reminds me of my own faith, also said to be ‘insular.’ Most Witnesses would not agree to the label ‘insular’, but that is primarily because they are unfamiliar with it and unsure just what attachments might come with it. They will instantly, even proudly, acknowledge two closely related phrases: they are ‘separate from the world’ and ‘no part of’ it.' It is a scriptural imperative, they will say, because if you want to lend a helping hand, you must be in a place of safety yourself.

    This is exactly what the stalwart ones of Israel did: they stayed ‘separate from the world,’ from that position later to benefit ones within it. “Jehovah your God I am, who has set you apart from the peoples. . . . You must be holy to me, because I, Jehovah, am holy, and I am setting you apart from the peoples to become mine.” (Leviticus 20: 24-26) They were separate, ‘set apart.’ They were not to mingle with those making no effort to be ‘holy’ or, with regard to God, to be ‘mine.’ Thus, it is not surprising that their writings (the Old Testament) might read as ‘insular,’ just as do the writings of the modern Christian congregation. What is insulation if not material to keep one substance ‘no part’ of another? Surely, that determination will be reflected in the writing. Compare the Bible writings with those of ancient secular history and you may say, ‘They barely know that an outside world exists!’

    Separation is resented by ‘the world,’ however. In this modern age of ‘inclusion,’ the very opposite of separateness, activists even try to make it illegal. Thus, within the Witness congregations, disfellowshipping, a last ditch effort, after all else has failed, to ensure that, either members stay true to the Christian way of life they have voluntarily chosen or else separate, is under ferocious legal attack today. It is an escalation of the scenario described at 1 Peter 4:3-4, where the apostle describes the world he and his separated from in not flattering ways:

    “For the time that has passed by is sufficient for you to have worked out the will of the nations when you proceeded in deeds of loose conduct, lusts, excesses with wine, revelries, drinking matches, and illegal idolatries. Because you do not continue running with them in this course to the same low sink of debauchery, they are puzzled and go on speaking abusively of you.” They speak no less abusively today, and are even inclined to add, “Water’s fine here in the low sink! Who are you to judge?”

    After the Holocaust, Jews discarded a lot of baggage that they deemed had caused them nothing but trouble. Belief in a coming messiah was among those items carted away. Maintaining separateness as a nation was another, even though the legal establishment of a homeland might suggest otherwise. From that homeland in the original ‘Promised Land,’ Jewish descendants operate in the arena of political nations, with no particular reliance upon God. God himself is a baggage that many left behind, as a direct consequence of that Holocaust. It is enough for them to keep alive Jewish tradition.

    Even that is enough to rile some non-Jews. But, since Jews make no special effort to pull people from the ‘low sink,’ they do not arouse the furor of those who wish to swim in it—or even return to it. Jehovah’s Witnesses do make that effort, however, and thus encounter pushback. Where do you think the name of my ‘house apostate,’ Vic Vomodog, comes from if not from the writings of Peter? “The dog has returned to its own vomit, and the sow that was bathed to rolling in the mire.” (2 Peter 2:22) In fact, he used to be ‘Vomidog,’ but several people said the name was disgusting, so I softened it to ‘Vomodog.’ It makes it easier to present him as a ‘Wily E Coyote’ type of fellow, eternally scheming against the Road Runner and eternally frustrated. So far, there is no Larry Lowsink, but I am thinking of introducing him as a companion. I might even make it a she—Loretta Lowsink, and have them married. Or I might just marry them gender-unchanged, in keeping with the spirit of the times.

    In real life, however, Vic and possibly Larry makes considerable trouble for those who are yet determined to stay separate from the world. They have had a few court cases go their way. For now, such outcomes tend to be reversed by higher, less activist courts, the kind that are quicker to spot ‘mischief by decree.’ But they press on, in accord with the greater agenda to make separation from the world illegal, in mandated ‘inclusion.’

