David makes a dumb move at 70,000 die. Israel of old clears out the Promised Land and many more die. And then—what about slavery?
Probably, the way it works is that once humans, in the persons of Adam and Eve, have sailed past God’s will and entered the doomed experiment of independent self-rule, to be concluded several thousands of years later, God works with the products of that rebellion to achieve his purpose.
This means, if warfare and yielding to the whims of the gods has become a fixture in life, it is used in furtherance of that purpose. People of that time may not like it, but they will take it right in stride as the sort of thing that happens in their times—whereas people 4000 years later won’t be able to get their heads around it at all. We, from the present day, imagine a world court of some sort that will make a stab at punishing war crimes. Not so then. The time-tested way to clear people out, especially those whose “error” has had 400 years to come to fruition, the way Genesis 15:16 says, is through warfare.
It is rather the same thing with slavery. Modern woke people expect Jesus, or any character of godly standing, to suspend all activity upon encountering it so as to deliver lectures as to how unjust it is. Instead, they say: “well, humans chose injustice (albeit unknowingly) from the earliest days of the first couple,” so they work with it, rather than rail against it. “Were you called when a slave? Do not let it concern you; but if you can become free, then seize the opportunity,” Paul writes at 1 Corinthians 7:21.
In short, humans chose injustice. So God incorporates all the products of that choice into his developing purpose. In the case of David and the 70 deceased K, this is likely a realized manifestation of God’s warning not to choose a king. The system of judges was working just fine. Don’t mess it up:
“However, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel and said: “No, but a king is what will come to be over us. And we must become, we also, like all the nations, and our king must judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8:19-20)
Oh yeah! Cool! Do it the way “all the nations” do. Maybe we can even have our own flag!
Sometimes the king loses those battles. When he does, since you’ve put yourself under his authority, you bear a part of the defeat. Even in lands of participatory government, when you succeed in putting your guy into office, then he commits mayhem abroad, don’t you share some bloodguilt for putting him in that position? Can you really claim to be an innocent civilian?
That God uses the products of early human rebellion against him, in this case the nations they congeal themselves into, as instruments in his purpose, is no more evident than it is in the Book of Isaiah. He uses the nation of Assyria, even calling it the rod of his anger, to discipline his own people:
“Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.” (Isaiah 10:5-6) Later, Babylon will be the instrument, as demonstrated most notable in chapters 39 and 47.
They are fickle and imprecise instruments, as would be expected of products of human rebellion—hard to control, even for God, but such are the tools he has to work with. When the hangman gets too ghoulish, even the State may restrain him. So it is that the mayhem-inducing nations go too far, and God must pull them back. “Should the axe exult itself over the One who chops with it?” Jehovah rebukes Assyria. (10:15) It is the same way with Babylon: “I was angry with my people and profaned my heritage; I gave them into your hand, you showed them no mercy…” (47:6) The oppression is limited. Once the discipline of his people is complete, His anger turns away.
Though disguised, the beef of many is not with the 70K, nor clearing the Promised Land, nor the mean Assyrians or Babylonians, nor the myriad other criticisms they bring up, but with God’s overall plan to let thousands of years elapse to demonstrate that human self-rule independent of him doesn’t work. Rather than the present world “passing away,” they appear to want it repaired, and imagine that lectures on the evils of warfare and slavery will do the trick. If there is one thing history has taught us, it is that humans at the highest levels of accountability are perfectly capable of arguing away whatever is recorded in scripture in favor of what they would rather do. The way the Bible has it laid out is that after the experiment of self-rule has ended, Jehovah will forcefully uphold his sovereignty through the rulership of his son, amidst much loss of life from those who yet oppose. And I suspect they won’t like that either.
”They love this current system so they want to just ‘repair’ the aspects they dont want not realizing its broken and the only solution is to destroy it and have something better”
Sometimes I phrase this that these don’t really want an end to injustice as much as to the symptoms of injustice, mostly the ones that affect them personally. Or, to be more charitable, to the ones that they know of personally. A central Bible theme is that human self-rule is itself the source of injustice, and that injustice manifests itself in so many ways at so many levels that nobody can possible tally it all up—so they just focus on fixing ones those they know, often at the expense of ones they do not know. Human self-rule itself has to go if injustice is to be solved.
