Sheep and Goats

Tag: Jehovah’s Witnesses

  • Dancing on the Edge

    Sunday, July 24, 2011

    If you stumble and just barely avert falling over the precipice, ought you thereafter assume it's okay to dance upon the spot? Yet that exactly what leaders are doing right now with the world's economic system.

    The precipice was just two and a half years ago. Lest anyone think I exaggerate, here's the cover of the Economist that week*:

    2011 7 24 world on the edge 
     

     
    *not to be confused with 'What the the #@%! is Next'

    The fear at the edge was palpable. Did George Bush really fret aloud that “this sucker may go down!”? Panicked into doing something….anything…fast, Congress passed legislation infusing massive cash transfers into critical financial institutions, “bailing them out.” Essentially, the government printed more money, to the tune of $17,000 per American, (cumulative amount of all bailouts) using new public debt, the “promise to pay,” as the asset backing it. And after some breathless days…..ah….safety at last! It seemed to work, after a fashion.

    But two and a half years later, the edge is back! Another related crisis, with consequences just as dire if its bungled. Come August 2nd, the United States….the world's largest borrower….will default on its debts unless Congress authorizes a higher borrowing limit. They've done this scores of times in the past, but this time they're stuck. How to do it? Cut spending (a lot), increase taxes (a lot), or kick the can down the road to deal with later? Always, the 3rd option has won out, but maybe not this time.

    At present, 41 cents of every dollar spent is borrowed money, and credit rating agencies say they'll downgrade the U.S. credit rating in the absence of more financial discipline. They can't be bombed into submission, so it's a mixture of options 1 and 2, and nobody can agree on just what that mixture should be. So Congress and the President have been squabbling and stonewalling down to the present….dancing upon the edge…terms like 'financial Armeggedon' are bandied about in the event they do not succeed. Even to come near the date without an agreement is said to freak out the markets, which have always assumed that somehow these characters will get their act together.

    But Friday (July 22nd) there was 'meltdown' in the negotiations and PBS commentators Mark Shields and David Brooks, never at a loss for words about anything, were dumbfounded:

    MARK SHIELDS: Jim, what you have just seen is the rupture of the summit…..  And the time is now short. I mean, the grand deal appears to be in shambles. And now the urgency is to raise the debt-ceiling and get it done.

    DAVID BROOKS: Yes, shambles, a complete meltdown, apparently. I have never seen a presidential press conference with a president so angry in public…..if those [terms of a proposed agreement] are real, then I think it was a pretty good deal. But the president's tone of being the only adult in Washington, everyone else is a child, that he's going to summon people to the White House as if they are kindergartners, well, even if you agree with them on the substance, it's kind of hard to go along with someone who is insulting you all the time.

    MARK SHIELDS:
    …..And now we're down to the point of, you know, look, we're staring right down the barrel of Aug. 2.

    …..JIM LEHRER: Is it conceivable that they will not make a deal, or they will make it in such a way that the government of the United States of America will actually go into default?

    DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I had been going in thinking there was a 10 or 20 percent chance of that. Now I would move that up to 30 or so…….

    MARK SHIELDS: I still — I'm just — my native optimism just insists that these — in the final analysis, they're not partisans, they're grownups, they're Americans, and they know how far how grave the consequences are.

    JIM LEHRER: But then why are they acting the way they're acting?

    MARK SHIELDS: It's — it — Jim, it's a question that I don't have the answer for.

     (Greatly abbreviated. Click above for the full transcript)

     

    Of course, the public seethes over this and threatens to vote everyone out come next election. But surely that's a tired response. For people haven't been betrayed by their leaders….who are only doing just what one would expect them to do given the dramatically opposed constituencies they represent. This is the classic “iron mixed with clay” of Daniel 2:42-43. They're honorable people, for the most part, doing their best. Looking out for themselves at the same time, no doubt, but who doesn't? Rather, people have been betrayed by an idea….namely, that human rule, in this case government “by the people,”….works, and can solve our ever-deepening woes.

    Oh yeah, Tom Sheepandgoats, oh yeah!? Well, if you don't think 'government by the people' works, tell me of some government you like better. Exactly…….I can't. They all have strengths. They all have weaknesses. And in each case, the former is outweighed by the latter. It simply goes to show that human rule itself is the problem, and that “we need the Kingdom”…. that heavenly Kingdom which the Bible speaks of and which Jehovah's Witnesses publicize.

    But human self-rule is an article of faith unrivaled among notions today. Nobody likes to throw dirt at it. So instead they throw dirt at the persons involved, thinking they are the problem, and not the system itself. Yet the Congressmen themselves feel betrayed. They give their all to a system, believing as strongly as any religionist that that system will deliver, only to retire disillusioned, though always replaced by someone new who hasn't yet learned the lesson. Said Senator John Danforth, back in 1981: "I have never seen more Senators express discontent with their jobs….I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices in doing something terrible and unforgivable to our wonderful country. Deep down in our heart, we know that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected."

     

    Partly accounting for government truculence on economic matters is that past solutions have not proven effective. Accordingly, Senator Ron Paul grilled Fed Chief Ben Bernanke on the $17K per American ($5.1 trillion total) given to bail out the banks. Since there's been no discernible economic benefit, he mused, the Fed could have simply given each and every American $17,000.

    Consumer spending would have increased, surely. And consumers could catch up on their loans, or even pay them off, so the bank would hardly suffer. And some might pool their allotments together, forming new enterprises and creating new jobs. Instead, the banks were given the $5.1 trillion directly, for their liquidity, while still holding ordinary persons on the hook for the full amount of whatever they might owe.

    But Paul rushed his questions and cut off Bernanke's answers. Why? Senate sub-committee rules: he's only allotted 5 minutes! Right! And if it was the end of the world he was speaking about, he'd only have two minutes! But if it was the brand of coffee to be served during breaks, for that maybe he'd have 60 minutes or more. Shades of Parkinson's Law, if ever there existed any.

    I tell you, this is absolutely amazing. And it comes right down to the wire. Perhaps the 30% chance of disaster will not occur just now, and will be postponed a bit. But the answer, God's Kingdom, is being steadily proclaimed unitedly the world over. And yet, because it's proclaimed by humble, ordinary people, it's largely ignored. After all, how many Jehovah's Witnesses have gone to Harvard? How many of them are wealthy and influential?

    “For the speech about the torture stake [cross] is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is God’s power. For it is written: “I will make the wisdom of the wise [men] perish, and the intelligence of the intellectual [men] I will shove aside.” Where is the wise man? Where the scribe? Where the debater of this system of things? Did not God make the wisdom of the world foolish? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not get to know God, God saw good through the foolishness of what is preached to save those believing.”    Rom 1:18-21

    You know, the wisdom of the world does look foolish these days. More foolish all the time. And more disheartening for those who trust in it.

     

  • You Got a Timetable on That?

    Years after he went apostate on us, Vic Vomodog would walk into the hospital transfusion room, roll up his sleeve and say “fill er up!” just to show Jehovah's Witnesses what he thought of them. He authored a book….I still it see sometimes on the internet: “Forty Years Down the Toilet – My Wasted Life with Jehovah's Witnesses.” Online he's been known to log into chat rooms as Tom Puppydogs, so you have to watch out! More recently, he's somehow got his paws on a treasure trove of mundane Watchtower correspondence and he publishes each item separately on his blog as though each were a more damning indictment than the one preceding. I mean, if Jehovah's Witnesses pay their utility bill, he publishes the receipt as proof that they trust in man for power, not God. What is it with this guy?

    So I contacted him….it was probably not a good idea….they always say we ought not do it….but we used to work unitedly together at the Whitepebble Institute, and I just felt I should talk sense into him. What about the nearness of the end? I asked him. “You got a timetable on that?” he shot back.

    No. I don’t. Isn’t that really what’s at the crux of everything?

    We don’t get a timetable. Jesus said “keep on the watch” and “at an hour that you do not think to be it the Son of Man is coming.” Each time we’ve tried to force specificity on a prophesy we’ve been burned. And, no, it isn’t frequent. It’s happened just once in anyone’s lifetime (unless you are really really old), and even my arch-nemesis says (almost) that that time doesn't count. What we have today is a mix of prophesy confirmed by ever-deteriorating world conditions that point to a certain time period. That’s all we get.

    It’s enough for Jehovah's Witnesses. We’re convinced this system is a failure and slated for replacement by God’s Kingdom. Our hearts are in that new system. We proclaim it. We even refer to it as the “real life,” applying the words of Timothy. But if your heart is with this system, all the work and practices and beliefs of those whose heart is with the one to come seem extreme, unnecessary, or even deleterious. It all depends upon where your focus is. Live a good life now, even try to reform this world, or adhere to what JWs believe is the Bible’s hope…a coming new system.