    The reason I think this is the greater agenda is that today’s reality so closely conforms to Jesus’ words: “If you were part of the world, the world would be fond of what is its own. Now because you are no part of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you.” (John 15:19) Therefore, all these efforts to frame mischief by degree are a facade. That is not to say they are nothing, but they mask the real reason Jesus gave. 

    The CSA court cases, not so much the cases themselves, but the brouhaha over them, for example, are largely a facade. They are like saying “Jehovah’s Witnesses have zits!” Everyone has zits. CSA is the Gross Planetary Product. Whatever ‘records’ Witnesses may or may not have that opponents say should become police property exist only because they attempted to police themselves, in accord with Romans 2:21-23: “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 abhorring idols, do you rob temples? You who take pride in law, do you dishonor God by your transgressing of the Law?" Even that is spun as an abuse of personal freedom by opponents. Only the police can police. If overall society comes to feel that adultery is not a biggie, for example, then you’re on thin ice trying to discipline people over it, even if it is in the bylaws that all agreed to.

    Continued in Part 2.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Joseph Kempler

    After the war, concentration camp Joseph Kempler was invited to a hearing in Germany for the purpose of identifying war criminals. There, he struck up an acquaintance with some Jehovah’s Witnesses who had also been incarcerated. He knew nothing of their beliefs but he had previously encountered them, as a camp within a camp, at the Melk labor prison. He sat with them throughout the days of the hearings.

    The case of one former S.S. guard came up for review. He was the guard whose abuse had resulted in the complete loss of use of one arm and restricted use of the other for one of Kempler’s Witness companions. Kempler was both dumbfounded and furious when the latter sat quietly, puffing away at his pipe, and would not speak up. Here was his chance to exact payback! The man wouldn’t do it. “‘Vengeance in mine; I will repay,’ says Jehovah”—he cited the Bible verse at Romans 12:19

    Kempler’s imprisonment through six Nazi camps had broken him, both spiritually and emotionally. He was very explicit on that point in testimony for the USHMM archives, and he didn’t have to be. Even after he became a Witness in 1953, healing would take many years, during which time he credited his wife for raising his children. He had always been there, but not emotionally available. Like the Ethiopian eunuch of the sixth chapter of Acts, his background knowledge had allowed him to put the pieces together quickly. He soon could explain the complete Bible backward and forward. But, he would zone out under emotional stress, a mechanism that had enabled his survival in the camps.

    He was also explicit in that USHMM testimony that the Witnesses had not been broken. Physically, sometimes they had been, but spiritually and emotionally they had come through intact. Probably, that is why he invited the Witnesses into his home when they called back in 1953. He had previously accepted from them a book because a book, any book, for only fifty cents was a great bargain; he had always been a voracious reader. He had been surprised to see them, imagining they were a German religion. But his visitors showed him a map inside one of their books to indicate they were earthwide. ‘It’s a wonderful hope,’ he said, when they described promises of a paradise earth, ‘but it’s not something I could ever have.’ He was proved wrong.

    Mauthassen was the camp in which guards loaded crushingly heavy boulders on the shoulder of inmates and made them ascend uneven quarry steps to transport them elsewhere. (Kempler was angry when the government later replaced them with smooth steps for the sake of modern tourists.) One might easily topple over the edge to one’s death, or even be deliberately pushed off. Having survived a horrific stint in Mauthassen, Kempler was transferred by cattle car to the Melk labor camp, as though the culmination of a survival-of-the-fittest experiment. On that car, prisoners were packed in so tightly that if one raised his arms, he or she might not get them down again. People relieved themselves where they stood.

    At Melk, people died through overwork and mistreatment, but no one was shot—it was a labor camp for things the Germans needed. Kempler later described for the USC Shoah Foundation his first encounter with the Witnesses at that camp. It was “a barrack in the camp, which was surrounded by its own wire, so the people who were in there, they couldn’t go out and mix with the others, and nobody could go in. So I asked ‘Who are these people? Must be very dangerous if they had a camp within a camp. . . . They said, ‘They are Jehovah’s Witnesses. they were all Germans, mostly, and they were locked up because they wouldn’t go along with Hitler, they wouldn’t serve in the army.’

