TrueTomHarley

1 hour ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

It seems Jesus didn't suffer in this way of thinking. Jesus seemed not to care what people thought of Him. 

Well....he does have the advantage of being perfect and thus has no bloopers to deal with.

He also said of his followers that they would do works greater than his. Obviously, you will not top Jesus in quality, but you will top him in quantity and range, so that must be what he was referring to. Thus, for his work to expand, people will be drawn in who are not immune to bloopers. The treasure is carried in earthen vessels.

Also, for @The Librarian. The note that Brother Covington could sass back the Supreme Court Justices and get away with it I read in a Look Magazine article prior to 1970. I never forgot the factoid, but I also never kept the article. Do you have it or know where it might be found?

3 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Is that what they are Tom, the Victims. Just 'dirty laundry'.

Don't be silly. I said nothing of the sort.

3 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

It has ruined my life,

The prime object, therefore, ought to be to unruin it to the extent possible. If I or others here do not accede to your every point, you must not conclude that nobody here is Christian. Call it 'tough love' if you will - a desire to help you in unruining the life you say is ruined. 

Seeing perpetrators properly punished allows for unruining to a degree, but only to a relatively small degree. It still doesn't mean that the abuse did not happen.

Society has long denied loved ones of murder victims the justice they seek. For taking a life, a perpetrator might receive a 20 year prison term and there are many circumstances that can reduce this sentence to as much as zero. Even the harshest sentence will not afford healing to the loved one. He or she usually wants that manslayer D-E-A-D, a reality that was accommodated in Bible times.

Many were the Holocaust survivors, and that was a trauma most would agree is worse than child sexual abuse. Jehovah's Witnesses and others emerging from that system weighed 90 pounds or less. Many were worked to death. Some persecutors were brought to justice in the Nuremburg trials. Others escaped and were never heard from again. You can believe that the punishment or non-punishment of villains was not the factor that enabled Witness prisoners to recover, the victims that I am most familiar with. 

It must be the same with you. Healing must come first. Atrocities are unfortunately not uncommon today and people have to move on from them as best they can. PTSD for no end of causes is frequent. They have to heal as best they can and find strength to move on. Sometimes counseling helps and/or support groups. Witnesses would say that 'throwing one's burden on Jehovah helps. Whatever happened to you happened long ago and it is not happening any more. It is you who are afflicting yourself with continual memories of the abuse.

On ‎10‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 6:54 AM, JW Insider said:

A site that appears closely related to Barbara Anderson's activism has an article claiming to be from an Elder who recently left over the same issue of Child Sexual Abuse. https://scaars.org/2018/10/16/an-insiders-account-about-how-a-report-of-child-sex-abuse-is-handled/

Yes, he shines as a pillar of conscience. Point taken. Got it.

He chose to leave and there were “many reasons for his decision,” which he does not go into. Abuse policy is not his only reason, though at first glance it might appear that way. He could have reported any abuse allegations to police as he became aware of them. True, he would have to step down as an elder, because one holding office in anything must carry out the policies of those making them. But it is all volunteer service anyway. He could have taken his place as a regular congregation member and not thrown everything away with regard to his belief system.

Instead, it appears that he did throw it all away in order to become a warrior for a cause. He has thrown in his lot with the ones crusading against this one grievous wrong, who appear, for the moment, to be enjoying greater success in the war. Or are they? They are undeniably good at outing and punishing perpetrators of child sexual abuse, but are they proving any good at stemming the evil itself? Thirty-plus years of all-out war has produced little result; you can still throw a stone in any direction and hit five molesters. In contrast, there is good reason to believe that the Witness organization overall has significant success in prevention. 

What of the reasons that he became a Witness in the first place—the clear answer as to why God allows suffering, the knowledge of what happens to people when they die, and even the reason that they die? He has forgotten all about it. What of the Bible principles that have succeeded in producing one group, and practically only one group, that has not been molded by changing tides of morality, sexual and otherwise? Not worth the bother, his course suggests. What of the effort to educate ones the world over in knowledge of God’s purposes and the one true hope that conditions will not always be as they are now? It no longer interests him. What of the work to make known God’s name known and defend it against those who would malign it? None of it seems to be a concern any longer. If he remembers God at all, he will address him as ‘The LORD,’ since the rule elsewhere is to bury God’s name.

