JW Insider

This is very perceptive, very applicable.

A lot of speculation there.
I think this is about unity.
I always say there is strength in numbers. It's apparent that HQ received many "complaints" (they said so) from people who were arguing the "beard issue" . The organization probably realized that in 2016 they had left the question too ambiguous and this resulted in unnecessary "divisions" in the congregations. It was basically left up to the BOE. So consequently, in the same  building the English congregation had three elders with beards, one of them the COBE, and in the hall literally across the foyer the congregation (not English) wouldn't alow a young brother to operate the microphones unless he shaved his beard off. One elder in another congregation in the same city grew a beard (his wife liked it, it suited him) but the other elders were against it. Obviously no harmony there. So he and his family moved to the English congregation where beards were allowed. In the same city. 
The message was clear: give us a black and white answer, because this policy, that it was up to the elders, was causing divisions. Over what? Over beards! So the logical conclusion was to remove any "supposed" cultural barriers which caused the beard issues and let everyone know that to beard or not to beard is ok world wide for every male and in all responsible positions. 
My only complaint was the use of the chariot and the keeping up with the heavely organization mantra which I personally feel could have been omitted because in my opinion it created the word salad and was a little confusing, and open to interpretation because it suggested what JWI said, and that didn't make much sense. It's almost like sometimes the earthly organization paints itself into a corner. Unnecessarily. 
Jehovah's heavenly organization was obviously never against beards because all the angels had them, including Jesus. 

This is what Jehovah has said: “Cursed is the able-bodied man who puts his trust in earthling man and actually makes flesh his [chariot]. - Jer. 17:5
"Neither be called leaders, for your Leader is one, the Christ." - Mt. 23:10
 

It was clearly a call for loyalty, obedience, humility and unity. Those aren't bad things.
But the logic did seem a bit strained when they hitched it to the chariot.
What came across as odd to me was the logic that Jehovah's organization moves so fast that the earthly part of the organization can't keep up; it can only try. But we shouldn't try to keep up with Jehovah's organization because that would mean we will be "running ahead" of the earthly organization. In that case, keeping up with Jehovah's organization (the chariot) will cause division and show a bad attitude. It's always better to humbly stay behind Jehovah's organization, but keep up only with the earthly part of that organization. 
And that's the primary focus of the announcement letter, shown below:
[Note how, between points 5 and 6, the announcement letter blurs the line between the earthly and heavenly part of Jehovah's organization.)

I think I missed the point at first when I heard Brother Lett say this: Others might feel disappointed, saying, in effect, ‘I supported the policy about grooming for all those years. Now I feel let down!’ But is either reaction appropriate?
My first thought was the brother(s) who had to dismiss a brother at Bethel in 1979. The young brother was a Bethel elder, loved by everyone because he always seemed humble and ready to help in any way. He was counted on for a lot of accounting tasks, and Bethelite vacation days, and he was also in charge of requisitions for the purchase of non-Society books that Bethelites would order for their own personal libraries. (I got Josephus and Matthew Henry and Barnes' Notes and a few other books through him.) He came to breakfast one day with well-groomed but obvious weekend-length whiskers, not just "5 o'clock shadow." I remember thinking that he better go back to his room after breakfast to shave before going to work. He didn't, and he must have been called to ask what he was doing, because he was dismissed from Bethel immediately.
I imagined the disappointment and pain of the elders or committees that had to dismiss such a well-loved brother. I think it was Dean Songer who dismissed him, and Songer was probably the cleanest cut man at Bethel with a short 1960's NASA/FBI crewcut. He might have dismissed him with pleasure, but I thought of him anyway as someone who might have been disappointed in losing such a great asset to the Society.
Of course, if you were a brother, usually black, who could show medical or visible evidence of skin bumps and bleeding after each shave, you already had a reprieve. They had "skin in the game," but they would more typically suffer the loss of it, and surreptitiously touch up their wounds with bloody tissues at breakfast so that the scabs would be dry throughout the day.    