    Our people tend to regard apostates as “the bogeyman,” and I sometimes wish it wasn't that way. It lends them an undeserved air of mystery. They're not mysterious at all. Their actions are very understandable. Everything lies in that verse about the slave who, bummed that the master keeps delaying, begins beating his fellow slaves. That verse never used to make much sense to me, but as I've seen the drama enacted in recent times, it now hangs together quite well.

    “But if ever that evil slave should say in his heart, ‘My master is delaying,’ and should start to beat his fellow slaves and should eat and drink with the confirmed drunkards….."    Matt 24:48-49

    It's in the midst of parables and prophesies (Matt 24 & 25) concerned solely with Christ's parousia ('presence', though often mistranslated 'return') Once the slave gets fed up about the master's 'delay,' he jumps ship, and then he has a lot of time to account for….years, even decades, proclaiming a message he no longer believes….wasted years, as he now sees them. What better way to account for it than to say he was misled, lied to, brainwashed? In effect, he 'beats' his fellow slaves, the ones who continue to stay the course.

    So to avoid even the chance of being caught up in this outcome, ending up as a guy like Barfendogs, why not hedge your bets a little? Why not hold back? That way, if you somehow go sour on the whole Christianity thing one day, it won't be so hard to reintegrate into the world, since you never really left it in the first place. In short, why not learn, as is all the rage today, to “have your religion but keep it in its place” (which, of course, means last place)?  Wouldn't that be the practical course?

    Sigh….yes, I suppose so, except that makes you lukewarm, and Jesus doesn't really like for his followers to be lukewarm. To that Laodicean congregation: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or else hot. So, because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth.”   (Rev 3:15)

    The smug churchy folk hate verses like this. And since, as my aforementioned nemesis breezily acknowledges, they're mostly biblically illiterate, they likely don't know about them in the first place. Which seems just fine to them, otherwise they'd go someplace where you actually learn the Bible. What they love are verses like “believe on the Lord Jesus and be saved.” Now we're talking! The easier, the better. The rest of the Bible is just so much "fine print". 

    You might even liken the apostates to bad Baruchs. You remember Baruch, serving by Jeremiah's side for decades, leading up to Jerusalem's overthrow by Nebuchadnezzar. He got tired of it at one point, though, and the 45th chapter of Jeremiah is written for him:

    “This is what Jehovah the God of Israel has said concerning you, O Baruch, You have said: “Woe, now, to me, for Jehovah has added grief to my pain! I have grown weary because of my sighing, and no resting-place have I found.”’“This is what you should say to him, ‘This is what Jehovah has said: “Look! What I have built up I am tearing down, and what I have planted I am uprooting, even all the land itself. But as for you, you keep seeking great things for yourself. Do not keep on seeking.”’
    “‘For here I am bringing in a calamity upon all flesh,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘and I will give you your soul as a spoil in all the places to which you may go.’”  Jer 45:2-5
    –
    And Baruch proceeded to say: “You got a timetable on that?”

    Oh, alright, alright…..he didn't say it! I just threw it in. Apparently he responded well to the council, for we see his name mentioned later as one of the good guys. Would that the same could be said for all his counterparts today.

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    More here

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  • The New Songbook

    That last note of Make the Truth Your Own is one high, towering triumphant blast of a note….you climb as you approach it, and then reach way back in your lungs for every ounce of power to, not just belt it out, but sustain it. Each verse ends just that way, and then reverts into the chorus. On a recent rendition, Tom Whitepebble is ready. He bides his time. He waits for the song to come around. There! The moment has arrived. He nails that high note, with all his might!…..“believe what he tells you is truuuue…..!”

    What the……?!  The note's been changed! It's no longer that high crescendo! Now it's just some low-key humdrum note! Worse yet….everyone knows it except him! He's hanging out there all by himself, and they all turn to stare! The new songbook strikes again! Whitepebble looks clear across the hall at me (who is merely minding my own business) and mouths “Why?!”

    I know why, of course. It's on account of a woman named Pearl, who is the wife of Tom Pearlsandswine, and who attends the congregation across town, where I used to attend. She loves to sing….we have a lot of people who love to sing….but she really isn't that….um…..good. And when that final note used to come….that final note of each of the three verses, she'd let out a long piercing ape-like shriek that was enough to make you think “how come we don't have a paid choir, like the big churches do?” Moreover,  the way the song was constructed…..you held that last note, so there's no way anyone could ignore her braying in their midst.

    I tell you, no one could keep a straight face. Worse, you knew it was coming….the verse built towards it…. so well before that climactic moment, snickering began. So, in the new songbook, they've changed that last note to some bland thing that any clod can handle. What else could they do?

    It's not easy to write a review of the new songbook….we've been using it for ….what?….a year or two, now?…..because…because we're accustomed to praising anything we get as being exactly the food we need served up at just the right time, and don't think I'm about to break that tradition! Everything needs updating from time to time, we all know that. We'd used that old songbook for 25 years or so, as we had used the one prior to that. We had ample notice a new one was coming.  It wasn't sprung on us as a surprise. There was even encouragement to practice the melodies so as not to mess them up at the upcoming assembly…..you know how you'll sing a new song real anemic because you're not sure if the next note will be up or down. But, noooo….Whitepebble had to keep listening to his Bob Dylan CDs instead of the new Watchtower tunes. So it's his own fault.

    The new songbook, “Sing to Jehovah,” is a substantial revision of the old one. It has 135 songs, of which 35 are brand new. That means 125 songs which didn't make the cut, since the old book featured 225. And many of the survivors have been reworked in word or tune, some to the point of being unrecognizable. Familiar lyrics are assigned to new melodies. Familiar melodies are given new words. It takes a while to get your head around it. Some of those new songs are beautiful, even hauntingly so. Others, though…..well, they might be if we can ever master the tune, but with 3 songs per meeting, and 135 to choose from, not that many opportunities arise. As to the 125 songs that vanished…..look, there was nothing wrong with any of them….nobody's saying otherwise. All of them were indisputable blessings from heaven. It's just that….well….we had to prune a few.

    Of course, the instant I laid hands on the new book, I checked to see if "Dah da da da dah" was still there, a/k/a “We Must Have the Faith,” once song #144. It's still there, sort of. It's one of those which has undergone the scalpel, and only a ghost of the original refrain survives. That's too bad.

    Our son was speaking by his first birthday. “Ball” was his favorite word, as I recall, and anything circular was a “ball.” Pulling out the MasterCharge card would excite him to no end, just like it does now for Mrs. Sheepandgoats, though for a different reason. But my daughter was not yet talking by her second birthday, and we began to worry. One day, however, Mrs. Sheepandgoats called me, all thrilled, to say she was singing the song…. “dah da da da dah”…the melody is very distinctive. I didn't believe her at first, but later on…..yes, I too heard it. Sure enough, she sang before she spoke (and when she began speaking, she quickly made up for all lost time). For the next few years, whenever that song played, she'd turn to us, eyes aglow, and exclaim: “It's Dah da da da DAH!” So we're not terribly pleased that they've messed with the song, but….such is the nature of progress.

    I've even heard it said that they've “dumbed down” the songbook. That's unkind, isn't it? No, they didn't dumb it down!!! They just made it….um…uh….simpler in some places, dropping some lyrics that were absolutely untranslatable, you know, figures of speech and so forth that play well in one language but not another. Nobody, but nobody, translates material into as many languages as the Watchtower. Nobody comes close. By the way, they tell me that most of our translators in tiny backwater countries are youngsters in their twenties, since their parents tend to know the native tongue, but not any other. Another reason, I suppose, not to tax them with overcomplex vocabulary. Too, lyrics with any hint of “religiousity” have been dropped in favor of “plain speaking.” That's good, I guess, but sometimes I miss the old words. I mean, when you're singing some familiar tune, and suddenly your well remembered lines have been replaced, you find yourself grumbling “what on earth was wrong with those words?!” And there's a strange insistence on a few tunes that every note correspond to a syllable, a practice I find disconcerting.

    Ah well. Maybe it plays out according to tastes in other parts of the world. The time for considering only English speaking persons has past, as it should. What one person doesn't really care for is all the rage somewhere else. So one has to move on.

    You know, it would have helped had Manuel Noriega been able to move on. But, as it was, the onetime Panamanian dictator was stuck as a lover of classical music. He hadn't moved on to appreciate the modern stuff. So when the U.S. military wanted to flush him out of his Panama hiding spot in 1990 (much as NATO would like to do today with Muammar Gaddafi) they blasted him night and day with rock music mounted atop combat vehicles until the poor fellow couldn't take it anymore and gave himself up. And, when mall owners want chase away unruly teenagers, they simply play Mozart over the loudspeakers. Old people love it, but the kids run for their lives. If only we were more flexible when it comes to music.

