Sheep and Goats

Category: Congregation

  • I Knew the Punchline

    The circuit overseer related how one couple divorced after 60 years marriage—or was it an anecdote he related? It hardly matters, for it served not to illustrate marriage, but to distinguish between faithful and loyal. The two partners in marriage had been faithful, but they had not been loyal.

    I knew the punch line before he arrived at it. I knew it because many years ago Garrison Keillor had told the story on A Prairie Home Companion.

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    An elderly couple appears before judge to say they want a divorce. He’s 95. She’s 89. “Why do you want a divorce?” the judge says. “Because we don’t like each other. We have never gotten along. It has always been awful.”  “My.gracious!” the judge asks in astonishment, “Why did you ever wait so long?”

    “Well—we had to wait for the children to die. The shock would have killed them,” is the reply.

    So it was with the circuit overseer’s story—they had to wait for the children to die. Keillor played it for laughs, not the tragedy it really would be. His ‘Tales from Lake Wobegon’ monologue series was immensely popular in the 80s, poking gentle fun at the people of his fictional Minnesotan home-town. One of their attributes was that they would do their duty even if it killed them.

    The show’s popularity landed him on the cover of Time Magazine (leading him to write the song Mr. Coverboy). Did the divorce story filter down from Garrison to the C.O, or did both of them pick it up from an actual experience? In a country of 300 million people, it has probably happened many times.

    The circuit overseer wasn’t talking about marriage—not that he hasn’t done so many times before, but he was not this time. He was speaking of loyalty to God. The word loyalty has a sticking connotation to it, he said, as he displayed a photo of foxtail barley along side one of barnacles. Both stick, but the first dislodge fairly easily. The second you cannot get off if your life depends upon it. So, with regard to sticking with God, the second is the one to go for.

    It is one of those scenarios in which creation provides something that humans allow themselves to be instructed by without crediting the creator. I love posting about this and have done so before. In this case it is how scientists research the ingredients of barnacle glue so as to make better glue themselves. There are four ingredients to loyalty, the circuit overseer identified—appreciation, self-control, love, and faith—and he went on to analyze each one.

    Appreciation took him to Psalm 116, the first eleven verses containing more or less eleven reasons, some overlapping, to be appreciative. This was followed up with the rhetorical verse 12 question, “What shall I repay to Jehovah for all his benefits to me?” The CO’s own take was that appreciation unexpressed was like a present wrapped but not given.

    Self-control launched into controlling one’s thoughts, speech, and actions. It begins with thoughts. Thus, 2 Corinthians 10:5 came into play, that “we are bringing every thought into captivity to make it obedient to the Christ.” We are the landlords of our minds, he said, the one who decides with thought stay and which ones are evicted. Why would you ever view entertainment that plants thoughts in your mind to make that job more difficult?

    Love was next, the “perfect bond of union,” according to Colossians 3:14. “Keep seeking not own advantage, but that of the other person, (1 Corinthians 10:24) does wonders for that quality, in this case the “other person” being God.

    Faith was the last of four discussed. It triggered discussion of faithful, and that led into the opening anecdote of the couple seeking divorce after so many years.

    It is a special week of activity when the circuit overseer hits town. Besides the ministry, he gives three talks, one of his own devising and two from Bethel. To fit two of them in on Sunday, the Watchtower Study is cut in two, and the paragraphs are not read. COs hardly ever sit though a full-length Watchtower Study. One COs wife told of a time she did that she thought it would never end.

    Garrison even made mention of Jehovah’s Witnesses on his show. Reflecting the confidence you gain after you have acted in an opera, he said: “When Jehovah’s Witnesses come around, you don’t just hide. You go out and talk to them.”

     

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  • My 50-Year Battle with the Daily Text

    For years I ignored the daily text. I didn’t oppose it. I just focused on other things. It was sort of bite-sized, too insubstantial to make such a fuss over, or so it seemed.

    This avoidance did not change even when I was assigned the text at a convention. “You know that time when people read the back of the breakfast cereal box?” I asked my participant. “That’s when we read the text.” To be sure, with the children, either my wife or I did cover a daily text, my wife more so than me. My work schedule was squirrelly back in the day. But I always downplayed it.

    I even implied a certain derision of the text with John Wheatandweeds, who (in the Tom Irregardless and Me review of Ivor E Tower), “hinders members from their door to door ministry by spending inordinate amounts of time discussing the text of the day.” How well I remember old-timers rattling on about the text before field service. Sometimes they went on for so long that you didn’t feel like service any longer by the time they were done. Tom Irregardless and Me showcases a “battle” between Bethel and John Wheatandweeds to shorten up that morning discussion to seven minutes—a battle that eventually ended in a draw. He doesn’t get them out in seven minutes, but neither is it all day. And sometimes the time saved inside is squandered away in the parking lot.

    So here I am years later in Zoom Covid days, days that nobody could have anticipated, and the congregation service groups launch into discussions of the daily text, and it has become a highlight of the day! It only took 50 years. Gasp! Have I become one of those old-timers?

    That convention text discussion was the 2nd time I had been assigned a part. The prior year was my first, and I had been told to report at the chairman’s office where I would be escorted to the platform at the proper time. So for the second year, my participant and I hung out at the chairman’s office waiting for our escort. What I did not know was the prior year’s procedure was specific to that chairman’s organization.

    “Shouldn’t I be escorted to the platform by now?” I asked at the desk as the opening song began to play. I got the fastest escort in theocratic history. The brother opening the program looked not too comfortable—his eyes scanning the crowd for his successor to show up. I have told the story in No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash.

    I don’t know for sure, but I think it would not happen today. There is value in standardization.

    ….

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  • They Teach Early Christianity Like Night and Day—Bart Ehrman vs Luke Timothy Johnson

    Preaching Jesus was no picnic in the first century. “Are you speaking of that fellow that they executed?” someone would say. “He’s the savior of the world?” That’s just plain idiocy, thought the non-Jew. The Jews would think it beyond idiocy—they would think it blasphemy, for they would recall the Torah verse of how anyone hung on a stake was accursed by God. (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)

    Luke Timothy Johnson tells how early Christians had to overcome their “cognitive dissonance” on that point. Paul, the apostle, tells how he approached Corinth “in weakness and in fear and with much trembling” because he knew they would regard him as a snake oil salesman. (1 Corinthians 2:3) But only Bart Ehrman, the Bible-thumper who became an anti-Bible thumper but you can still see the Bible thumper in the anti-Bible thumper, actually presents him as a snake-oil salesman—Paul the itinerant preacher competing with hundreds of other itinerant preachers, each trying to yank the narrative of Christ his own way per his own “theology”—each concerned primarily with saving his own rear end from fire in the hereafter.

    When Bart takes up the challenge of presenting Jesus as Messiah to that world, he likens it to presenting David Koresh as messiah to the modern world. “David Koresh—the man who abused children and stockpiled weapons? He’s the messiah?” he anticipates modern reaction. Why does he make such a dumb comparison? I get it that either one is supposed to be shocking, but still…

    When you tell an illustration, you’re supposed to make sure all aspects of it line up with the subject—otherwise someone will be sure to spot the discordant part and throw out the entire illustration in consequence. Here the discordant part is glaring. Did Jesus abuse children? Did Jesus stockpile weapons? His “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword” is among the best-known adages on the planet.

    There’s no way Bart can’t know this. How can one not conclude that he has so little regard for the subject that he just doesn’t care? Even Mark Twain, reputed atheist with some of the most scathing invectives ever uttered on religion, never had an unkind word for Jesus. The problem, according to Twain, was that nobody followed him. “There has only been one Christian,” he wrote. “They caught and killed him—early.” But trashing Christ is all in a day’s work for Bart.

