Sheep and Goats

Category: Field Service

  • How’s it Going with “the Wicked” These Days?

    How’s it Going with “the Wicked” these days?

    There are plenty of passages to show that ‘the wicked’ (the Bible’s terminology, not mine) do just fine these days, so that one must serve God through love for his ways, not through thinking it will set one up pretty in the short term. For example, Job’s complaint:

    Why do the wicked live on, Grow old, and become wealthy? Their children are always in their presence, And they get to see their descendants. Their houses are secure, they are free from fear, And God does not punish them with his rod. Their bulls breed without failure; Their cows give birth and do not miscarry. Their boys run outside just like a flock, And their children skip about.  They sing accompanied by tambourine and harp And rejoice at the sound of the flute. They spend their days in contentment And go down peacefully to the Grave [at least they do not escape THAT bit of inconvenience\].  But they say to the true God, ‘Leave us alone! We have no desire to know your ways. Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What would we gain by being acquainted with him? (21:7-15)

    Or Psalm 73, where the carefree ways of those ignoring God almost made the writer stumble:

    As for me, my feet had almost strayed; My steps had nearly slipped. For I became envious of the arrogant When I would see the peace of the wicked. For they have no pain in their death; Their bodies are healthy. They are not troubled like other humans, Nor do they suffer like other men.  Therefore, haughtiness is their necklace; Violence clothes them as a garment. Their prosperity makes their eyes bulge; They have exceeded the imaginations of the heart. They scoff and say evil things. They arrogantly threaten oppression. They speak as if they were as high as heaven, And their tongues swagger about in the earth. So his people turn aside to them, And they drink from their abundant water. They say: “How does God know? Does the Most High really have knowledge?” Yes, these are the wicked, who always have it easy. They keep increasing their wealth.  Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure And washed my hands in innocence.  And I was troubled all day long;   (73:2-14)

    Sharing in the ministry helps, I think, for that is where you can showcase what you have to offer. It builds your own faith as you see how people respond. Here in the Bible are answers to the deep questions of life. Some thirst for such answers. Others do not. A statement in the 1968 book ‘The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life’ reads just as true to today as it did then: True, there has been progress in a materialistic way. But is it really progress when men send rockets to the moon, and yet cannot live together in peace on earth?” Some people think it is. Witnesses look for people who don’t. There is even a difference between those who “sigh and groan” over all the “detestable things” and those who bitch and complain because the politicians they don’t like presently have the upper hand. 

    I highly recommend an offer to read a scripture and see if the person has any interest in discussing it. Some will. Often, I start out with an observation that ‘the world is crazy [which nobody disputes in my part of it] and we are people who think the Bible helps: why is it crazy, what hope for the future, how to live in the meantime. I want to read you a scripture, you tell me what you think, and I am gone.’ This way they know immediately the two things Westerners must know: What does this visitor want? and How long will this take?

    Many years ago my wife and I, for our anniversary, attended a high-class cultural function in which everyone was dressed to the nines—impeccably. During intermission, as they were all sipping wine and mixed drinks, I said to her: “Here’s people we don’t hang out with too often: the wicked!” drawing on the phraseology of Psalm 73. I know, I know, completely unfair. No doubt most of them were nice. My wife, who did not yet savor all my sense of humor, looked at me oddly.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Be on Your Way

    “I knew it!” Jonah fumed. “I KNEW it! I knew you were going to cave at the last minute! You’re just so nice! That’s why I didn’t want to go in the first place!”

    Isn’t that the gist of Jonah 4:1-2, discussed at the mid-week meeting?

    “But this was highly displeasing to Jonah, and he became hot with anger. So he prayed to Jehovah: “Ah, now, Jehovah, was this not my concern when I was in my own land? That is why I tried to flee to Tarshish in the first place; for I knew that you are a compassionate and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in loyal love, one who feels grieved over calamity.”

    Who cannot see his point? All that preaching from Jonah, at great inconvenience, and now it turns out that God is going to spare a ton of people that he said he wasn’t going to spare!

    And all God says in reply is (verse 4): “Is it right for you to be so angry?”