    So I said, ‘Why do they lock them up? They said, ‘Because otherwise they will go out and preach to others.’ They’re considered too dangerous for that. But what they told me was, these people were the only ones who were not victims because they were told that by signing a statement denouncing their religion was enough to set them free. And they wouldn’t go.

    This was something that was totally unusual because any one of us would si—(laughs) ah, can you imagine signing a piece of paper and you can get out? So, I mean, it was the talk of the camp and they were there, most of them, going back to 1933-34. . . . the Germans trusted them for  babysitters or maybe its barbers—they wouldn't cut their throats, so as a result they had good positions. And these people were known to always support, would rather help one another . . . this made a powerful impression.”

    Even in camp the Witnesses were too thought dangerous to mix with the general population. Nazis who would inflict Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar guards upon the imprisoned populace, to persuade them they were subhuman, would not inflict these ones. [&&&FN Kempler’s video testimony is, at time of writing, readily found on the internet. A three-hour segment is found in the collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, at https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn508850.

    “It is difficult to speak with Jews,” he relates in the Engardio-Shephard 2006 documentary, Knocking. “They say I became a traitor. Six million Jews died and I joined the other side. I was among those survivors who felt that God was really responsible and guilty. He was the one who permitted the Holocaust. So we didn’t fail him, we didn’t do anything wrong. He failed us. And this is a very common belief.”

    “God is being maligned and misunderstood and in many different ways looked down upon as being uncaring or dead or whatever, and there are all kinds of distortions as to what God is and who he is. To be able to speak up in his defense . . . what a powerful turnaround from somebody where I was to become a defender of God . . . what a wonderful privilege this is.”

    Mr. Kempler saw, in the Holocaust aftermath, an opportunity to defend God. Though barbaric treatment turned millions away from God, millions who could not fathom how God could possibly permit such a monstrous thing—and he was among them—he was, in time, fortified by knowledge of why the world was as it is, what hope there was for change, and how to best live in the meantime. Armed with such knowledge, he was drawn to the people who, with faith and dignity intact, survived what was likely the greatest evil in history.

    Doubtless, he many times pondered the Book of Job—not in real time, of course—at the time of Holocaust, he and fellow inmates thought only of survival. Most became, in his words, “like animals, just out to survive, and being an animal is as close as you can describe such persons.” Belief in God turned to disappointment, then anger, then disappeared entirely. “They died before they died,” said he of his fellow captives. Nobody grieved at another’s death, even of family. He shut down emotionally. He later credited his faith as a Witness for the supportive atmosphere it bestowed in which renewal could take place. That, and a renewed Bible understanding that consistently likens spiritual things to water, which is healthy when it moves and stagnant when it does not.

    Jehovah’s Witnesses weathered the storm, with faith and dignity intact, They had read the Book of Job. They had gotten the greater sense of it. Victor Frankl, a Jew who would later go on to write several books, relates what a gut-punch it was for him, after his camp experience, to encounter members of the general populace who said, ‘We didn’t know.’ In some cases it was a conscience-salving dodge, but in most cases they actually didn’t know. It wasn’t even one of those lawyerly ‘knew or should have known’ scenarios; in most cases there was no reason they ‘should have known.’ How could anyone be expected to imagine such atrocities?

    It was a gut-punch for him. It meant his suffering went unnoticed. Wasn’t that nearly the same as it being in vain? Witnesses were not undercut by that perception. At the very least, they knew their suffering was observed by God, as Job’s had been. They knew they had been given opportunity to display loyalty to God under suffering, again like Job. They had not felt their lives purposeless even in confinement. They had been given opportunity to build up others, when not physically separated from them, with their kingdom hope. They had even smuggled out detailed diagrams of the camps, as early as the 1930s, to be forwarded to Western media sources. Those sources disbelieved them, since it was from the Witnesses, but their spiritual brothers came to know. And, of course, they had been given opportunity to help each other. That gives purpose to anyone.