    Luke Timothy Johnson and Bart Ehrman both teach religion courses for the Great Courses lecture series. Their topics aren’t exactly the same but there’s plenty of overlap—they both cover the spread of Christianity in the first few centuries after his death. Comparing the two approaches reveals all the difference between a violin and a fiddle—the style is so different that it’s hard to believe the instrument is the same. Luke follows a traditional religious approach, Bart the historical critical approach. Luke examines his subject from within, Bart examines it from without. Luke looks for points of agreement. Bart looks for points of disharmony. Luke’s take is how early Christians complement. Bart’s take is on how they compete—just like organisms do in the survival-of-the-fittest evolutionary world.

    Luke isn’t keen on the historical-critical approach as he acknowledges that it dominates religious study at the university level these days—send your child there so they can break down his or her faith (my words, not his). He cites David Strauss, an early advocate of that approach, who observes that “critical historiography can only deal with events in human times and space.”  Therefore, as Luke Johnson restates it, “the historian cannot take up anything having to do with the transcendent, or the supernatural, the historian cannot talk about the miraculous birth of Jesus, his miracles, his walking on the water, his transfiguration, his resurrection from the dead, and so forth.

    “Well, fair enough. The historian can’t talk about those things, but that methodological restraint of Strauss very quickly becomes implicitly an epistemological denial, that is ‘the historian cannot talk about these things, therefore they are not real.’”

    Exactly! It is as though a mechanic approaches an ailing car with a toolbox equipped only with wrenches. Finding a screwdriver is needed, he does not  reproach himself for not bringing one. Rather, he declares the problem unsolvable. Helpful as science is, there are times when it wouldn’t know a fact if it choked on one.

    Back to Luke: “And so…the narrative of Jesus and the biblical story simply gets eliminated, [with] each item looked at through the political agenda of the writer—what was [this or that writer] trying to accomplish, rather than, ‘How is God speaking to us?’” Sure enough, when Bart tackles subjects as Jesus’ miraculous birth, his miracles, and his resurrection, he concludes that they cannot be proven scientifically. Duh.

    The mother of all obtuseness appears when Bart examines the reason behind Christian persecution in the first century. Rome burned, the populace suspected Nero of setting the fire (to clear the way for urban renewal) and to deflect blame from himself, he redirected it to the Christians, who were hunted down and killed in the most heinous ways. Bart’s conclusion: “So Christians weren’t persecution for being Christian—they were persecuted for arson!”

    Bart leaves untouched the 800-pound question behind the arson charge: “What was it about Christians that made them such perfect scapegoats?” It doesn’t occur to him to go there, though it would anyone else. Why didn’t Nero blame the Mafia, the spies from Egypt, the fortune tellers, the crazies, or a host of more likely suspects?

    His obtuseness is heightened by the fact that Tacitus tells him the answer—and it doesn’t strike him as significant enough to mention. According to that Roman historian, Christians were “convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city, as of hating the human race.” How can Bart possibly miss that?

    It’s not as though are so many sources that this one fell through the cracks. There are only four contemporary historians that even mention Christianity—Tacitus, Pliny the younger, Philo, and Josephus—and none of them write more than a paragraph or so. Christianity was a movement of the lower classes, and then, as now, the doings of such people are beneath the notice of the chroniclers.

    No, Bart is just obtuse to the spiritual nature of his subject. His obsession with historical and scientific facts causes him to overlook the only FACT that matters—early Christians were regarded as radicals—yes, call them ‘extremists’—who were “hating the human race.” That is the absurdity that bears looking into, not the technicalities of the arson charge. Why in the world would Jesus followers—the ones who heeded his command to not take to the sword—be thought haters of the human race? The answer is very close to the reason Jehovah’s Witnesses are persecuted today in Russia, and are targets of general disapproval in most other lands.

    Of course, their pacifism means non-participation in war efforts, and neutrality bumps it up a notch to not supporting in any way the war effort. That will always put you on the black list of a nationalistic world that demands everyone stay on the same page—“when we say ‘It’s war, that means you applaud!” But the distaste is for reasons more basic than that.

    Luke Timothy Johnson observes how Christians “would not even perform the minimal political gesture of offering a pinch of incense to the gods.” This is because the gesture was religious to them. To everyone else, it was “political”—not a big deal. Why could they not grasp the Christian point of view?

    The polytheistic world back then had no problem with Christians bringing in another god—not in itself. There was always room at the table for another god—pull up a chair. The problem was that once Jehovah was seated at the table, he ordered all the other gods away. None of the other gods were so possessive. All took it for granted that you worshipped many, and even when some human (such as the empiror) claimed divine status, it was not a problem for anyone other than the Christians (and Jews).

    That situation isn’t exactly analogous to JWs and the flag salute? Anyone else will do it. Outright scoundrels and traitors will do it with fingers crossed behind their backs. Only Jehovah’s Witnesses read a violation of the Ten Commandments into it. “You must not make for yourself a carved image or a form like anything that is in the heavens above or that is on the earth underneath or that is in the waters under the earth. You must not bow down to them nor be induced to serve them, because I Jehovah your God am a God exacting exclusive devotion.” (Exodus 20:4-5) Though the U. S. Supreme Court has acquiesced to Witness interpretation, that does nothing to garner them acceptance in the popular mind.

    “I Jehovah your God am a God exacting exclusive devotion,” says the verse. “There you go again,” said Ronald Reagan to Jimmy Carter, calling him on an attitude out of sync with the changing times and winning the election partly on the strength of that line. When the popular mood favors inclusiveness, it does not help to follow a God who requires “exclusive devotion.” It caused Christians to sit out events of life that others followed as a matter of routine, and that dependably annoys people.

    Bart points out that Christians were reproached for dividing families—just as Jehovah’s Witnesses are today, and just as Jesus counseled would be the case. “Do not think I came to bring peace to the earth; I came to bring, not peace, but a sword,” he says. “For I came to cause division, with a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” As a practical matter, Christianity that strives to stay true to Jesus’ words will do that.

    The “haters of the human race” charge becomes easier to envision in view of Jesus’ words above. Sitting out routine events in life based on “exclusive devotion” simply gets people’s dander up. Kicking back at such charges, the same as Jehovah’s Witnesses must do today, Paul points out, “We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one.” (2 Corinthians 7:2) The same undercurrent of “victimhood” so popular today finds its counterpart back then. “There is nothing new under the sun.” Christians stood so apart from routine areas of life, choosing the company of each other instead unless it was to spread their faith, that they were thought to throw sand in the gears of community life.

    Why doesn’t Bart, who enmeshes himself in the gears of “science,” see that? He describes the executions of early Christian martyrs. In many cases, Roman officials gave them every chance to recant, pleaded with them to recant, patiently tried to persuade them that offering a pinch of incense to the emperor was too tiny a gesture to be concerned about, and—incredibly (considering his evangelical background), Bart sides with the Romans and expresses amazement that the martyrs could be so stubborn. “Why, when they had so much to offer this world, would they be so eager to leave it?” is the gist of one of his review questions.

    Should you want to read up on how the Bible canon was assembled, either of these two writers and lecturers will get the job done. However, Bart with his atheistic point of view, is relentlessly annoying, and Luke, with his devotional point of view, is unobjectionable. Ditto if you want to read up on the early church “fathers” and apologists. Watchtower publications are light on those topics. The canon is explored in places as the Scriptures Inspired book the Insight book, but Bart or Luke expands it into much greater detail. And Watchtower articles on the early apologists are downright sparse, and tend to focus on what they got wrong.

    I rather like how Luke Johnson puts it: “I think there is perhaps no greater evidence of Christianity’s success as a religion, that is, as a movement quite apart from imperial sponsorship and the politics of empire than these ancient versions from lands extending from present day Iran, Central Asia, Syria, Egypt, and Turkey, up into Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe. Something in the Bible must have spoken to all of these far-flung people and touched them in some fashion, not only to the dukes and the nobles and the bishops, but also the ordinary people who seemed eagerly to receive the word in their own languages. Indeed it may be an oblique but very real compliment to the energy and the power of Christianity in the first millenium of its existence that so many peoples in so many lands found these odd stories from ancient Palestine and the Greco-Mediterranean world of the first century to be both compelling and convincing.”