    Flexibility is not the defining trait of the Sheepandgoats clan, however. Predictability is. Thus, social gatherings of the Sheepandgoats men (not necessarily the women) invariably end with a game of Scrabble. Every time. “They always do it?” asked an incredulous new daughter-in-law. Yes. Always. Plus, we have developed peculiar quirks that make us incompatible with even other Scrabble players. The house dictionary rules, for example, and so the character of the game varies depending upon whose house we are in. Playing at Pop's house is a real challenge. There, a set of 1964 World Book encyclopedias still grace the living room bookshelf, a relic from the days he vainly hoped to pound some sense into us. His dictionary is from that era, too. It wasn't easy to get him to accept even such common electronic terms as “fax,” (which go unchallenged in my house or anywhere else) and I was robustly shouted down when I tried to play “adware” over a triple word score, the 'w' resting upon a double letter square.

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    Read ‘Tom Irregardless and Me.’    30% free preview

    Starting with Prince, a fierce and frolicking defense of Jehovah’s Witnesses. A riotous romp through their way of life. “We have become a theatrical spectacle in the world, and to angels and to men,” the Bible verse says. That being the case, let’s give them some theater! Let’s skewer the liars who slander the Christ! Let’s pull down the house on the axis lords! Let the seed-pickers unite!

     

  • How to Predict the End of the World

    From our readers:

     

    Dear Tom Sheepandgoats:

    How can I figure when the world will end? 

    Sincere Person

     

    Dear Sincere Person:

    The only thing you’re sincere about is saving your skin! Nevertheless, here’s how you do it.

    You start with the well-known verse in Mathew:

    Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father.     Matt 24:36

    Got it? Nobody knows the day and the hour. While, at first glance, that might seem unhelpful for your calculation, in reality it is the key to success! The method is straightforward. Since no one knows the day and the hour, that means if anyone claims a certain date for the end of the world, that’s not it. To visualize how the method works, start with a calendar. 

    2011 5 13 cameras and calendars 014

    Now, let’s consider an example. May 21st. Say someone declares this day to be the end of the world. Since he knows it to be true, that’s not it. On your calendar, you cross out May 21. Cross it out, not in pencil, but with a permanent marker. 

     

    2011 5 13 cameras and calendars 021

    Repeat the process. Whenever you come upon a day someone just knows is the day and the hour, cross out that day. With a bit of research, you ought to eventually have a calendar looking like this.

     

    2011 5 13 cameras and calendars 023

    There! That’s all there is to it. You’ll cross out all days except one. That’s the day! Be ready.

      

    I can hear the cynics, already. “Hold on a minute, Sheepandgoats!  You can’t tell me that every day of the calendar is taken. There may be a lot of nutcakes, but surely not so many as to fill up every day on the calendar!”

    On the surface, it seems a valid objection, but in reality, it just reveals laziness on your part. I admit, if you just count nutcakes predicting the day and hour, you’ll fall short. You must count more than just the nutcakes. You must also count the screwballs, the cranks, the fruitcakes, the starry-eyed lunatics, the wolflike false prophets, the round-the-bend idiots, the maniacal crackpots, the self-aggrandizing demented, the certifiable crazies, the raving beserk, the unhinged wackos, and the moonstruck schizos. It’s a little work, I admit, but it’s not rocket science. If you count all these characters, you easily eliminate the wrong days, leaving only the truth to assert itself!

    Now, since I do nothing but think about God all day long, I’ve worked through all this, and I know the date. But, if I really knew the date, that wouldn’t be the date, would it? So I don’t know. I’ve only been able to narrow it down to three possibilities. There are only three days throughout time that no one else has claimed. Thus we can see the breathtaking splendor of the heavenly plan. Three things are proven:

    1. God is a trinity.
    2. He works in mysterious ways.
    3. Matt 24:36 holds. You can’t tell the day and the hour; your best shot is a 33% chance.

     

    Now, should we give Mr Camping some credit? It’s not easy to do. I agonize over it. His formula, seven 1000-year days after the flood, seems awfully simplistic. He’s throwing everyone in a tizzy over that? Haven’t I said before I don’t do floods? If I met him, I’m not at all sure I would like him. Besides, he buys into all the typical hash of trinity and hellfire, doesn’t he? Don’t get me started on this rapture stuff. And what’s to say about those folk who buy into his prophesies? Why weren’t they wearing ties as they announced the end? So, I suppose, not being on board, I run the risk of going to hell. Maybe if I say kind words, I will go to a softer version of hell…some place with merely an abominable climate, like here in Rochester, which I am used to. At any rate, it seems worth the effort. So….

    Harold Camping, too, was aware of “Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father.” He didn’t just blow it off as if it never existed. He worked around it in a very clever way. He said that verse related only to that specific period of time in which it was written, not now! Now all the Trinitarians laugh at such a silly explanation, yet they blunder as greatly regarding the second part of the verse: “…no man knows the day and hour, nor does the Son, but the Father does!” Still, they would have me believe that the Son and the Father are the same!

    Look, Camping stuck his neck out and looked ridiculous, he messed up a lot of people, but at least he is in the spirit ofJesus admonition to “keep on the watch.” I’ll give him credit for that, if no more. I mean, I’ve heard atheists and skeptics carry on about how can people be so credulous to buy into end-time obsessions. I’ll tell you how. You need look no further than Newsweek, which lists calamities on the front cover of it’s “Apocalyse Now” edition, before tearing their hair out with “What the #@%!” is Next?! So at least Camping errs in furthering a Bible theme, that there will be an end of this system of things. I mean, if the ridicule of him comes from those steamed over his goofball formula, or his presumption of nailing the day and hour, well and good. But if it comes from those mocking the very notion that one day God will intervene in world affairs so that the earth does not end up totally ruined…..well….I hate to pick sides. I’m not sure which is the worse.

    Years ago I called on some science person who had read the book Life – How Did it Get Here; by Evolution or by Creation. In the course of discussion, he asked what difference did it make. Who cared? Either way, evolution or creation, we’re here. I answered that if God was responsible for bringing about earth and the life on it, then he just might have some purpose for it, and might not stand idly by while human mismanagement destroyed it. But if evolution was responsible for all, then if there was any hope for earth’s future, it lay with humans. And they weren’t doing so well, then or now. The man’s wife, who up to that time had had little to say, remarked ‘that’s a good point.’

    Well……alright already Sheepandgoats. You say there’s three possibilities? Spill. What are they? Not so fast! It’ll cost ya. Look, Camping and everyone else draws a salary for what they do. What should I and Jehovah’s Witnesses be the only ones not to cash in? Contact me and we’ll talk. Do you want to be ready for the big day or don’t you?

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  • Bob Dylan Riles a Journalist

    Bob Dylan took his tour to Beijing, but the authorities wanted to look over his play list first. Maybe there would be some songs they didn't like. So Bob figured he could live with that. He submitted his songs, and the authorities crossed out a few. He couldn't sing Desolation Row, for instance. But so what?…..Dylan's written hundreds of songs, and he mixes them up with each new concert. So he played his show with about 30 songs, like he always does, and the government was happy, he was happy, his musicians were happy, and the attendees were happy, just like my son and I were happy when we went to his Rochester concert at the Gordon Field House.

    But columnist Maureen Dowd, from the New York Times, was not happy. “Bob Dylan may have done the impossible: broken creative new ground in selling out,” she fumed. Lately China has taken to jailing outspoken dissidents, she pointed out. They've not been nice to people too assertive in demanding change. But if Bob Dylan had stuck it to them, Maureen thinks, singing famous ballads like “The Times They Are a-Changing”…..Spirit of 60s well, doubtless 1960's flower-power would engulf the country, a new age of Aquarius would descend, and all would be peace and love in China, just like it is in…um…the United….uh…States, the land from which Dowd writes.

    Now, Dowd picked the wrong ox to gore, as far as I'm concerned. Isn't Bob Dylan my favorite musical entertainer? But Dowd is a journalist and, yes…I admit it, I have mixed feelings about those folk. Aren't they direct descendents of that kid from school who was always going "to tell"? None of us could stand that kid. This was true even when there were things going down that deserved telling. That kid just had a strange personality, a little too given to sucking up and holding center stage.

