TrueTomHarley
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Posts posted by TrueTomHarley
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9 hours ago, Noble Berean said:
I don't get what you mean
If you don't get what I mean it is because I did not take enough time to read you. It is my fault. Sorry.
9 hours ago, Noble Berean said:The WT keeps spinning new stories to maintain credibility and give people a sense of urgency.
They are not 'new stories' when initially 'spun.' It's the insinuation of deceit that disturbs me and the expectation of silky smoothness that strikes me as naive. I see no reason to think they are not peering ahead absolutely the best they can, and that God allows it. The errors of those who took the lead in the first century would certainly suggest he does.
9 hours ago, Noble Berean said:So, I believe the GB is more focused on preserving its credibility than Biblical truth.
To some extent they are the same thing. If God is worth his salt, he provides capable human leadership. How would you feel if the cockpit door swung open and the pilot shouted: "Hey, anybody here know how to fly this thing?"
The other way to look at everything here is to suggest that the nervous nellies ought to get a grip on themselves. When the plane encounters choppy weather and the flight attendants retreat with their refreshment carts so Coke does not splash all over everyone, I fasten my belt as advised and ride out the turbulence without undue concern. I don't reach for the flotation seat cover.
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On 8/31/2017 at 7:50 AM, JW Insider said:
For some reason they brought one back. (Malachi 3:1) I think after realizing that they had demoted Russell from the FDS, they realized they needed him again for some kind of continuity attached to the "Watch Tower" name.
I like him in his new role.
He (and his) is the 'messenger preparing the way.' Like the hazardous waste crew that reclaim the land so that it can be rebuilt upon. Russell is the garbageman, carting hellfire and Trinity out to the trash so that builders can later build.
One thing I like about this forum - there are some things I don't like - is that you get to weigh in on progressive things. The Watchtowere magazine itself does that, as do the meetings. They don't go on and on about how we know Jesus died on a stake and not a cross. It is trash discarded 100 years ago. Bethel will repeat it now and then for reminders' sake, but they barely notice it otherwise. You don't attach a note for Waste Management explaining why you have discarded the trash. They know why. Meanwhile, you occupy yourself to what is not trash.
For some reason, JWs online go in for the baby food, attempting to prove that the trash really is trash. I don't know why they do that. Maybe two reasons. 1.) Witnesses online are not typical. The typical ones busy themselves in face-to-face interaction, which is more straightforward and thus productive, and 2.) it is not wrong to explain the trash to persons not of us who don't know it is trash. Even so, rightly or wrongly, I think most in the world have 'moved on' and are more receptive to items such as sovereignty and relative authority.
Besides, he had to be demoted. Just look at that beard!
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On 8/29/2017 at 3:51 PM, Noble Berean said:
No doubt in a few decades (if this system persists) another "refinement" will come along
Yes. Of course. There's nothing wrong with that. You think it's a piece of cake looking into the future?
Meanwhile I will keep my feet firmly planted in the two boats of the overlapping generations, fidgeting with slight concern as they drift, while I see Endofthesystem clouds fast approaching.
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On 8/28/2017 at 11:45 PM, Albert Michelson said:
And yet he was raised without any opportunity to hear or see contrary evidence. I wanted to get baptized at 10 as well because that's all I knew. But this is a lifelong commitment that they are never allowed to retract.
Is it a bad thing for parents to teach their children? It is spun that way in an increasingly irreligious world. And should a child take its parental training to heart, is it a bad thing to let him follow through on it?
Years ago during our homeschooling days, a local family was fined for violation of the child labor laws. They ran a small deli. It was nothing for their children to take turns at the register when they returned from school, and one was doing so the day Child Protective Services appeared. Homeschool pioneer John Holt pointed out that (not this case, but he had many others) this was the very reason children become delinquent - they are shut out of the adult world under the guise of protecting them.
Among the philosophical underpinnings of compulsory public education (nobody had a problem with voluntary) is that children ought be separated early from possible pernicious influence of the parents so as to be molded by greater society. Thus, schooling cannot wait until adolescence - it must start early. To this day, compulsory school advocates carry on about the imperative of socialization - which they maintain is only to be found in schools. If anything, their brand of it argues against them. People behave horrendously today - there are even teens who shoot up their schools. Yet they have all been 'socialized.'