    Then he maneuvers a circumstance in which Jonah feels sorry for a dopey plant that flourishes one day and is struck down the next. After that, he follows up with: 

    “You felt sorry for the bottle-gourd plant, which you did not work for, nor did you make it grow; it grew in one night and perished in one night. Should I not also feel sorry for Nineveh the great city, in which there are more than 120,000 men who do not even know right from wrong, as well as their many animals?” (vs 10-11)

    We can overthink it. We can take ourselves too seriously. Jonah had reached the point where he wanted to see people die. God readjusted him. If it turns out that Jehovah will spare some thought to be unsparable—that they have a change of heart—that’s not a good thing?

    It’s a good thing to speak up for God, to be used as his mouthpiece. Those doing so ought not second-guess it. I am reminded of a circuit overseer from years ago, doubling down on what was apparently his favorite line, from God to Ananias: “Be on your way!” (Acts 9:15) It was a line that typified his life-course.

    Here was Ananias doing a ‘But . . . but . . . but’ as to all the reasons he shouldn’t go, primarily because the one he was being sent to was, at the time, a nasty piece of work, then God cuts him off with a “Be on your way!” 

    (“But Ananias answered: “Lord, I have heard from many about this man [Saul—later to be known as Paul the apostle], how many injurious things he did to your holy ones in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to put in bonds all those calling upon your name.” But the Lord said to him: “Be on your way, because this man is a chosen vessel to me to bear my name to the nations as well as to kings and the sons of Israel.” (9:13-15) It’s no good overthinking it, just like it wasn’t for Jonah. We don’t have to know everything.

    You go to people’s home because that’s where they are. If some get bent out of shape by this, learn to be pleasant and tactful. If they still get bent out of shape, realize the problem may have nothing to do with you but with the topic you are discussing. Add a few venues, if need be, in which people can approach you if they want, rather than you approach them.

    Alas, with the 2013 revision to the New World Translation, it is no longer “Be on your way!” but is instead a simple “Go!” One can picture that CO, if he were still alive, fuming over this, so that God would have to plant a translation tree over his head for him to feel sorry for.

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  • “The Best Way to Respond to Injustice”-a Study

    I found that return visit at home who had previously told me he cuts back on the news because it gets him all cranked up. So I decided to show him that paragraph from Sunday’s Watchtower study (1/23/25: The Best Way to Respond to Injustice) which recommended exactly that course. I even left it with him. Given the choice of digital or print, he said he preferred digital, so I used that transfer feature on the app to email the article to him.

    I had commented on that paragraph during the study. There is a new Watchtower conductor now and I can’t lean into him so readily as I could with the old conductor, so I have to look comments over carefully before letting fly. For sure I won’t get in as many. But that’s not really a bad thing. It means other people do.

    That paragraph (12) went: “What can help us to control our feelings of anger over an injustice? Many have found it helpful to be selective in what they read, listen to, and watch. Some forms of social media are full of posts that sensationalize injustices and that promote social reform movements. Often, news agencies report information in a biased way.”

    Yeah. Anyone on social media knows that the political stuff encroaches like an invasive species. You have to keep pruning it back or it will take over. Some Witnesses just uproot it on sight, or more thorough yet, avoid social media altogether. I’m not one of them but I do understand the response. It gets you all worked up. One sis even recalled a visit to a U.S. city much in the news lately for a certain protest. A few Witnesses had been there, she said, and they got their faces on TV! Like that commercial, I told her afterward, where the guy helps himself to the cotton candy of the kid in the stadium row before him and it is captured by the Kiss Cam and displayed on the Jumbotron! Yeah, like that, she agreed.

    Then, there was the sister cited in paragraph 9, recalling her former protest days, who the paragraph quoted: “When I was at protests, I would question whether I was on the correct side,” contrasting that with “Now that I support God’s Kingdom, I know that I’m on the right side. I know that Jehovah will fight for every victim of oppression better than I ever could.” 

    I commented on that paragraph too, ramming it past the new vigilant conductor. “Sure. Just once I would like to see a war in which one side or the other says, ‘We are the bad guys.’ But it never happens. Always, both sides fob themselves off as the good guys. Social reform is like that too. You can wonder if you’re on the correct side.” One person’s reform is another person’s pouring fuel to the fire.

    a man in red and black sweater
    Photo by Anton Bohlin on Pexels.com

    2 Peter 3:13 was quoted in the final paragraph: “But there are new heavens and a new earth that we are awaiting according to his promise,and in these righteousness is to dwell.”