    Yes, it is wordy. Yes, you half expect him to say, “All roads lead to heaven.” Yes, he may grumble when he finds out you don’t do the trinity, and discard your claim to Christianity on that account. Yes, when he says it was dangerous to be a Bible translator in the Middle Ages, he never says why—in his own way he is just as prone to ignore the 800 lb gorilla as is Bart—but since he does speak appreciatively of spiritual things we’ll let it slide. At any rate, I’ll take him in a heartbeat over Bart. The latter irritates me, though possibly not on purpose.

  • Complaints over the Farmers-to-Families Program—Part 3

    (See Part 2)

    If the counter.org story is right, It sounds like the Watchtower was one of the few organizations meeting the USDA Farmers-to-Families program requirements. The story charges that outfits accepted the food boxes but were unwilling to take on the costs of distribution. Instead, they had food distributions in their parking lots—you had to fetch the food quickly before it rotted, and run through a gauntlet of prayer services or ‘soul-salvations’ in the process. Some never intended to comply with program requirements, charges the story. Not so here.

    The plan was called "truck-to-trunk." The companies were supposed to take their food boxes directly to local food bank distribution points and drop the boxes into the trunks of waiting cars.” Witnesses did better than that. They delivered it directly to homes. What if someone doesn’t have a “waiting car?” Really poor people do not.

    However, the Witness organization does something that will also get thecounter.org people going. They operate with Galatians 6:10 in mind: “Let us work what is good toward all, but especially toward those related to us in the faith.” Recipients of their aid will fall on the “poor spectrum.” Since Witnesses are in aggregate the faith with the lowest average income—and when aid is sent to the neediest of them with the proviso that if they think someone needs it more they can take it there—that is all but guaranteed. But what of those who aren’t keen on God? Are they as likely to be on the Witnesses’s radar as those who aren’t? Probably not.

    Frankly, I don’t see what’s so horrendous about even the “abuses” the article attributes to some church groups. Even if I find those abuses distasteful, still food is distributed to anyone who comes to fetch it. The counter.org article just reflects jealousy, in my view, that people of faith will do more to solve ills than do secular people, who are more apt to address it through massive agencies and then spend the rest of their lives on lawyers prosecuting the abuses and corruption that inevitably occurs. If people of faith want to call attention to what implants the generous spirit within them, why should the humanists not be able to live with that? They just don’t like God. Sometimes I think they would rather let people starve than to see them exposed to religion. Must we bend over backwards to see that no humanist is offended by mention of God?

    However, this post begins with the proviso: “If the counter.org story is right.” I am willing to entertain that it is not. The counter.org is a humanist organization, and as such I can readily believe it would pass over without comment any faith-based organization doing the work, by its definition, “properly”—keeping their mouths shut about God. Even the Watchtower, with its firm stand on God’s kingdom as the ultimate answer, will say things of the greater world like: “True, some good has been accomplished, but….” However, the counter.org article highlights nothing but what it thinks is bad. So maybe there are some faith groups who are helping fix the world’s broken distribution system without mention of God, activity that would meet the conditions of thecounter.org.

    Still, can we all agree that since Jehovah’s Witnesses comprise .01% of the world’s population, what they do or do not do will not make a difference to the world’s self-repair efforts? If they did nothing but offer flowers to passerby on street corners, they would not spoil the world’s efforts to save itself.

    In my lifetime I have seen “taking care of one’s own” go from being a laudable trait to a cult-like offense bordering on criminal. Let us rip Galatians 6:10 out of our Bibles, for it is selfish to actually do it: “let us work what is good toward all, but especially toward those related to us in the faith.”

    Let us entertain the critics for a just moment and speculate that Jehovah’s Witnesses really are selfish for operating with this verse in mind. Isn’t it the fault of God, who says here that Christians should begin aid with their own? What really can be the beef over this? Aren’t faith-based organizations the ideal distribution channels? And humanists will not be left out of the equation, for if there is anything to their leaving God by the curb, surely they will be able to devise something at least equal, if not better.

    Witnesses don’t know how to fix the world’s broken system. People without Bible principles tend not to get along. We don’t know how to help them succeed in the absence of Bible principles, and that is why Jehovah’s Witnesses are primarily a Bible teaching organization. They follow the ‘teach a man to fish’ model, so you will not have to keep giving them fish till the end of time, because we see repeatedly how that model breaks down under stress—and all it has to do is break down once for calamity to ensue. What Witnesses can do is set an example for others to follow—religious or secular—in “caring for their own.” That way, if every one does, and especially when they go the extra mile as do the Witnesses, everyone’s needs will be cared for. There will be no poor unattended.

    Anyone can apply for this program. All you have to do is be willing to work for others and have your act together sufficiently enough to package and distribute. If Witnesses take the government up on their generous program, truly an instance—they are not all that common, of when government does things right—why would anyone object to it? Anyone is invited. Grumbling over this reflects exactly the same jealousy that has been manifested at the JW disaster relief program,* on the basis that it doesn’t attempt to restore everybody, but operates with Galatians 6:10 in mind.

    Now, I personally have no issue with those who operate otherwise. When I pass a soup kitchen I do not mutter bad things about it. I say good things about it. I say that they are focusing on a specific good thing that we are not, and so how can you criticize that? I do not. I may observe that it is a stopgap measure, but that certainly does not make it unpraiseworthy. 

    There is in my neck of the woods such an agency called the House of Mercy. It is run by a nun, or maybe a former-nun. I have nothing but praise for it. She shakes down whoever she must to procure supplies and help those who are truly down and out with feeding and lodging. Recently she was worried that a gigundous shipment of canned goods that she has come to rely upon, supplied by the Latter Day Saints church in Salt Lake City, might not come this year. And then it did. Will one praise the Mormons? I will in this instance. It is a very good deed they do. (Besides, I have a thing for Mormons.) However they are also the most political of faiths—the most consistently Republican as rated by the same Pew organization that ranks the Witnesses as the most apolitical, they have a lot of beliefs that take time to get ones head around, and there are those who will deride them as a cult almost to the extent they will deride JWs as one.

    I don’t have a problem with someone trying to make this world’s broken distribution system work. However, I will not go so far as to hurl stones at the people who have invented an entirely new channel that does work. The Watchtower has published an apt illustration of parents who hire a babysitter to care for their children, and on returning home, they find the children not cared for, as the babysitter is busy painting the house. Even though the house needed painting, they are not happy. Tending to the children was the assigned task. If the babysitter wants to paint the house AND care for the children, that works fine, but that good work cannot be done INSTEAD of caring for the children.

    I personally had mixed feelings when I heard this illustration because I had been saying something very similar for a long time and I thought maybe they had stolen it from me. Of course, they are welcome to it, and indeed, it is an obvious enough comparison that it might well occur simultaneously to different people. It actually improved upon mine because mine didn’t involve people. Mine involved hiring a contractor to reroof the house and later find that he has painted it instead. Theirs involves people, which is better, but it is also worse, because hiring a babysitter is always associated with caring for the kids physically. The parents do not hope for the babysitter to care for them spiritually, and usually are relieved to find that he/she hasn’t made that attempt.

    The JW organization puts emphasis on caring for ones spiritually, so that in applying Bible principles they will correspond to the man who has learned how to fish. Of course, giving a man a fish also has a place, and as stated, I  am not one to criticize it. But if you only give them fish you make them dependent upon yourself for life, and the first time you fall down on “your” job, they blame you for it. Better teach them Bible principles that will enable them to fish, and the best foundation for Bible principles to stick is to fortify them with accurate knowledge about God.