It is not true that if you withhold teaching your child, he will grow up free and unencumbered and, when of age, choose for itself among life's rich cornucopia of ideas. No. All it means is that someone else will train him.
When Witness parents are progressive - as all are exhorted to be - they will digest the family resources found abundantly in Watchtower publications and will produce emotionally secure children. Hopefully these will stand up a flood of propaganda that Christianity is passe or even undesirable. But even if they reassess later on in life, they have a secure foundation to build upon. At the very least, they will be comfortable speaking before an audience, something that terrifies many an adult.
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8 hours ago, The Librarian said:
Joel Osteen Suggests God Caused Hurricane Harvey to Test You
Possibly God allows him to hang around so as to test us, for it does have that effect.
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5 hours ago, Gone Fishing said:
So we can "get out of Babylon" (false religion), we can be "no part of the world", (the political system), but as for that sticky old honeytrap, commerce? Just "make use" of it, to further spiritual interests, and simultaneously prove yourself "faithful in much".
Make your footprint small. I like it.
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18 hours ago, Otto said:
I thought about this illustration, do we know if the steward had complete control over his masters debts, if so, he had the right to do what he did. it wasn't stealing, what was owed was more than the master had laid out in the 1st place...any thoughts?
Strictly speaking, the parable doesn't make sense. The master would commend the steward for robbing him blind? These days security guards escort you out the building The Man has downsized you from precisely so that you do not make slick deals with his debtors.
I think it shows that Jesus doesn't really care if the head perceives some discrepancies. He goes straight for the heart. Jehovah's people are not especially 'heady.' We all know it. Far from being embarrassed over it, we should embrace it. When the Bible refers to the thinkers of this world, it is to put them down. We need not emulate them.
Of course, we have to make some semblance of sense, for Paul reasoned from the scriptures with them for three Sabbaths. The noble Boreans searched the scriptures carefully to be sure they were not being sold a bill of goods. It's simply that we need not shy away from Jesus' methods in going for the heart over the head.
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It would seem so.
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31 minutes ago, TheWorldNewsOrg said:
Germany-Turkey: Tensions are after TV Debate between Merkel and Schulz
I know this does not help, but as the narrator states people have criticized the campaign as dull, the logo displays: DAS TV DEULL.
The English speaking person hones in on the last word and sees only DULL.
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On 9/3/2017 at 10:24 AM, The Librarian said:
Too often in our explanations or illustrations of Holy Spirit we have used electricity as an analogy which is an oversimplification
WHAT??!!!
ZZAAPPPP!!! There! That takes care of you. (you old hen)
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6 hours ago, Gone Fishing said:
That slant I hadn't actually considered before as the saying has a proverbial status in English.
It takes a thief to catch a thief?
The illustration doesn't exactly line up with modern day principles of 'reason.' The components don't dovetail. But it is close enough that Jesus teaches a vital lesson with it.
To me, it indicates that Jesus is not enslaved to today's insistence upon 'reason,' which has not served its world particularly well.
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31 minutes ago, Gone Fishing said:
Maybe he had overcharged them in the first place.
With an 'unrighteous steward' you never know.
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If the unrighteous riches are not of God's making but of this system's, why not use an unrighteous steward to teach a lesson with them? He uses money that is not his to reduce debts and make friends for himself.
If we are debtors to God (who isn't?) we also can use money that is not 'ours' - all of it, since it is not God's idea - to reduce our debts to him and make him a friend. How cool is that?
It's not a strict parallel, but it works in a quirky sort of way.
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5 hours ago, JW Insider said:
We forgive him for bending the law and for several ethics violations because we are sure that, in the long run, he had the "truer" religion compared to those he outmaneuvered.
Had he lost maybe we would all be wearing beards and the ones shaving like you and me would have heard about it.
It's before my time. Rutherford to Knorr went smoothly enough. And I don't think there was turmoil from Knorr to a GB, though Witness growls that she was cheated.