These are the ones who put unlimited faith in humankind—or maybe it is disdain for God—so that they continue to insist humans are salvageable, that all that lacks is more education, more communication, more ‘coming together.’ At root, it is those who suppose that man is basically good, rather than fatally flawed. Witnesses take the ‘fatally flawed’ viewpoint, and that the only remedy is salvation through Christ.
It really is true that “the word of God is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints from the marrow, and is able to discern thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
Meanwhile, the most learned theologians, stymied by tools that prevent looking into the divine, attribute all such scriptures to after-the-fact damage control, as though putting lipstick on a pig. The 70K died, the original inhabitants west of the Jordan wiped out, Israel and Judah itself desecrated at the hands of foreign powers, and narrative must be concocted to cover these unpleasantries from a human point of view.
Q: If God really can bring an end to war so easily, then what is he waiting for? After all, the longer he delays, the more generations live and die in suffering.
Yes, they do, but it is reversible through the provision of resurrection. In time, former distresses will be forgotten, as though a bad dream.
One must not rush a trial. One must allow it to play out, distressing as it may be to those under the gun. For Witnesses, the question to be determined arose at the very beginning of human creation, with Adam rejecting God’s right to rule for his own. God could eliminate them and start again, but who’s to say the next pair won’t raise the same point? Better to let it play out.
The overall Bible tale is that, starting with this rebellion, God allows humans to make good on their claim of independence from him. He allows them to devise their own governments down through the ages, their own economies, justice, ethics, inventions—organize or disorganize any way they will. Only when the results become the absolute trainwreck that human rule is today does the question begin to be answered. Questions answered and precedent supplied, then God can forcibly bring about the rule by his Son.
It’s the theme of a book I wrote not too long ago, entitled “A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen.” A theodicy is a theological term referring to the attempts to answer how a God of love would coexist with evil and suffering. It is among the oldest questions of time, and likely the most important:
This ‘Workman’s Theodicy’ is centered in free will. Is such a vital component of life or not? Free will does make a bad course possible, but it also makes a good course so much more meaningful. How meaningful is someone’s love if you know they have been programmed so that they cannot respond in any other way? The trial has to play out. The consequences of human independence from God must become manifest.
God has chosen not to be an enabler, allowing human rebellion but making sure nothing REALLY bad happens. Those who deal with harmful and/or addictive behaviors know that enabling is a dead end. Enablers allow, and even encourage, destructive behavior, charging someone else to prevent the mess that inevitably results. Such ones don’t actually hate what is bad. They just hate the symptoms of what is bad and want someone else to clean those up. There are critics of the Witnesses who complain about “manipulation” and “control,” but appear to want manipulation and control to be woven into the very fabric of life, so that humans never have to face the consequences of their destructive conduct.
There are no end of negative consequences from going independent of God. Were their wish to come true, that the really bad consequences of independence from God were wiped away, complaints would soon coalesce about the next worst things on the list—why doesn’t God prevent those, too? No. This is just recommending that God be an enabler. It is something he will not do, for our sakes as well as his own.
“A cat that sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again”—attributed to Mark Twain. “Nor will it set on a cold stove, because they all look hot.” That is the goal: to keep humans away from the “stove” of self-rule, cold that can so easily turn to hot, with all its inherent hobbling consequences.
A million years into everlasting life, when people have been unshackled from sin to be all that they can be, the intense suffering some underwent during a few of their 70 or 80 years will not be something they hold a grudge over. It is as that illustration goes that Witnesses sometimes use: parents will submit a child to a painful operation if they know that it is necessary to future happy and healthy life.
Through ingenuity, humans overcome their natural limitations against flight and deep-sea diving. They can fly and they can submerge. But no amount of ingenuity can equip them to overcome their inability to self-rule, “man dominating man to his injury.” All such efforts devolve into some permutation of “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.>” Such were the takeaways from Sunday’s talk on End of War. Many time’s I’ve compared inability to fly to inability to rule, but I’ve never extended it that the first can be overcome but not the second.
“Come and witness the activities of Jehovah, How he has done astonishing things on the earth. He is bringing an end to wars throughout the earth.” (Psalm 46:8-9) Pretty good trick if he can pull that one off.