    Kempler died in 2021, at 93 years of age. He did not outlive Leopold Engleitner, another Witness Holocaust survivor, for a time the oldest one, who with the assistance of his publisher, toured the globe at 103. “I’ll be back,” he had said in California, imitating the then-governor’s movie days. He would visit classrooms, and the kids, as with Kempler, couldn’t get enough of him. He described himself as “a busy boy, with no time to die.” Somehow, he later found the time, at 107 years of age. Kempler did not outlive him. But, 93 certainly qualifies as being ‘old and satisfied with days.’ And, just a few years prior to his death, his daughter-in-law published his memoirs. The book is entitled The Altered I: Memoirs of Holocaust Survivor Joseph Kempler. It is a good title, for he was altered—twice.

    (From my upcoming book, tentatively titled 'Job and the Workman's Theodicy: Why Bad Thing Happen'–perhaps verbatim, perhaps in modified form.)

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Theologians Move Away from Satan—Why?

    Modern theologians have discarded Satan. It is so yesterday. Satan makes Christianity a dualism, a bad to offset the good. The devil is a good concept to have around, since you can blame all your troubles on him. But modern theologians of the monotheistic religions have long since moved on from him, as though an embarrassment from their childhood.

    I think this is because they are very much into fixing the world via human solutions. They are really not too much different from secularists, only with a light God-seasoning sprinkled on top. A Devil makes all their efforts moot. How can you fix the world if the basic problem is outside your influence? When they do devil at all, they present him as an analogy for ‘the evil that is within us.’ That is something they imagine will yield to their repair efforts.

    Then too I think they suffer an overreaction to how the churches have portrayed the Devil, as the master torturer of hellfire, somehow commissioned by God to do his dirty work of punishing sinners. What logical person wouldn’t want to break away from that?—and these theologians are nothing if not those who pride themselves on their logic.

    Chasing down a lecture series that Tom Whitepebble pointed me to, I found the lecturer, James Hall, told that he was raised Lutheran Evangelical. Nobody does hellfire more than they. So when he described himself as an “ethical monotheist,” I just assumed that his worldview incorporated a devil. Instead, he tested theodicy after theodicy, punched holes in all of them, and only last did he consider a “dualism” solution that involves the devil. (A theodicy, for anyone who doesn’t know, is an attempt to explain how God could coexist with evil) He conceded this one made the most sense, but also that it was very unpopular, so unpopular that he seemed to think portions of his audience might not have heard of it.

    This “unpopular” theodicy only posited that there was a devil. It did not touch on how that one came to be, why God permits it, how he will resolve it, or any other aspect of the Universal Court case scenario—just that there was a devil whom you could pin all the bad stuff on. I had asked Whitepebble if he knew where our court case scenario originated. Based on something he had heard, he pointed me to this lecture series. But it really didn’t touch on the essence of it, just that there was a master villain devil.

    Imagine. The fellow reviews theodicy after theodicy, rejects them all as unsatisfactory, and ignores only the one that works. It recalls what a certain friend used to say to me, a friend who is fond of alternative medicine: “If it works, insurance won’t cover it.”

    It is not a contradiction in terms to find a given theologian might not believe in God. Some are atheist. This is because theology is not a study of God, as the uninitiated might assume, but a study of man’s interaction with the concept of God. Thus, there doesn’t even have to be a God for the ‘concept of God’ to be valid. It is entirely a human field of study, like sociology or anthropology.

    It is all a part of my current work in progress, a review of our ‘court case’ theodicy. It begins with discussion of the Book of Job. In fact, that’s where I first got the idea to write it, when we were doing Job in our congregation Bible readings. It had been vaguely kicking around in my head before, but it needed those Job readings to gel.

     

     

    ******  The bookstore

     

  • Assume Unity of Scripture or Disunity–the Choice

    Back in the days of cloth diapers, it was easy to accidentally flush one down the toilet, rendering the contraption inoperable. Many times I recall my father fishing them out, which was not an easy task and might even be beyond him, entailing the call for an expensive plumber. Once, a certain false-flushing only partially disabled the upstairs toilet. It thereafter worked for liquid waste but not solid. My fed-up dad apparently acquiesced to that become the new norm. If you had to pee, you could use the upstairs toilet, but if your bathroom needs were more serious, only the downstair powder room toilet would do. In time, people forgot the reason why. I grew up thinking that this was just the way it was for houses, that upstairs toilets in any home were unusable for any matter of substance.

