TrueTomHarley

6 minutes ago, xero said:

Twiddle, twaddle. The pope is meaningless and so is whatever comes out of his mouth.

Yeah, it’s pretty much like I bless everyone here…No Exceptions!!…but not necessarily the dumb things many of them say.

59 minutes ago, Pudgy said:

… that’s MY forte’!

Still scratching my head over the 60K+ downloads in a two-day period. 80 hits a day are average for my blog. Then one day it is 40K, followed by 20K? My entire blog consists of less that 1500 posts.

It’s probably some AI bot kind of thing. As such, is it good or bad? If it trains AI to defend the good news and kick back that those who accuse our brothers day and night before our God, as in Revelation 12:10, then it is a good thing.

But I suspect it is just as likely, if not more,  to be some data-scraping thing for ignoble ends. Elon Musk capped access to other people’s tweets to the most recent two-dozen or so because AI-enabled competitors were scraping massive data in order to open competing sites, even contradicting sites, since everything is political these days. 

Most innovations of humans are immediately put to bad use, sometimes outstripping its good use. AI might be one of those things. Here is an article to the effect that fake and lying AI generated news channels are proliferating so quickly as to make uncovering the truth of anything a near-impossible task:

https://medium.com/@ai.news.official/the-rise-of-ai-generated-fake-news-a-misinformation-superspreader-c1a7f8f97cba

9 minutes ago, Pudgy said:

Hey! I’m just trying to understand WHY a grinding policy of 80 and more years was suddenly reversed 180°.

Because they tried to do it gradually and it didn’t work:

https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2023/12/beards-get-the-green-light.html

I did my very best to reassemble all—the good, the bad, and the ugly—stopping short only at the ridiculous.

8 hours ago, JW Insider said:

I think that's a logical stretch, but I have heard similar ideas about the recent change to allow publishers to be counted even without any hourly goal to report

Almost anything can be open to such an interpretation if you’re willing to stretch enough. How many things are there among a sizable group of people that have zero financial impact? If you have cynicism running through your veins, anything can be framed as primarily motivated by the money that is ‘the root of all evil.’

Even in more plausible scenarios in which money might be a factor, how does that become a bad thing? Are mobsters the only people who use money? Don’t good and honest people do it too? Did Jesus condemn stewards for being wise in managing resources? Even one who was a bit slippery he managed to praise. It’s good to take money into account. It doesn’t always correlate with wickedness. More often it correlates with good, plain, beneficial common sense, so that you are foolish if you ignore it.

To constantly harp on money, even in plausible situations (which I agree with you, the above two situations are not) —doesn’t it become a ‘You hypocrites! Which one of you has a bull falling into a pit on Sabbath who will not immediately pull it out?’ type of scenario? Anyone here who gets a hole in his wallet who will not immediately stitch in up?

Now, time for my Bible reading: 

“If you build a new house, you must also make a parapet for your roof, so that you may not bring bloodguilt on your house because of someone falling from it.”

And Pudgy the Muttite said: “Bloodguilt, schmoodguilt! I’ll tell you why Moses is saying this! $$$$$$$$$!! What! He thinks I was born yesterday?”

2 hours ago, Pudgy said:

I would like to think that I knew the price I would have to pay, (and I did, for 60 years) in advance, and that never caving in is one reason the Brotherhood has been partially freed from pervasive petty tyranny that was the complete OPPOSITE of being scripturally based. I hope this is just the beginning of much needed reform.

Yeah. Not a bad answer—though you didn’t exactly suffer in silence like our Lord.

Occasionally I muse that my blog may also be read by someone who matters and goes on to make some great change on its account.

It may have just happened. My blog is all my personal writing. It has modest traffic. I’m happy with 70- 100 hits a day, which is more or less average.  In a recent 2-day period, however, it logged over 60,000 hits.

I was unsure what to make of this—or even it was a good thing. What gives?

Then I figured it out. It was @Many Miles, no doubt, downloading everything so that he could ponder over the weekend and realize the error of his ways.

If only it is followed up by an equal number of orders for my books, which are advertised with each post . . . 

https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com

10 hours ago, Thinking said:

On 12/15/2023 at 5:56 PM, Pudgy said:

It would have helped,  had there been an apology for all the ruined lives.

There was not.

There won’t be an apology or a “ we should have handled that differently”

as then it’s getting into legalities……I know you have been seriously hurt…and it’s a crying shame that only those with such scars really get what you are saying.

Im happy for your sons too and also my grandchildren…a different era of things..and Jehovah remembers those who have drifted….he doesn’t forget them.

Oh, don’t mind Pudgy with his bellyaching over no apologies. 

This is the same Pudgy who, along with his cohort Rush Limbaugh, used to heap scorn on President Obama for embarking on worldwide Apology Tours.

I am sympathetic to difficulties he has encountered. But it doesn’t justify a lifelong Character Assassination Tour of people who even he acknowledges are in the main good and honorable men. (Or is that the local elders he says that of?) And, surely, his own hardheadedness and inflexibility has had something to do with it.