The solution advanced in that talk—all Bible promises—on how God would do that is:
1: bringing an end to human governments, replacing them by the rule of his Son
2: raising humankind to a state of perfection
3: removing the influence of Satan, the one right now “misleading the entire inhabited earth.” (Revelation 12:9)
So it was in the ministry that I answered the Muslim man who, in good faith, watered down the solution to war to that of all people sincerely living the tenets of their faith. Yes, it’s a good thing when they do that, I agreed, but make no mistake: that will not be sufficient to overcome man’s inability to rule and their resulting proclivity to war.
This was the fellow from Bangladesh who had escaped war there as a child and still had nightmares about it. He’d been in America for decades and was “living the American dream,” he and all his siblings having attained PhD status. He, not me, was the one who brought up, all on his own, his prime concern that ending war was mankind’s greatest need, along with his fear that humans are regressing in that goal.
But even after a return call, I couldn’t shake his equally prime concern that I had come to “change his religion.” “Look, if I come 200 times and we agree each time, on the 201st time I will say ‘Do you want to change your religion?’ but it’s not going to happen until that time. In the meantime, it’s just conversation. Nothing to worry about.” Nope. Didn’t fly with this fellow.
The trouble is, there’s really not too many faiths that point to the above solution of war. Most water it down to God somehow blessing human efforts to end it through political means. Or, to this man’s hoped-for outcome that each person will start sincerely living the tenets of their faith. “When the broken-hearted people living in the world agree,” is how McCartney put it. Good luck on that goal.
Q: If God really can bring an end to war that easily, then what is he waiting for? After all, the longer he delays, the more generations live and die in suffering.
Yes, they do, but it is reversible through the provision of resurrection. In time, former distresses will be forgotten, as though a bad dream.
One must not rush a trial. One must allow it to play out, distressing as it may be to those under the gun. For Witnesses, the question to be determined arose at the very beginning of human creation, with Adam rejecting God’s right to rule for his own. God could flatten them and start again, but who’s to say the next pair won’t raise the same point? Better to let it play out.
The overall Bible tale is that, starting with this rebellion, God allows humans to make good on their claim of independence from him. He allows them to devise their own governments down through the ages, their own economies, justice, ethics, inventions—organize or disorganize any way they will. Only when the results become the absolute trainwreck that human rule is today does the question begin to be answered. Questions answered and precedent supplied, then God can forcibly bring about the rule by his Son.
It’s the theme of a book I wrote not too long ago, entitled “A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen.” Probably you know that theodicy is a theological term referring to the attempts to answer how a God of love would coexist with evil and suffering. It is among the oldest questions of time, and likely the most important:
Did they tell Charles Darwin that God was picking flowers?
Charles Darwin’s favorite child, Annie, contracted scarlet fever at age 10. She agonized for 6 weeks before dying. Also a casualty was Darwin’s faith in a beneficent Creator. The book Evolution: Triumph of an Idea, by Carl Zimmer, tells us that Darwin “lost faith in angels.” That’s an odd expression. Why would it be used?
Did they tell him that God was picking flowers?
Is there any analogy more slanderous to God than the one in which God is picking flowers? Up there in heaven He has the most beautiful garden imaginable. But it is not enough! He is always on the watch for pretty flowers, the very best, and if He spots one in your garden, He helps himself, even though it may be your only one. Yes, He needs more angels, and if your child is the most pure, the most beautiful, happy, innocent child that can be, well….watch out! He or she may become next new angel. Sappy preachers give this illustration all the time, apparently thinking helps.
The picking flowers analogy is nowhere found in the Bible. However, there is a parable parallel in all respects EXCEPT THE MORAL AT THE END. It is the one Nathan told to David after he had taken Bathsheba as a wife and killed her husband.
“The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.” David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12:1-7)
This analogy appeals to us. It is just. The man is not expected to take comfort that the king stole his wife. No, he deserves execution! So how is it that preachers have God doing the same, expecting it will comfort? Of course it will not! The man who stole the sole lamb deserves to die! Preachers make a horrific mess trying to extract themselves from the moral corners their doctrines unfailingly paint them into.
