Category: Social Media

The internet is not exactly new, but social media in its present form is less than 20 years old. It’s like when some new invention comes along and the young latch right on to it. The oldsters say, “I lived with out is this long—how essential can it be?’

Challenges for the young? Nothing screams ‘Old People!’ more loudly than writing letters. It is hard to imagine a more contact-free form of witnessing, as though fishing with a 5-mile line. The only thing that might scream ‘Old People!’ louder is telephone calls. Young people will text to the cows come home but they don’t do phone calls.

I admit that I did little of either. Now that the pandemic is over, I am relieved of that ‘Crisis of Comfort’ and can revert to more people-friendly forms. Not that it was scaredy-cat for me. One brother said, ‘It’s not that I’m scared to do it. It’s that I’m scared of being ineffective.’

Exactly. When they urge me to ‘step out of my comfort zone,’ I reply that I am not necessarily comfortable even in my comfort zone. Yet here it had nothing to do with comfort zone. It had to do with considering oneself ineffective. I would sit down to write a letter and then it would occur to me that I could write something on the internet and get near-instant feedback. I would next think of phone calls, but be dissuaded by notion that if someone answered, my first thought would be, “What! Are you nuts?” Like many even of my age, and especially the young, you know that scammers will eat you alive if you pick up unidentified calls, and so you don’t do it. That’s not to say no good results were achieved in these ways. I know of several occasions in which they were—and in some strange way I can’t put my finger on, new ones attending the meetings is on the rise, at least where I am. But once again, it and letter-writing represent an ultra-cautious approach—contrary to the very spirit of young people, which is that of boldness.

Get them out door-to-door and get them out door-to-door when people are home. Don’t stuff them in cars for the driving ministry, focusing on calls that are not likely to be home. Alas, this recommendation is not as easy to pursue as before, since many oldsters have grown fond of the Zoom ministry. Nothing wrong with that—don’t think there is. But it does make it hard to guide the young people. ‘Your young men will present themselves like dewdrops,’ say the verse. ‘Welcome, dewdrop! Grab a pen. We’re writing letters today!’ I don’t think so. They don’t even teach cursive in many schools today, so archaic has it become.

And if social media has become their Athens marketplace, where people do nothing but listen to or tell of things new, don’t hold them back from going there if they want (subject to parental approval/supervision and all) out of fear that the apostate bogey man may appear, necessitating the Monty Python, “Run away! Run away!” Teach them how to handle that jerk if he does crash the party. Why should the entire internet be ceded to the Devil?

Social media is not everything, but neither is it nothing. It becomes the elephant in the room as we think about ways of contacting people. It’s not hard to envision why the earthly organization might worry about social media, not just on account of the bogey man, but also on account of when Witnesses do go online, they tend to be not very good at it. They’re prone to sending back and forth memes alternately syrupy and judgmental. No matter. Nobody’s good at things without training. Give them some.

One firebrand on Twitter says he is there to answer Bible questions. A quick look at those he follows reveals, veering little from recommendations, that they are all fellow Witnesses. ‘Um—they’re not likely to ask you Bible questions if they are Witnesses already,’ I tell him. But he’s convinced that somehow it will work out. And maybe it will. Sometimes letter and phone calls work out. But the spirit of young people is bold. They’re not given to hiding. They figure out tech in a heartbeat. I mean, when Elon Musk goes to hiring, he doesn’t say, ‘Check out the resume of that old fart Harley. Whoa! Look at this point. He knows how to insert the UBS code right side up! And he knows it’s hashtags, not crosstags’

It took me a while to know how to behave on social media. Nobody was there to train me. I probably trolled a bit more than was advisable. I even briefly locked horns with Nemo—my nickname for the virulent Witness apostate who later blew up his family by revealing a predilection for the lithe young prostitutes of Asia. I mean, if letter writing screams ‘Old People!’ is does not scream it nearly so loudly as his course screamed 2 Peter 2:19: “While they are promising them freedom, they themselves are slaves of corruption!” But he managed to blame his twisted tastes on his former religion—he was an expert at blaming others and even many of his former cohorts became fed up with him.

I’ve got that all out of my system now. Now I am ‘social network smart’ — the TrueTom way. Teach the young who want to use it how to use it. Many of them do it anyway—doing it furtively lest they trigger disapproval. Teach them to do it right—sort of like cart work or like your physical presence in your physical neighborhood. There, you routinely come across people. You don’t witness to them with your every breath as you share whatever common interests you may have. But you establish yourself as an all-around good egg, a Jehovah’s Witness as it turns out, and once in a while you get to put in a good word for God. It’s not everything. But neither is cart work everything, nor informal witnessing, nor phone calls, nor letter writing.