    Plus, journalists are too often subject to an unreasonable faith that humans, and especially human governments, have the answers to world problems. And that if you just shine the light of journalism upon this or that unsavory circumstance, those circumstances improve. Filling the public's “right to know”…..that's all that is lacking for peace and happiness to prevail! Thus, even good ol Joel Engardio, who's made the most honest documentary examination of Jehovah's Witnesses I've ever seen, left his JW upbringing as a teen, and pursued journalism, because he didn't want to wait for an improved world. He wanted to make it happen now, through journalism. Look, it's true that when you shine a bright light, the cockroaches vanish. But they don't cease to be cockroaches. They just go somewhere else. Put them out of commission, and it's like the Bullet used to say about swatting flies: kill one fly and fifty come to the funeral.

    Lee Chugg used to reflect on how Awake's reporting, written by peers, could capture the actual views of whatever peoples it covered. Newsweek would send its own wildly over-educated correspondents into the barrios of this or that country, and the locals would tell them anything they wanted to hear. No one wants to be thought ignorant, and if reporters framed everything in terms of human solutions, political solutions, residents played right along. Probing a certain fellow, (I saw this recently on a BBC item) the man answered that he had faith in God. “Yes, yes, you have faith in God,” acknowledged the reporter, eager to get this useless bit of trivia behind him, but what about politicians? Do you have faith in politicians?” “Some politicians, but not all politicians,” was the reply. Ahh….now we're talking! Human efforts! And the interview proceeded from there, the BBC reporter having established the groundrules. Awake would have pursued his initial answer, taking for granted the general uselessness of politicians.

    Common people today tend to liken governments to the unchangeable heavens, just as they did in ancient times. Regularly, that metaphor appears in the Bible. It fit perfectly then. It fits almost as well today. From the heavens back then would descend any sort of weather, blessing you one moment, cursing you the next, and you couldn't do anything about it. It's little different today in most parts of the world. Even in more democratic countries, it is mostly illusion that "the heavens" can be significantly changed, but people buy into that illusion to an astounding degree. I don't think Bob Dylan does. And I don't. And Jehovah's Witnesses don't.

    But Maureen Dowd does, I think. Now, isn't Dowd one of those aging flower children from the 60's, you know, the decade of love, who remember fondly those days of war protest, getting stoned, love the one you're with, and bringing down Nixon (whom the Chinese like)? Ahhh…those glorious days when policemen were called “pigs.”* Those reveling youth of the '60's idolized Dylan, and Dowd does not take his betrayal lightly. “The idea that the raspy troubadour of '60s freedom anthems would go to a dictatorship and not sing those anthems is a whole new kind of sellout,” she mutters.

    *a taunt that lasted until policemen themselves defused it, turning it into a badge of honor: PIGS = P(ride) I(ntegrity) G(uts) S(ervice)

    But in all her Dylan-worshipping fervor, did she never notice that Dylan denied being a god? He never embraced the “spirit of the '60s,” much less try to lead it. Rather, he wrote the songs he did because people ate them up. “I latched on,” he said, “when I got to New York City, because I saw (what) a huge audience there was. I knew I wasn't going to stay there. I knew it wasn't my thing. … I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow." I almost (but not quite) think he regrets doing it, because he was so successful that the beatniks and sycophants back then seized him and tried to make him king. Now, they tried to do the same with Jesus, and Jesus escaped….

    Hence when the men saw the signs he performed, they began to say: “This is for a certainty the prophet that was to come into the world.” Therefore Jesus, knowing they were about to come and seize him to make him king, withdrew again into the mountain all alone.      John 6:14-15

    …..but Dylan wasn't so adept. He actually got stuck being king for a few decades, the leader of a movement he never liked! "I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of," he writes in his autobiography. "Whatever the counterculture was, I'd seen enough of it," He grumbles on about being "anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent." Instead, he writes that he wanted “to have a house with a white picket fence and pink roses in back, live in East Hampton with his wife and pack of kids, eat Cheerios and go to the Rainbow Room and see Frank Sinatra Jr. perform!”

    Alright, alright. So he did walk off the Ed Sullivan show when Ed wouldn't let him sing the John Birch Talkin Blues (sending Maureen Dowd into an ecstatic swoon, no doubt). He was 22. In a huff over artistic integrity, most likely, and intrigued that his lyrics could so rile a guy three times his age. But in 1974 he said "It's never been my duty to remake the world at large, nor is it my intention to sound the battle charge."

    Gasp!……is this to say that Bob Dylan doesn't care about injustice? My guess is that he does, but he also has the presence of mind to know it has little to do with human governments. Is there injustice in China? I don't doubt it for a second. It's the notion that there's not injustice elsewhere that's the rub. Different people suffer different forms of injustice, that's all. Human government doesn't stamp out injustice. Instead, it removes the hat of injustice from this head and puts it on that one. If there are things disagreeable about the Chinese system, there are also things agreeable, so that on balance, it's just another form of human government, with both strengths and weaknesses. Is it gauling to have one's freedom restricted by “guy's at the top?” Doubtless, it is. But the other side of the coin is that expressed by H. L. Mencken: "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." Overall, human rulership is a mess. “Man ruling man” is the problem, rather than the specific form such ruling takes.

    Or is it that the freedom human governments are able to grant is such a tiny subset of overall freedom that it hardly seems worth getting obsessed about? After all, a relationship with God points one toward freedom from death, and sin. I'll take those freedoms any day to the lesser freedoms humans (unreliably) promise. Oh, I suppose, like Dowd, I should rail about the Chinese authorities, because they are communist, and communists tend to ban Jehovah's Witnesses a lot, and that's who I am. It makes no sense at all for them to do this, but it happens nonetheless. If you want people guaranteed not to rebel or protest, fill your country with JWs. If you want your taxes paid, if you want your laws obeyed, if you want your people to be honest, to work and to mind their own business, fill up with JWs. Let them meet and speak about their faith, and they're happy. All other matters they keep in perspective.

    The 1990 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses tells of a Canadian Witness child who was tested with regard to flag decorum. JWs don't salute the flag – an item that riles many a nation. She and another child were summoned separately to the principal’s office, where they found a Canadian flag draped across his desk. The non-Witness child was told to spit on the flag, and she did so, notwithstanding that she saluted it every day. Spitting must be okay….her teacher had told her to do it.  The Witness child was brought in and told to do the same. She would not do it. They tried to coax her. Since she didn’t salute, there’s no reason not to spit, they suggested. She held her ground. No, spitting would be desecrating the national symbol, she explained. Jehovah’s Witnesses respect the flag, though they do not worship it. Results were announced in class. Apparently, it was part of some civics lesson.

    Now, the Western media – let us choose Dowd as it's representative – is obsessed with freedom from authority. If the U.S. establishment went down 50 years ago, maybe now is the time for China! Does Dowd swoon over memories of the '60s? Are Woodstock posters hanging in her home somewhere? Look, I lived through the '60s, just as she did. I always thought they were phony, and this is long before I became a Witness. Perhaps they weren't phony everywhere, but where I was, on the campus I traipsed, it all seemed just a big reason to party, to riot, to escape the “tyranny” of anyone who would tell us what to do. I followed fellow students, as did everyone, when they trekked into “downtown” Potsdam NY to vent their outrage over the war and stuff in general. I caught a whiff of pepper gas – man, you don't want to get remotely near that stuff! – when the police turned up. It was a wild party gone bad. Maybe there were sincere, mature protesters somewhere. I assume that there were. But I didn't see them.

    Many a young person must have cursed their parents for bringing in the “spirit of the '60s.” For the '60s meant an explosion in STDs. Why is herpes widepsread today? Blame the spirit of the '60s. Look, people have always slept around – don't kid yourself – but it was not till the '60s that the changing world embraced sleeping around as a positive, a value to be passed on to the next generation. The '60s brought in a massive refocus on our “rights.” Not bad in itself, one might argue, but it was accompanied by a corresponding loss of interest on responsibilities. I can well understand how the Chinese government might want to safeguard citizens from that. It's not just old guys who want to secure their place at top of the heap, which is the only explanation Western media can imagine. “Generally the Chinese people are happy,” says one fellow who lives in Beijing, who I found somewhere on the internet, and, for the life of me, cannot find again, though I've tried. “Generally they are proud of China; and generally they think more change and freedom are needed. It will come because most of them want it, but they also want stability. It has been rough here the last 100 years or so, and people value the positive things while seeing the need for more.”

    You know, I can't quite picture those government authorities sifting Dylan songs, trying to ….um….separate the sheep from the goats. All Dylan lyrics mean something, I suppose, but judging just what they mean is no piece of cake. Seldom are they political. But if you're a critic who can see things only that way, they can usually be teased for some political meaning. “That which is crooked cannot be made straight,” is the Bible statement regarding human governmental systems which might most readily represent his views. His lyrics are “hard on bosses, courts, pols and anyone corrupted by money and power.” They're “infused with subversion against all kinds of authority, except God.”