He throws it all away to become a foot soldier in a cause. The cause is certainly not nothing, but neither is it everything. Every notion he once had about God taking a separate people for his name appears to have vanished. Christianity should not be separate from the world, in his apparent revised eyes. It should jump in and help fix it, even if most of the tools it offers will be scorned. If the world scorns them, perhaps it has a point, he seems to suggest. His new course says it loud and clear: Elders should put aside concerns of safeguarding the congregation, and should become agents of the state, so as to do their part in safeguarding the whole world.

He has bought completely into his new role. It is not enough for him that elders, at present, leave it to parents and victims as a personal matter whether they will seek help from outside counselors. He is upset that they do not encourage it. Seemingly he would hold them accountable even if they did encourage it, which they do at present, and the parents/victims yet declined. They did not encourage it enough, he would maintain. Too, he is concerned that an offender might go door to door as a Witness in search of new victims. Well, nothing is impossible, but it seems an extraordinarily difficult way to go about it. The house to house ministry is a challenge even when done for the right reasons. Isn’t there another thread here that complains about how difficult it is to find people home today? How many of them are going to be unsupervised children? How many of those children are going to be trusting of strangers? It’s ridiculous, but the former elder has swallowed it all. Why not simply hang out where children are? Volunteer at a children’s camp. Coach youth sports. Drive a school bus.

He could have just relinquished his office and reported whatever allegations that he became aware of. Instead, he has flushed everything away to focus on the popular crusade. If he remains religious, he will probably lean right. If he has gone atheist, he will probably lean left. They mostly do. Nor should it be a surprise. If you go atheist, you put your full trust in human self-rule. Obviously, nations have to band together for this to be successful, so any populist movement is counterproductive. The question reverts right back to that of 1919, when the Bible Students chose God’s kingdom as the true hope for all mankind, and their opponents, throwing in their lot with human efforts, chose the League of Nations.

All of this said, the former elder prefaces his diatribe by his having seen “the extent that the organization would go to in order to defend their position.” It is a point that merits addressing.

Those brothers most eager to not air dirty laundry in an attempt not to sully God’s name appear to have succeeded in sullying it, albeit unintentionally, more than if the newspaper was called the instant any congregation member so much as hiccupped. The very reason there is an expression ‘skeletons in the closet’ is the universal instinct to keep them there, and that universal tendency is exacerbated in direct proportion to consciousness of reputation. Few are more conscious of reputation than the Witness organization, even as though drawing support from a 1 Corinthians 6:7 mission statement.

It is not hard to understand how this can happen, yielding to the instinct to not air dirty laundry. But it is not useful here, and any hint that one is concerned with reputation as more than an insignificant footnote will incur the wrath of those focused on one and one thing only. They will say ‘If you really do abhor child sexual abuse why do you even think for a moment about reputation?’ It is a very difficult road to traverse.

Everyone except those in Bethel watches the television show Bull today, and there they learn that playing to the jury on the jury’s own terms is critical. Does the Watchtower attorney in Montana do that? Or does he give evidence of being ‘insular,’ quoting Bible verse a couple of times when it is not necessary to do so, when a more contemporary argument might have better resounded? He is a fine brother, I am sure, with a monumental job, but I suspect the verses hurt more than help with a jury composed of persons who simply do not hold scripture in the same esteem as was once the case. They might even reckon it an attempt to schmaltz them and pull the wool over their eyes. Might his explanation fall flat that the ‘regular Montana folk’ who are Witnesses call ‘because they love you,’ and since ‘many of you are Bible readers,’ they will recognize that Jesus followed just that course? He misses completely the political nuances of the expression ‘fake news’ that few of them will miss, and he spins a folksy story of the caught fish that gets bigger with each telling to suggest, fair enough but it plays a little tone deaf, that abuse victims might exaggerate with the passage of time. He covers all the right points but with a backdrop that will suggest to some that he just doesn’t ‘get it’ as regards the pain of those who have suffered abuse. Courthouse proceedings are not therapy sessions and one can only be so therapeutic with plaintiffs seeking millions, thereby clearly indicating their chosen means of comfort. But more putting oneself into their shoes can hardly be a bad thing. 
He commits these lapses, if lapses they be, because he comes from a faith described as insular. ‘Insularity’ is not a crime (yet) but it does here present obstacles to heart to heart communication. His talk would play well indeed to persons on the same page as he, such as he might find in a Kingdom Hall, but to a public conditioned by events to be skeptical as to whether Jehovah’s Witnesses truly do ‘abhor child abuse,’ as they say they do, it seems to show stress cracks.