If you have a body of work, as I do, you link to it, along with a profile picture. If you don’t, you find some spiritual ‘mission statement’ with which you can identify. Myself—I don’t link to Jw.org on my profile page. I suspect they don’t want that, especially if you’re weird. The point is, you can establish yourself as both a neighbor and one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. ‘I decided to be very open about my faith,’ said the teenaged girl featured in the Convention video. ‘In time my classmates began approaching me with their problems.’

I torment the local stockbroker with pictures of Ramblers. It’s become a running joke. He has a classic car collection that he trots out for special events. Ramblers are the cars I grew up with. I envied classmates who tooled around in cars with fins on which you could impale a buffalo whereas I was stuck in a boxy toaster that got good gas mileage. Getting good gas mileage may be a virtue today, but only a wuss cared about it them.

’I dunno, Tom,’ he says, when I trot out a Rambler I came across in the country.

‘It looks in pretty good shape. If you must have a Rambler maybe you should snap this one up.’ I reply that it is indeed a little tempting, but the last thing I need is another hobby. Nor do I have the mechanical ability to keep it shipshape, nor the disposable income to hire it out.

I’ve never even breathed ‘God’ to this busy fellow, nor do I engage with him for that main objective. I exchange tweets with him because he’s an interesting guy. But at some point it is hard to believe he will not have checked out my profile and adjacent tweets in which I do weigh in on God. It’s not everything, but neither is it nothing—and will have made at least as much impression as passing a literature cart.

Others I have directly witnessed to, usually in incremental measure. Someone will say something about ‘what is the purpose’ of life,’ for example, and one can add a remark that is not too light and also not a sledge hammer. I’m not giving any Sermons on the Mount but there are countless people who know or have opportunity to know more of the faith by having come across my path. Periodically I will add new followers, usually those who have liked a prior remark, and delete some whom I follow, usually those who have not interacted. It’s almost like checking out a new territory.

Nobody taught me these things. I figured them out on my own and it took awhile. Sure enough, the bogey man does stop by now and again, but I’ve learned how to chase him off.

I don’t know that it is something to encourage. I’m just don’t know why it should be so thoroughly discouraged as it is. Ever heard our people have a kind word for social media? Nor have I. It could be all Gehenna would break out were our youths to swarm there. You might have to train them to interact, not especially a slam-dunk because our own adults don’t interact much. Alas, all Gehenna breaks out anyway. Might as well break it our way. Give the dewdrops something to do in accord with their interests and abilities.

Everything is cool. Counsel is good. Go here. Watch out for that. It all works. But things that are done need not necessarily be done to the nth degree. Sometimes the nth degree works out to be the course of wisdom. Sometimes it backfires on you.

*** The bookstore

An early 2023 Watchtower Study dealt with those who say ill things about Jehovah’s Witnesses in general and responsible brothers in particular. Quite a few articles do that these days.

One sis commented on how, after the meeting, many of us would be watching football. I knew her comment to be true because I was going to be one of them. Not that I am a football fanatic—I’m not—but the recent resurgence of the Bills after decades in the basement has piqued the interest of many. She further said that each team prepared for the game by studying the playbook of the other so that they could catch every little trick to be used against them. ‘We do that too,’ she said. We have the playbook of the adversary. So we can know we are well-prepared and need not unduly fret no matter how much grief comes from those who oppose, even should they be apostates.

It’s not really true. In a sense it is, but only ‘in a sense.’ What we have is the ‘NFL Compendium Grand Strategic Play History Including Coach Commentary and Famous Player Roster.’ From there maybe you can deduce the opposing team’s playbook, but it is not easy to do. You never get more than an approximation.

In this particular game, the opposing team’s playbook incorporated several Bengals
making snow angels in the accumulating precip just after one of them intercepted a pass that once and for all put an end to any Bills threat. Think you’re going to get that from the NFL Compendium Grand History? Snow Angels! Those punks made snow angels! Like little kids! And when another one of them slapped down a would-be touchdown pass, he ran half the length of the field to rejoin his teammates, shaking his finger as though to say, ‘No, no, no! Not this time!’ I mean, the home team took a thorough drubbing and at the next-day news conference the talk was all of which heads would roll—as if nothing bad can happen without a few heads offered up in sacrifice!

If we really had the opposing spiritual team’s playbook we would be familiar with the current specific doings of apostates. But this we are strongly exhorted to be as clueless about as possible—in the spirit of ‘innocent as doves.’ Just listen to Brother Losch listing 100 metaphors for truth, and consider that your defense. It’s not nothing, but how much of a defense is it really?

These days the young are not especially religious. We might (and do) carry on about how they are leaving the churches in the West, but they are leaving the Kingdom Hall setting too. Some will say they are yet ‘spiritual’ but the word is so redefined that simply ‘looking deep within oneself’ may trigger it.

