Sheep and Goats

Category: Meetings

You Almost Never Have all the Facts

Lot was a righteous man. The Bethel speaker said so. Three times 2 Peter 2:7-8 says he was. So, he must have been.

“And [God] rescued righteous Lot, who was greatly distressed by the brazen conduct of the lawless people—for day after day that righteous man was tormenting his righteous soul over the lawless deeds that he saw and heard while dwelling among them.”

It really bothered him to see all the riff-raff and how they were carrying on.

And yet, righteous is not the first word coming to mind when most think of him. What is? Quarrelsome? Opportunistic? Materialistic? Abraham offered him a choice and he chose the best portion. Just like the circuit overseer was dismayed when Ernie chose the biggest piece of pie. You’re not supposed to do that, he said, you’re supposed to defer to the other person. Well, which piece would you have taken? Ernie countered. He replied that he would have chosen the smaller piece. “Well, there you go,” the slick fellow said.

But maybe, just maybe, the Bethel speaker said, Lot was older than Abraham—did you ever think of that? It could be. Abraham was probably the baby of the family. Long as their child-producing days were back then, his brothers might have been much older than he, so much so that their kids would also be older than him. So maybe Lot was. This led to the observation that the older man always gets the cushier place, which led to the sacrosanct Bethel practice of bidding on both rooms and apartments. I know this first-hand from our Bethel friends who maneuvered forever to get a fine apartment up there in the Sliver Building that Bethel owned, and there we were after a day of sightseeing in New York, up high in his apartment with wine and cheese and a magnificent view of Manhattan. Alas, soon afterwards, he and his wife were transferred to Patterson. What would they see outside those windows, cows?

Then, too, since Lot had been kidnapped years ago, swept away, and it took a SWAT team to free him, maybe, just maybe, he suffered shell-shock, PTSD, and Abraham knew that, so no wonder Lot would thereafter avoid the wide open fields. No wonder he would seek out the safety in numbers. So there.

Could the Bethel speaker prove it? No. But that was his point, he said. You also couldn’t disprove it. In fact, it was all a segue to lead into something else. His talk had nothing to do with proof, he said, nor with Lot, for that matter. His talk had to do with not jumping to conclusions when you don’t have all the facts.

We love to do it. We do it all the time. But we shouldn’t. You almost never have all the facts, and instead extrapolate from what you have, which sometimes is very little. The speaker next gave examples, one or two from the scriptures where such is frequently the case, but most from real life, in which it was easy to be hard on someone—until you knew a key missing fact which turned the entire situation around—as it might have with Lot.

That’s why it’s so much easier, not to mention more productive, to turn your scrutiny upon yourself, and not the other person. Even with yourself you may not have all the facts but you’ll have 100 times what you do with the other person. Remember what everyone’s mama used to say: when you point your finger at someone else, there are three pointing back at you.

****** The bookstore

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March 27, 2026
The Owner’s Manual

This thought I liked from yesterday’s Watchtower Study and compared it to an ad for online therapy now making the rounds in my neck of the woods:

“After they rebelled, Adam and Eve immediately experienced the consequences of their violating God’s law—a law that was “written in their hearts.” (Rom. 2:15) They could sense a change in themselves—and not for the better. They felt compelled to cover portions of their body and hide like criminals from their Creator. (Gen. 3:7, 8) For the first time, Adam and Eve were subject to feelings of guilt, anxiety, insecurity, pain, and shame. To one degree or another, those feelings would plague them until their death.—Gen. 3:16-19” (para 10)

The ad for therapy asserts that it can help since “we’re all figuring it out.” Not to diss therapy; it probably can help—if not always, at least sometimes. But it seems like it can help a whole lot more if you if you augment counselors yet “figuring it out” with sources that have figured it out, sources that tell us where “feelings of guilt, anxiety, insecurity, pain, and shame” (para 10) come from in the first place. Those emotions bubble up and reappear in settings far removed from their origin, but it is still good to know what their origin is.

The illustration that resonates with Witnesses is that of an owner’s manual for a product. You’d be crazy not to heed its directions. Witnesses figure the Bible is the owner’s manual for the product that is us. They draw that thought from scriptures such as 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, so that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work.”

Since God made us, it’s only going to create internal discord to go against what is “written in our hearts,” from Romans 2:15 again in that paragraph. You really do have to cooperate with the owner’s manual. The point of this post is not to devalue therapy. It is to elevate instruction from our Maker.