    And if I feared that the organization has stolen my illustration, it is not so bad as a recent speaker who related how at another Hall he had laid a $20 bill on the speaker stand along with his outline because he meant to use it as an illustration of how counterfeit is so hard to distinguish from real, and that the fact that there is much counterfeit money does not prove that there is no such thing as real money. However, the chairman, upon spotting the bill, removed it to Lost and Found, so that when the speaker took the stand, he could not use his analogy. “He literally stole my illustration,” he told us.

    …

    The following excerpt is from Tom Irregardless and Me, an ebook I wrote three years ago:

    At the home of Victor Vomodog, an alarm panel light pulsed red. Victor read the incoming feed. It was serious. Someone was saying nice things about Jehovah’s Witnesses. Instantly, he swung into action. There was not a moment to lose. He opened his door and whistled. The media came running. “Witnesses are selfish!” he cried. “They only think of themselves! Why don’t they help everyone? Why do they just do their own people?” That evening, media ran the headline: “WHY DON’T THEY HELP EVERYONE?”

    But they had asked the wrong question. The headline they should have run, but didn’t, because they didn’t want to deal with the answer, was: “WHY AREN’T OTHERS DOING THE SAME?” The answer to the first question is obvious: Witness efforts consist of volunteers using their vacation time. Just how much time is the boss going to grant?

    So do it yourself, Victor! Organize your own new chums! Or send your money to some mega-agency where they think Bible education is for fools. Be content to see monies frittered away on salaries, hotels, travel, retirement, health care benefits, and God knows what else! Be content to see much of what remains squandered! It’s the best you can do—embrace it! Or at least shut up about the one organization that has its act together.

    The obvious solution, when it comes to disaster relief, is for others to do as Jehovah’s Witnesses do. Why have they not? There are hundreds of religions. There are atheists…aren’t you tight with them now, Victor?  Organize them, why don’t you? They all claim to be veritable gifts to freedom and humankind. Surely they can see human suffering. Why don’t they step up to the plate themselves?

    They can’t. They are vested in a selfish model that runs a selfish world. Let them become Jehovah’s Witnesses and benefit from the Bible education overseen by the Governing Body, Plato’s and Sider’s dream brought to life. But if they stay where they are, they must look to their own organization or lack thereof. There’s no excuse that they should not be able to copy Witnesses. They have far more resources to draw upon. We’re not big enough to do everyone for free, and we don’t know how to run a for-pay model; we’ve no experience in that. Instead, other groups must learn how to put love into action, as we did long ago.

    C’mon, Victor! If all the world needs is to ‘come together,’ then see to it! We don’t know how to do that. People without Bible education tend not to get along. You make them do it! You don’t want to, or can’t, do large-scale relief, yet you want to shoot down those who do! What a liar!

    .

  • Complaints over the USDA Farmers to Families Program—Part 2

    It took a while, but one day Heather intercepted a food package delivered to her JW grandma. Heather used to be a Witness, but says she no longer is. There were potatoes, onions, apples, and a cauliflower inside, but Heather smelled only a rat. She contacted the Counter.org people, who specialize in “food journalism that goes beyond the gustatory to uncover the money, power, and politics behind our plate.” They, it turns out, had been grumbling for some time about the USDA Farmers to Families program, and they launched an article critical of it. My faith group was in the headline, though for the most part it was about other groups, so I took time to write a response to it. I had posted on the topic once before.
     
    The Witnesses’ description “that the boxes came from Jehovah—instead of taxpayers—represents a significant departure from standard operating procedure for federal food aid,” the Counter wrote. Well—okay, people of faith are kind of like that, ever describing good things as blessings from God, not unlike how secular people will say “If you can read, thank a teacher.” My two kids read voraciously, yet save for the 6th grade they have never seen the inside of a school. They read because their parents read. We read to them, but otherwise didn’t “teach” them too much. They learned by doing. Could you not even say “If you can read, thank God” for making our brains spongelike?
     
    If there was anything hush-hush about the USDA program from the Witnesses point of view, as the article states, that never reached my ears nor those of my immediate circle. Within a few days I had posted on my own blog of it, a post that comprises Part 1 of this series. In our congregation sub-group, when an elderly woman remarked on how “the brothers” had bought this food, the one with oversight told her that it was not they—they were just distributing—it was a government program that they had signed on to.
     
    I do get the concern expressed within the Counter article that maybe there is someone who needs the food more. And that certainly could be. The part where Robert Hendricks of the Witnesses says that they advised those who received packages not to turn them down, and later presents the rationale that they will be inclined to underestimate their own burden—“downplaying any private struggles with food insecurity”—I can see that, too. (My wife and I are not destitute, but we are retired and we do live off social security—we have lived modestly as Witnesses generally do, so that the stipend is far from huge) I responded the same way that Hendricks suggested some might respond: there will be others who need it more—and we were told that if that is the case, we could share with neighbors and others. I know of ones who have done this. How many? No idea. People of faith tend to take to heart Jesus’ counsel to not let the right hand know what the left is doing and to not to blow a trumpet in front of them whenever they give. (Matthew 6:2) At some point you have to put faith in the “little people” to do what is right.
     
    The Pew Research Foundation has released studies to indicate that Jehovah’s Witnesses are the lowest income group of all faiths. Thus, even if aid to them went no further than they and their immediate associates, it would hardly be a travesty. But, as indicated, they were encouraged to share if they felt there were others who could benefit more. 
     
    The trick is finding these ones. The solution of leaving it up to the individual to share with cases of need that he/she personally knows of is probably as efficient as any, and it may be the most efficient of all. If you are poor, you will likely live in a poor neighborhood, and will know of serious cases of need. If you are a Witness not poor, you will know of some who are, because Witnesses are a tightly knit community, and can find out about such hard cases through them in the event that none are in your immediate area.
     
    Though ostensibly about Jehovah’s Witnesses, the tone of the article is irreligious in general, and whatever potential abuses of USDA rules it describes are not those of Jehovah’s Witnesses, even of such lesser charges as swapping the government logo for a religious one. The box we received plainly said ‘Farmers to Families—USDA.’ and I am glad a photo of it appears in my linked post, because Heather may have forgotten to mention it.
     
    Those church outfits will have to speak for themselves, and I noticed that some had no comment, in contrast to Hendricks, who did. Still, doesn’t jealousy account for much of the article’s tone—that communities of faith are motivated to have effective distribution channels that easily outstrip those of non-faith, those purely secular? Says the article: “Many food banks and other nonprofits have complained that they’re incurring significant, unexpected expenses related to storage and last-mile delivery.” Not to be unfeeling, but whose fault is that? 
     
    Faith, love of brother, and love of neighbor has moved ones of the JW organization to overcome these “unexpected expenses related to storage and last-mile delivery.” The packages I’ve received have been delivered directly to my door, and I have indeed shared some with others who were not recipients. Jehovah’s Witnesses thus set an example showing secular outfits how it can be done. All those outfits need to do is find similar selfless people.
     
    Of course, they do have some. I’ve nothing but praise for secular food relief organizations. But they don’t have such selfless ones in anywhere near the abundance as does the Witness faith-based community, and that is why massive lines have accompanied some distributions—one wonders if in some cases the aid received is not offset by the cost of gasoline in retrieving it. 
     
    In the early days of the pandemic, before monitory relief came from the government that would temporarily take the pressure off some, I wrote a check to one of these food banks. I don’t like the idea of people going hungry. I wanted to give and I did so. Yet, as I did so, I had to come to grips with the certain knowledge that inefficiencies built into such programs would dilute my contribution. It pains me that this is the case. I wish it were not. I wish they could draw upon enough people in the overall community to solve distribution issues—it’s produce, after all—it can’t sit around forever.
     