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I'll go along with much of what you've said, but draw the line at some scenarios that your yourself declared unlikely:
17 hours ago, Anna said:If EVERY member of JWs decided they would no longer cooperate with certain policies, where would those policies be? Of course this is not likely ever to happen, but the point I am trying to make is that many policies exist only because of the support they get
I'd be very hesitant to engage in civil disobedience to theocratic headship. If history is any guide, maybe the earth would open up.
Instead, I've chosen the role to defend whatever the GB does. It doesn't mean I don't acknowledge it might be done differently or that they can't make mistakes - they've acknowledges that themselves; I just don't feel its my role to push for changes. If they decide to do things differently, I'll spin positively that new policy too. It's the role I have chosen.
There's a lot of urging here that the GB should do this or the GB should do that. Is that permissible? Who knows? All I know is that I am uncomfortable taking part in it, so I will not. I see no biblical precedent for it and much biblical precedent that would discourage (if not forbid) it. It is 'leadership by the people' instead of being 'taught by Jehovah.' It is the Western model of journalism - 'exposing' errors that it assumes no responsibility to fix and no responsibility to deal with the consequences of stirring up discontent among persons not previously discontent.
Do they arbitrarily decide things at Bethel without input from 'the people?' I wouldn't say that. Each week every circuit overseer in the world sends in a report from the congregation he has served. Okay, okay, one could say many are 'yes men' and all are loyal, but it is not a given that an organization send out its agitators to represent it. The COs, especially the more experienced ones, can be trusted to give input about whatever is affecting the congregations, including PR matters. It's for them to do it, not me, and if I was to do it, it wouldn't be in a public forum. Again, it is 'taught by Jehovah,' and not 'leadership of the people' because leadership of the people does not always lead to fine ends. It is largely an article of faith in today's world that it does, but a perusal of history shows that it only occasionally does.
The truth faith is the true faith. It is a challenge piloting it in an increasingly irreligious world in which the very notion of keeping the congregation clean is spun as a negative, as a scheme to 'control' people. The world pushes hard for the viewpoint that, if you must have religion, make it bland and let it not interfere with serious things of life. The GB has its hands full coping and they are overall doing well in catering to God and not just the individual. I won't tell them where they are going wrong. How do I know? For every line of information I have, they have one hundred.
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As the C.O. said, we will have to see what sticks.
4 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:not that I have anything against the Mormons per se)
2 hours ago, Anna said:my step son became a Mormon
Yikes!
I've got a thing for Mormons and an entire Mormon category on my blog, which I do not have for any other religion.
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On 8/27/2017 at 8:09 PM, Anna said:
"Really, what your beloved family member needs to see is your resolute stance to put Jehovah above anything else - including the family bond.....Do not look for excuses to associate with a disfellowshipped family member, for example, through email"
This builds off the Witness assumption, held by few others, that not all roads lead to heaven and that, if one would survive into the new order, one must serve God according to his standards and his truths. Therefore the ultimate goal in avoiding a family member who departs for different beliefs is to help him see he must 'straighten out and fly right' spiritually, thus re-uniting the family forever spiritually and otherwise.
Absent this outcome, it is a lose-lose for both parties - the departing one merely moves up the hour of separation which will occur anyway at cut-off for this system.
Some of what throws a wrench into this discipline for ultimately a good cause is that, in many cases, the departing one no longer worries about living forever - on earth or anywhere else. He or she has gone atheistic and have thought the remaining few decades a cool bargain, with no sense of being cheated from all eternity. When the world embraces atheism, all sorts of paradigms shift.
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This might be seen as splitting hairs but...
15 hours ago, Anna said:God allows each person the freedom to choose how he or she will respond.
That is not to say there might not be consequences to a choice.
15 hours ago, Anna said:No one should be forced to worship in a way that he finds unacceptable or be made to choose between his beliefs and his family”
That's not exactly the point you raised. The person departing does not have to choose to leave his/her family. The family, however, might choose to no longer associate with him. They likely will - if they value what makes the truth the truth.
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19 minutes ago, Anna said:
Well this is not what I had in mind when I raised the question. I genuinely would like to know if I have missed something, or misunderstood something. So I thought someone might be able to explain it. When the article in the Awake first came out, I wondered about it then. Here is the whole article for reference if someone wants to read it:
Perhaps I should take the time to read it but I won't. Probably the assumption that JWs have the truth is all one needs to know.