1 hour ago, Pudgy said:

 

YEAH!!!

On the other hand, did I not read in some study issue: “Later, under the pretext of greeting his cousin Amasa, Joab took hold of Amasa’s beard with his right hand as if to kiss him and then ran him through with the sword in his left hand.”

Shave off those beards, you bad brothers! Later, when you notice no one has run you through, you can thank me.

46 minutes ago, Thinking said:

That’s what you want to happen…..I see this as corrections being made…that were well overdue…for whatever reason ..I’m very grateful.

Not to mention how the video in #8 linked the sudden shaving craze to the a direct aftermath of WWI, and we all know what year that began in. There was the Bethel photo prior to 1914 showing all beards. There was the Bethel photo after 1914 showing few.

With any luck, the beard brouhaha can become the latest ‘sign of the last days’ to have been dealt with.

6 hours ago, Thinking said:

On 12/16/2023 at 10:21 AM, Pudgy said:

I wonder what REALLY prompted this out-of-the-blue with no indication dramatic change?

Not some esoteric contrived fantasy explanation to maintain authority ….

THE REAL REASON?

It may come out later…….

It came out in the update itself:

“A number of branch offices around the world have written to us, indicating that there continues to be question about whether or not it is proper for a brother in an appointed position to wear a beard. . . . The Governing Body has concluded that there is a need for clarification.”

Translation: “There continues to be a question.” There should not be by now. We keep getting letters. We’re tired of it. There is a need for clarification. Nothing new, here. Just restatement of the old.

”The Governing Body does not have an issue with brothers wearing beards.” Got it? We don’t. To prove it, we’re now pulling out all the stops, employing all the bells and whistles, even hauling out the chariot, because when we first indicated it was a non-issue, no one took us up on it. So now, let us repeat…..(drum roll, please)….. We. Don’t. Care.

“We thought sending a message 7 years ago was enough: 

“What about the propriety of brothers wearing a beard? The Mosaic Law required men to wear a beard. However, Christians are not under the Mosaic Law, nor are they obliged to observe it. (Lev. 19:27; 21:5; Gal. 3:24, 25) In some cultures, a neatly trimmed beard may be acceptable and respectable, and it may not detract at all from the Kingdom message. In fact, some appointed brothers have beards. Even so, some brothers might decide not to wear a beard. (1 Cor. 8:9, 13; 10:32) In other cultures or localities, beards are not the custom and are not considered acceptable for Christian ministers. In fact, having one may hinder a brother from bringing glory to God by his dress and grooming and his being irreprehensible. —Rom. 15:1-3; 1 Tim. 3:2, 7.” (Sept 2016)

“We thought that would do the trick. It didn’t. So now we’re saying it so emphatically that nobody could possibly misunderstand it.”

It may well be that Rutherford disliked beards but so did everyone else of his time and well after. Look at television shows of that time. Count up the beards. Maynard G Krebs the beatnik had one. Beyond that, nearly zilch. I barely recall seeing any beards at all during by non-Witness youth, certainly not among my parents’ generation. 

Witnesses were just the last (by far) to notice the world had moved on from no-beards. They missed it because they were ‘insular,’ a problem more difficult to remedy than one might think because it is the flipside of the ‘no part of the world’ coin. If you are no part of the world, you are almost by definition ‘insular’ to a certain extent. That’s what insulation is—something that keeps two things that should not mix separate.

After that 2016 Watchtower, bodies of elders considered its local applicability. Some began to not fuss over beards for appointed servants, but most continued to. Some of those that did fretted that beards among servants would stumble congregation members, completely missing the point that Paul’s counsel about stumbling (over eating meat) was out of concern for new ones or nonbelievers. In the case of beards, these ones had no issue with it, but only some ‘veterans’ who had made it a virtue in itself to be beardless and who you’d think would have moved on by now. Old habits die hard, especially when you are insular.

At long last, the mess is resolved. It looks a little silly the way it happens, but it is resolved. It comes close on the heels of another irritant being resolved—the matter of ‘counting time’—applicable at one time, but less so with passing years, as it introduces curious and crippling notions of being ‘on duty’ and ‘off duty.’ It was a relic of guys raised from the factory era in which, even when there was nothing to do, you’d better look busy to avoid the boss’s displeasure. Times change. God is not like that. It has been discarded. 

Two nettlesome things resolved in fairly short order. As for Srecko and others, it will become a Mark Twain ‘Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’ type of thing, Neither is really that big of a deal. It just seems so because they have been around so long. It takes a long long time to overturn entrenched habits.

It makes for unity to do things like #8. It also looks a little silly to those who have acquiesced to a disunited world, who consider that normal, and who grumble when anyone actually seeks unity not done their way, unity not achieved by waiting for all “the brokenhearted people living in the world [to] agree”—the way that history has demonstrated they never have or will.

JWs in the United States are almost exactly 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and 1/3 Hispanic, says Pew Research, also with about 5% Asian. Meaning? They have solved racism, an issue that tears the greater world apart. Though, at first glance, it seems not the same thing, if you want unity, you have to oil the cogs every once it a while, and Update 8 is an example of that on a lesser issue that unexpectedly became large.