    At heart, the issue is that non-faith does not move people to be selfless to the same extent as does faith, and the article seems to me an expression of jealousy that such is the case. Is it so shocking that that when people of faith give they want to call attention to what implanted that generous spirit within them? The article appears even to have even political overtones, complaining at the perceived shortfalls of a Trump administration program.
     
    Of course, if there are abuses of the system, then someone ought lower the boom on whoever is committing them. “Saving” people in the parking lot, soliciting donations for the program, offering prayer sessions as a condition, things that Witnesses do not do, does sound as though it might violate the spirit or even letter of the program. And are parishioners low income to start with, as JWs in the aggregate are, or are some well-off? All proper matters to look at, it seems. But at present, this looks to me like another article—I have seen many—that highlights the abuses of some churches and by headline suggests that Jehovah’s Witnesses are the worst of the lot, even though Witnesses steer clear of such shenanigans.
     

    I wouldn’t know just what is the case with “Heather,” whose complaint triggered this article. But I reflect back upon when I was working in a group home that hired a new assistant manager. In short order, I began to feel some heat, and in time I went to the house manager about it. “For some reason, I think she is trying to get me fired,” I told her. The manager thought that unlikely. She asked me why that would be, and I truthfully told her I didn’t know. But I then mentioned that, as it turns out, she and I know hundreds of people in common, for she was once a member of my faith. “Oh,” the manager said, and instantly her tone changed. She said no more, I said no more, and I heard no more, until a week or two later that that asst manager had been discharged. The hostility of some ex-JWs is hard to fathom.

     
    See Part 3 to follow.
     

  • Sticking up for Pilate, and Battling the Trolls

    I always felt a little bad for Pilate. He tried to free Jesus. He really did—the four Gospel accounts make that very clear—declining only to fall on his own sword for him. For a military leader that’s not bad. It is not promising that when he says (and displays) that he is washing his hands of the blood of Jesus, the enemies of the Lord shout: “Let his blood come upon us and upon our children.” (Matthew 27:25)

    Partly to divert attention from the actions of those religious leaders, who after all, have descendants, history has cranked up the volume on Pilate’s (who does not) vileness. In time, it became almost politically incorrect to connect Jesus’ death with those leaders. However, when Mel Gibson, director of the gory film The Passion—which I have never seen, though it was almost required viewing for evangelicals, I am told (I can take the Gospel’s word for it that it was gory) was asked whether it was the Jews (not really them, but their leaders at the time) who killed Jesus, he replied: “Well, it wasn’t the Scandinavians.”

    There was a book long ago recommended to me by an older sister in the congregation—a historical novel titled simply ‘Pontus Pilate.’ It followed Pilate’s exploits through life. It presented everything from his point of view. It made him not unlikable at all, and its portrayal of Jesus was completely believable, though when it later moved on to consider reports of Paul, it presented him as a loony fanatic that many would not be able to stand for too long—it wasn’t as I picture him at all. Now I spot a review of that book here:

    Anyway, along comes someone on Twitter named Lee to challenge me over Pilate’s actions per the Bible accounts Naw, Pilate wouldn’t have done that, he says, because he was rotten as can be without a shred of decency—a tyrant who ruled with an iron fist. Besides, the Gospel accounts are hooey, and the Watchtower scholarship is nil—full of insults this fellow is. Presently, he reveals that his source is Bart Ehrman.

    Now, Bart exists for the purpose of destroying people’s faith—or at best, transferring it from faith in God to faith in man. That’s not in his job description, of course, but it is the effect of him doing his job. He sits at some university chairing the Religious Studies department, and students sign up for his courses thinking they will increase their knowledge of the Bible—how can that be a bad thing? He teaches them that it is—that is, if they regard the book a source of faith. If they just regard it critically, that is fine with him, but if they think they can extract faith from it, he works to disabuse them of that notion.

    Rather than the common sense view that the four gospels are written by four credible sources covering the same events more or less like four newspapers might cover the same events, each supplying details that the others leave out, he presents them as warring factions each trying to repackage Jesus after their own image. I remember decades ago giving the public talk ‘The Harmony of the Gospels’ and remarking how well it is that Matthew supplements Mark, because otherwise you might think that the first time Peter and John ever laid eyes on Jesus, they dropped everything to follow him after just a single sentence, which makes no sense at all. Matthew’s account makes clear they already knew each other well, and so Jesus’ saying “Come be my follower,” is just an invitation into a more intensive ministry.

    Bart presents Mark’s version as though they really do abandon everything first time they see him!—how can anyone be so stupid? I’ll know I’ve arrived as a minister when I can invite people to study the Bible as Witnesses do, and they say as though in a trance “Must…follow…Tom” as they leave home and hearth, with their lawn mower still running! Bart thinks that according to Mark it actually happened that way!—since he thinks Mark’s purpose is to present Jesus as the mesmerizing miracle worker. You know, it would help if he hadn’t had come from an evangelical background where they believe all sorts of things that make little sense, so if he pats himself on the back at breaking free from that—well, who can blame him? If only his Bible knowledge had been well grounded in the first place.

    So Lee has read Bart, and he thinks he thereby knows more than anyone else. He says: “As far as I know there are no non-Biblical accounts of this practice (freeing a prisoner, such as Pilate offered with Barabbas) and the Romans tended not to free insurrectionists to go round causing trouble all over again. I find it interesting that Barabbas means "son of the father" which is a good description of Jesus. A natural conclusion to draw is that this is a literary device and not reporting of real events.”

    I replied: “It is also a good description of anyone. Who can say? The account is specific enough and (atypically) in all four gospels. I see no need to blow it off as an invention. Maybe it was one of those deals that politicians are wont to pull every four years—releasing a few prisoners sometimes because they deserve it and/or sometimes because it makes them look good.”

    He tipped his hand more, and this time revealed that his source was Bart—linking to a post Bart had written on the topic, along with his own: “Why look for chinks of light to defend a sectarian interpretation rather than look to the most reasonable explanation of available evidence?”

    It’s time to reveal to this character that I, too, know of the great, educated, and all-knowing Bart. I replied:

    “Bart says that our sources for Pilate are almost nil, yet it is still enough for him to know Pilate through and through!? I think my take is more reasonable. Leaders throw out a bone or two today. Why not then? Maybe Barabbas was old and toothless by then, all the fight out of him. As to Bart’s recent book, Heaven and Hell, I have written that any JW could have written the bulk of it.

    He responded in a flurry of tweets. When that happens, and if you want to continue, don’t respond to each one. Just because he thinks in a muddle, it does not mean you have to. Pick just one. He bombarded me with (I’ll number them—they all came at once:

    1. Given that little time was spent prior to execution, if the Barabbas character was old and wrinkly that doesn't seem to have stopped his sedition and would not prevent his execution.

    2. Yes, from what I've heard of Bart discussing it, I also noted how similar to JW's a lot of his position is. It seemed odd when he was attacked without being named in the March 2020 JW broadcast. [not that I noticed, but then if he was not named, who can say?]

    3. I'm not sure where you get the idea he's been cribbing JW teachings. An annihilationist hell has been a feature of some Christian denominations for hundreds of years. Martin Luther and Tyndale for example. It is also common among Millerite offshoots including the JW's.

    4. "the scholarship of the Watchtower must be elevated . . .  their critics generally assume that they have none." No, just largely only carried out at Bethel whilst the rank and file are asked not to dig too deeply into the secular scholarship the writing department accesses.

    5. JW writing department treatment of scholarship is more to give a partial presentation to fit pre-conceived theology, not to ignore scholarship altogether.

    6. JW writing department treatment of scholarship is more to give a partial presentation to fit pre-conceived theology, not to ignore scholarship altogether.

    I was tempted to respond to #3. What is an “annihilationist hell” other than no hell at all?—which is what Jehovah’s Witnesses teach, and almost nobody else! People just make up terms they hope you don’t know to make themselves look smart.