The ones who appear to be mainly interested in reputation have been caught in their own righteous trap and it is being played out in plain sight before all the world. The only thing that takes away from their detractors’ efforts to make maximum hay out of this debacle is that there are so many atrocities to compete for attention today, many of which are far worse, that it is a challenge to keep the spotlight focused on where they want it. 

Rather than try to maintain the illusion that ungodly deeds could never have occurred among true Christians, these Witnesses might have let the chips fall wherever they might and trust that a relative scarcity of abuse will be enough in a world where one out of every five children suffers molestation before age 18. Instead, their insularity made them miss the determination and progress of outside authorities to stamp out child sexual abuse, slow to acknowledge the cause when they did hear of it, and thus they are readily framed by their detractors to make it seem that they oppose it.

It could have been me. I am not better than these ones. I, too, might have become distressed when the media did not seem to notice the elephant in the room. Will the greater world enjoy success when it embraces every permutation of sexual interaction as fine and good, except for one that will not be tolerated? The world today nurtures the pedophilia with one hand that it seeks to eliminate with the other, and even the New York Times swoons over a child model in an 11/22/2017 article. “His eye makeup is better than yours,” it says, and gushes that he has 330,000 Instagram followers. How many of them are pedophiles? Why, the Times doesn’t think of going there. And what of this story, showing that there are clear limits in fighting child sexual abuse. It is not so bad if it is customary where you come from, a Finnish court finds.

https://yournewswire.com/finnish-court-sex-children/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Meanwhile, the organization that teaches family values from the Bible, that specifically warns about child sexual abuse, that doesn’t settle for merely punishing the wrong, but significantly prevents it as compared to the overall world—what of that organization? That is the organization on the hot seat, tried by those dubious of it and a few that outright despise it. However ill it plays today, one can understand a reluctance to broadcast shortfalls believed to be comparatively scarce—a lot of them, to be sure, but significantly less than in the greater world. But that reluctance serves nobody well in this instance.

Are Jehovah’s Witnesses insular? Try these words of Jesus on for insularity: “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it has hated you. If you were part of the world, the world would be fond of what is its own. Now because you are no part of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, on this account the world hates you.” Christianity as defined in the Bible is insular. It is not part of the world. It is separate from the world, and from there it tries to extend a helping hand to individuals therein. To the extent contemporary variations of it are not insular, it is due to compromise over time so as to conform to whatever might be disapproved by overall society, something Jehovah’s Witnesses do not do. One will have to ban the Bible itself to forestall insularity and there are plenty in an irreligious age who would like to do just that. No longer is it the legal climate of decades ago, when the Watchtower lawyer could cite his Bible and the judge would follow along, nodding thoughtfully. Even Hayden Covington, a Witness attorney of the 1940’s, renowned for his ability to sass Supreme Court Justices and get away with it, would be hard pressed today.

The Australian government has just issued an apology in the wake of a Royal Commission looking into child sexual abuse, an investigation that spanned several years. That apology is lauded as the example for everyone to follow, but it is worth noting that the victims did not accept it. Many of them will never accept any apology. What they will only accept is for their abuse never to have happened—something that surely speaks well as regards prevention being the prime focus.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-45819080

Detractors are chagrined that Jehovah’s Witnesses are not specifically mentioned in the apology, but it may be because for most institutions investigated, the leaders were the perpetrators. With Jehovah’s Witnesses that was rarely the case. Their ‘wrong’ was to investigate first, and in so doing, fail to coordinate with outside authorities. Seeming frustrated, one Witness opponent tweets: 

‘So sick of Watchtower apologists trying to say that it's OK to protect pedophiles & for child sexual abuse to go unchecked & unpunished.  I wonder if now they will use the same defenses to support the Catholic Church & its mishandling of child sexual abuse?’