    Similarly, as a boy, I would get carsick riding in the backseat, but riding in the front seat solved the problem. In time, I always rode shotgun on family trips, and my mother and other two siblings, who did not get carsick, rode in the back seat. Again, I grew up thinking this was normal. I was surprised to find the families of my friends loaded their cars the ‘wrong’ way. Normalcy is often determined by how you were raised.

    Might this be why theologians are so quick to assume disunity over unity? People don’t agree in their world. Things are not united in their world. Do they assume, therefore, that they never do, never have, and never are? In time, rubbing shoulders with less brainwashed others served to convince me that moms usually rode in the front seat and that you could use the upstairs toilet to defecate, but what if I had never encountered such people? What if, even as I grew up, I encountered only persons who thought backseats were for moms upstairs toilets were no good. Might I not be deluded to this day? Nobody thought of fixing that upstairs toilet till my dad died and we were preparing the house for resale.

    So it is that views of disunity are so popular among scholars today. Why are they so quick to assume that nobody cooperated back then? It is because nobody of their world cooperates. They impose their world upon the ancients rather than allowing for the reverse. Everything they encounter is disunited. Why should it be any different with textual scholarship? Hall, assuming disunity, reviews biblical tale after tale and declares them all ‘ambiguous.’

    Hall assumes disunity, and consequently, he sees only scraps of this and scraps of that. He never sees how they fit together because he never thinks to look there. He assumes they don’t. Consequently, everything is ambiguous to him.

    Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do experience unity, put them together without undue fuss and do not assume that they are all there to compete with each other for attention.

    You will have to assume something. Something must serve as your starting point. Assume unity and seek to reconcile when it is not manifest. Assume unity over disunity. It’s as great a paradigm shift as seeing the glass half-full over half empty, and it has just as much consequence. Be like Einstein, who labored all his life to connect the dots. He never even wanted to call his theory relativity, a name that suggests a certain disunity. He wanted to call it the theory of invariance, a name that does not; quantities could be changed from one form to another, as though exchanging currencies, but the rate of exchange was invariant: E=mc2. That Einstein was outmaneuvered in naming his own theory says something of his (and our) times. Isaacson’s book on Einstein describes the breakdown of seemingly unrelated elements of society following relativity, as though ‘everything is relative’ and so who can know anything? One wonders if such psychological consequences would have followed a Theory of Invariance.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Clock Ticks on Emotion: A Correction to Theology

    If you are trying to please the ology people—those whose specialize in theology, sociology, psychology, and add philosophy to the stack—you do not present God by his personality and attributes. These are not matters of the intellect. The thinkers do not have the tools to measure it. They are uncomfortable when not strictly in the realm of the head, strictly in the realm of critical thinking. A diversion into the heart may do as an enhancing spice, but if the goal is to discern the truth of a matter, the heart is considered untrustworthy since it introduces emotion.

    The clear bias towards head over heart is found in the very characters invented for science fiction. Spock, the Star Trek Vulcan, has no emotion at all; he is pure logic, even when his half human origin interferes. Data, the android, is likewise the epitome of brains and is barren of emotion. If you want to know something, you ask one of these characters. You do not ask one of their human shipmates. They might be right but they might just as easily be wrong. The problem is that their judgment will be clouded by emotion. In the world of science fiction, mental capacity is elevated to the highest heights and everything else plays second fiddle.

    It must have been a setback to these ones to discover that people who have suffered brain injury, so that that they cannot experience emotion, thereafter are unable to make even simple decisions in matters supposedly having nothing to do with emotion. Decisions as to what to wear, what to eat, what to buy—they cannot make them. Plainly, it is too simplistic to view emotion as the enemy of rationality, a contamination that must be ferreted out, lest it interfere with the quest for truth.