****** The bookstore

March 23, 2026
Paul—“An Insolent Man”

Early Christians were afraid of Paul. He’d been a violent enemy. When he turned around, they didn’t believe it. Barnabas (always good for that sort of thing) had to escort him around and ease the way.

Some of those Christians probably always were afraid of him. The Watchtower study of last week (3/15/26) included the printed point: “Can you imagine how Paul must have felt when he visited a congregation and met those he had persecuted or the family members of those he had persecuted?” It may have been tougher on him personally when they forgave.

Every so often he would run into one of those persons. If they didn’t remind him of what a hothead he had been, his own conscience would have—-he, the guy that, as Saul, would “ravage the congregation. He would invade one house after another, dragging out both men and women and turning them over to prison.” (Acts 8:3)

So some were afraid to approach. Probably some of them always were. He’s okay if you agreed with him in every particular, but if you cross him in any way, they’d think, recalling strong statements he’d made in his letters, and every so often, he’d say to himself ‘Yeah, you know I really still am an insolent man’, (1 Timothy 1:13) I just switched sides.’ Anyone who wields authority benefits from this.

We like to think we have made progress in our lives. What a downer to taste, even for a moment, that we have not. It’s like when someone recalls the harsh traits of their dad and says “I’m never going to be like him’ and they go for years thinking they are not, only to one day look at themselves in the mirror and say, ‘Huh, I’m exactly like him. Strip aside the superficialities, and I’m exactly like him.’

Of course, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. Paul’s violent past would lead him to the contemplative water of past sins, but he didn’t have to drown in it, nor drink it in. He had counterbalancing thought of how Christ’s death had repurchased him, forgiven him, and would cleanse him as though a new person. He accepted that forgiveness. He never took it for granted, spending the rest of his life building up the congregations, suffering no end of hardship in the process.

It did equip him to spot the “superfine apostles” though, slicksters of tongue (2 Corinthians 11:5-6) who wanted his office but not his work. To them, he detailed his hardships:

“I have done more work, been imprisoned more often, suffered countless beatings, and experienced many near-deaths. Five times I received 40 strokes less one from the Jews, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I experienced shipwreck, a night and a day I have spent in the open sea; in journeys often, in dangers from rivers, in dangers from robbers, in dangers from my own people, in dangers from the nations, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers at sea, in dangers among false brothers, in labor and toil, in sleepless nights often, in hunger and thirst, frequently without food, in cold and lacking clothing.” (2 Corinthians 11: 23-27)

Perhaps it faded in time, or maybe that past when he opposed haunted him even more with increasing years. That Watchtower Study corralled three statements of his to that effect:

“For example, when he wrote his first letter to the Corinthians in about 55 C.E., he said: ‘I am not worthy of being called an apostle, because I persecuted the congregation of God.’ (1 Cor. 15:9) Some five years later, in his letter to the Ephesians, he described himself as being ‘less than the least of all holy ones.’ (Eph. 3:8) When writing to Timothy, Paul referred to himself as being formerly ‘a blasphemer and a persecutor and an insolent man.’ (1 Tim. 1:13)”

It was another one of those studies—most of them are these days—in which healing and imitating the Christ is the theme. Are such meetings boring? These days they focus heavily on applying the Bible in one’s life, putting on the new personality and all. That’s not appealing to a lot of people, who are more into telling other people what to do.

The Study made good use of Psalm 139: “You observe me when I travel and when I lie down; You are familiar with all my ways. There is not a word on my tongue, But look! O Jehovah, you already know it well. Behind and before me, you surround me; And you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is beyond my comprehension. It is too high for me to reach. (verses 3-6)

That being the case, that God knows us better than we do ourselves, the psalmist could ask: “Search through me, O God, and know my heart. Examine me, and know my anxious thoughts. See whether there is in me any harmful way, And lead me in the way of eternity. (23-24)

“Anxious thoughts.” Sometimes we feel off and if asked why will respond that we don’t know. Just what is it? We don’t know. We may not want to know. Here, we are encouraged to go to Jehovah in prayer who searches us though.

