Congregations going through the Book of Ecclesiastes in their mid-week meetings, two chapters at a time. It’s good for its descriptions of the curves life can throw at you regardless of your spirituality. Solomon writes how “I have seen everything—from the righteous one who perishes in his righteousness to the wicked one who lives long despite his badness, (7:15) and “that the swift do not always win the race, nor do the mighty win the battle, nor do the wise always have the food, nor do the intelligent always have the riches, nor do those with knowledge always have success, because time and unexpected events overtake them all. (9:11) This reality lends the present life a certain “futility,” a continual theme of the book.
There is no scriptural correlation between spirituality and material wealth. Sometimes the latter works out. Sometimes it doesn’t. It is sort of like winning or losing in a game that is part skill and part dumb luck. In neither case is it the “real life” of 1 Timothy 6:19 that Witnesses make their primary hope, life in God’s new system under Christ’s reign.
A previous Sunday’s Watchtower study (Have You Learned the ‘Secret of Contentment’? – October 2025) focused on how to be content. Philippians 4:11-12 was the theme, in which Paul said: “I have learned to be self-sufficient regardlessof my circumstances. I know how to be low on provisions and how to have an abundance. In everything and in all circumstances I have learned the secret of both how to be full and how to hunger, both how to have an abundance and how to do without.”
He had had periods of both in his life. He had “learned the secret” of how to adapt to both, to be content. It’s something people very much need today—all people, not just Witnesses. There was a lot in the study article on cultivating a spirit of gratitute. It is healthy to do that. Viewing the glass as half-full rather than half-empty helps. Both descriptions are equally accurate. But they evoke different attitudes. You can be grateful for a glass half-full but we never hear of people being grateful for one half-empty.
Being content is the key. Witnesses by and large are. Even when they are not, their discontent seldom rises to the greater world’s level of discontent. It is a very tragic thing to lose faith in God’s promises because then one joins them in discontent. For whatever reason, those who have lost faith tend to gather on social media. There, I read descriptions of my own faith that I do not recognize. It is as what Paul writes to Timothy of those who have come to think materially, those who suppose that “godly devotion is a means of gain.” They immerse themselves in “things [that] give rise to envy, strife, slander, wicked suspicions, constant disputes about minor matters.” (1 Timothy 6:4-5) To hear some former Witnesses carry on at the venues they have chosen, you might not even realize that there is a Bible. Faith has been shipwrecked so all people have are the minor matters to stew about, matters of human interaction reframed as “control” and “manipulation.”
When it is said that Witnesses are getting by “just fine” it’s referring more to their overall state of happiness than their material state. Materially, some do well. Others do not. The same as is true with the greater world. On the ordinary matters of life, Witnesses are as likely to say what is commonly said everywhere else: “If I knew then what I know now…” or “if I had it all to do over again….” People say such things all the time. Witnesses are people. They say it too.
They seldom say it regarding their spiritual outlook, however. They call their set of beliefs “the truth” on account of how it all dovetails together. It sees them through both good times and bad. If they have made some moves in life that, in hindsight, didn’t work out so well, it doesn’t change the tenets of faith that anchors them. I doubt there are fewer children among Witnesses than anywhere else, in a Western world that has decided not to have many, nor would home ownership be lower, in a world where some rent and some own. College, I concede, is lower. Witnesses are very much top-heavy with “workmen,” which is probably why Paul used that word in at 2 Timothy 2:15. He could have said elite or scholar, or even student. He said workman.
****** The bookstore