    The “heavens” make an apt analogy for human government. In those Bible times, they would scorch you one minute, drench you the next, freeze you the moment thereafter—and there wasn’t a thing you could do about it. In most respects that is still true of human governments today, even participatory ones, in which your input is not exactly zero, but close to it. The “new heavens” is God’s just government to come and the “new earth” is those constituents who will benefit from it.

    They even slipped in that verse about how Jesus so wowed the crowds that they wanted to appoint him king. (John 6:15) He couldn’t get away from that bunch quick enough—for the same reason that he later told Pilate: “My Kingdom is no part of this world. If my Kingdom were part of thisworld, my attendants would have fought that  should not be handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my Kingdom is not from this source.” (John 18:36) 

    Exactly. They would have fought. Get yourself too cranked up fighting over the current “heavens” and it will be at the expense of looking to the “new heavens.” That was the overall thrust of the article.

    ******  The bookstore

  • “You Always Have the Poor with You”

    As fine as helping the poor is and it is well to do it, Jesus said the following to those wishing to do it at the expense of attending to the Lord’s interests at that moment: (Matthew 26:11): “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” It sounds kind of callous but serves to show that the two activities are not the same.

    Even more significant than the plight of the poor and needy is that there should be so many of them, 2000 years after Jesus said what he did. Does it not show the utter failure of human government, which supposedly exists to alleviate such suffering? That being the case, the work Jehovah’s Witnesses are best known for, announcing the incoming kingdom of God, the same one Jesus taught his followers to pray for in ‘the Lord’s Prayer’ becomes an important component of Christian activity. It’s what gives people hope.

    To be sure, it is a specialty. Nobody works that specialty as the Witnesses do, and most don’t do it at all. Those who respond to the good news correspond to the man who learns how to fish, instead of eternally needing a fish supplied him. The good news imparts hope. Thus, two huge factors causing neediness and homelessness are eliminated. Preaching the good news is an activity not to be minimized.

    That said, I never criticize those who do run soup kitchens and such projects. They are undeniably alleviating suffering and it is something Witnesses don’t make their main focus.

    Given all the criticism directed at Witnesses for their focus on preaching, sometimes taking the form of spiritual one-up-mans-ship, one might assume that everyone else in the Christian world IS fully devoted to alleviating suffering and hunger. If so, why so little result? Given that Witnesses are but the tiniest sliver of the overall religious population, and that they are generally of modest means themselves, if they forgot all about preaching to devote themselves fully to rendering physical aid, how much of a dent do you think it would make? The problem is structural, gets worse with time, and will be fully solved only with the coming of God’s kingdom.

    Meanwhile, there is nothing to stop Witnesses as individuals from donating to local charities focused on neediness and hunger if they wish. I have done so. I assume there are others, according to their means.

    ******  The bookstore

  • The End of War—When?

    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.

    ******  The bookstore

    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:

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    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2HDS4Z1

  • A Ministry Approach to Recommend

    Sometimes I call upon people in a door-to-door ministry to observe something to the effect that ‘The world is crazy. We are people who think the Bible helps; in that it uncovers a) why it is crazy, b) what hope lies in the future, and c) how best to live in the meantime.’ People are not always sure that ‘the Bible helps,’ but nobody disputes that the world is crazy. Instantly, you have common ground. I mean, what is anyone going to say—that it’s not?

    Couple that with an offer to “Read a scripture, you tell me what you think, and I am gone” and your approach is complete. Head-and-shoulders I recommend this approach before all others. The householder immediately knows what you want and how long it will take. Not long, unless he or she chooses to make it that way. Few things are more clunky than trying to draw a person into conversation who doesn’t want to be drawn. This approach averts all that. If the person declines my offer of scripture, I say a pleasantry or two and I am gone. Occasionally, the pleasantry itself opens up conversation along different lines.