They even threw in the Potter molding the vessel, someone “try[ing] to imagine Jehovah molding us and trying to make us better people. This brings us closer to him.” It’s like when you hit a wall, as Paul apparently did at times, bad traits having caught up with you, or at least the memories of them, and you say, ‘I’m no good.’ Nah, you’re not no good. You’ve just hit a lump that continued molding will work out.

****** The bookstore

March 21, 2026
Keeping Calm and Showing Trust: Covid 19 Revisited: Isaiah 30

I’m still fond of the year text from 2021: “Your strength will be in keeping calm and showing trust.” (Isaiah 30:15)

Anxiety is the flavor of our age, “staying calm” our greatest need. It’s a crazy world, with norms such as gender that have been in place for all human history changed overnight. Unheard of expressions, such as “fake news,” pop up suddenly and become ubiquitous. Tidal waves like AI come out of nowhere and you don’t know if they will wipe out humanity or usher in a new Renaissance. “Keeping calm” along with the means of doing it, by “showing trust” is what we gotta do.

The anxiety reached a crescendo in that 2021 year. This was during Covid days. Lockdown became the world policy. You lost your job (in the U.S*) if you declined vaccination with what was really not a vaccine, at least not in the conventional sense of allowing minuscule exposure to a disease. Instead, it was a new form of gene therapy to make the body recognize and destroy a pathogen it had never encountered. Fast-tracked, it proved to be nowhere near as safe and effective as touted. Drugs that were safe and effective (ivermectin was the subject of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015) were deemed dangerous so that emergency authorization could be obtained for the newfangled vaccine.

Some had it worse than the U.S. Friends living in Myanmar told me authorities came calling every day for temperature checks. If you failed one, they could haul you away to quarantine camps.

Jehovah’s Witness meetings were affected. One week, direction came that they would proceed with disinfectant wiping down of all touchable surfaces before each meeting. Within days, they had been suspended. Then, all within a week, meetings had migrated to Zoom. I posted with glee that we would be meeting in “Zoom Rooms.” I mean, how can you beat that? And there Witnesses did meet for two or three years.

In a service group Zoom meeting on the ministry, one sister said how we ought not “put people in boxes.” I agreed with this remark as I gazed upon ten boxes of people on my computer screen. With very little fuss at all Jehovah’s Witnesses adopted the Zoom conferencing software. Didn’t it provide case-in-point to those talks about how Jehovah considers people individually important? There were other church groups that also adopted Zoom—Witnesses were not alone—but because their normal program structure doesn’t incorporate congregation participation, there were complaints that the result just seemed too irrelevant and inadequate. Some of those churches indeed had additional social groups, chat rooms, but that was just it—they were for chat, with no spiritual component built into it.

Then there were also some churches that blew past social distance strictures as a scheme to subvert religion and held their services as usual, enraging everyone else for being so ‘irresponsible,’ even defiant of public policy.

How much ‘credit’ would Jehovah’s organization get there for quick cooperation with the new social distancing policies at no spiritual detriment to believers? When the “CultExpert” tweeted that cult members are putty in the hands of their leaders ordering them to ignore science and convene as usual, I appended that there is at least one “cult” that did not. When he said that cults fall into line with the prompts of his new nemesis, the Supreme Cult Leader Trump, I told him that there is at least one “cult” that is universally known to be apolitical—and not involved in such controversies at all. Somewhere along the line, i told him that if all persons were ‘cult’ members like Jehovah’s Witnesses, COVID-19 would have moved on by now—it’s not OUR people that were partying on the beach, but it likely included some of his, whose distinguishing feature is “independence” and “forming their own mind.” That’s a recipe for cooperating with government recommendations? I don’t think so.

The Zoom company wondered why so many of those using their app identified as Jehovah’s Witnesses—this was related to us by a brother in our service meeting group. Zoom had served as a tool for his huge family reunion just after the Memorial, bringing together ones who had not crossed paths in some time, and some of them had Warwick connections. Warwick brothers got to witness to the Zoom team, they related. Six Zoomer leaders attended a meeting, and three of those stayed on till the end.

Now, our brothers will unfailingly put a spiritual face on doings that may be completely non-spiritual. But surely the core of the story will be true. They will spin it that these Zoomers are on the cusp of Bible study themselves, when doubtless their first motive will be to see how their product is being used and provide customer support. That does not mean a spiritual component is non-existent. Time will tell. Meanwhile, unless I am very much mistaken (how likely is THAT?) Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide were giving their product its most rigorous workout ever, ensuring that each member is connected to the coordinating organization—and this could not help but put the cause to the front of their consciousness. Just like Putin never saw anything like every Witness in the world writing him on behalf of their brothers, so Zoom never saw anything like the efforts to keep every Witness in the world unified in Bible teachings.