How different history might have been had Darwin known the truth about death. Not just Darwin, but every one of his time, as well as before and after. Instead, fed a diet of phony pieties….junk food, really…..he and others of inquisitive minds searched elsewhere in an attempt to make sense of life.
“In the absence of a workable theodicy, when people have no clue as to why a God of love would permit evil and suffering, God takes many shots. He took one in an episode of the TV whodunnit series, Dr. Blake. An elderly priest had been murdered. Upon solving the crime in his customary way: with unusual insight, unusual empathy, and unusual flare for getting under his superiors’ skin, Doc Blake finds occasion to enter the church alone at the end of the episode. Is he there because the idealistic younger priest exhorted him not to let his wartime experiences destroy his relationship with God? Nope. Though one anticipates that outcome for a moment, he is not there to make peace with God. He is there to tell God off.
“Yes, I know. It’s been a long time since I was last here,” he begins, after a long introspective silence, during which one imagines repentance. “A funeral, in case you’ve forgotten.” [Uh oh. God—forgets?] “It’s all right. I didn’t come expecting an answer this time [either]. Though I imagine Father Morton [the murdered priest] did. Did he know he was losing his mind [which caused him to reveal confidential confessions in public sermons, which in turn caused a not-too-penitent church member to kill him, lest he be compromised next]?”
“Did he kneel right here and ask you for your help? I’m sure he did. And what did you give him? A sign? Or nothing? All these children—your children—begging you for help. What father ignores his children?” The episode is entitled, “The Sky is Empty.” It is a title that has nothing to do with the plot itself but appears selected only to drive home the “lesson” at the end: there is no God.
“Thing is, it’s not a bad question, that final one. It should be answered. In the absence of a satisfying theodicy, it cannot be. That is why it borders on criminal to withhold that theodicy. With it, the question would not even have had to be asked. The good doctor would have known what can and does happen in a world whose forebears have deliberately severed themselves from God.”
In Jehovah’s Witness congregations, victims, parents, or anyone else, have always been free to report allegations of child sexual abuse to the police. The troubling reality is that many chose not to do it. They alerted congregation elders and went no further. Why? Because they thought that by so doing, they might be bringing reproach on God’s name and the Christian congregation.
That situation has been resolved. The May 2019 study edition of the Watchtower, reviewed via Q & A participation at all congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses—it will escape nobody—addressed it specifically:
“But what if the report is about someone who is a part of the congregation and the matter then becomes known in the community? Should the Christian who reported it feel that he has brought reproach on God’s name? No. The abuser is the one who brings reproach on God’s name,” states the magazine.*
The problem is solved. Can one bring reproach on God or the Christian congregation by reporting child sexual abuse to police? No. The abuser has already brought the reproach. There will be many who had long ago come to that conclusion, but now, unambiguously, in writing, for elders and members alike, here it is spelled out.
From the beginning, child sexual abuse controversies as related to Jehovah’s Witnesses have been markedly different from those of nearly anywhere else. Incidents have mostly been within the ranks of the general membership, come to light because the Witness organization takes seriously passages as Romans 2:21-22, and investigates wrongdoing within its midst so as to “keep the congregation clean” in God’s eyes, something that they think He demands:
“Do you, however, the one teaching someone else, not teach yourself? You, the one preaching “Do not steal,” do you steal? You, the one saying “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery?” (Romans 2:21-22)
Elsewhere it is the leaders being looked at exclusively. Usually, no mechanism at all exists that the wrongdoing of religious members comes to light. When the police nab John Q. Parishioner, it is as much news to the church minister as it is to the public. When was the last time you read of an abuser identified by religious affiliation unless it was a person in position of leadership?
As I write this, it now appears that the time has come for Southern Baptists to take their turn in the hot seat. Just eight days prior to this writing, a Houston Chronicle headline (February 10, 2019) announces: “Abuse of Faith – 20 years, 700 victims: Southern Baptist sexual abuse spreads as leaders resist reforms.”
Who are the victims? Entirely those who were abused by leaders. The latter “were pastors. ministers. youth pastors. Sunday school teachers. deacons. And church volunteers.” Were any of them just regular church members abused by other regular church members? No. There is no apparatus for that to ever come to light. The church preaches to them on Sunday but otherwise takes no interest in whether they actually apply the faith or not. Doubtless they hope for the best, but it is no more than hope. Only a handful of faiths make any effort to ensure that members live up to what they profess.