    Instead, I decided to ignore this point, along with his other insults, and stay on topic—his appeal to Bart for authority: I replied: “Bart has only two sources regarding Pilate [Philo and Josephus], both Jewish upper class intellectuals, both with every reason to deeply resent occupying Rome. Why does it not occur to you or Bart that they just might not be unbiased sources? The Gospel account is probably more unbiased and true.

    He shifted into high gear spinning theological terms: “Did you adopt this view of Johanine neutrality and historicity after a careful meta-analysis of scholarly work or after adopting a position of Biblical infallibility without such a scholarly exercise?”

    “Come, come,” said I. “Your argument is weak. Don’t just keep flailing away nor “pull rank” with PhDs as though only they can think. Lots of Trump people are smart, too. Will you trust two of them to give an honest appraisel of Biden? Or vice versa? The gospel writers are more reliable, and infinitely more detailed. Brilliant and learned as your two sources may be, they wrote exceedingly little, not just on Pilate, but on the entire Christian movement.”

    He next revealed that he had no idea what he was talking about, and didn’t really care. He just thought he could score a few points:

    He: “I've no idea what Philo said about the Christian movement and doubt Josephus wrote what is attributed to him. How do you judge the reliability of NT writers accounts of miracles?”

    See how he sweeps aside the fact that he doesn’t really know anything, and presses on with the fight anyway. It’s not happening on my watch. He already knows how I feel about the reliability of NT writers because he knows I am one of Jehovah’s Witnesses—he just wants to start a fight after awing me with credentials he does not have. There are only four brief “real time” mentions of first-century Christianity apart from the Bible itself. He had mentioned two—Josephus and Philo. I asked him if he knew the other, too. [They are Tacitus and Pliny the Younger] Of course, he did not—or at any rate I never heard from him again.

    I thus never got the opportunity to point out that the reason there are only four extremely brief contemporary mentions of first-century Christianity outside of the New Testament itself is that the movement was (and is) one of the common people—who are ever beneath the notice of the “educated” class.

     

  • “Close Friendship With Jehovah Brings the Greatest Joy” was the Title of the Talk.

    “It can’t be pleasing to Jehovah when we fixate on the negative,” was a theme of Anthony Morris’s talk Friday PM at the Regional Convention. It is a choice. An unconscious choice, maybe, and difficult to retrain—but it ought be the aim. The talk was entitled: Close Friendship With Jehovah Brings the Greatest Joy!

    “All creation keeps on groaning,” he said, quoting Romans 8:22, but does that mean we should go into it full mode, too? Though the backdrop was unpleasant in Habakkuk’s time, he was set on rejoicing: “Although the fig tree may not blossom and there may be no fruit on the vines; although the olive crop may fail and the fields may produce no food; Although the flock may disappear from the pen, and there may be no cattle in the stalls; Yet, as for me, I will exult in Jehovah;I will be joyful in the God of my salvation.” he said. (Habakkuk 3:17-18)

    Instead, practice being like Jesus in as many ways as possible, was the thrust of the talk. Practice giving and people will give to you—stingy people are never happy—stop judging and you will no means be judged. He didn’t say “Don’t start judging,” but “stop judging,” because they already were. It made me think of how the same speaker had handled the counsel of Jesus at Matthew 6:25: “Stop being anxious about your lives as to what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your bodies as to what you will wear,” and in this case reiterated it as though one might a child: “Just, stop it!” planting the idea that it was not uncontrollable. He didn’t say, “Don’t be anxious,” as though they weren’t already. He said “Stop being anxious,” conceding that they were.

    Other points touched on in that talk: Don’t be envious of others, don’t begrudge someone’s material prosperity, because “jeolousy is rottenness to the bones.” (Proverbs 14:30) Brother Morris has a way of murmuring through his own talks, appearing to reason it out as he goes, so that no one in a thousand years would accuse him of “speechmaking.”

    And what to make of 1 Peter 4:15? “Let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or a wrongdoer or a busybody in other people’s matters.” Most people would rate murderer as super-serious, thief somewhat less so, and busybody so far down the scale as to hardly register, yet Peter mentioned them all in the same breath.

    Don’t be a busybody, was his admonition, and being a busybody usually stems from being dissatisfied in one’s own life. “All the days of the aflicted ones are bad”—Morris quoted Proverbs 15:15, so try to dwell on the second half of the verse: “But the one with a cheerful heart has a continual feast,” and strive hard to squeeze out the “poor me” attitude, needlessly focusing on the afflictions. Agonizing over problems that are beyond our control cannot be pleasing to God, instead, try to focus on the more productive things—things that we can do.

    It occurred to me afterwards that this year we are not really calling it a ‘Regional Convention.’ With the entire convention moved online due to Covid-19, the “region” it covers is pretty big. This is it is just the “2020 Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses” with the theme “Always Rejoice,” which can be streamed from the jw.org website.

  • American’s Frontline Doctors and the Canceled JW Conventions—Tying Together Two Topics that You Wouldn’t Think Could Be Tied Together At All

    When I heard the truncated clip, I was disappointed. It makes our guy look like a religious nut. “It’s a modern-day miracle,” he says, seemingly his lead-off line about the Jehovah’s Witnesses move to present their annual summer conventions online.

    It’s not a modern-day miracle. It’s a technological accomplishment—an impressive one, to be sure—after all, it involves 500 languages, done on a crash basis, and broadcast worldwide—but it is not a “miracle.” It is not Jesus walking on water. Forgive me if I admit that when I first saw the clip with that as his lead statement, I supposed that the man was a nut—an over enthusiastic zealot who had drunk too much of his own Kool-Aid.

    Yet, do I not come across the entire interview several days later to find it of a completely different flavor? It turns out that he is not that way at all—his remarks were framed to make him sound a fanatic by a media that feels it their duty to do so when dealing with matters of faith, something that is not their forte. He never meant the “miracle” remark literally. It’s a gush of enthusiasm such as anyone will have upon completing an overwhelming project. It is Neil Armstrong saying “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It is a throw-off line of hyperbole that comes 5 minutes into the interview—not the lead-off pronouncement of the truncated version.

    This is so infuriating, but also so typical. Everyone will say something in the course of 15 minutes that can be misconstrued by those of another agenda—who simply can’t get their heads around a different point of view or may even be trying to deliberately sabotage it—to make the person look like a nut.

    I almost wonder if something similar is now at work with the doctor from Cameroon recommending the hydroxychloroquine drug for Covid 19. There were ten doctors who banded together for a public statement before the steps of the Supreme Court, but because this one (Stella Immanuel) has made remarks in her past about demons, and the others presumably have not, she becomes the sole media focus to discredit the lot of them. The other nine are sent out to pasture.

    I don’t often speak on my blog of demons, nor of the devil. Much of my target audience chokes at mention of God, so should I really send them into orbit with posts of the devil? Besides, humans are perfectly capable of doing evil things all on their own—a line of demarcation is hard to draw.

    But neither do I think someone should be pilloried for bringing up the topic, much less when it has nothing to do with the story at hand. If anything, I am the expedient chicken, not her. Anyone who knows anything about Africa knows that belief in interaction with the spirits is well-nigh universal. She is to be expected not to pick up on it? Let the thinkers today get a handle on evil—even eradicate it a little bit—before they go ridiculing those who go off their materialistic script.

    At root, though the doctor and our guy may be poles apart, the reason to trash them is the same, or at least it is a kissing cousin: they are both serious about things not endorsed by today’s prevailing atheistic materialistic view. In her case, there may be more to the story—something that is deliberately discredited. In our case, there certainly is. Us first:

    Robert Hendricks, spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses, speaks of how both the door-to-door ministry and the annual conventions have been suspended for the first time in history. The reasons are telling—that of “respect for life” and “love of neighbor.” Probably no one has more potential to spread the Covid 19 virus than Jehovah’s Witnesses in their old model. Not only do they routinely approach people, but their organization is the largest convention-holding one in the world—people converge sometimes by the tens of thousands for events held in stadiums. We just couldn’t see ourselves doing that this year, Hendricks said. With a lead-in time of only about a month, Witnesses put the entire event online to be streamed worldwide.