Zoom was not ready for the explosion of interest in their product—nobody would be. It is as though you open a restaurant and everyone in the country shows up to order a hamburger. Some security issues came to the fore and the Zoom people scrambled to patch them, like the kid sticking his fingers in the dike. Two weeks into Zoom, congregation elders mentioned having received an 8-page letter from their own HQ on how to effectively yet safely use the product. All elders in the world got up to speed on Zoom—and there would be among them a huge number, no doubt, with very shaky grasp of technology to begin with.

Now you know—you just know—how the Witnesses would have been in interacting with Zoom personnel. They would have been respectful, patient, and even helpful, as the creators of what one Italian IT firm called the “world’s best website” (mentioned in one of the Yearbooks—I think, 2017). Contrast that with the typical customer, who might well not be that way at all—screaming when something goes wrong, some of them. Faith and its resulting qualities are not the possession of all people.

It seems a perfect time to kick back at some of those naysayers—you know who you are—who have said, “Who needs organization?” People then were going stir-crazy in the greater world, but it was not so with Jehovah’s people. Just ‘Jesus and me?’—that’s enough? It is the bottom line, of course. You need a relationship with the father and with the son. But as a gimme, God throws in a network of united worshippers—a brotherhood. Anyone would be crazy to pass that by. We are social beings. We’re built that way. The brotherhood had come to the fore with its quick adaptation of technology.

At the same time, the non-stop Bible counsel emphasized on how to get along with family and spouse in forbearance and love—you want to try to tell me that didn’t come in handy? There are many people for whom the worst possible stressor would be to sentence them to open-ended ‘prison terms’ with their family—cooped up in the same house! But it was not so for Jehovah’s people. Payoff for the godly counsel had never been more apparent than in the days of “keeping calm and showing trust.”.

(*given that the company was big enough)

When the pathogens at last settled, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about returning to the Hall. I’m starting to get up there in years. Zoom is convenient. You don’t have to travel. You don’t have to worry about how your lower half is dressed. But no sooner did I walk through the door than I knew it was the right move.

Our attendance was solid and enthusiasm ran high. The hybrid Zoom tie-in was seamless. The speaker read that familiar passage of 2 Timothy 3:1-5. Though he did not dwell on “not open to any agreement,” it resonated with me. There is scarcely any point today, no matter how trivial, that people do not debate and argue to the nth degree. I’m not one to avoid the news, though I see why some would. It’s exhausting. “It’s like a bad accident,” said my neighbor, unsuccessfully trying to wean herself. “You know you should look away, but you can’t.”

It was refreshing being in that Hall where not a trace of that contentious spirit was to be found. It is not even that everyone agrees—they just know enough how to yield and not to squabble. Given the state of Covid in our community just then, I personally thought the strong mask recommendation a bit dumb. But the majority apparently did not feel that way. I was asked to wear one, so I do. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

Though, given the size of the crowd I did begin to think maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I had not been in such close proximity to large groups of people in two years.

I also wasn’t sure how easy it would be to avoid handshakes. I like not having been sick in two years and I had resolved not to do it. But some in-your-face people are very insistent and the alternative elbow bump just seems too stupid to initiate. But in fact, a fist bump proved pretty easy to do. “What! Are you trying to kill me?” I would say to anyone approaching with outstretched hand..

Alas, not all is peachy. I did see something to complain about. The speaker played a two-three minute video, and afterwards everyone clapped! I’m not playing this game anymore. I know how it starts . Someone well-respected thinks it is fine to “show appreciation.” He claps and others follow suit. People usually follow suit. I know this from the rare occasions that the music was not cued up and the attending servant can’t find it. If I knew the tune, I’d just belt it out. You’re only out there a split second or two before others follow suit. (It’s an unsettling split second, though—what if they don’t?) In the past I’ve given two or three half-hearted claps. No more. It’s silly. The video doesn’t know you’re clapping for it. We don’t clap every time some gives a demonstration on the platform. The Watchtower reader doesn’t earn an applause. It is enough to applaud the speaker, for that is customary and is the way things are done everywhere. I don’t squabble over such things but neither do I have to follow suit. It is sort of like when brothers approach stage by disappearing behind that quarter wall and then appear again. That drives me nuts. Just walk up on the platform. Do it right, brothers!