It has always been apples vs oranges. That is what has long frustrated Jehovah’s Witnesses. With most groups, if you want to find a bumper crop of pedophile abusers, you need look no farther than the leaders. With Jehovah’s Witnesses, if you “hope” for the same catch, you must broaden your nets to include, not just leaders, but everybody. It is rare for a Witness leader to be an abuser, the rotter in San Diego being a notable exception. It is the rule elsewhere. The most recent Witness legal case, involving a lawsuit in Montana, involves abuse entirely within a member’s step-family that did not reach the ears of the police, which the court decided was through leadership culpability.
To account for this marked difference in leadership personal conduct, this writer submits a reason. Those who lead among Jehovah’s Witnesses are selected from rank and file members on the basis of moral qualifications highlighted in the Bible itself, for example, at Titus 1:6-9. In short, they are those who have distinguished themselves in living their religion. Leaders of most denominations have distinguished themselves in knowing their religion, having graduated from divinity schools of higher education. They may live the religion—ideally, they do, but this is by no means assured—the emphasis is on academic knowledge.
Add to the mix that Jehovah’s Witness elders preside without pay, and thus their true motive is revealed. Most religious leaders do it for pay, and thus present conflicting motives. One could even call them “mercenary ministers.” Are they untainted in their desire to do the Lord’s work or not? One hopes for the best but can never be sure.
Confounding irreligious humanists who would frame the child sexual abuse issue as one of religious institutions, two days after the Southern Baptist exposé, there appeared one of the United Nations. On February 12, the Sun (thesun.co.uk) reported that “thousands more ‘predatory’ sex abusers specifically target aid charity jobs to get close to vulnerable women and children.”
“There are tens of thousands of aid workers around the world with paedophile tendencies, but if you wear a UNICEF T-shirt nobody will ask what you’re up to. You have the impunity to do whatever you want,” Andrew Macleod, a former UN high official stated, adding that “there has been an ‘endemic’ cover-up of the sickening crimes for two decades, with those who attempt to blow the whistle just getting fired.” Sharing his data with The Sun, Mr. Macleod “warned that the spiralling abuse scandal was on the same scale as the Catholic Church’s.”
All things must be put into perspective. Child sexual abuse is not an issue of any single religion, much less a tiny one where otherwise blameless leaders are perceived to have bungled reporting to police. It occurs in any setting in which people interact with one another. The legal system being what it is, one can prosecute child sexual abuse wherever it is encountered. The tort system being what it is, one prosecutes primarily where there are deep pockets. Arguably, the child sexual abuse issues of the Southern Baptists have taken so long coming to light is because that denomination is decentralized in organization, presenting no deep pockets.
With the May 2019 Watchtower mentioned above, finally the reporting issues of Jehovah’s Witnesses are fixed. Anyone who knows of abuse allegations may bring those to the attention of the police, and regardless of how “insular” or “no part of the world” Witnesses may be, they need not have the slightest misgivings about bringing reproach on the congregation. Both goals can proceed—that of societal justice and that of congregation justice—and neither interferes with the other.
Witness opposers were not at all gracious about this change, that I could see. Many continued to harp on the “two witness” rule of verifying abuse, for example. It becomes entirely irrelevant now. Were it a “40-witness” or a “half-witness” rule, it wouldn’t matter. It is a standard that guides congregation judicial proceedings and has absolutely no bearing on secular justice.
“Well, it only took a landslide of legal threats around the world to force their hand on this,” opposers grumbled, as they went on to claim credit. Why not give them the credit? Likely it is true. Everything in life is action/reaction and it would be foolish to deny the substance of this. Once ones leave the faith, people within lose track of them. It is easy to say: “Out of sight, out of mind,” and opponents did not allow this to happen. They should seriously congratulate themselves. Many have publicly stated that their opposition is only so that Jehovah’s Witnesses will fix their “broken policies.” Now that they have been fixed, one wonders if their opposition will stop.