    God comes out in the clear. Good. Bob's not starry eyed over human government. He knows injustice goes far beyond political systems. I like all this. Bob Dylan's not like Randy Newman. He's more like…..um….well…..me.

    ******************************

    Read ‘Tom Irregardless and Me.’     30% free preview

    Starting with Prince, a fierce and frolicking defense of Jehovah’s Witnesses. A riotous romp through their way of life. “We have become a theatrical spectacle in the world, and to angels and to men,” the Bible verse says. That being the case, let’s give them some theater! Let’s skewer the liars who slander the Christ! Let’s pull down the house on the axis lords! Let the seed-pickers unite!

     

  • What the #@%! is Next?

    Can you really put a smiley face on the world, with but a little tweaking, or even none at all? I wouldn't think so, but there are plenty who disagree.  Sometimes, trying to make me mad, they scour Watchtower publications for pictures of Armeggedon, and post them on their websites. Jehovah's Witnesses are mean, they charge. Look how they print such pictures, traumatizing the little children! What is armeggedon cover Many of these grousers, amazingly, are ex-Witnesses, who have tired of organized cooperation with a Bible educational work. These have reassessed their former view that today's world merits God's disapproval, instead concluding that it's a nifty place to find fulfillment.

     

    Typifying this view, here's a comparative religion website accusing the Watchtower Society of "maintain[ing] a state of high anxiety in their membership by stressing the imminence of the end." We would not have phrased things this way.  Instead, we would say that recognition of where we are in the stream of time goes a long way to allay anxiety. It's as though these web writers think all is just peachy worldwide and everyone would know it were it not for JWs fouling the air with their “high anxiety.”

    Well, two can play at that game. Take a look at Newsweek's cover for March 28, 2011:Newsweek cover apoclayse

    “Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Nuclear Meltdowns, Revolutions, Economies on the Brink!” No anxiety here, is there? I tell you, for anyone with a memory, it's absolutely amazing to see such despairing words on the cover of a national magazine. Surely Newsweek, representing the world's collective wisdom, has some reassuring words for the children? Ah…yes, here it is, just below the list of calamities: They say “What the #@%! is next?!”

    And to think that my 7th grade social studies teacher had us all subscribe to Newsweek, on the premise we would thereby become well-informed. Was I anticipating future covers of that magazine when I began my World News Oral Report with the words “What the #@%! is next?” and spent the rest of the semester writing “I will not swear” on the chalkboard? As adults of this system have failed the children in so many ways….in morals, in education, in personal and group and financial security, they now fail them even in reassuring rhetoric. “What the #@%! is next?” is the best they can manage. Why not further say: “We haven't a clue, kids. We've screwed things up in every way.”

    For that matter, why not say “Jehovah's Witnesses are Right?” For Jehovah's Witnesses have been saying for decades that the present system of things is doomed to extinction, to be replaced by God's Kingdom. Everyone else says or hopes that God will somehow bless the present hash of human governments, so as to collectively bring us all a happy future. Well who doesn't want a happy future? But a happy future is not something humans can provide. It comes only under God's Kingdom. No human has the slightest role in bringing that Kingdom about. God himself does that. But we can position ourselves to benefit from it. That is the long-standing message of Jehovah's Witnesses, coupled with an invitation to study the Bible itself.

    Hey, it's not been an easy job. It still isn't. “Aw, go soak your head,” people tell us. “What a bunch of alarmists! We've always had bad things happening!” I can hear the refrain now.  Naturally, the Bible reader thinks of 2 Peter 3:3,4:

    First off, you need to know that in the last days, mockers are going to have a heyday. Reducing everything to the level of their puny feelings, they'll mock, "So what's happened to the promise of his Coming? Our ancestors are dead and buried, and everything's going on just as it has from the first day of creation. Nothing's changed."   (the paraphrased Message translation; it may not be literal, but it sure is fresh)

    Well….we sure haven't always had magazine covers like this one of Newsweek's! It's as if the editors are collectively throwing up their hands and crying “Sheesh! Everything humans touch turns to shit!” (Normally I would never use such unsavory words as “shit,” but I am unwholesomely influenced by Newsweek's #@%! It really is true that “bad associations spoils useful habits.)

    The only time I said “What the #@%! is next?” was when I saw the price of the magazine. $5.95! Weren't these things under a dollar when I was a kid? With more pages? And better written, not dumbed down like it is today? I know, I know, it's unfair to be critical of a mass publication for “dumbing down.” The Watchtower is dumbed down, too. We all know it. As the world's education system steadily goes down the toilet, so do collective reading skills. If you want to reach a broad audience, simple writing is the way you have to go, however painful it may be for guys who cherish reading. But there's hardly any need to rub it in: Note above the Newsweek banner is the byline for another story: “How Ignorant are You?” Am I being too sensitive when I read between the lines: “We're not ignorant…..you are!”?)
     
    To be faithful to the Bible, you need to talk about things not so pleasant. You just do. And destruction of “the ungodly” is not so pleasant. Nobody says otherwise. The only caveat…..and it's a significant one….is that a person can be saved from it by adhering to divine direction. Isn't that, when push comes to shove, a good thing?

    Now….see if you can spot the spurious words I've cleverly inserted in the following passage: Revelation 6:12-17 (Message Translation, again) in which John prophesies

    “…..a bone-jarring earthquake, sun turned black as ink, moon all bloody, stars falling out of the sky like figs shaken from a tree in a high wind, sky snapped shut like a book, islands and mountains sliding this way and that. And then pandemonium, everyone and his dog running for cover—kings, princes, generals, rich and strong, along with every commoner, slave or free. They hid in mountain caves and rocky dens, calling out to mountains and rocks, “What the #@%! is next?”

    There. Did you spot it? What they actually cry is "Refuge! Hide us from the One Seated on the Throne and the wrath of the Lamb! The great Day of their wrath has come—who can stand it." But I try to keep up with contemporary jargon per Newsweek.

    Or, what about the words of Jesus:

    “The time is coming when they'll say, 'Lucky the women who never conceived! Lucky the wombs that never gave birth! Lucky the breasts that never gave milk!' Then they'll start calling to the mountains, “What the #@%! is next?”  Luke 23:29-30

    Nope. What they actually call to the mountains is “Fall down on us! Cover us up!”

    We take a lot of flak for adhering to the Bible's teaching of Armageddon, great tribulation, destruction of the wicked, paradise earth under Kingdom reign, and so forth. Jehovah's Witnesses are a serious religion that doesn't hedge its bets. We're not all over the board. We unabashedly hold to key Bible tenets, no matter if they find scorn elsewhere. For, to be sure, if you don't think God will call “the ungodly” to account, if you don't think God will one day intervene dramatically in world events, then Jehovah's Witnesses and all that they represent are ridiculous, a perfect target for derision. It all depends upon where you're coming from.

    But pertaining to Armageddon…. look, I don't know just who will and who will not go down at that time. Nobody does. Can you be some distance from theocratic provisions or not one inch? Dunno. But why not stay in a known place of safety and take part in a work in which it is good to take part in any event, simply on the basis of Rev 4:11?

    “You are worthy, Jehovah, even our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created.”

    God created all things. The massive experiment of human self-rule is turning out exactly as he said it would. He deserves our service.

    Is it coincidence? In the same month Newsweek throws up its hands in mass despair, Jehovah's Witnesses intensify their ministry as never before.  Here in Rochester, most congregations have 50-80% or more of members in some form of “pioneer service,” volunteering 30-50 hours of their time in Bible teaching. As they visit neighbors, they don't say “What the #@%! is next?” Instead, they point out today's disintegration is all foretold, and is a precursor to God fulfilling his promise to bring peace and paradise on earth through his kingdom.

    We like verses like the following one in Psalms. We think they're soon to come true. And we don't just sit on the information, we do our best to tell others so they can benefit too:

    And just a little while longer, and the wicked one will be no more; And you will certainly give attention to his place, and he will not be. But the meek ones themselves will possess the earth, And they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace.   Ps 37:10-11

    Does not this Psalm recall Jesus' words “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” They certainly haven't to date. But Jehovah's Witnesses believe this promise is soon to be fulfilled, and they invite others to examine the evidence.

    See here, here, here, and here.

     

    [EDIT….58% was the figure of those in some sort of full-time service during April, so reported our C.O. recently. (figures in your circuit may vary)]

    ************************

    Visit Smashwords bookstore.  Also available at Amazon & other ebook retailers.

     

     

     

  • San Diego

    Just north of San Diego, they built a children's beach. It was for the children. The kids needed a beach, don't you see. They didn't get one, though. They were evicted. By sea lions!