    We Witnesses call on people without appointment, something virtually unheard of in the Western world. Nobody has to give us any time at all, and yet many do. I am always gracious over it. To someone who it was quite obvious that the timing was wrong—they were entertaining company—I conceded as much. At her request, I went through the above about the crazy world, and again at the offer to do a scripture, said it might not be the best time. She agreed it was not, and as I made to go, said “Thank you for being respectful of my time.”

    Give it a few weeks. When I’m in the area again, I’ll stop in. The company will have gone home. We’ll see what happens. The Bible is a good thing, worth sharing.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Black Sheep of the Family

    Then there was Frank, very much the black sheep of his family. His brother was one of the major power brokers of our area, his surname often attached to large financial projects. Yet here was Frank, hustling his way through a series of work-a-day jobs.

    How he came to be the black sheep I’m not sure. Was he that way before he went off to fight in Vietnam? Wealthy families often buy their way out of such conflicts. Frank was sucked into it. Days after his discharge, he married his sweetheart, apparently long pre-arranged, from another financial titan family. He told me how the extravagant affair blew his mind. He had just seen friends blown to bits in Nam.

    Some time after Nam he studied the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses, which further cemented his black sheep status. It kept him permanently out of power-broker status too, though he might not have joined his brother there at any rate. Witnesses now are like Christians then, of the first century. There’s not many power brokers among them, not many “powerful,” not many “of noble birth,” not many “wise in a fleshly way” is how 1 Corinthians 1:26 puts it.

    In time he was appointed an elder in the congregation. I worked with him a lot. An intelligent and empathetic man, he was a good source of comfort to those beaten down in various ways. Nonetheless, he told me of some huge family gathering in which all his relatives hobnobbed with each other over financial deals, and here is he feeling very much out of place with his factory job. I made some stupid and pious remark about “choosing the better portion,” as though he were Mary attending to Jesus, leaving her sister to do all the work. It didn’t do it for him. “I felt like a fool,” he said.

    This story comes up—it happened many years ago—because at our meeting for field service, the conductor led off with Ephesians 6:16, where Paul twice recognized a need for boldness:

    “Pray also for me, that the words may be given to me when I open my mouth, so that I may be able to speak boldly in making known the sacred secret of the good news, for which I am acting as an ambassador in chains, and that I may speak about it with boldness, as I ought to speak.”

    “Why do we need to cultivate boldness?” the conductor took his cue from this verse.

    I answered that when we call on people, we are often not in the commanding position and that many are deeply conscious of it. Indeed, beware the tactless person who is completely oblivious to it. We are often not the most powerful, not the most wealthy, not the most educated, and that it puts one at a disadvantage. Paul was in the hoosegow when he wrote what he did. How’s THAT for being in an advantageous position—set on a course of recommending the person who had been executed as though a common criminal?

    Partly, I said what I did for the benefit of that conductor, a considerably younger man—who ISN’T younger than me these days? He caught my eye—I knew he’d picked up on it, though no one else did. Days before we had worked in a well-to-do area. We had chatted with a retired college professor. Afterward, I observed to my companion an area where he could have chimed in had he wanted to. Yes, he knew that, he said, and he has done it in the past only to see it backfire. The householder plays both the age card, the education card, and the wealth card to advise him that he should apply himself more to “better” himself—leaving him in the similarly awkward position of painting himself a Mary who leaves Martha to do all the work. It’s not necessarily easy to explain the chosen simple way of life to the high-rollers.

    I have worked through all this stuff. Long ago, my new bride introduced me to some well-off relatives. What does Tom do for a living? they wanted to know. He does janitorial work, she answered. A disappointed, “oh.” “He owns his own business,” she added. Same sound, but with opposite inflection! It’s all facade! It’s all temporary. It doesn’t mean a thing. All this was after my college education days, which I did little with—my fault, not theirs. I guess I’m sort of an offscouring too, just like Frank. But, then, the apostle Paul outright says that Christians are “the offscouring of all things,” (1 Corinthians 4:13) so one can hardly complain about it.

    Some big names hail from the university I attended. But they all start dropping when they reach my age—the great and the small alike—so that there is little difference between them, and what counts is only the “treasures that one has stored up in heaven.” Meanwhile, I took advantage of those janitorial days to “read,” via Books on Tape, over half of the BBC’s 100 Greatest Books of all Time. I really only stopped when the library ran out of books beyond the pop ones. It is a habit I heartily recommend and it did not happen for me in college, where people are mostly cramming for tests.