Members have been given the clearest possible direction that there should be no obstacle or objection to their reporting whatever allegations or realities they feel should be reported. Few journalists will hold out for elders marching them down to the police station at gunpoint to make sure that they do, even if their most determined opposers will settle for no less. There are some experiences that seem to preclude one’s ever looking at life rationally again, and perhaps child sexual abuse is one of them. The only people not knowing that the situation is fixed are those who are convinced that Jehovah’s Witnesses are evil incarnate whose charter purpose is to abuse children, and they will not be convinced until there is a cop in every Witness home.
With a major “reform” making clear that there is absolutely no reproach in reporting vile things to the authorities, some of the most virulent of Witness critics lose something huge to them, and the question some of them must face is a little like that of Tom Brady—what on earth is he ever going to do with himself after he retires? A few face withering away like old Roger Chillingsworth of the Scarlet Letter, who, when Arthur Dimmesdale finally changed his policy, “knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which life seemed to have departed. ‘Thou hast escaped me!’ he repeated more than once. ‘Thou has escaped me!’
This will not be the journalists, of course. Nor will it be the legal people. Nor will it even be Witness critics in the main. But for some of the latter, former members who are vested in tearing down what they once embraced, it will not be an easy transition. They almost have no choice but to find some far-fetched scenario involving “rogue elders” that could conceivably allow something bad to yet happen and harp on that till the cows come home. There are always going to be ‘What ifs.’ At some point one must have some confidence in the power of parents to be concerned for their children, and for community to handle occasional lapses, particularly since governmental solutions have hardly proven immune to abuse and miscarriages of justice themselves. It is not easy to get between a mama bear and her cub.
***February 2023:
Out of nowhere a scholar has appeared who talks dispassionate sense on the subject of child sexual abuse as it relates to Jehovah’s Witnesses and is unswayed by secular jingoism. Are/were you a Jehovah’s Witness who was abused as a child? That is very bad, Holly Folk agrees, but she cautions such ones that they must be on guard not to be abused a second time. It may happen at the hands of those who mostly feign interest in their trauma so as to enlist them in their greater goal of taking down a religion they dislike. “All I ask is that you consider, for a moment, that you might be being used again, by people who care little about achieving justice for victims,” she says.
“Both official reports and media often confuse ‘institutional’ abuse in religious settings and abuse happening in families that happen to be religious.” It is a statement as pithy yet complete as anything I have written in several chapters of TrueTom vs the Apostates! She instantly cuts to the chase of the matter, whereas I pussyfoot around forever before arriving at an echo not quite so well put.
She pinpoints the flaw of the ARC’s Case Study 29, which I also attempted, but did not put it so concisely. Every other case was an investigation of institutional abuse within an agency, sometimes religious, sometimes secular. Case Study 29 was the only investigation of a religion itself. It is unique. It was rammed into the ARC agenda mostly at the behest of ex-Witnesses who hounded them relentlessly until they overrode their normal judgment. It plainly doesn’t fit into the overall program. JWs have no institutional settings, as did all the other agencies on the hot seat. Next move will be to hold Walmart responsible for abuse that has occurred among their shoppers.
It’s why you don’t sign on to a redress scheme tailor-made for situations of institutional abuse that you don’t have. You wait for a redress scheme tailor-made for situations of abuse that occur among Walmart’s customers. That you can sign on to it as a reasonable parallel.
In a second article (it is a four-part series) she criticizes the studies of the Netherlands and Belgium. I hadn’t gone there, assuming they would be no more than a rehash of the ARC. They were all that and less, she writes, so slipshod and lacking in any sound methodology of social science that it will be a scandal if they are relied upon for policy. Yet they might be, she opines, goaded on by the sheer noise that comes from Witness detractors, mostly ex-Witnesses settling the score, and given false credibility by the prestige of the Atlantic journal.
As a dispassionate outsider, not a Witness herself, she can do what is very difficult for any Witness to do, self included. She can bypass the reputation of a religion as something immaterial and focus on the greater affront to fight child sexual abuse. It is all diluted, she charges, when ex-members redirect rage against child sexual abuse to a target that is essentially a non-factor. The Witness religion overall does pretty well at fighting the perversion, she writes. I mean, who else [my contribution, not hers] gathers every member in the world (at the 2017 Regional Conventions) to consider detailed scenarios in which child sexual abuse might occur so that parents, obviously the first line of defense, can be on their guard? If there are sleepovers, if there are tickling sessions, if there are unsupervised trips to the restroom, if anyone displays unusual interest in your child—all these things were identified as potential red flags, not conclusive in themselves, but things to keep you eye on.