    2011 3 27 san diego 053 
    Now, I can think of scores of examples where animals are displaced by people, but how often is it the other way around? It's sort of refreshing, isn't it? The children and seals competed for a time, but the cove's protected nature….rocky cliffs on one side of the beach, manmade seawall on the other….well, word just spread among sea lions…you know how they are….and they came in such numbers so as to drive the children away.  When they started to mate and give birth on the beach, practicing unprotected seal sex, it was time to clear the children out 2011 3 27 san diego 066 once and for all! There must have been 120 seals lounging about the day we visited.  See how happy this guy is?

    Odd birds keep gliding by as you're strolling the sea wall. Line after line of pelicans on patrol, single file, more or less, each line   undulating up and down with the waves. Graceful from a distance, but as they pass close by, you're struck with their appearance. Heads eerily too big for their body, no neck, extended beak….flying gnomes, seeming to eye you closely, though not turning their heads, as if relaying your position to headquarters.

     2011 3 27 san diego 093 
    Now, you mustn't feel too sorry for the displaced children, here. Or, at least, if you do, don't feel it from the standpoint of physical well-being. This is LaJolla (Spanish for “the Jewel), California. It's among the wealthiest locales in the US. It's beautifully hilly terrain. It's picture perfect weather. Relaxed, seemingly stress-free people. The PGA just finished up the Farmers Insurance Open at the community's Torrey Pines golf course, and Bubba Watson walked off with a million dollar check. Witnessing is a challenge here, I'm told, since folks have their own bit of paradise right here and now, living in their multi-million dollar homes clinging to the hillsides.  I was glad I was visiting with my wife, Mrs Sheepandgoats, and not Tom Pearlsandswine, who would doubtless glower over the scene, just like he did at the Ithaca Earth Museum dinosaur exhibit, grumbling about the “wiles of Satan.”  Here, his brow would darken…I've seen it before….he'd mutter to himself awhile, and finally blurt out something like: “I don't know how it happened! The have pigs escaped from the barn, and they're in the farmer's house!”2011 3 27 san diego 042 
     

    Trouble is, I'm not sure I don't agree with him, except for perhaps that unkind remark about 'pigs.' Is it really appropriate to dwell in untouchable luxury when much of the world lives in unspeakable squalor? Isn't one at risk of losing touch that way, not only with less luminary humans, but even with God? From the freewheeling Message translation:

    Give me enough food to live on, neither too much nor too little.
    If I'm too full, I might get independent, saying, 'God? Who needs him?'  (Prov 30:7-9)

    Ah well, that's kind of heady and philosophical, isn't it? It's just too warm and pleasant here to care much. Maybe if I had the dough, I'd be right here with them. Besides, one can always dash off a check for how-many thousands to whatever charitable cause strikes one's fancy.

    We drive along Torrey Pines Rd, gawking at the sights, just as out-of-towners do, water on seemingly all sides,  towering hills to the left, mounted by a huge gleaming white cross, and continue to……wait…a huge gleaming white cross? Here in LaJolla? Here?! Where you substitute shopping for church, and Consumer Reports for the Bible? Rio de Janeiro, okay, you'd expect to find a cross there….but La Jolla? How come the atheists haven't pulled it down? Better go up and check. So we turn up one of the side roads, snaking up the mountain, half-expecting to be ordered off by million dollar residents. Not that they're not nice and all. But like all outsiders on unfamiliar winding roads full of splendid vistas, we creep along slowly. You don't want to run over anyone's child. The guidebook says “some of the most expensive real estate in the world”….yeah, it sort of looked that way. Residents familiar with every turn and hairpin twist keep roaring up behind us in Mercedes or Lexus automobiles, obliging us to pull over and let them pass. But we finally reach our destination.

     

    2011 3 27 san diego 158

     

     

     

    Aha! It's a war memorial. Try as you might, you can't mess with a cross at a war memorial. 2400 black granite plaques surround the cross, each with photos and stories of American servicemen and women. And my Lord! What a view of the surrounding area.

    Plus, here's the sign from those frustrated atheists that I figured had to be here. They did try to take that cross down, I 2011 3 27 san diego 159mean, they must have, knowing them and knowing the times we live in, but the task looks impossible for now, so they had to content themselves with a disclaimer. It only remains to put up some stupid counter display of their own, like they did at that Illinois nativity scene.  

    Back to real people the next day. We breakfasted in downtown San Diego, on Fifth Street. Cafe 21, a restaurant you must visit should you find yourself in the area. Normally, an omelet is an omelet.2011 3 27 san diego 307  Any orangutang can make one, and it makes no different where you have yours. But here, breakfast had personality. Everything's unique. The owners hail from Azerbaijan, a map thereof appears on the menu, and the husband stopped by to chat. The waitress stewed over some scheme of the local politician's to extend parking rates into the evenings, plus weekends. What's a working person to do? Already, she parks afar and scateboards the distance to work. She was just that right combination of friendliness, wit, and loopiness. Surely, a native San Diegan! Nope, she says, she comes from Ohio. Ohio! Right next door! We could be cousins. She and everyone else. I can't tell you how many people we met who've transplanted themselves from the northeast.

    What am I doing in freezing my rear end off in upstate New York? Taking solace when March 1rst comes, imagining on that day that one can almost begin to perhaps see the foreglimmerings of the light at the end of the weather tunnel? When we returned on March 26, it was colder than when we left!

    I know, I know, it's my theocratic assignment. That's how we come to think of it when we're stuck in some armpit of a location.  It will continue to be my assignment until I jump ship and go somewhere else. “Don't worry, Jehovah will provide. Besides, I'm outta here,” I'll say as I roar off. But I probably won't leave. Family is here, extended family, and friends, so that we're all locked here in a conspiracy of inertia. Not to mention that…..it's my assignment.

     
     There were other things we did in San Diego. Other beaches we visited, for example, like in Ocean City, where rows of pelicans cruised by to update our2011 3 27 san diego 093  position, oblivious to the changed socio-economic surroundings, And the zoo, which would take several days, I think, to take it all in. Now, I'm used to zoos in which the animals bunch up as far away from the visitors as possible, and just sit there like sullen union members, not doing squat. But San Diego is a Paul Simon type of  zoo…and the animals will love it if ya do, now…..these creatures interact. They're not shy at all.

    2011 3 27 san diego 275 
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    It was a nice vacation. We don't travel much, nor do we usually go far. I'd never been west of the Mississippi. A short stay in the Poconos is more our speed. But the kids are out of the house, now. Some bills are paid off. Maybe we'll do it again someday. Starting with this post, I believe I'll start a “Travelogue” category.

    We even visited friends who had one of those GPS devices. And to think I've been pulling over in traffic like an old fogey, unwrinkling gigantic maps, painstakingly finding my place, plotting a course, and then driving a half mile and doing it all over again! Just like Pop. He's even older than I am! My first run-in, years ago, with a GPS device made me suspicious of them, but no more. Maybe Mrs. Sheepandgoats will buy me one as a present, and since we don't do Christmas, maybe I won't have to wait nine months.

    They do make you an idiot, however. Like the person we met at the hotel swimming pool who told us of some sight to see in San Diego. Wow, we said, how do you get there? No idea, she said breezily. You know….GPS. It's sort of like the calculator wars playing out all over again. Thus, I once knew a CPA who would not use a calculator, and generally not even an adding machine. He was strictly pencil and paper! What a nutjob! Face it, we're all destined to become stupider and stupider for the duration of this system of things. Resistance is futile.

    ************  The bookstore

     

  • Hiking Around the World

    The District Overseer's going to walk around the earth. He told us so at the Circuit Assembly. He's not going now, of course. He'll go in the new system. Probably well into the new system, not on day one. He'll backpack, I guess. Go with his wife.

    He doesn't worry that he may not get the time off. He will. He doesn't worry about problems crossing the border.* There won't be any borders. He doesn't worry about terrorists. They'll be gone. He doesn't even worry about nasty people. There won't be any of those, either. He's counting on Isa 11:6 taking place:

    And the wolf will actually reside for a while with the male lamb, and with the kid the leopard itself will lie down, and the calf and the maned young lion and the well-fed animal all together; and a mere little boy will be leader over them. And the cow and the bear themselves will feed; together their young ones will lie down. And even the lion will eat straw just like the bull. And the sucking child will certainly play upon the hole of the cobra; and upon the light aperture of a poisonous snake will a weaned child actually put his own hand. They will not do any harm or cause any ruin in all my holy mountain; because the earth will certainly be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters are covering the very sea.    