I think I missed the point at first when I heard Brother Lett say this: Others might feel disappointed, saying, in effect, ‘I supported the policy about grooming for all those years. Now I feel let down!’ But is either reaction appropriate?
My first thought was the brother(s) who had to dismiss a brother at Bethel in 1979. The young brother was a Bethel elder, loved by everyone because he always seemed humble and ready to help in any way. He was counted on for a lot of accounting tasks, and Bethelite vacation days, and he was also in charge of requisitions for the purchase of non-Society books that Bethelites would order for their own personal libraries. (I got Josephus and Matthew Henry and Barnes' Notes and a few other books through him.) He came to breakfast one day with well-groomed but obvious weekend-length whiskers, not just "5 o'clock shadow." I remember thinking that he better go back to his room after breakfast to shave before going to work. He didn't, and he must have been called to ask what he was doing, because he was dismissed from Bethel immediately.
I imagined the disappointment and pain of the elders or committees that had to dismiss such a well-loved brother. I think it was Dean Songer who dismissed him, and Songer was probably the cleanest cut man at Bethel with a short 1960's NASA/FBI crewcut. He might have dismissed him with pleasure, but I thought of him anyway as someone who might have been disappointed in losing such a great asset to the Society.
Of course, if you were a brother, usually black, who could show medical or visible evidence of skin bumps and bleeding after each shave, you already had a reprieve. They had "skin in the game," but they would more typically suffer the loss of it, and surreptitiously touch up their wounds with bloody tissues at breakfast so that the scabs would be dry throughout the day.    

It was clearly a call for loyalty, obedience, humility and unity. Those aren't bad things.
But the logic did seem a bit strained when they hitched it to the chariot.
What came across as odd to me was the logic that Jehovah's organization moves so fast that the earthly part of the organization can't keep up; it can only try. But we shouldn't try to keep up with Jehovah's organization because that would mean we will be "running ahead" of the earthly organization. In that case, keeping up with Jehovah's organization (the chariot) will cause division and show a bad attitude. It's always better to humbly stay behind Jehovah's organization, but keep up only with the earthly part of that organization. 
And that's the primary focus of the announcement letter, shown below:
[Note how, between points 5 and 6, the announcement letter blurs the line between the earthly and heavenly part of Jehovah's organization.)

https://www.jw.org/en/library/videos/#en/mediaitems/StudioFeatured/docid-702023024_1_VIDEO

I remember having to tell a young woman that her dreadlocks weren't in keeping with the field ministry, that it was associated with Rastafarians and all that related to the same. She wanted to get baptized and the body left it up to me to explain to her the whole thing. I was annoyed at having to deal with being the congregation fashion coordinator on two counts: 1st that people couldn't read the room and conform to somewhere in the middle and 2nd that I had to enforce something that was a personal choice people were making. I did it thinking to myself that these kinds of people would likely have argued with Moses about circumcision, when there is zero explanation in scripture as to the reasons for it being a requirement other than Jehovah saying "because I told you to". I see both sides of these things. On the one hand, it's nice to have an external sign of people who could be troublemakers, on the other hand "Really? I have to deal with beards, and other fashion concerns? Don't we have bigger fish to fry?" Then I see it all as some kind of useful social exercise. It forces me to think about the benefits and hazards of conformity, and what standards to use, and balancing the differences. When we choose to look different from those we have social bonds with, we are sending messages. There's a whole social science dealing with these "semiotics". Are we Jehovah's Christian Witnesses? Then what does that look like? How does it act? Does it look like seeking it's own personal advantage? Does it look like lording it over the brothers and sisters in telling them what to do with regard to personal matters? Nature identifies juveniles by the way that they look when they are young, vs when they become mature. What do mature people look like? Do they wear themselves out over fashion? 
I remember one elder before my appointment asking me whether I wondered why I wasn't appointed as an elder yet seeing as how I'd been a regular pioneer and servant for almost ten years then and was regularly giving talks outside the congregation. My response was "I imagined it was because Jehovah decided it wasn't the right time". I never asked, because I cared, but I didn't care either if you know what I mean, it's not like I didn't have things to do. The only things I didn't have to do looked more like the annoying things like judicial committees with people who can't take hints from the Bible about how to behave themselves. His reaction was a bit surprised, but then I could see that he needed to give me some counsel so I relented and he went on. It turned out my answers in the meeting suggested I relied on "Worldly Wisdom", my shoes weren't shiny enough and I walked funny when I went up to the podium.  So I thought to myself that I want this elder to feel good about this counseling session so I asked him to watch me at the meetings and let me know if I was slipping in these areas. I told him that when conversing w/the friends I would mention where in the Societies pubs I read whatever it was I was commenting on, so they wouldn't get the idea I was pushing some novel idea unique to me as well. He seemed pleased with my responses. My thoughts were that as an elder you can do some damage, so if I make this elder happy about giving counsel he'll do a better job with the next publisher.
 
Anyway, I'm rambling now....