Witnesses will find her tack hard to copy. Their first response will be violent indignation at these patent efforts to undermine the religious organization they hold in high regard, and in the process, they are likely to come across as tone-deaf to the suffering of victims. But Ms. Folk has no skin in the game, so she can focus directly to how this vendetta of ex-JWs undermines efforts to fight child sexual abuse. She can express dismay that those with an anti-religious agenda squander resources that could be far better employed elsewhere.
Some firebrand on Twitter accosted me the moment I put the subject out there: “So, NO child is EVER separated from its parent(s) for ANY reason for religious purposes (or within a religious setting) by JWs… is that what you are saying?”
Well, duh—no. But NO child EVER separated is a far cry from ALL children ROUTINELY separated, which is the case with other groups Witnesses are compared to, as though apples to apples. Sunday Schools, youth camps and clubs—alas, they have proved to be breeding grounds for child sexual abuse. Witnesses do not have such settings. What! Do they chain their children at home so that no outside contact is possible? Does any balanced person? Imagine the uproar if they did.
Holly Folk also carries the “advantage” of being a survivor herself. “How would you know what it feels like to be abused?” people can (and have) said to me. I don’t. But she does. It gives her a freeness of speech that no non-victim will possess.
The closest I ever came to abuse was when I was walking up and down auto dealer row prior to my 16th birthday, anticipating the used car I might buy once I had my license. A certain slimeball approached and tried to befriend me. “They keep the really good cars in back,” he told me, eager to go there. Even as I evaded him, it was not due to my street smarts or lack of naïveté. I was as sheltered a lad as ever existed, with no specific knowledge of even what a child abuser was. (an ignorance not uncommon at the time.) I just knew that you don’t put the really good cars in the back—you put them up front where people can see them.
They are very thorough articles that Holly writes. Press on the links:
I like it also that Holly Folk does not fear to take on the “money tree” that is lawyers. This doesn’t speak for or against victims in itself, of course, just the inherent possibility for abuse of such as system. In my community, there are so less than 7 accident injury firms that constantly advertise. Not to mention about twice that number that advertise over various carcinogens, medical treatments, devices, and of course, sexual abuse claims. Almost always the Catholic Church is targeted, and the Boy Scouts. Sometimes I hear a catch-all of any abuse in any religious setting.
I get it that injured people seek redress. Still, the sheer cacaphony of legal noise will strike most as overkill—a massive societal transfer of funds with lawyers netting a third. Don’t think the profit motive is absent with the Witness situation, Ms. Folk says, just like it is not in any other. It is no different than defense companies cooking up scenarios of peril so as to sell their goods, or pharmaceutical companies overplaying threats to our health for the same reason, or for that matter, any merchandiser doing whatever it must to expand the market for its goods or services.
”My lawyer got me 5 million dollars, 23 times what the insurance company said.” Such are the ads that I hear. What I do not hear is, “My neighbors all celebrated with me. Then they opened their insurance premium bills.” Where does anyone think the money comes from? The insurance company itself? They just pass the cost along. They have to, in order to survive.
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.)
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.
“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
These brothers who say how prayer is communication with God and you never get a busy signal, to modest chuckling from the audience?
Job keeps getting a busy signal!! That’s what he can’t understand. He’s heard those talks, most likely, and even joined in applause at the end. But now he keeps getting a busy signal!
He does express confidence in God—if only he could get through to him:
“Would [God] contend with me using his great power? No, surely he would give me a hearing,” he says. (Job 22:6) If only he could get through. Why does he want to get through? Because his life has devolved into a pile of you-know-what, that’s why, and he wants to fill God’s ear about it!
And then Eliphaz comes around—man, these guys are obnoxious! to say:
“Get to know Him, and you will be at peace; Then good things will come your way. . . If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored.”
‘Why why why doesn’t God hear me? Job cries. ‘I cry out to him day and night, but all I get is a busy signal!’