For 5-10 years now, the word 'disfellowship' has not been heard in public announcements. Instead, you will hear that so-and-so is no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Surely if you have joined the Mormons, you are no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses.
What if someone drifted from Witnesses and five years later joined the Mormons. Would that trigger the announcement? Frankly, I don't know. The purpose of disfellowshipping is to separate an (in this case spiritually - not that I have anything against the Mormons per se) unwholesome influence from the congregation, but if the person does it himself, nobody chases him down. The reason I don't know is that it seldom happens. If people leave Jehovah's Witnesses, rarely do they go in for another denomination of churches. I'm sure it happens but I know first hand of no case. Oh wait - I do. It is a typical case of one who was disfellowshipped and over time came to think a religious connection good for the family, so drifted into a church less demanding than Witnesses, having lost appreciation for the things we consider spiritual gems.
My point is: it doesn't matter if there is an announcement or not. Joining another faith is, from our point of view, an apostasy, and no one in the Witness community would thereafter associate with the person - it's not that their arm has to be twisted by the GB - they know it from the scriptures. Far from being an extreme stand, it is the stand that any faith ought to take about their own members leaving for another religion. They don't do this usually, but scripturally they should.
Few people take religion seriously. They can't imagine making too much of a fuss over God, though they will go for the jugular when it comes to politics. Some churches would not erect such a barrier because they realize there is little that makes them unique and if you want to switch from one to another it is little more than swapping a Ford for a Chevy. When my dad, years ago when they were more serious about such things, wanted to marry my mom, the Catholic church said she would have to convert to Catholicism first. 'Forget that,' my dad said and they never saw him again. Having little unique to offer in a world not too spiritual in the first place, most churches won't maintain obstacles to retaining members. However, the Witness faith is absolutely unique - the combination of beneficial teachings are found no where else - and they take firm action to be separate from a world that has willfully strayed from Christianity.
So to answer your question: if they don't do it - avoid their apostates - it indicates that they have little to apostasize from. It indicates that they are sound asleep spiritually and they have acquiesced to the prevailing view that "all roads lead to heaven."
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I wouldn't recommend pursuing celebrity status for this reason - for every successful Witness celebrity there are two or three Michael Jacksons - but I think faithful Witness celebrities serve the cause well, like Coco, like the Russian (now American) punk rocker. The world revels in celebrity and understands little else. The punk rocker, I am told, generated floods of rare positive publicity in the Russian press following his exile in the West.
The world loves celebrity and will even cut Witness celebrities a little slack. Many here will not, and ESPECIALLY Witness detractors will wait for the slightest misstep to hurl it into our faces, but the world in general likes them.
I even think Selena - with her you-know-whats flying about, and her public thanks to Jehovah for letting her beat opponents into mush - does us well. It only sweetens the deal to learn that she was merely raised a Witness and was never baptized - thus she never agreed to carry about the Name.
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1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:
... and therein is where the crime lies.
We are thinking adults ... not children .
The response is for children.
If you would maintain that we are not children and advocate challenging everything and everyone under the sun, especially within the theocratic realm, then you must take ownership of the world such thinking has collectively produced. Look around you. Are you proud of what your thinking leads to? Unfortunately, though you revel in independence, you will find not everyone likewise reveling agrees with you - and the situation inevitably deteriorates to the one you love to describe ad nauseum - to one where MEN struggle for GLORY AND GUTS AND HONOR, feeling the HOT BREATH OF DEATH and they stare eyeball to eyeball with one another, locked into BATTLE, and ....well, you can complete the rest.
The 'dad' in the car is not just the GB, or even primarily so. It is God and Christ, who both make clear they grant authority to men. For every verse (NONE actually come to mind) that recommends overturning authority, there are twenty that say we ought to acquiesce to it. Even villainous secular authority we are advised to submit to, for the king paves the roads and it is 'not without purpose that he bears the sword.'