I answered that one: ‘They have made their own bed & must lie in it. Unlike JWs, where leaders were seldom the perpetrators, theirs exclusively were. Heaven help us if the members are ever looked at, as with JWs. Still, to the extent faith in God is destroyed, it is a tragedy even greater than that which triggers it.’
 

12 minutes ago, Space Merchant said:

@TrueTomHarley People seem to forget that Trees are of God's creation....Alas, what is a blessing some do not appreciate, until it is gone or dying out, that is when they begin to care.

Yes, they are nice, but they have blemishes. Some are gnarly. Some suffer bugs and blight. Some are not symmetrical. 

'Rip them all out and blacktop what remains' is the attitude of some.

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

The JW Org is like a beautiful forest from a distance, but just do not get close and look at those trees or you will be so disappointed. 

That is true with anything.

1 hour ago, ericsmith95 said:

ARE YOU ALL FAITHFULL LOVERS OF JEHOVAH ??????

ALL I CAN SEE HERE IS THE BEGINNINGS OF APOSTASY  ,

Relatively few are. Even nobody is, if measured by standard counsel regarding associations.

The beginnings? It is well beyond that point.

6 minutes ago, Anna said:

This is also why many Witnesses won't accept blood fractions, their conscience doesn't allow it for that reason.

Others will say: ‘It’s not a cake until you mix the ingredients.’

5 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Many Earthwide who were once JW's and have left or been removed because they were stumbled due to the GB policies and the puppet Elders that didn't question orders

I think it is just that they developed or came across something that they thought entitled them to drive the bus. They left when they discovered that they would not be allowed to. In some cases they were caught red-handed trying to hotwire the bus.

In the end it is a too high opinion of oneself and one’s wisdom that sinks one. The worship and deeds of Jehovah’s Witnesses, magnified by their organized quality, either appeal to the heart or they don’t.

3 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

The Beverly Hillbillies began playing in reruns that night and the ones that you despise love that old show.

40 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Sorry but that is the biggest squirm I have read on here so far. 

I, too, was outraged. That is why I tried to top it.

3 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

What was the true reason the Group study of a Tuesday Eve was stopped ? Sorry that's off topic. 

The Beverly Hillbillies began playing in reruns that night and the ones that you despise love that old show.

7 hours ago, JW Insider said:

and the "Commentary on the Letters of Peter" (which was finally named "Choosing the Best Way of Life").

I did not know this.  

It also makes me want to dig the James commentary out again.

2 hours ago, The Librarian said:

@JOHN BUTLER  I also heard of a JW somewhere who ate insects!!!! ....BTW.. I love tacos.

Thank you, don’t mind if I do. Please pass the...WHAT!!  No ladybugwing toppings for my taco?!!

1 minute ago, Jack Ryan said:

@TrueTomHarley of course not: "It's a Good Book"!!! ? so "fleece the flock!"

 

Obviously if one has gone atheist, the whole thing is a massive waste. That will not be the point of view of most here, however.

On 10/19/2018 at 9:08 AM, JW Insider said:

Our efforts in working shoulder to shoulder are ways to help one another, encourage one another, and in some tenuous way, I would agree that they could "help" Jehovah.

I will go further to suggest that when you devise a completely new production and distribution channel to get a low-cost, even free, modern Bible into the hands of an impoverished person so that he or she is not stuck with some 200-year old turkey of a translation that he can neither afford nor understand, you are ‘helping’ the God who plainly wants people to be educated in his ways. I will even suggest that the Witness organization is not being arrogant in so doing.

On 10/19/2018 at 10:43 AM, Space Merchant said:

As technology advances, things like this will change. Who knows, in the next 50-75 or so years we could be paying bills or contributing to something financially with a mere thought 

I am ahead of the curve here. I have been trying to pay my bills this way for some time, so far unsuccessfully, and even occasionally incurring the ire of the payee, but, you know that the pioneers always take the arrows.

35 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

That's why I am a big fan of the fictional character John Wayne ... he can endure ANYTHING, and barely notice.

He also had a very high regard for Jehovah’s Witnesses, likely through his close association with Mickey Spillane 

5 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

That's very funny. If only there were one Allen Smith who could communicate with one BillyTheKid. It's a long shot, but perhaps one of the following might have his number:

Wyatt Earp:

 

Billy the Kid:

What! You would prod a tiger in its lair? Now I know that you are a glutton for punishment.