‘Well, if you weren’t so wicked, it wouldn’t happen,’ is Eliphaz’s answer, and that of the two other companions.
It is only Eliphaz and crew who feel this way? There was a flood of preachers post-Katrina in New Orleans to say the cities ruination was its own fault. God destroyed New Orleans, Pat Robertson declared, because of abortion and homosexuality. But the mayor, Ray Nagin, disagreed. Sharply. At his own news conference, he set the record straight. God did not destroy his town because of abortion and homosexuality.
He destroyed it because of war in Iraq and disunity among black residents!
The reasons differed, according to individual and political peeves. But the common ground was that God did it!
And here are these three frauds advancing that ‘theology’ with Job—God did it! For what reason? Listen to Eliphaz carry on: (22:6-9)
“You strip people of their garments, leaving them naked. You do not give the tired one a drink of water, And you hold back food from the hungry. The land belongs to the powerful man, And the favored one dwells in it. But you sent away widows empty-handed, And you crushed the arms of fatherless children!”
He’s made the point before, more gently, but been rebuffed. He does not like to be contradicted, and so juices up his charge of what Job ‘must have’ done to be suffering so!
Furthermore, to distill his remarks, ‘God could care less if you’re good—what’s that to him? But he sure does care if you’re bad, ever eager to dish out the punishment in that event. No wonder people say the God of the Old Testament is mean! If we are to listen to Pat Robertson and Ray Nagin, the God of the New Testament is, too! And don’t get me going on how when a tiny child dies, it’s because God needed another flower in his perfect heavenly garden; these preachers make a god-awful mess when they try to extract themselves from the corners their wrong doctrines unfailingly paint them into! (in this case, not only the doctrine that the soul can never die, but that all good souls go straight to heaven upon doing so):
Eliphaz the Temanite said in reply: “Can a man be of use to God? Can anyone with insight be of benefit to him? Does the Almighty care that you are righteous, Or does he gain anything because you follow the course of integrity?” (22:1-3) He could care less, is the charge, whereas Santa Claus at least doesn’t give you coal when you’re ’been nice!’
Job is not going to let these guys gaslight him; that’s why he wants his hearing before God—but he keeps getting a busy signal! If he could only argue out his case, he knows God would listen.
“If only I knew where to find God! I would go to his place of dwelling. I would present my case before him And fill my mouth with arguments; I would learn how he would answer me And take note of what he says to me. Would he contend with me using his great power? No, surely he would give me a hearing. There the upright one could set matters straight with him, And I would be acquitted once and for all by my Judge.” (23:3-7)
“But if I go east, he is not there; And I return and I cannot find him. When he is working on the left, I cannot look upon him; Then he turns to the right, but I still do not see him.” (8-9) A busy signal!
Whereupon Job expands on, not just his own suffering, but all the rotten things God puts up with:
“People move boundary markers; They carry off flocks for their own pasture. They drive away the donkey of fatherless children And seize the widow’s bull as security for a loan. They force the poor off the road; The helpless of the earth must hide from them. The poor forage for food like wild donkeys in the wilderness; They seek food in the desert for their children. They must harvest in another’s field And glean from the vineyard of the wicked. They spend the night naked, without clothing; They have no covering for the cold. They are drenched by the mountain rains; They cling to the rocks for lack of shelter. The fatherless child is snatched away from the breast; And the garments of the poor are taken as security for a loan, Forcing them to go about naked, without clothing, And hungry, as they carry the sheaves of grain. They toil among the terrace walls in the heat of the day; They tread the winepresses, yet they go thirsty. The dying keep groaning in the city; The fatally wounded cry for help, But God does not regard this as improper. (24:2-12)
God will fix it; Job does not doubt he will—but it would sure be nice if He would step on it a little. He will fix it in the long run, but as John Kenneth Galbraith said, ‘In the long run we’re all dead,’ and Job’s faith in a resurrection for himself is not so ironclad as some suppose.
“God will use his strength to do away with the powerful; Though they may rise up, they have no assurance of life. God lets them become confident and secure, But his eyes are on everything they do. They are exalted for a little while, then they are no more. They are brought low and gathered like everyone else; They are cut off like heads of grain.” (24: 22-24)