I think I missed the point at first when I heard Brother Lett say this: Others might feel disappointed, saying, in effect, ‘I supported the policy about grooming for all those years. Now I feel let down!’ But is either reaction appropriate?
My first thought was the brother(s) who had to dismiss a brother at Bethel in 1979. The young brother was a Bethel elder, loved by everyone because he always seemed humble and ready to help in any way. He was counted on for a lot of accounting tasks, and Bethelite vacation days, and he was also in charge of requisitions for the purchase of non-Society books that Bethelites would order for their own personal libraries. (I got Josephus and Matthew Henry and Barnes' Notes and a few other books through him.) He came to breakfast one day with well-groomed but obvious weekend-length whiskers, not just "5 o'clock shadow." I remember thinking that he better go back to his room after breakfast to shave before going to work. He didn't, and he must have been called to ask what he was doing, because he was dismissed from Bethel immediately.
I imagined the disappointment and pain of the elders or committees that had to dismiss such a well-loved brother. I think it was Dean Songer who dismissed him, and Songer was probably the cleanest cut man at Bethel with a short 1960's NASA/FBI crewcut. He might have dismissed him with pleasure, but I thought of him anyway as someone who might have been disappointed in losing such a great asset to the Society.
Of course, if you were a brother, usually black, who could show medical or visible evidence of skin bumps and bleeding after each shave, you already had a reprieve. They had "skin in the game," but they would more typically suffer the loss of it, and surreptitiously touch up their wounds with bloody tissues at breakfast so that the scabs would be dry throughout the day.    

I just found the remark about keeping up with Jehovah's chariot a little strange, and not quite sure what was meant by that.
"All of us need to remember that the earthly part of Jehovah's organization is always striving to reflect the heavenly part-to keep up with it, as it were. Remember how fast the chariot in Ezekiel's vision moved? Like flashes of lightning! (Ezek. 1:14) Any who seek to run ahead of that chariot, trying to force change prematurely,.."
It is obvious that the no wearing beards policy was never from Jehovah in the first place,, obviously not as he created men with the DNA to grow one. 
But somehow we have now compared this new decision  to the issue of circumcision in the 1st Century. Jehovah also created men with foreskins, but he was also the one to give the law about circumcision. But he never gave a law about needing to be clean shaven. That was a purely a man made law. So how was that trying to keep up with Jehovah's chariot and striving to reflect the heavenly part? Are they saying they failed in this regard? I think I would have probably left that part out....

Obviously because he was 6'5!

One of the two pictures of Brother Lett above is not real. I just told an AI program to add a beard. It might be what Brother Lett would look like if he led by example, as in:  "As you see how their conduct turns out, imitate their face." 

One of the two pictures of Brother Lett above is not real. I just told an AI program to add a beard. It might be what Brother Lett would look like if he led by example, as in:  "As you see how their conduct turns out, imitate their face." 

WOW!
I suppose in the interest of unity I should have tolerated during my entire adult lifetime, which is almost over, the unrelenting discrimination, ostracism, alienation, by the Elders, over and over and over in “the little back room”, being shunned and rejected by the Congregation brothers and sisters, in EVERY Congregation where I had a beard (… except ONE near Pittsburgh, PA, in 1977-1978), and having been sent home in bitter tears when I showed up for field service at a grocery store parking lot rendezvous for having a beard.
In the interest of unity, I should overlook and forget the 60 continuous, unrelenting years of boneheaded stupidity that made my life defensive and hard, denying me opportunities for service and Christian fellowship, and the life distorting, crippling, crushing loneliness I had to endure, each and every day.
Oops!
Silly me.

Being the oldest should mean more wisdom and respect wouldn’t it…🤭

Going back on topic, (of a post that hasn't been on topic, lol) in reading everyone's comments I see the reasoning behind both the against and the for blood. Personally I can see why someone would abstain (which means both eating and transfusing). My main issue is that the organization says this is a conscience matter, whereas in practice this is not true. It is the societies conscience we are told to obey. We were always taught to tell the doctors that our conscience will not allow us to break God's law on blood. But what if someone's conscience did allow them, for whatever reason? This is why I think the blood issue (whole blood) should be something between them and Jehovah only. (Someone said well then we could say the same about fornication. Well, if no one in the congregation finds out about it, then it will still be between them and Jehovah, and they will have to answer to Jehovah for it in the end.
In line with this, I have noticed that elders on the HLC no longer "interfere" or are privy to a person's medical decision. In the USA hippa laws are strict, and absolutely no one should be able to find out if someone has had a blood transfusion, even relatives. So if someone does get a blood transfusion, it remains between them and Jehovah.
I think Tom's handling of the situation with the young brother in hospital was very good. No elder should be persuading another person to follow his (the elder's) conscience, or anybody else's conscience for that matter. The conscience is each person's their own. (This is why the conscientious objection to alternative service was a farce because the brothers who objected, for the most part, didn't know why they were objecting, they were just following the societies conscience). 
The stance now is we do not fight the Superior Authorities when it comes to transfusing children. Which makes me wonder where the principle "obey God as ruler rather than men" went to? Did we decide this because we do not want to make a spectacle of ourselves, fighting court battles and making it look like JW parents want their children to die? Don't get me wrong, I am glad about it, but where in truth does it leave  "obey God as ruler rather than man?" It seems like the organization has compromised... or not? Same with the fractions becoming  a conscience matter. I get why this was so, they "didn't want to get "dogmatic" (a phrase we will probably be hearing a lot more). But how much of this was also for practical reasons? The guidance about blood fractions itself says that people should realize that many vaccines (which members of Bethel used) and other therapeutic medicines contains blood fractions. So the person who says no to blood fractions should realize this, and then make an informed decision. I wonder if the covid vaccines had been based on blood fractions, or contained blood fractions, how would the organization have handled that? Probably they wouldn't have been able to "push" it like they did, and would have just had to say it's each person's decision, based on their own conscience. 
For me, when it comes to the question of blood, we don't want to be putting our life at risk just for man made rules. We have to be sure it is Jehovah's law, and by the looks of it this camp is split into two. Some say yes and some say no. 
I feel like we should apply Occam's razor and go with the simplest and clearest explanation. 
It's all giving me a headache...
 