The Hillary-Trump turmoil, unabated months after the election, is a godsend for American Witnesses. Not that we take part in it, but we can point out that it demonstrates how people froth and lose their minds over something having nothing to do with religion - I've even heard cautions of looming civil war - therefore perhaps they can appreciate how some might get worked up over God, who offers more than any human king does.
In fact, Russian officials (and Chinese) must shake their heads in astonishment, that their old Communist predictions are coming absolutely true, and that the West is succumbing to its own decadence and celebration of speech without restraint. They offer an alternative model and there are many persons who prefer a level of security even at the expense of some freedoms. Of course, they do not merely offer it - they OFFER!! it and they will off you if you complain about it too much. Don't think I am advocating for it. I'm just observing that the Western alternative is not exactly nirvana either.
Railing on endlessly about disfellowshipping the way you do is to maintain, as you have, that our personal happiness is the issue before all creation. It is the approach of the churches who say it is all about us - about our own personal salvation and relationship with Jesus. That's where you belong, for that is your thinking. Does God want a clean people, since a soiled one - physically, morally, or spiritually - is a reflection on him and makes him 'fake news?' FUGETABOUTIT! You would have us believe that it is primarily about not stepping on the toes - EVER - of any individual.
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2 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:
In Russian State Orphanages they bind babies in cloth so they cannot move their arms, and when they cry they are ignored. After awhile... they stop crying, because no one ever comes to show them tenderness and love .... and their "Big Brother" sees this as a good thing, because when they grow up, they will make excellent, totally obedient citizens and soldiers.
Careful. You have up till now suggested that from Putin on down, Russians all watch 'Leave it to Beaver' - that family ties mean EVERYTHING to them, and this is why they positively lose it - and rightly so - when they hear that a Witness family has been disrupted by a disfellowshipping. Are you now painting them as cold and uncaring? Putin knows where you live, you know, as PeterR reminded me - you provided him your address 'details' when you wrote in about the ban. Even if the purpose of your letter was to say 'attaboy!' he still has your address.
Did you also cheer on the Jewish pogroms in Russia? If I recall my 'Fiddler on the Roof,' Tavye's Jewish religion made he and his family shun the third daughter for marrying a Gentile soldier. It's outrageous!! Even Jehovah's Witnesses would not do that! What choice did the Czar have but to beat up every last Jew in sight and to leave it to another tyrant later on to take care of the ones he could not get to?
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4 hours ago, Anna said:
and I have no idea what the conclusion on that topic was as I got lost in the amount of postings (8 pages in 6 days) besides some quality input from JWInsider and you, all I know is that it ran off poor Bruce and that JTR had his fare share of input with cartoons, and that it digressed to the Walsh Trial, and a list of teachings JWs have wrong, then some backward and forward with Nanna and Albert etc. but has there been any conclusive ….umm… conclusion regarding the actual question?
No, there was not a conclusion to the matter, and don't think there will be by switching to another thread. It is a fallacy to think that when you put persons in a room and let them loose, even if they deem themselves thinking persons, they are going to arrive at a conclusion that will not be summarily rejected by the person who didn't think it in the first place. It is classic human self-rule.
JTR's comment is just above mine. Do you think he is ever going to come around to a consensus view? I don't think so. He has said what he has just said for 10,000 posts. And was there a consensus view over 1914? Or did JWI eventually wear everyone down with posts as long as the phone book?
When I was a kid squabbling in the car back seat with my siblings and whining 'are we there yet?' my dad - everyone's dad that I know of - would eventually whirl around and yell: 'if you kids don't stop crying back there, I'll give you something to cry about!' It's undignified to think we have not outgrown that model, and we all hate to be undignified. But that does not mean we have outgrown it.
All this incessant sniping at the GB is little more than the back-seat kids of yesteryear responding to dad's rebuke: "do YOU like dad?' 'No, I don't like dad at all -he's mean. If only dad would go jump in a lake. Then we could be like Howie Hoodlimm next door and Willie Watever down the street - their dads let them do whatever they want.
Should JW's punish, disfellowship, or shun members who disagree with certain teachings?
in Topics
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Nana, there are some here attempting to divorce the murmurings of Moses from the murmurings of the Christian congregation headship. This verse will not let them get away with it. Thanks.