    Their organization had gone into lockdown even before governments began to require it. “Just because you can drive 75 mph in some areas doesn’t mean that you should,” he stated. I told the CultExpert, he of the #freedomofmind hashtag, that “our” people were more responsible than his. Our people promptly and without fuss laid low—Covid 19 would be long gone by now if all were like them—but “his” people? You don’t think many of them will use their “freedom of mind” to tell the government what it can do with its rules?

    Frankly, since media jumps all over churches that defy “science” by gathering, you would think they would praise to the heavens one that has set the example for being proactive. Yet, even when trying to compliment, they are hamstrung by a mindset that pronounces religion outmoded. Even as the New York Times covers the socially responsible move, (that of suspending the door-to-door ministry, not that of the conventions, which came later), they take for granted that it is done only for the sake of appearances. The decision “followed anguished discussions at Watchtower headquarters with leaders deciding March 20 that knocking on doors would leave the impression that members were disregarding the safety of those they hoped to convert,” as though the safety itself doesn’t mean a hill of beans to them. “Members are called on to share scriptures in person with nonmembers,” it wrote. Well, in fact they are called to do it, but it is by the scriptures themselves, and not the commands of HQ, as they like to frame it. “Now if I am declaring the good news, it is no reason for me to boast, for necessity is laid upon me. Really, woe to me if I do not declare the good news!” writes the apostle at 1 Corinthians 9:16. Why do these materialistic ones not just say that the Bible itself is a “cult manual” and be done with it?

    As to the 500 languages (1000 in print): the interview branched into this as the newsman asked some questions—it turns out that his mom is a Witness, and he thanked Hendricks for keeping her safe. The languages feat can be done because there is no profit motive, Hendricks said. That’s why no one else even comes close—Google, Apple, Amazon—no one. “There’s no end to what can be done if there is not a profit motive,” he said.

    A cynical me says that he will probably be fired for going so far “off-script.” Naw—I don’t really think he will be, but if it is like the Cameroon doctor, he could be. She and her fellow doctors were promptly muzzled on social media for “spreading misinformation.” Will the News13 reporter be accused of “enabling” it as well?

    Her turn: A major study of the Henry Ford Healthcare System in Detroit finds that the drug hydroxychloroquine is extremely effective. Why it is trashed as it is, I will never know. But since it is dirt cheap, and since the President has recommended it, it is hard not to think that either or both or these facts suggest possible reasons. 

    By the time, the Henry Ford study was released, media had already reached the verdict that the drug was no good. This was based upon an earlier study published in Lancet that said hydroxychloroquine was ineffective, and in fact, even dangerous. However, Lancet later retracted their article. The reason they retracted it is that it was of a study that had not been submitted to peer review. The reason it had not been submitted to peer review is that it would have failed—it was a very sloppy study, sabotaged in numerous ways. The reason it was taken up by the media anyway, despite being so sloppy, is that it discredited Trump, who first said he liked the stuff and later that he even took it. Everything is politicized today—everyone gets into the fray of battling over who will rule the world.

    Hydroxychloroquine has been around forever, a mainstay of treatment for several ills. It would have been run off the road long ago were it so dangerous. It is extremely cheap—another reason to attack it from an entirely different quarter—Remdesivir, a competing treatment, costs $1000 per dose! Does the cheaper drug have side effects? Just listen to the side effects of drugs relentlessly hawked on TV today—it is enough to scare your socks off. Cardiologist Dr. William O’Neill, medical director at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan, director of the Detroit study said: “I've never seen science [so] politicized in 40 years of practice.”

     

     

     

     

  • One Virtual Convention Replaces a Few Hundred Physical Ones

    It started yesterday, just after the congregation meeting via zoom, just like Rocky said it would. It is divided up into 6 sessions, to be streamed from the website. The invitation is to view them directly after the abbreviated Watchtower Study, but they can be watched anytime.

    I appreciated that the program went on with barely a hiccup, transferred to virtual. You just know that Zoom is giving people ideas. It works so well that even when the ‘coast is clear’ signal is given—assuming that it is someday—it will still play some role yet to be determined. At the very least, it will be the new option for people who can’t physically get to meetings, replacing the telephone tie-in. I could be wrong, but…let us be perfect candid…how likely is that?

    Remember how Wayne Whitepebble used to carry on about the huge expense per family to attend? Even with economizing and choosing hotels on the recommended lodging list, it still was an annual expense of several hundred dollars. I wouldn’t be surprised if virtual supplements actual to some extent in the future.

    On the first day, I liked the many stadium shots of Regional Conventions during the music introduction, and I even prefer the song in languages I do not understand—it gives it more of an international flavor.

    Not only did they all start yesterday—actually just one now—but the entire world membership and their guests saw it. Even foreign languages—Rocky says last year there were about 100–saw the same speakers, with translation dubbed in. Of course, speakers at the Regionals of previous years have never been clunkers, but this year it is Governing Body members and their direct helpers—even better.

    Some wiseacre has put out a meme, and it has been going around for awhile, of how to “prepare” for the virtual convention. It involves replicating all the inconveniences, and even aggravations, of the actual physical conventions. It’s very funny, and the friends love it.

    Suggestions include making sure that you choose an uncomfortable chair to sit in, and then ramming another chair directly in front of it so you have no foot room. Make sure that you have an unstable platform for taking notes so that your notes (or even device) is sure to fall on the floor a time or two—and so forth—there are about a dozen of them. I even added one directed to a group of youthful sisters online—prepare ahead of time photos of all the eligible brothers so that you may engage in “fellowshopping” between sessions. 

    Some of the dozen of so items of the list are not aggravating at all—they are merely inconveniences that are part of the package—they even contribute to the annual excitement. Still, streaming offers a way around much of what frustrates, while saving each family a huge amount of dough. We will see how much of it survives. Already in Rochester, at the last moment last year, Regional Conventions were cancelled at the location we had been using for 30 years. A change in management dramatically hiked the rates, and also (I am told) insisted that all pass through metal detectors manned by the facilities‘ own staff in order to enter. Disney on Ice, along with some Monster Truck Rally, also cancelled.

    Through the years, Witnesses have developed a huge attendant department that will be far more vigilant than anything building management can come up with and that can spot a suspicious character blocks away, but new management would yield on nothing. We are to believe that some sleepy door employee, paid as little as possible, who will shake down a old man for a nail clipper and let an occasional knife slip by—we all know how these things work—is going to be more effective than our own people—alert due to love of those they protect? I don’t think so.

    Witnesses canceled, with about three weeks to go before start of convention. Things hung in the air, though all were assured, and nobody doubted, that alternative arrangements would be made. They were—all was transferred to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, about four hours away for my wife and I. This year (prior to Covid-19) the entire 2020 Convention was going to be held at the Assembly Hall—an unheard of development (at least for me) that would entail splitting it up into a dozen different sections. 

    It also doesn’t hurt that a small but very vociferous bevy of protesters is also thwarted by the switch—one reason the attendant department was so well organized was to prevent these ones getting in the face of visitors who aimed only to attend the convention in peace. The world has gone nuts in protesting things, and it can lead to the impression that many people don’t really have much to do with their lives. 

    So changes were already underway In some places, and now with Covid-19, maybe some new ones may endure even once the all-clear signal is given. Unprecedented recent chaos made more timely the point raised by the keynote speaker, Kenneth Cook: “Is it possible to rejoice as the world crumbles around us?” It certainly is crumbling, and there isn’t a lot of hope among the general populace these days.