    So he won't get attacked by wolves or leopards or cobras or whatever, abundant and free-roaming though they will be. But he also won't be contending with people with personalities like those of wild beasts. After all, the “knowledge of Jehovah” is not something animals learn about. People do. Even now, there's plenty of people who've swapped animalistic personalities for peaceful ones upon applying Bible principles (and, alas, some who have gone the other way, abandoning faith to revert back to “this life is all there is” mode).

    The District Overseer's not worried about money. You won't need any in the new system. (do we really know that?) He's not worried about where to stay. Everyone will be hospitable. He's not worried about much, is he? He's probably not even worried about the weather. This last item he did not specifically mention…I just threw it in…because weather is a big deal for us in Rochester this time of year. This has been a tough winter. But when March 1rst rolls around, it's like how you feel when you've finally called the cops to throw that drunk out of your house. You know he won't go quietly. He'll probably break a lamp or two on the way out. But he'll be gone soon. And so it is with this winter. Before you know it, the Lilac Festival will be here.

    I like talks like the District Overseer gave. They're a little childlike, but let's face it, Jehovah's Witnesses have a lot of child in them. We haven't thrown that part of ourselves away. When we first learned of the Bible hope…living forever on a paradise earth….it resonated deep within us. So it's good to be reminded of that initial thrill from time to time. Otherwise, the aggravations of daily life can squeeze it out.

    People nowadays get so cultured and refined and dignified and carry on about their business doings and the least turn of politics, that pretty soon you can hardly stand to be around them. But Jehovah's Witnesses….naw, we're not too sophisticated. We like the idea of walking around the earth in the new system. Not that the pull toward greatness and savvy can't take hold of anyone….it can. We, too,  can get caught up in the minor skirmishes of business like everyone else, and start to carry on about it, if we don't ground ourselves in what's really important. Probably that's what's behind Jame's advice to certain characters he came across in the congregation:

    Come, now, you who say: “Today or tomorrow we will journey to this city and will spend a year there, and we will engage in business and make profits,” whereas you do not know what your life will be tomorrow. For you are a mist appearing for a little while and then disappearing. Instead, you ought to say: “If Jehovah wills, we shall live and also do this or that.    James 4:13-15

    (sigh….Torre took this verse very literally, and you couldn't tell him you were doing anything without his correcting you: “IF Jehovah's wills, you will do.….,” he'd point out.)

    Paradise earth is a tenet pretty much unique to Jehovah's Witnesses. Everyone else is just passing through, you understand, just doing their time. They're all heaven-bound! Though depending on a church's fundamentalist quotient, some won't quite make it. They end up in hell, burning forever and ever and ever, even though their misdeeds on earth spanned only a few decades! They also tell me of some fundamentalists who attempt to tack on paradise earth sort of as a vague afterthought, since several plain-as-day verses insist upon it. But it doesn't really fit in with their overall view, so the result is a kind of theological mush.

    But the JW hope is everlasting life on a paradise earth. That's why the D.O. can carry on about walking the globe and strike a chord with all listening. After all, where, according to the Bible, did God put his human creation? Wasn't it on earth? And why did he put them there? Wasn't it because that's where he wanted them? They'd be there still were it not for an early rebellion. So how is it that God changed tactics somewhere along the line and decided to bring everyone to heaven?

    Everyone knows that Jesus, while dying impaled, was flanked by two wrongdoers, one on either side of him. And one said: “Jesus, remember me when you get into your kingdom.” to which he answered: “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise.”  Luke 23:43

    Search as you may, you will not find a translation that renders the subject of Luke 23:43 as anything other than “paradise.” (let me know if you find one; I couldn't) However, the Complete Jewish Bible renders the verse: Yeshua said to him, "Yes! I promise that you will be with me today in Gan-`Eden."  That's as in Garden of Eden, as the word Eden itself means (in Hebrew) “park-like garden.” Right! A paradise earth.

    As regards the heavens, to Jehovah the heavens belong, but the earth he has given to the sons of men.  (Ps 115:16)

    To be sure, humans today are rapidly “ruining the earth,” but doesn't the Bible point to a time when “God will bring to ruin those ruining the earth?” (Rev 11:18) Once that has taken place, once God's Kingdom rules over the earth, and we all get into swing of things, at that time the D.O's making his trek.

    Oh, alright, alright! So there are some who are going to heaven. But in the overall picture for humans, it's but a tiny footnote. I should have a dollar for everyone on the internet who supposes he's found the hidden Achilles heal of Jehovah's Witnesses: “Only 144,000 are going to heaven, yet there's millions of JWs! HA! So that's why they go door to door looking for converts…they're competing with each other, trying to squeeze into a room not large enough for all of them!"  Sheesh!

    Look, life on a paradise earth is not second class for us. It's the fulfillment of God's original purpose. But the Bible also speaks of a "sacred secret," (Colossians 1:26) a "secret" first made known to the early Christian congregation, that there would be some from humankind, a comparatively tiny number, who would share in  rulership of the heavenly government. Since this "secret" was made known shortly after Christ's resurrection, and there are only 144,000 of these who will serve as "kings and priests, very few of them are on earth today. Most, we maintain, have long since lived their lives and been resurrected to heavenly life.

    Selection of the 144,000 didn't even begin until after Christ's resurrection. That's why Christ is called the “firstfruits” of the "harvest.” He was first. Thus, Matt 11:11 makes sense: “…….among those born of women there has not been raised up a greater than John the Baptist; but a person that is a lesser one in the kingdom of the heavens is greater than he is.” When John was alive and active, the heavenly calling had not yet begun.

    Ask them what they're going to do there….all those folks you meet who's churches say they're going to heaven. They haven't a clue. But Rev 5:10 says of all those with the heavenly hope: “……with your [Jesus'] blood you bought persons for God out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and you made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they are to rule as kings over the earth”

    Now, not everyone can be a chief, can they? Not everyone can rule. Not everyone can be “inside the beltway.” There have to be some Indians. That's what the D.O. is, and all the rest of us with the earthly hope. And that's why he looks forward to hiking that great future Appalachian trail stretching around the globe.

    DED078B0-1FEC-46C6-8BA6-80977CC4B10C

    …………………………………….

    *like I had returning from Canada.

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    Tom Irregardless and Me      No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash 

  • Playing With Dinosaurs

    The kid at work thinks I’m old. He addresses me that way. “Hey, old man!” he says. It’s all good-natured fun, or at any rate, I may as well let the little snot think I regard it as good-natured fun. I ask him if he’s ever seen Fred Flintstone on TV.

    “I knew that guy,” I tell him. “Not real well,” I admit. He was pretty old when I was a kid. He lived down the street, and my folks warned me to stay clear because he would barrel along in that foot-motor car of his…he sort of was a public menace as he got older.” [see Yabbadabba man] I used to play with dinosaurs when I was a kid, too. They were great fun. Downright mean as they got older, but not to you if you’d befriended them when they were small and cuddly. So I always did.

    Aging’s not so bad, because you can remember a lot of things, and can start to put them all into context. Youngsters don’t remember anything different from the here and now. Pop says he did some of his best work at 60, an age I haven’t touched yet, though I’m pushing it. (pushing it pretty hard, too) And wasn’t it Andy Laguna who said he didn’t mind getting older, since with each succeeding year, he found more reasons to be grateful to Jehovah? Hangups that you might have once had sort of resolve themselves as you get older. ‘You don’t really know anything before age 40,’ I tell the kid. ‘Oh, you can figure out how to use the toilet, and perhaps change the TV stations,’ but real smarts don’t kick in till later.

    I did some calculating once, and figured that, per the Bible’s chronology, a youngster who’d met Adam, when the latter was an old guy, might conceivably, when he himself had grown ancient, speak to the adolescent Noah, long before the latter had attained boat-building fame. It’s almost as if one could have know Fred Flintstone back then. It may be two links were actually required between Adam and Noah, but it almost seems that it was just one. Of course, most today think those early biblical lifespans of 800-900 years are but nonsense, but didn’t I write here and here how it all sort of hangs together?

    If you play with this notion for awhile, you begin to appreciate the coherence that might have developed among human society when one might reasonably speak to, not merely his grandparents, but his great grandparents, and great great grandparents, and great great great grandparents, and so forth for several generations out. You’d get deep roots that way. Whatever prior generations had seen or learned, they almost couldn’t help but pass it down.

    Today, roots are wafer-thin. We’ve all seen those studies in which the modern child communicates with a parent a mere minutes per day. And where’s the rest of the time spent? It used to be TV, usage of which is still pretty heavy, but is now supplemented by no end of other media options. This might not be so bad if these connected one with something of consequence; one might think the internet could greatly expand people, but you know, and I know, that it connects with pop culture and values entirely from the here and now. You can see it in Wikapedia, a source that Winged Migration Man (where is he, by the way?) looked upon without favor; an item of history runs a few paragraphs, whereas review of a pop TV show runs pages and pages per episode. Is it any wonder that young folks readily accept today’s conditions today as normal? They’ve not been exposed to anything else. There’s almost no transference from one generation to the next. Didn’t I carry on about it here?