 

24 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

But only persons who have an extreme ego, or who confuse Jehovah with the organization believe they are "helping Jehovah." 

For then I shall give to peoples the change to a pure language, in order for them all to call upon the name of Jehovah, in order to serve him shoulder to shoulder.’ (Zeph 3:9)

Whenever you serve someone, in can be reasonably be said that you are ‘helping’ him, can it not?

6 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

My point was that the GB are only men and therefore the content of the meetings being approved by men means nothing.

Oh. Okay. Now I see where you are coming from. The same place that you always come from.

But it is so entirely irrelevant to the post that it threw me. My bad, of course.

3 hours ago, Judith Sweeney said:

Whew!   

Exactly.

7 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

But the approval of mere men means nothing in God's eyes, haven't you figured that out yet Tom ? .

My oh my and I thought you had spiritual wisdom.

Your comment makes no sense whatsoever.

Okay, serious again. Back to work.

The inclusion of 2 Samuel 16:5-13 in the midweek meeting is telling, in my view. It was particularly so since that same meeting, in the 'Book Study' portion, discussed Matthew 11, where Jesus states that they criticize you no matter what you do, like children, so the best recourse is to go full speed ahead and let 'wisdom be proved righteous by its works.'

The GB doesn't make specific statements regarding accusations, even when some prove true and the media shouts them to the high heavens. They do a Matthew 11, or a Psalm 34:18, or a Luke 9:62. They don't play the game of responding to outside reports. Some of them are true. Some of them are untrue. Some of them are partially true. If they weigh in on each one it not only focuses the spotlight on the greater world's information channel, but it leaves them time to do anything else.

Nonetheless, by including the 2 Samuel verses, it is clear their what their attitude is, and it is so far from 'arrogant' that anyone charging it ought to have his or her head examined. In those verses, David strays from familiar turf. Shimei confronts him from afar. He curses him, calling him 'blood-guilty,' 'good-for-nothing,' and throws stones at him. David's man wants to take his head off, but David says: 'Well, he has a point.'

No, he doesn't say that literally, but he comes pretty close. Whatever Shimei thinks, he came by his viewpoint through his interpretation of things that actually transpired, and David says, in effect, 'Well, if Jehovah permits him to abuse me like this, who am I to say he cannot do it?' It is incredible humility on his part. 

He says exactly: "Here my own son, who has come forth out of my own inward parts, is looking for my soul, and how much more [this man.] Let him alone that he may call down evil" and let Jehovah figure it out, however he will. 

With that David and his men kept going on in the road, while Shimei was walking on the side of the mountain, walking abreast of him that he might call down evil; and he kept throwing stones while abreast of him, and he threw a lot of dust.

Now, there is nothing significant that enters the meeting content without the express approval of Governing Body members, as they serve on various committees. There is no way they that cannot be putting themselves in the place of David. Whatever may be gleaned from this, one thing that cannot be missed is that they are the most self-effacing men on earth. 

13 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

You are not supposed to go THROUGH them ... you are supposed to splash about in them, marinate in them, wallow in them, luxuriate in them, like a porpoise happily frolicking in the open ocean, with that porpoiseful permanent smile!

I am not sure, but I believe my parakeet does all of that before pooping on them.

8 hours ago, Querotevernoparaiso said:

admin I think I'll be warned about trying to express myself in English

I suspect @admin wants nothing to do with this and is sorry he ever stuck his toe in the water. He turns over everything of religious bent to his assistant @The Librarian, who does the best she can. (the old hen)

@James Thomas Rook Jr. is another thing entirely. He never saw a fight he did not like and I half-imagine that he would apply himself to learn Portuguese if need be just so he can go there are argue with you.

3 hours ago, Querotevernoparaiso said:

But it's because of my humor in Portuguese ?

Keep it clean, buster. ‘Portuguese’ sounds very much like ‘pork and cheese.’

3 hours ago, Space Merchant said:

Possibly you and admin.

Watch for it..... I don’t want to issue a spoiler, but think Star Wars.

”Luke....I am your father!”