    Emotion is part of the quest. It is not to be shoved aside as useless. “A physical man does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot get to know them, because they are examined spiritually,” says 1 Corinthians 2:14. Remove the quality that feels emotion and you will be just as impeded in spiritual examination as is the emotion-deprived person towards examining strictly physical things.

    What the Bible writer calls “the things of the spirit of God” remain elusive to those whose specialty is critical thinking. Therefore, some of these ones come to focus their analysis on the effects of religious belief, since they don’t know how to evaluate religious belief itself. They give up on the task, for example, of discerning whether God rewards the good and punishes the bad. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) called such questions antinomies. He considered them unknowable, since they lay outside the access of his sole tool, reason. However, the effects of believing in them were not. Does such belief help or hurt society? He felt splendidly equipped to analyze that derivative topic.

     The change of focus is not a bad consolation prize for them. You would hope that your beliefs contribute favorably to society, and if they don’t, maybe there is something wrong with them. If your beliefs make you behave better, make you kinder, make you industrious, make you honest—what’s not to like? What is good for the believer is good for society. That is the original basis of favorable government tax treatment for religion: they did the government’s work for them.

    It can be awkward, however, when society itself veers in a certain direction and religion doesn’t embrace the change. Peter spoke of ones who were “puzzled that you do not continue running with them in the same decadent course of debauchery, so they speak abusively of you.” (1 Peter 4:4) When society begins to frown upon separation because inclusion has become their guiding principle, even your good qualities begin to be looked upon with suspicion. When society becomes intent on fixing this world, and here you are like the early Christians proclaiming it slated for replacement, that too is regarded warily. The Scriptural counsel to stay “no part of this world” is viewed with suspicion by those who see nothing wrong with it. Jesus expressed it alarmingly with, “If you were part of the world, the world would be fond of what is its own. Now because you are no part of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you.” (John 15:19) Even trying to sit out the war that all are determined to rush into can cause you trouble. It is not enough to point out that your religious counterparts on the other side are also sitting it out. It is not enough to ask that both you and they be allowed to do what you both do best, to bring scriptural comfort. During such times, the pressure is on that all must participate in determining which brand of human rulership will prevail.

    Another ologist to consider is William James (1842-1910), who taught psychology at Harvard. He is known also as a philosopher, as well as theologian, since he has written his own theories of religion. He is another one analogous to the math teacher whom you assume is there to teach math, but no—he is only there to teach about math, since the topic itself is beyond his field of expertise. He is another one of these who dodges the question as to whether God exists or not and is only concerned with the effects of believing that he exists or not. And—it’s not a huge concession, but I’ll take it—he is another one who, like Stark and Baimbridge (preceding chapter), does not think it his duty to cart religion out to the curb or oversee its downfall. He hasn’t concluded, like most of his ology forebears, that it is ‘bad science.’ He isn’t perplexed as to why it hasn’t imploded by now.

    He breaks ranks with many of his fellow ologists by allowing a significant role for emotion, which he calls “our passionate nature.” In selecting our worldview, be it religious or not, you cannot use rationality and logic to make all the decisions, he contends, because the clock is ticking. As a case in point, he considers a hypothetical young woman you are thinking of marrying (after you are past the ‘bloom of youth,’ thank you very much). The clock is ticking. While you are off doing your endless background checks, you are killing what could be some very pleasant years and the rewards of joint accomplishments. The facts will never be all in. At some point, you must decide on a basis that is not 100% logic.

    So it is with religious faith, as well as the choice between religious faiths. You look them over closely. You seek to bring in all the facts. But they will never be all in, and the clock is ticking. At some point, unless one wants to be a law unto oneself (an island, said Paul Simon), one must commit to a greater worldview, be it religious or not, and thus benefit from its direction, guidance, and support.