Did I ever tell you about my three-legged pig (circa 1973) that I used to ride in my car? I hit a drunk driver, and Norma pushed me out of the car before it burst into flames. 
A pig that special and talented you just can’t eat all at once.

She was a good companion, and never gave me indigestion …..

It's because I believe that if a non-Jewish person could eat an unbled animal that died naturally, then they could also trap or hunt or net an animal (mammal/fish/bird/etc) and eat it unbled. But even if it were only animals that died naturally, which might have been ideal, then it was still OK for people of the nations to eat unbled animals. Narrowing it down to distinguish which kinds were OK doesn't change that overall fact.
With the Jews, they had Moses read in their synagogues week after week so they would know the Mosaic Law. Did all the nations have Noah (Gen 6-9) read to them every week, so they would know the Noahide Law?
(Acts 15:20, 21) . . .but to write them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from what is strangled, and from blood. 21  For from ancient times Moses has had those who preach him in city after city, because he is read aloud in the synagogues on every sabbath.”
 
Also, the lines can get blurred. If I create a grazing path for bison at a precarious edge of a cliff, is it NATURAL that one might slip and fall to its death now and then? If a dog is trained to bring back a duck that I didn't quite kill when I hit it with a slingshot, but the dog kills it by holding it by the neck, did it die naturally? What if the dog brings me one that it caught on its own? What about the chipmunk the cat brought to my doorstep that dies after several hours of torture by the cat? If I take an animal from the mouth of a lion that just killed it by chasing away the lion, did it die naturally? 
I don't know the taboo you mean, but the above could just as well mean that Noah could NOT eat carrion. He could not eat an animal found dead of natural causes. And he couldn't eat an animal that still had blood (or breath) flowing in it. So he could only eat meat he purposely killed. He just couldn't eat it with the blood.
Blood made it taboo, and therefore blood WAS considered a sacred substance by decree of God himself. 

Maybe. Maybe not. The Jews of the Hebrew Bible did not necessarily consider Jehovah to be an invisible Spirit the way we do. They considered Jehovah to have a body that could see and hear and EAT and SMELL. (FWIW, ancient Jewish rabbis had no trouble agreeing that Jehovah was circumcised!!!) The idea that smoke from "incinerated" meat created a kind of smoky incense that ascended upwards toward heaven was likely an indication of this consumption by God, leaving only a few ashes. And this idea was spelled out even more clearly in other nearby cultures.
When the Jews would be scattered, they would have to serve gods that were not real and therefore could NOT eat and smell.
(Deuteronomy 4:27, 28) 27 Jehovah will scatter you among the peoples, and just a few of you will survive among the nations to which Jehovah will have driven you. 28 There you will have to serve gods of wood and stone made by human hands, gods that cannot see or hear or eat or smell.
(Leviticus 26:31) . . .I will give your cities to the sword and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell the pleasing aromas of your sacrifices.
 
I agree that the intent of Leviticus 3 and similar passages was probably to identify ALL the major fatty places for sacrificed animals. It can also be read as: "Don't eat any of the fat, sacrifice all of it, and this INCLUDES the fatty pieces of the inner organs and intestines." That's why I quoted the passage about animala that died naturally or were killed by another animal. In that case, it was NOT about a sacrifice or a priest's portion. 

First she gets perceived condescension from MM, and now you are going to give her a superiority complex.