    Family mealtime was also once a relaxed setting in which perspectives might flow from one generation to the next. Therefore, some years ago the Watchtower began suggesting that family meals ought not be sacrificed to modern life – families ought to strive to eat at least one together. I was surprised, for I hadn’t fully realized the custom had fallen by the wayside. In fact, when I first stuck my toe into “evening witnessing,” I didn’t want to start too soon after dinnertime, lest I break up such a family meal. But in time I found that only rarely would that happen, no matter when I started. If it did, I would  apologize and withdraw. Common meals are not really that common, today, even in neighborhoods where you might think they would be. And to think that Torre, from the old country, would not call on folks even during the noon hour, a self-prohibition I thought absurd. But he remembered when even that time was sacred, a time reserved for family and friends.

    Times have changed.

    Not long ago I was riding with Tom Weedsandwheat. He had to swerve and brake hard so as not to hit some kid who had stepped out right in front of him, headphones on, pants hanging down, skull empty as a beach ball. “There can never be another generation,” he muttered to me. 

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    The bookstore

  • Ryan, Sean Carroll, and the Leprechauns

    “Of all the scientists in the world today, there is no one with whom Charles Darwin would rather spend an evening than Sean Carroll.” So says Michael Ruse, author of The Evolution-Creation Struggle. Hmmm….well, how does he know? Maybe if Sean met the Great Man, the latter wouldn't be able to stand him. Sort of reminds me of that passage in Up the Down Staircase where the student gets an F for wrongly interpreting a poem. He protests, but the grade stands. It even stands when he brings the poet himself to class, and the poet says yes..that's exactly what he meant when he wrote his poem. Nonetheless, the incident does change school policy. From that point on, only dead poets are the subject of essays. It's much easier to make assertions after someone has died.

    But this is just idle chatter to fill up a paragraph. I've nothing against Sean Carroll. No doubt he's a great guy. Probably, Charles Darwin would indeed salivate over the prospect of meeting him. At any rate, a certain blogger named Ryan read Carroll's book The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution and was effusive in his praise. It moved him to marvel how he himself could ever have failed to march to the evolutionist drumbeat. Once, he had believed creation. But that's all history now. Science has simply come so far. Now it's evolution all the way!

    See, scientists today have mapped the genome. They can read the DNA in existing creatures, even the “fossil DNA”. This DNA sequence is found here, and here, but not there. These two beings share x percent of their DNA, those two beings y percent. This critter has a certain sequence of DNA, and so does that critter from a faraway time and place! So like a giant game of Clue, evolutionists run numbers, and make deductions about the development of life.

    The evolution theory is now firmly proved, Ryan concludes. “People who believe otherwise are no different in any major respect than flat earth proponents or people who believe in leprechauns.” To be sure, he says, “It is possible that a thinking person could have doubted evolution 100 years ago or even 50 years ago but now those days are past.” Sigh….presumably he, as a foremost example of both thinking person and one-time creation adherent, left the creation camp the last day it was possible for a thinking person to still believe it, and switched off the light on his way out.

    I wasn't in the mood. I took him up on his “it is possible that a thinking person could have doubted evolution 100 years ago or even 50 years ago…” That point was not conceded 100 years ago or even 50 years ago, I commented. Then, as now, the mantra was “People who believe otherwise are no different in any major respect than flat earth proponents or people who believe in leprechauns.” We all know it. To these guys, evolution was unquestionable fact the day Darwin stepped off the boat. Will DNA analysis prove to be the silver bullet that, once and for all, establishes evolution? Should I lose my cookies when they claim – this time for sure – to have found the ultimate trump card? I'm not ready to bolt just yet. We've heard that claim many times before.

    Still, I haven't exactly read anything by evolutionists lately in their own words. Ooh…wait. Yes I did. I read Carl Zimmer's Evolution: the Triumph of an Idea (2001). (and worked it into a post here) But that was a book on CD. Maybe that's not really reading. At any rate, maybe it's time for another book, especially since the evolutionists say they have new ammo.  What have these guys been up to since decoding the DNA? I picked up Sean Carroll's book, since he is Darwin's favorite.

    And……upon reading the book, it seems to me that the biologists have made great strides in an aspect of evolution that Jehovah's Witnesses barely had any problems with in the first place, that of micro-evolution. That is, variation within that vague Biblical term “kind.” The stuff of animal husbandry, and selective breeding. The science behind the proliferation of superbugs, now that overuse of antibiotics has eliminated all the wimpy germs. They've found the workings behind such things, the mechanics of it, and…..does it indeed involve glitches in gene duplication culled by natural selection? Apparently, we are to be so awed by these findings, that we readily extrapolate them in macro-evolution (one “kind” emerging from another “kind”), where the footing is much less firm.

    First, we begin with a discussion of the icefish, a significant variation within the fish “kind,” to be sure. These creatures live where it's too cold to exist without a form of antifreeze within their blood. The blood itself is not red, lacking hemoglobin. Then some explanation as to just how mutations occur. Breaking the genetic code has enabled scientists to track these things on a much more intricate level than ever before, and….well….you have to respect that. Then other chapters track, for example, the development of color vision. Here's a discussion of “fossil” DNA, remnants of one time functional genes which have deteriorated due to "use it or lose it" syndrome, their possessors entering new surroundings. And much discussion of the forensic record revealed.

    But aren't people mistaking tonnage for proof? Like the time I strove to prove a matter of property ownership to the city, and my lawyer opined that submitted materials simply had to “weigh enough?” All this abundant stuff is consistent with evolution. But that's not the same as proving it, for it is equally consistent with creation. Yet these guys carry on as if every gene they discover is the final coup de grace to creation, as if created life would have Bible scriptures in their genes, and not DNA. Look, wheels are common to all vehicles, yet they were all manufactured. You might, by studying changes in design, figure out, in time, the order of the manufacture, the descent and relationships of various automakers, but you have nothing to suggest they were not manufactured.

    But repeat anything often enough and forcefully enough and people begin to think there must be something to it. It's just the way we are. Precious little in this book deals with macro-evolution. And there's nothing at all mentioned, so far as I can see, with regard to the third leg of the evolution Trinity: that of origin itself from non-living materials. It's all micro-evolution, variation within a biblical kind. But there's little to suggest any……oh…wait….Sean addresses it here (pg192):

    “Much of the resistance to Darwin's theories was or is based on doubts about the validity of such extrapolations (e.g, not accepting the “adding up” of effects over vast periods of time). To this point in the book I, too, have implied a degree of extrapolation.” Whereupon he devotes some pages, but not too many, to describe parallels of development in vastly different life forms, with the footnote that material about macro-evolution is to be found in another book of his….to be fair, one he has already written, not one he has yet to write. Then there follows on page 215 a certain “coaching” section climaxing in how to answer creationists, in which Carroll discouragingly leaves his research to turn political. Ah, well, he's the author, so I guess he can go anywhere he likes. Besides, he does liken this part to the after-dinner conversation, where the learned ones tilt back in their chairs while the less learned tend to the cleaning up or knitting, and say “now what are we going to do about these infernal creationists?”

    You know, I will read that other book eventually. I doubt I'll get to it right away. Alas, I must go to work every day. And carry on my normal routine. And do my best to dodge Mrs. Sheepandgoats when she comes around to inform that this or that aspect of the house is falling down. In the meantime, jihad may strike, or WWIII, or the earth itself may fry from any number of always increasing man-made threats. Or the Great Great Depression might commence, since anyone who knows anything says forces which triggered the late financial meltdown are still firmly in place, entirely uncorrected. Moreover, the good news continues to be preached, of which I have a share, since unfolding calamities are all in accord with the Bible's overall message that human rule can end in nothing but chaos. An intense anti-religious air takes hold among the world's movers and shakers, a natural and Revelation-foretold (Rev 17:16) consequence of centuries of outrages in the name of God. Has anyone other than Jehovah's Witnesses pointed to such a occurrence?

    So it will come, reading that second book, but in due time. Meantime, and ironically, Ryan has removed his post from the web, along with his entire blog, so far as I can see. You can no longer pull it up. But I remembered key words, and by googling them, and then googling again the results, I was able to reconstruct the original. Yes, I tracked forensic fossilized google snippets! You can do the same using key words like Ryan, evolution, flat earth, and leprechauns. But only if you are an evolutionist. Fossilized google evidence is not something creation people know how to handle and we don't believe in it for a second.

    [edit…Update here.

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    ******  The bookstore