    The choice was thrust upon the Boreans when Paul and Silas paid a visit in the first century:

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

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

    The challenges are greater today. It was enough then to study the scriptures as to whether “these things were so.” Today, in a more pluralistic world, one must also tackle the subject of whether the scriptures themselves are so. The learned ones of today increasingly lean that they are not. Even the theologians are apt to maintain that, while it contains glimmers of ‘being so,’ in the main it is not.

    (See: Introduction to the Study of Religion–Charles B Jones, Great Courses, Lecture 10)

    ******  The bookstore

  • Who We Are and Why We Are and Where We Are Going?

    “How can people believe Bible texts the way they do? People were superstitious then. And it is violent.”

    Maybe because they are enamored with its main character, God. Those not enamored with him are not attracted to the text. Psalm 34:8 is a favorite of mine: “Taste and see that Jehovah is good.” Some people think he tastes bad. Taste is not a provable topic. It resonates with some and not with others. It is not primarily a matter of intellect. Some people hate asparagus. Good luck trying to ‘prove’ to them that it tastes good.

    The reason God and the texts long associated with him ‘taste good’ to people of faith is summed up in this quote from a newspaper editor, as true today as when he wrote it 60 years ago: “Here is a curious thing. In the contemplation of man himself, of his dilemmas, of his place in the universe, we are little further along than when time began. We are still left with questions of who we are and why we are and where we are going.” (Vermont Royster) People of faith want to know “who we are and why we are and where we are going.” They are convinced secular society has no answers (“we are little further along than when time began”), so they look to God. They are not put off by the fact the Bible is old. (You would hardly expect a message from God to all mankind to have been written recently) They don’t consider those ancients inferior. If anything, with less to distract them, they had the time to think deeper thoughts.

    Nor do they think science answers Royster’s question. Professor Viskontas* addresses how our present life is but an hour or two on the year-scaled cosmic timeline. “Does this mean that our short little lives hold no meaning? I would argue that it certainly does not. In fact, it gives us a sense of how far we’ve come and how connected we are even to the very beginnings of the universe. And surely life gains meaning through the connections that we make to each other and to our world,” se says. I dunno. It’s not nothing, but it doesn’t compare to the thought of everlasting life. Isn’t it more akin to persuading a speed bump to find meaning in its role on the highway of life?

    Too, God’s revealed personality attracts some. To Moses, he presented himself as “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.” (Exodus 34) Those are good qualities to have in a God, particularly in a world not typified by such qualities. They draw people. He ‘tastes good’ to them. They see a world deteriorating at an almost visibly increasing rate. They see human governments have no answers. They look for one in the Scriptures, and there they find it.

    They do not find it offensive that God would have requirements, as is intimated at the end of the Exodus phrase. It instantly strikes them as right that he would. They like the illustration of an owner’s manual for a product, say a new Ford. It makes perfect sense to them that Ford would be the one to consult as to how to care for the product it created.That’s why “people have believed in this text for so many years.” It is a vehicle through which one may get to know one’s Creator. Ordinary people find that very comforting, even if some more independently minded others find it offensive.

    Is there concern that there is much violence in the OT? Don’t think people are any less violent today. It is just that modern societies have found a way to sanitize and corporatize violence, so that it can be inflicted from afar by horrific weapons, while the ones congratulating themselves at their supposed moral progress safely watch on TV. Some have heard the terrorist argument for attacking innocent civilians. There are no innocent civilians, they say, because these ‘innocent’ civilians willfully empower governments that go on to commit atrocities in their homeland.

    No need to fuss about things that happened 4000 years ago, which is when most of the OT violence occurred. Parties have had plenty of time to reform, if they see fit to do so. Besides, you can always assign that Bible reading of Elisha calling down bears on the jeering children to a bald brother, who will tap his own shiny dome as though to say, ‘Don’t mess with me.’

    …* Indre Viskontas, lecturer of 12 Essential Scientific Concepts, from Great Courses

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Like a Bad Accident: You Know You Shouldn’t Watch, but You Can’t Look Away.

    Our next-door neighbor likens the news to a bad accident. “You know you shouldn’t watch, but you can’t look away,” she says. Is that a great analogy for ‘Man ruling man to his injury’ or what? And she is not even a Witness.