Ah well. This is our version of problems. A bit less serious than those that hamstring the greater world, I think.

****** The bookstore

February 9, 2026
“You Can Prepare for Them”

One might liken the written material of Witness meetings to a cake mix. It isn’t complete until you mix the ingredients. There are times when I look at the upcoming Watchtower article and say, ‘Well, this is going to be a yawner.’ But, mixed in with the 60 or so congregation comments, it becomes an entirely different experience. I think when people approach the meetings with ‘What can I bring to the table?’ rather than ‘What can I take from the table,’ any perception of boring meetings goes away.

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The mid-week meeting, for example, is far more integrated—and thus inherently interesting—than it once was. Two or three chapters in the Bible set the tone for the entire meeting. Highlights of that reading are expounded in the first part, audience comment on any of it invited in the second part (participation is enthusiastic in our congregation), thereafter, to the extent possible, all other parts dovetail with those Bible chapters. Before the current format for mid-week meetings was devised, those meetings were more open to the charge of being boring. Parts were more likely to be a grab-bag of different Bible sections and themes, with no connection to one another.

Some years ago a newbie summed up his impression of the meetings: “You can prepare for them.” It’s a fairly unusual attribute for religious gatherings, most of which you just experience as it comes. It is a classroom-type atmosphere, based on the premise that “all Scripture is inspired and beneficial for teaching, reproving, setting things straight that the person of God my be completely equipped,’ etc. (2 Timothy 3:16) But if you want to get bowled over by mystery and emotion, sometimes under the guise of being filled with holy spirit, you may not like them. Meeting, for Witnesses, are the starting point of our worship, not the end point. There, they encourage and incite to love and fine works, as stated at Hebrews 10:24.

Lately, the final mid-week portion has been consideration of a children’s book covering the usual retinue of Bible characters. I thought it might be a downer, but it works. The simplified format allows participation at different levels. In all cases, the scriptural passages are presented. They may run entire chapters of a Bible book. In your preparation, you can read and comment from those chapters themselves when the corresponding item comes up. For some, the summarized children’s version will be quite enough, but you can skip it all if you want and just comment from the Bible passages directly.

****** The bookstore

January 10, 2026
Earnest People Seek Different Paths: What’s With That?

Q: How come it seems like there’s people who honestly and wholeheartedly seek God/truth, yet end up in different religions/denominations? I’m trying to understand why/how people can earnest seek Truth yet come to different conclusions and paths.

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A: Different people seek God according to different criteria. Sometimes, at the door with someone inclined to be contentious, I might say, “Look, why don’t we just agree to leave that in God’s hands? He knows if he’s a trinity or not.” (or whatever be the issue left unresolved)

The meetings of Jehovah’s Witnesses take the form of Bible studies. You can prepare for them. We Witnesses think that is that way to go, but there are people drawn more to denominations or venues more experiential, more triggering the emotions, ones where they will say they experience the holy spirit. The gatherings for many faiths there is no point in preparing for, beyond getting yourself in the mood.

Then, there are faiths as Catholicism, where a sense of mystery is thought highly desirable in any worship service. There’s not too much of this at Witness meetings, which look more like a classroom, which are more for edification and encouragement, that a person might be better equipped to worship God in their daily life.

Charlie Kirk said Catholicism is experiencing a resurgence these days, somewhat against his preference, as an evangelical. He attributed much of it to their long history and confidence that it was less given therefore to flip on the dime of new social trends. Stability is what attracted people, he thought.

JWs think that God speaks to us primarily through the pages of his written Word, and we to him primarily through prayer. Not everyone is drawn to that formula. It used to be, maybe still is, that there were denominations where you might ‘roll in the aisles’ (they were nicknamed ‘holy rollers) getting upon getting ‘filled with the spirit.” There are many modern updates of that formula.

Paul spoke of his Jewish countrymen at Romans 10:2: “For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.” Witnesses do think it best to do things “according to knowledge.” But, rather than attack each other online for being wrong—attacks that tend to be endless—online, it is better to adapt to the formula: present whatever you have to present (let your light shine) and let people be drawn or not to the faith you espouse. Or, in the words of Bob Dylan: “Let me see what you got. We’ll have a whoppin good time.”