     

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  • The Muslim Man I Spoke With in the Ministry

    The Muslim man I spoke with in the ministry was a retired college professor. He responded to the query of what ill would he fix had he the power to do so. Peace, he said. It was humankind’s greatest need; however he was quite sure the world was “regressing” in that department. He remembered warfare well from surviving it in his native Bangladesh before fleeing to the United States decades ago. He still had nightmares about it, he said. He could identify with the 120th Psalm, where it says at the end:

    “I have been dwelling far too long with those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.”

    He had assured me at the outset that he was all set in the religion department, doubtless confusing us with churches who would call upon him to be “saved” that very day. I told him on the 200th time I called, I would ask him if he wanted to be a Jehovah’s Witness, but it wouldn’t happen until the 200th time—and what were the chances anything would go on for so long a time? In the meantime, it was just conversation. With that, I was able to introduce the above psalm about peace.

    To his concern that mankind was regressing, I pointed out the reason: God did not create humans with the ability to govern themselves. No more than he created them to fly—it’s an ability they do not have. All efforts to rule invariably end in some variation of Ecclesiastes 8:9, in which “man has dominated man to his injury.” It is mankind’s entire history, through countless variations in government.

    It’s why the Bible speaks of God fulfilling that need, of his ruling over the earth, rather than man-made governments. And that people tend to cringe when they hear such terms as “government by God” for fear that whoever tells them this also view themselves as the enforcers, a hair’s breadth away from pulling out guns to coerce anyone not on board. In the case of God’s kingdom, however, humans can do nothing to bring it about, I assured him. All they can do is advertise it and live according to its principles now. God has to bring it. If he doesn’t, we’re stranded out there on a limb. But we’re convinced he will.

    He was fully involved in the discussion at this point. He observed how people must live their faith, it must be truly in their heart, rather than the carry-on baggage that amounts to ‘Say one thing but do another.’ It’s a noble thought, I agreed with him, and plainly true. However, even when people do this it does not negate “man dominating man to his injury.” Not all governments are mean. Some are nice. None—mean or nice—can overcome the inability of man to rule. It has to be a superior arrangement, not of men, but of God.

    We’ll see where this goes. Possibly, nowhere. But it might. I handed him one of those cards with the QR code leading to the home Bible study offer—he could look it over if he wished. There was also written in my personal contact information, in case we don’t meet up again anytime soon (or at all). I also told him he must not be put off by how very simply it was written. He was a college professor and anyone taking his courses had a certain level of rigor they had to meet, but this way not true of people in general. He had no problem with this at all; he had lamented how hard it was to get his American students to work, many of them, as though they thought they were still in high school.

    Often when I speak with college students, I will say the same. “Now, you’re in college. That means you’re smart. (It’s a good sign when people demur at this; if they puff out their chest and take it in stride, that’s a bad sign—but few do that.) But most people are not in college and they’re not especially smart. If they are, they’re consumed with the everyday affairs of life. If you write over everyone’s head, what have you accomplished? Think of the text simply as the glue that binds the Bible verses together—for they are the real sources of knowledge.

    Oh, and back to that “man dominating man to his injury” downside of human self-rule? It’s in that context that the “new heavens and new earth” of 2nd Peter is best understood. Heavens are an apt analogy for human government in those Bible times. They might scorch you one minute, drench you the next, freeze you the moment thereafter—and there wasn’t a thing you could do about it. In most respects that is still true of human governments today, even participatory ones, in which your input is not exactly zero but close to it. The “new heavens” is God’s just government to come and the “new earth” is those constituents who will benefit from it.

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Tesla that Drove Itself

    There was someone recently who bought a Tesla and the Tesla drove itself to his home. That’s a selling point. Usually, if you buy a car, you have to go fetch it. This car fetched itself. It comes to you; you don’t have to go to it.

    Someone at the congregation meeting (was it me?) said this is kind of like our Bible study offer. The circuit overseer recently recommended everyone explain its good features; don’t be bashful about it. That it comes to you is surely one of them. You can be wearing shorts and slippers, just like on Zoom. In fact, you can do it on Zoom. I had a really fine study on Zoom and—let me tell you—that is convenient.