    It’s a trainwreck! You really should look away, for you will see some horrific things—but you can’t. It will cause you less angst if you look away. On the other hand, there are survivors of that accident. Witnesses encounter them, even going out of their way to search for them. It can help to know where they are coming from and what they have been through.

    I was assigned the 5-minute talk last mid-week meeting. Our next-door neighbor’s analogy served as the introduction. The first scripture considered was Psalm 46:2-3

    “We will not fear, though the earth undergoes change, Though the mountains topple into the depths of the sea, though its waters roar and foam over, Though the mountains rock on account of its turbulence.”

    Recall that mountains, when not literal, can picture human institutions, often nations or political parties within a nation, because the are big, they tower over people with seemingly rock-like stability. Nobody runs to the valleys in time of emergency; they run to the mountains. And, the sea with its waters pictures restless, unstable humankind, forever kicking up seaweed and crud. “But the wicked are like the restless sea that cannot calm down, And its waters keep tossing up seaweed and mire,” says Isaiah 57:20

    So we have two ancient symbolisms, mountains and seas, to accompany the one new one—that the news is like a bad accident. Seldom have we seen the open hostility between political parties within nations. In the U.S, not only do Democrats and the GOP not agree on answers to the questions, but they don’t even agree on what the questions are, Pew Research recently stated. With no starting point for discussion, there can be no hope of reaching anything but more rancor.

    What people need to do is in the words of Psalm 46:10, which was the theme scripture of the talk: “Give in and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.” They have to give in to the idea of rulership by God. In the New Testament, it is expressed as God’s kingdom, that when it comes, his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. In the Old Testament, it is the stone that smashes into the feet of the idol of successive human seventies, toppling the entire statue.

    Even religious people have to ‘give in,’ since for the most part it is human rulership they want to fix through their religion, choosing from a sorry lot of human candidates the one they think most likely to do it. The thought of God’s ruling through his Son is a turn-off to them. Ideally, they do ‘give in’ and it doesn’t become a matter of brute force, as when Jesus confronted Saul on the road to Damascus. ‘You going to give in?’ he told that one. ‘What’s with the persecution? What! You think I’m going to lose here? You only make it hard on yourself.’

    Jehovah’s people too may need to ‘give in’ from time to time. Basic neutrality means no one will openly campaign for this candidate or that. But might they drop down a notch and ‘fact check’ ‘misperceptions’ about one side? You know, just in the interests of establishing truth, whereas they would never correct misperceptions of the other side—which are probably not misperceptions at all; they are probably true, that person being a fraud and a liar. We can be not so neutral as we imagine ourselves to be. It is good not to bring it into the Kingdom Hall, lest we encounter someone whose experiences and perceptions have led him to ‘fact check’ the other way.

    “Give in and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.” It is a role Jehovah’s people are glad to have. They even feel privileged to have it. Paul wrote on how “we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the good news. (1 Thess 2:4) He didn’t write of God saying, “Look, clear up a few of those issues of yours and then maybe we can talk.” No, he “approved” of Christians, flawed thought they were, and “entrusted” them with the good news of God’s kingdom.

    There is a brother I know who frames it that we have a ring-side seat for the greatest show on earth: human kingdoms go down locked in mortal combat, with God’s kingdom on the ascent. But it is not really a ‘seat’—it is a participatory role from a position of relative safety. Through the many venues typifying Witnesses—whether door-to-door (because everyone lives somewhere), or literature displays, informal chatting up people and writing to them, since some are not at home or live in places inaccessible. At any rate, this brother tells how he rearranges his entire life to have a large role in that activity.

     

    ***After the mid-week meeting, someone approached to say that they had liked my talk. I knew it was a trap. I knew they were just waiting to see if I would get all puffed up and so be eaten by worms. Herod’s demise had also been covered at that meeting. I slunk out of that Hall so modestly you could hear a pin drop.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • 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)

    ******  The bookstore

  • 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.”

    ******  The bookstore