    I had been told that Mark Sanderson’s talk Friday morning would be super-encouraging, on how one may “rejoice under persecution,” and it was. It even, as though for a personal zing to me, concluded with the same experience that I have used to conclude ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates!’—of a Russian brother sentenced to prison, who in slightly tongue-in-cheek fashion (which may or may not have been wise), invited the court to consider several years into the future, where there will be so many Witnesses in prison, and they will have so many Bible studies there—he had worked out the ratios—that when their sentences were up, they will not want to leave, and the Russian court would regret having ever sent them there in the first place. “He has a way with words, doesn’t he?” I concluded the book. “And math.”

    (Like Dear Mr. Putin – Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia, I have used Covid-19 time to clear up blips, typos, and punctuation faux pas in ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates!’ that should have been cleared up before release, but I am only one person who had no idea how stubborn those things would be to get out, There were not nearly so many as the other book—the original was composed differently—but there were some, particularly at the end where I had very sloppily appended some updates post-publication. They’re all cleaned up, now.)

    Then, too, there was that series of videos—the kind they always have—on ordinary scenarious and snares with which to cope. My wife has worked in machine shops. When that brother in the video dumped his cup of coffee and fried out the machine, she knew what that machine was. She knew how much it cost. She knew how much trouble he was in.

    Did anyone else think that the janitor peering through the glass panel of the door—who saw it all—could have been like old Roger Chillingsworth had that brother tried to hide his ”sin?” Maybe he would have tormented the brother’s conscience until years later he would collapse on the floor, and co-workers would rip open his shirt to see “I did it” branded on his chest.

    I sort of liked the line, “It even smells of coffee,” as they were thinking how feasible it might be to try to cover it up, before the brother decided (rather promptly) to fess up.

     

     

  • Who is “Jehovah’s Mouthpiece,” Who is “Inspired,” and Who is “Spirit-Directed?”

    Q: The Governing Body doesn’t directly write what becomes the spiritual food, does it? Doesn’t the Writing Committee originate it, and they merely put their stamp of approval on it?

    A: The defining word here is “merely.”

    If my roof caves in tomorrow and I decide that it’s God’s fault, or if I park on the Kingdom Hall lawn, the elders tell me not to, and I say, “Oh yeah?! Well I show you in my next post!”—if I do it at Bethel, the GB will “merely” decline to put their stamp of approval on my rant—they will put me on potato-peeling detail in the kitchen instead, and call up someone from the bullpen less deranged. But if I am a loose cannon on my own blog—there is nothing anyone can do when I go haywire. That’s why I don’t ever expect to be acknowledged for my self-appointed role as an apologist, much less commended for it. Even the real apologists of the early centuries have not fared will at the hands of the writing committee, that tends to focus on things they got wrong.

    No, the “merely” is a big deal. It makes for constancy and consistency. Call it a “think tank” at Bethel if you will. It is a concentration of gray hairs and experience, of meeting trials, of knowing they are to be judged for their actions (or inaction), of following up on having brought understanding of the sacred writings to begin with. 

    I can just shoot my mouth off here, say whatever pops into my head, insult Vic Vomodog whenever he deserves it (which is almost always), praise the Benoit Blanc movie* even though there is crude language—and perhaps I have never faced a care in the world. But they can’t. 

    What are my morals? I could (to borrow from Bob Dylan) “be respectably married—or running a whorehouse in Buenos Aries.” Nobody knows. But the Bethel writers are vetted, not just for being good writers, but for being good Christians. They take it for granted there that if your conduct is sullied, somehow that will come out in your guidance, even if it doesn’t seem to at first glance.

    I had a friend that, eccentric though he was, had a gift of making complex things simple—even oversimplifying to drive the point home.  I can still hear him recounting to someone just how it works in Jehovah’s organization: “At Bethel, the Governing Body study their Bibles. An idea will occur to one of them. They will discuss it among themselves and when they all come to agreement, it will appear in print.”

    “Now, the thing is,” he continued, “you also study your Bible. The same idea might have occurred to you, maybe even before it occurred to them. ‘And if this were Christendom, you’d run out and start your own religion over it.’  But because you know it is not a free-for-all, and you know that Jehovah is a God of order, you wait for material to come through the appointed channel.”

    So if they have called themselves “Jehovah’s mouthpiece” in the past, I can live with that. They have the greatest think tank collection of gray hairs that, per the scriptures, denotes wisdom, of experience in Christian works, in safeguarding and extending the king’s belongings, in knowing the will be held accountable before God. They have the  greatest sense of direction and following up on momentum. One must not do a Miriam and say—“does not Jehovah speak through all of us?” I am happy to have a thought that makes sense—I don’t go thinking I am God’s gift to the brotherhood for it.

    The trouble is that there are so many literalists who see the expression “crocodile tears” and take it as proof that the one shedding them is a crocodile. There are so many literalists who do not strive to think of how phrases like “Jehovah’s mouthpiece” might apply, but they strive to think of how they don’t. It is the same with “being led by spirit.” It is almost too explosive a phrase to use because of the literalists—if you go to the bathroom—well—how can you be guided by spirit? since holy spirit would never do THAT!

    It’s the same with elders and servants being “appointed by holy spirit.” How do you know they are? To my mind it is because the qualifications are in the Book inspired by holy spirit, and the judgment as to how persons measure up is made by a (small) “think tank” of holy spirit, and seconded by a traveling minister patterned after scripture—another repository of holy spirit. It works for me. But there will be some who think that if an appointee ever goes bad afterwards it must be that they were not appointed by holy spirit. I think not. Any of these terms must necessarily be “watered down” some when put in the context of humans, “in whose heart the inclination to do bad” is ingrained from his youth up.

    I think of certain brother appointed upon the recommendation of the BOE. The circuit overseer, an older and very experienced man, okayed the recommendation, with the observation: “He’s not the most humble brother in the world.” He didn’t have to be. All he had to do was to meet each of the qualifications to an acceptable degree. Alas, the CO should have listened to his gut, for the man in time went apostate. He was the one who was a history buff and used to impress the householder by answering, “Because I’m an historian,” when asked how he knew this or that about the past. Once I said to him, “Will you knock it off?! You are a history buff. A historian is when other people acknowledge you, not just you yourself!”

    I could be wrong, but I bet the GB has learned to be very leery of such phrases and terms as “mouthpiece” and “inspired” and “spirit-directed”—not just for all the literalists, but for all the critics (who are often the same).  Some things if they say just once, it is magnified 100 times. Other things they say 100 times, only to find it ignored. “Don’t save seats for everyone you know,” they would say about the Regionals, “think of the elderly.” Finally, they gave up, and said to let the elderly in early, and everyone else only after the oldsters were seated. Innumerable directives went unheeded. Yet if they speak just once about “forums,” their words are enshrined for all time. I alluded to this in Tom Irregardless and Me. The organization would say that the Governing Body does not endorse such and such, and the friends would accordingly have a helpful sense of priority and focus. And then Oscar or someone would be found doing it, and Tom Pearlandswine would descend to tell him that the Governing Body DOES NOT ENDORSE!!! such and such. You never know what quote will be magnified and what will be forgotten, but I bet they are advancing on the learning curve.

    …..

    *Aw, shut up, with your Kentucky-fried Foghorn Leghorn drawl!” the villain says to Benoit Blanc. it’s about time someone said it to me. (Someone just had.) If you see the movie ‘Knives Out’—it is free on Amazon Prime—you must be prepared for a bit of language. It is by no means filthy, by today’s standards—I don’t recall a single f-bomb—but no way is it pristine like in the Kingdom Hall. It is an Hercule Poirot parody, with Daniel Craig playing the Christie-like eccentric, brilliant, and world-renowned sleuth, Benoit Blanc. There is nothing funnier, to my mind, then when he opens his mouth to speak an overbearing combination of French/Southern Redneck accent. He routinely says things that, at first glance are profound, but at second are just plain stupid.