    Living forever on a paradise earth sounds like a fairy tale; why expect anyone to waste their time chatting about that? But it also sounds good. If the time involved was substantial or the cost-prohibitive, you could expect everyone to dismiss the notion instantly. But if the time involved is an hour a week, and the cost is free, what’s not to like? Some will decide to investigate. They’ll appreciate that someone has gone to a lot of trouble to bring that message to them.

    Once a person has the satisfaction of putting the puzzle pieces of the Bible together, seeing the completed portrait of a puppy dog or a mountain range reconstructed, same as on the box cover, they change. It’s hard to put that puzzle together outside of the JW realm, where they have altered too many pieces and they don’t fit anymore.

    Once you have looked upon your completed puzzle, you’re immune to the critic who says your interpretation is wrong. You are especially immune if his puzzle lies unassembled in the box on his closet shelf. And if you’re cruising down the highway at 55 miles per hour, even the atheist on the radio telling you your car doesn’t run needn’t be a cause for concern. You don’t have to prove to him that it does.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Do All Christians Need to Preach? (A Question More Complicated than at First Appears)

    An apocryphal story that I believe: You might not, but I do because it was told by someone I consider trustworthy and who was there:

    Sometime during the 1980s there were “high-level” discussions at Bethel over, of all things, is it necessary for all Christians to preach.

    It only took 40 years to reveal that the answer is no.

    You wouldn’t think it necessary to qualify “necessary.” But it is. Is it “necessary” to obey the speed limit signs? ‘Only if a cop is around’ will be the answer of many. 

    So it is with taking part in the ministry of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Is it “necessary?” Check a box saying you have taken some part in it within the month and you are done. The answer is effectively no, from a human point of view. The answer may be yes from God’s point of view, but it is left for each individual to call it as he sees it. Human-wise, the answer is no. I don’t expect Witness HQ ever to say it, but de facto the answer is no, even though it be yes from God. Practically speaking, anything not backed up by human discipline becomes a no.

    That’s why the 2005 book ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience’ said that, to their shame, church members in general live no different from the world. Most of them know it should not be that way. But without human discipline to buttress good intentions, conduct of the two groups, Christians and the overall world, soon becomes indistinguishable. 

    The preaching activity is no longer a topic of “discipline.” It’s not for one house servant to monitor that activity of another, is the thinking—to his own master he stands or falls. Check a box at month’s end that you engaged in some from of the ministry and the deal is done. You could lie and nobody would know. Probably some PIMOs do lie, but the overall ministry keeps going strong.

    Change is okay. You look like an old fart when you start crying about how it’s not like it used to be. When cart-witnessing proliferates, by default, door-to-door will diminish. It’s all good. Every time there’s any change of any sort, the crazies cheering for downfall point to it as proof that the Witnesses are going down. Instead, they just adapt to the times.

    Recently, a certain sprawling apartment complex in our territory converted their contact system to make it impossible for Witnesses, or anyone else, to contact residents. Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned. It had become a horrible nuisance, with loud aggravating buzzers, tenants stoked by friends whose zeal and thoroughness, in some cases, outweighed common sense. Good riddance. That’s what the cart work is for, where people interested can approach the Witnesses, and people not are not annoyed.

    I don’t see that overall ministry activity among Witnesses has decreased. It has changed, with many making cart work their new favorite, and some letter-writing. But I think the overall ministry remains steady, even if morphed to adapt to changing times. As for me, I take part regularly in the door-to-door ministry, not much in the cart work, and I think the ministry unimpeded by the new non-counting policy. 

    Unlike Covid, which did impede and from which full recovery has not taken place. That began people writing letters, formerly the method of the elderly and infirm, but during Covid everyone switched to the method, it being one of the few available, and some didn’t come back. I started a few letters then, too, but every time I did I came to reflect I could put something online instead and receive quick feedback, rather than send something into the great void and never hear of it again.

    Door-to-door and the Bible study work is still the gold standard. That point was made abundantly clear at the recent convention, but there are now various supplementary methods.

     

    ******  The bookstore