A good number of those young people who leave the Hall, it seems, are over at a former member forum. Is it not more than ridiculous that the only one who should know about this in the congregation is me? And that I should be looked at askance because of it—not that specifically but just a known interest in ‘the other team’s playbook.’ I thrive despite the stigma because I am otherwise considered a pretty good guy. But don’t think you can hold any privilege in the congregation, maybe to the point of carrying a mic, with such a stigma. I don’t mind. It’s discipline. If you want to represent any group you must ‘toe the line’ more than if you only wish to be among it. I don’t try to explain to shepherds what can be done properly on social media and what cannot be done. Since their own use of it is minimal at best and often non-existent, all you can do is provide grist for the mill of misunderstanding.

In that forum of malcontents where some are out, others are physically in but mentally out (PIMO), the majority of comments take the tone of high school students mocking out their teachers for bloopers that are sometimes real, sometimes imagined, and always exaggerated. A minority of comments, however, will have a more mature tone. These ones ‘promise the younger ones freedom’ without regard to who may or may not be ‘slaves to corruption.’ Any familial division revealed? These ones will seek to widen it, thus ensuring there will never be healing. They present the general world as an oyster promising unbounded fulfillment—whereas anyone with a lick of sense knows it to be in dire straits, if not going down the tubes.

They might not be able to do that were Witnesses not so ‘insular.’ That statement is one to make with caution, because ‘insularity’ and ‘no part of the world’ are flip sides of the same coin, similar to the relationship between ‘obstinate’ and ‘tenacious.’ You don’t want to be seen as discouraging ‘no part of the world.’ Jesus demands his people be that way. And even with being ‘insular’—try removing the insulation on your house wiring if you think ‘insular’ is so horrible. But anything Witnesses do, they do to the nth degree. Sometimes you wish things were more nuanced.

You can’t do the following with just anyone and I don’t do it routinely, but every so often as a joke I propose we go into what I call the ‘pickpocket ministry.’ I don’t propose it as much as I do street work on the thruway—slap a tract under the wiper as the cars roar by. No. But once in a while, before someone known to have a sense of humor, I do.

In the pickpocket ministry, you work in twos. Your deft partners lifts a person’s wallet as they walk by and lets it fall to the ground. Then you pick it up and return it to the person, explaining that you would never ever ever do so were it not for the Bible principles you learned as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

It’s a joke. I’ve never heard of anyone besides myself referring to the ‘pickpocket ministry.’ Yet some of our people view the greater world that way. You wish things would be more nuanced. At the music festival I attended, a ‘long-haired hippy type,’ the kind in the song who ‘need not apply,’ tapped me on the should to return the wallet that had slipped out of my pocket. I thanked him. Then I turned around to thank him more proper. He gave a gesture as if to say, ‘But of course—it’s not a big deal.’ Even the wallet I dropped on an excursion in Canada (Just try getting back into the country without one—it is doable but it’s anything but a cakewalk.) was returned to me. Someone called to say he had found it and asked how it could be returned. (Though, when I asked about the money inside, he said, ‘What money?’)

The point is that there are plenty of people who will do the right thing, often even when the stakes are high. Yet that bit of nuance is something our kids have not picked up on. Put them in the ex forum where they discover that the risks of the world are not guarantees and many of them carry on as though there are no risks—it was all scaremongering on the Witness organizations part! a result of ‘overplaying their hand.’

We Witnesses live in black-and-whites. This is to be expected of people who respond to Jesus’ ‘You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.’ (John 8:32) Christianity that adheres to the Bible does not primarily attract ‘nuanced’ people. ‘Gray area’ people don’t apply. ‘What is truth?’ people like Pilate don’t apply. Dogmatic people, on the other hand, apply in droves. It’s because the Bible presents a basic sense of right and wrong. But you would hope people would not stay dogmatic, as many of our people seem to do.

Ida Brexit once related how she didn’t want to be caught flat-footed in case her then-teenager was stumbled by apostasy. She made it her business to unpackage the stuff so that she could provide assistance should that happen. It made perfect sense to me. Our young people succumb to the oldest trick in the book, that of ‘curiosity killed the cat.’ They come across something that stumbles them. Thereafter no one is able to help them, even parents, because nobody has any idea of what it is they have come across. We speak, as did another sister at that above Watchtower Study, about the ‘lies’ of apostates without knowledge beyond the vaguest generalities of just what those lies are. Moreover, the youngster just mentioned must contend with the onus of being supposed ‘disloyal’ for even looking there—even if his or her initial motive was to defend the faith. Even if he/she would like to get parental insight, he won’t dare ask for fear an explosion might result. And the ‘mature’ parent who might otherwise give corrective guidance does not go there either so as not to be similarly ‘disloyal.’