It’s not a call for ecumenism. It is simply a call for practicality, so that we all may realize the words: “Can’t we all just get along?” No one’s trying to sweep 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 under the rug:

“But the lawless one’s presence is by the operation of Satan with every powerful work and lying signs and wonders and every unrighteous deception for those who are perishing, as a retribution because they did not accept the love of the truth in order that they might be saved. That is why God lets a deceptive influence mislead them so that they may come to believe the lie, in order that they all may be judged because they did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.”

It’s just that you can’t settle it through debate. Frankly, I think the above is evidence that God is having the last laugh on those who think you can. It will have to be a “Let me see what you got.” It is a dictum not too far from Jesus’ own: “By their fruits you will know them.”

****** The bookstore

January 8, 2026
An Increased Focus on Jesus

There are times when I think that if Jehovah’s Witnesses would simply modify their schedule of congregation Bible reading, that in itself would go a long way towards muzzling accusations that they don’t do Jesus. They certainly do. How anyone can make that charge is beyond me, yet there are those that continually make it.

Just modify the Bible reading schedule. For as long as I can remember, probably always, Jehovah’s Witnesses have worked their way through the Bible, a few chapters at a time, at each mid-week meeting. Reach the end of Revelation and start in again at Genesis. This means they are only 20% within the New Testament, for 20% is all the NT comprises of the overall Bible.

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We ARE living at the time the New Testament is in effect. We ARE living at the time that Jesus rules as king. Maybe change the focus of the weekly Bible reading to better reflect that, maybe make it something like: Pentateuch, the NT, the wisdom chapters of the OT, the NT, the prophets, NT, and so forth, making the ratio more 50/50. Even trimming the 80/20 (OT/NT) to 66/33 would help.

Nah, I don’t think it will ever happen, or even that it would be a good idea. Who would want to take responsibility for skipping over any part of the “all Scripture” which is “written for our instruction?” Nor would that change placate the “Jesus IS God” people. It will probably be 80/20 Genesis-through-Revelation for the duration of this system of things. But who knows? Every once in a while, the teaching program of meetings is adjusted. Maybe this one too will happen someday.

****** The bookstore

December 4, 2025
Avoiding the Birdcatcher’s Trap

The Sunday speaker focused on avoiding the “trap of the birdcatcher,” taking for granted that Satan is the birdcatcher (“fowler”), only not everyone thinks it is he. Jehovah’s Witnesses do, and also many other faith traditions. Really, more do than don’t. In medieval times, the linkage was well-nigh universal. Augustine, for example, explicitly said so the birdcatcher (fowler) was the devil.

But, in modern times of “higher criticism,” where people assume each Bible book is a separate island, bearing little relationship to its fellow Book-mate, they are more inclined to say, ‘Nah, it’s just a guy trying to catch birds.’ It’s any human pitfall that might trip a guy up.

G. K. Chesterton’s words come into play. The Catholic writer from a century ago called those “wrong who maintain that the Old Testament [and by extension, the New] is a mere loose library; that it has no consistency or aim. Whether the result was achieved by some supernal spiritual truth, or by a steady national tradition, or merely by an ingenious selection in aftertimes, the books of the Old Testament have a quite perceptible unity. . .”

It’s like how Jehovah’s Witnesses point out that the Bible was written by some 40-odd writers of vastly different backgrounds, over a period of 1600 years. What are the chances that anything coherent will emerge from that? That it does is powerful evidence to them of the book’s inspiration. But modern people haven’t taken the time to familiarize themselves with the Bible, mostly, or they do so under the guidance of those determined to tear it apart. Its unified nature is lost on them.

At any rate, assuming unity of Scripture, you take into account that the New Testament often speaks of Satan laying traps and snares, just like the Psalm 91 birdcatcher. See Luke 13:16, for instance, also “the snare of the devil” of 2 timothy 2:26 and 1 Timothy 3:7. Ephesians 6:11 speaks of the “wiles” (cunning traps) of the devil.

Anyhow, the speaker ran with Satan as the birdcatcher, then branched out to how hard it was to catch a bird. His brother had tried that, as a child, standing stock-still under the birdfeeder for an hour (it took that long for birds to let down their guard) then swooping up his hand fast to catch one, only to emerge with just a few feathers. “Birdcatcher” sounds a little wussy next to the “lion” description of 1 Peter 5:8, but if you take into account the craftiness required, then it evens out. Thing is, he said, a bird’s eyes are on both sides of its head, giving it a wide field of vision. He contrasted this with how he had noticed that those in the audience had eyes up front and spaced much like his. I had noticed this, too, though I admit, I wasn’t mulling it over the entire time.

He used a lot of images from his childhood in that talk, alluding to traps he saw set on Saturday morning cartoons when he wasn’t taken out in field service, traps that would catch any creature “except the roadrunner”—including the simple upside down box propped up by a stick. “Those things work!” he related how he had once caught a skunk that way, luring it in with dogfood. Who would think a skunk is going to follow a trail of dogfood, “but it did!”

Silly putty played into his talk, too. He told how the “iPad of his day” could bounce, be shattered, suck up ink from the Sunday comics, but eventually became such a disgusting blob, full of dirt, ink, and cat hair, that you tossed it out. He likened that to how Satan toys with his victims for a time, dirtying them up, before discarding them.

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****** The bookstore

December 3, 2025
Reading Isaiah 2:1-11 at the Mid-Week Meeting

If one is reading aloud the second chapter of Isaiah, it’s clear you have to put a long pause between verses 5 and 6. The thrust of the two is completely different:

Verse 5: “O house of Jacob, come, Let us walk in the light of Jehovah.”

Verse 6: “For you have forsaken your people, the house of Jacob.”

Verse 5 belongs to the preceding verses of how “(2) In the final part of the days, the mountain of the house of Jehovah Will become firmly established . . . And to it all the nations will stream,” that (3 ) “many peoples will go and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, To the house of the God of Jacob. He will instruct us about his ways, And we will walk in his paths,’” that “law will go out of Zion, And the word of Jehovah out of Jerusalem,” who (4) “will render judgment among the nations And set matters straight respecting many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares And their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, Nor will they learn war anymore.”

Who wouldn’t get excited about that? Isaiah sure does, so he appends his own plea: (5) “O house of Jacob, come, Let us walk in the light of Jehovah!”

But the next verse is addressed to God, not to “the house of Jacob.” God has “forsaken [his] people.” A list of their offenses follow, culminating in (8): “Their land is filled with worthless gods. They bow down to the work of their own hands, To what their own fingers have made.”

I would not likely have picked up on this need for a long pause had I not been assigned that Bible reading (Isaiah 2:1-11) at the mid-week meeting. But I was, and so I looked for other areas to emphasize. It’s not a sure thing, but all the same, I stomped rather hand on the “becomes” of verse 9:

“So man bows down, he becomes low, And you cannot possibly pardon them.”

I mean, to bow down, you must physically get low. But, given that final clause, “you cannot possibly pardon them,” it probably ought be read as though man also becomes spiritually low when he does that—he becomes low. Imagine: bowing down to “gods” that you yourself made!

Idolatry is a consistent no-no in the Bible. Witness groups speaking to Muslims point this out fairly early. It generally comes as a surprise to them, since they are conditioned by churches, especially Catholic churches, into thinking that Christianity and idolatry are one and the same.

“We are walking by faith, not by sight,” says 2 Corinthians 5:7. How is it not “walking by sight” if one feels best connected with God only if they are holding something, even something so ubiquitous as a cross?

It’s like when Israelites leaned on Aaron to cast that golden calf and then tried to pass it off as though God would be cool with it. “There is a festival to Jehovah tomorrow!” they announced. (Exodus 32:5) Sure, they knew the calf was not God; it just represented God. Surely God would be okay with that. He wasn’t.

Neither is he shown that way in the last verses of the assigned reading:

“And you cannot possibly pardon them. (10) Enter into the rock and hide yourself in the dust Because of the terrifying presence of Jehovah And his majestic splendor. (11) The haughty eyes of man will be brought low, And the arrogance of men will bow down. Jehovah alone will be exalted in that day.”

There are plenty of critics who will carry on about God being mean, so that his “presence” will be “terrifying.” Instead, I usually figure that he is giving a friendly heads-up. Take note of what gets him going and don’t do those things. It’s not that hard.

****** The bookstore

November 27, 2025
“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.

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

November 26, 2025