Of course, it’s easy to understand why the stance is what it is. Essentially, it is ‘The Bible says so.’ ‘What harmony is there between Christ as Belial?’ ‘Keep your eye on those causing division and avoid them.’ ‘Don’t be a sharer of wicked works by even saying a greeting,’ and so forth. I get it where it comes from: the Bible, and Witnesses are a Bible people. However, it sure makes for some downsides both ludicrous and tragic. Alas, I ran Ida’s seemingly practical course through the site where ‘never is heard a discouraging word’ and I was roundly chastised over it.

Now, if there is a downside to following current counsel, there is also a downside to not following it. Do I know that such downside is not worse? I have in the past expressed worry for Ida because she puts under the tooth comb of suspicion any piddly little statement that others blow off as a nothingburger. But she is a ‘why? why? why’ person and I suppose such persons must be satisfied. Her devotion to Jehovah is solid, she assures us. I just hope we don’t get a ‘flee to the mountains’ someday and she says, ‘You’re joking!’ [Not to worry—she says she likes mountains and it won’t happen.]

It’s all very well for me to float ‘alternative counsel’ as trial balloons, but I’m not “keeping watch over you as those who will render an account.” (Hebrews 13:17) The earthly shepherds are. I don’t have to render an account (hopefully) when people heed my incautious words and some fall flat on their face. They do. How much skin you have in the game makes a big difference in how you play it.

On the other hand, hoards of Westerners are falling flat on their face now. The spirit of young people is bold. It is not given to continual warnings of ‘Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!’ The spirit of the young is not given to be continually ‘protected.’ Same as with a party, if there’s a brawl going on somewhere, it wants to be part of it. Why not do a ‘avoid toxic people’ not as a matter of ‘loyalty,’ but just because they are toxic? Any psychologist will back you up on that one—and man, o man—are the malcontents ever toxic on the internet!

Back when we homeschooled—it is a move I have never regretted, even though there is a non-educational downside of not knowing where the agencies are (some of those agencies can be helpful), because my son entering community college, the first classroom he had ever seen save for the 6th grade, said in all innocence, “I had no idea there were so many stupid people”—back in those days we subscribed to a newsletter called, ‘Growth Without Schooling.’ It’s founder, John Holt, was of the opinion that much juvenile delinquency stemmed from teens being barred from the adult world under the guise of protecting them. Thus, a local family who ran a grocery store got into serious trouble with Child Protective Services when their teen took her turn behind the cash register upon returning from school.

Let youths join in the adult world as their maturity allows. Will some fall? No doubt some will, along with some of the Ida-like parents who go there to help them. But it may be a like when I ran by Jim Whitepebble the local attrition rate for those who go to college and he says it much resembled the attrition rate for those who didn’t go.

The organizational goal is to protect. It is that of the scriptural sheepfold with the shepherd eyes peeled in watch for the wolves. Since it is scripture, and scripture is what drives the Witnesses, it will not readily yield to adaptation. This is true even though some come to feel this protection is to the point of smothering and that it sells them short, as if completely disregarding any possibility that a person might confront apostasy and, not only remain loyal, but become stronger for it, indignant and thereafter become a stalwart for staring into the abyss and when it started staring back at him kicking its butt.

Even with adults it works this way. Thus, there is that convention video of the one with decades of faithful service to God who quit serving Him after reading material ‘critical of the organization.’ No possibility is offered that he might have become livid and spurred himself on to a greater defense or even counterattack of that ‘yellow journalism.’ How can even adults not become all but superstitious over the A-word? It is no more than ‘Demas has forsaken me because he loved the present system of things’ in 100 different variations. Knowing what those variations are one might equate with ‘knowing the playbook of the opposing team.’

I would never recommend someone go traipsing through these ex-sites. The hostility there is breathtaking. Do not think you are going to persuade anyone to ‘Return to Jehovah.’ What you’ll find is that when parents send wayward youths a ‘Return to Jehovah’ message, they post it online for ridicule. But the all-but-forbidding it on pain of being thought disloyal approach isn’t working especially well either. Plus, it is so easily portrayed as sticking one’s head in the sand and submitting oneself to be fitted with blinders as though an animal as to give a push to the slide of any deviating youths. And then we come along with our all-or-nothing reasoning and say, ‘Would you drink even a little bit of poison?’ In fact, we ingest ‘a little bit of poison’ all the time and our immune system is strengthened for it—assuming we haven’t ruined it. In fact again, the great controversy of our time, which HQ came to enthusiastically weigh in on after an initial stance of ‘neutrality,’ was that of, ‘To take the Covid vaccine or not to take the Covid vaccine?’ What is a vaccine if not ‘a little bit of poison’ that stimulates the body to mount a defense?

*** The bookstore