Any criticism or ridicule of such ‘oiling’ is only valid if it comes from ones who themselves enjoy unity. Otherwise, it is little more than sour grapes. Some have simply acquiesced to a world without unity as ‘normal.’ Their criticisms don’t count. If you have long ago become part of the world, you can’t criticize the travails of those who haven’t.

‘Stockholm syndrome’—sheesh! What a bunch of loons. The GB is respected because they are the vehicle through which Bible truth was brought to us. It’s no more complicated than that.

42 minutes ago, Thinking said:

Im very wary of you miles as so many on line start out warm and fuzzy..but they do not build up their former brothers and sisters but tear them down…not in a straight out  way…

yeah.

1 hour ago, Many Miles said:

Ultimately the 1914 thing will implode on itself

Says who? 

The veracity of it will not be evident for decades to come. ‘Generation’ can even be stretched further by saying it means ‘era.’

Meantime, those too intent on proving themselves right over this matter tend to miss entirely the greater world’s astonishingly rapid plunge. They effectively join the ranks of ridiculers with their, ‘Where is this promised presence of his?

If the GB simply holds the line on 1914, it becomes a game of chicken with those plotting their downfall. It becomes the movie ending of all movie endings of the Greatest Action Flik of All Time. Let us see who pees their pants first.

On 12/16/2023 at 10:50 AM, xero said:

Then I see it all as some kind of useful social exercise. It forces me to think about the benefits and hazards of conformity

this is too.

22 minutes ago, xero said:

People and organizations are like art. There's a proper viewing distance. Sometimes I see trees, sometimes I see the forest. Sometimes I see defects, and sometimes I see these as an opportunity.

This is very perceptive, very applicable.

4 hours ago, Pudgy said:

So do I, when I use any term, including “bankrupt”.  

Your extrapolations are occasionally invalid. This is one of those times.

Perhaps just a “bad hair day”?

Sorry, it was just a new one for me. I had heard you tell of your troubles in connection with 75. I had never heard of any in connection with beards. My bad.

Score Pudgy 1 and TTH 0.

But maybe tomorrow it will not be that way.

10 hours ago, Anna said:

I just found the remark about keeping up with Jehovah's chariot a little strange,

Sometimes I think we overuse the chariot illustration. 

Recently my wife and I were invited on a KH remodeling project. At my age and non-skill level, I am not going to be any major player in anything, but I appreciated the invitation and accepted a two-day stint along with my wife.

Safety training is required—a lot of it before you even set foot on the project. For one session online that I was informed might take up to three hours—several videos followed by answering questions off the master safety document, I found myself beating back the cynical thought that some too-starryeyed artist might insert God strapped into his chariot in one of the videos. But it did not happen and I could not help but think that the quality of training would be the envy of any construction organization. The way scriptures were interwoven was masterful. Even the verse of the ‘overconfident one who comes to ruin’ was applied to the experienced worker inclined to blow past safety regulations because he is so experienced as to think himself immune. Nobody blows past anything when it comes to safety, experienced or not. You’re dismissed from the site if you do, but I didn’t see anyone coming even close to grumbling over such rules of safety, which are iron-clad. Zero accidents is the goal.

Not just the training, but the project itself. The people skills on display far outshone what would be found on any secular construction site. The abilities of volunteers, some experienced and some not, was harnessed to an astonishing degree. Always, there was a brother with oversight to accommodate any skill level and to break any task into doable steps—and always with the safety and overall well-being of participants placed even ahead of the job itself. First of all, they are shepherds, I am told—that is incorporated into their training. In short, I’ve never seen anything like it—even if the chariot was not on visible display.

15 hours ago, Pudgy said:

No, I have never, to my rememberance, used the word bankrupt here on the Archive before. I have never once said that before.  
 If you can show I am wrong, I stand corrected.

No. You did not use the term bankrupt in connection with 1975. You used terminology that meant the same thing—massive upheaval in your life. Whereas you were an engineer for many years and thus are accustomed to being precise, I am not. I am stuck with common sense and knowing a synonym when I see one.

Are you even sure ‘bankrupt’ is the proper word in this connection? Did you file for Chapter 7? If anything, the word would have been more appropriate for your job change back in 75, when it appears you took a certain financial hit.

22 hours ago, Pudgy said:

I am happy the Brotherhood, and my sons, are now free of this tyranny.

It would have helped,  had there been an apology for all the ruined lives.

I’ve no patience for calling this sort of thing ‘tyranny.’ It’s not important enough. Moreover, given what you have written about your sons in the past, they appear to have no issue with it. Save your ‘tyranny’ for occasions in which to resist will cost you more than hurt feelings.

Everyone must pick the hill they will die on. I like the expression not only for its surface value, but also for its acknowledgment that you will die on one. So make it count, son. Don’t die on a stupid hill. Don’t leave your epitaph to say: “Here lies Pudgy. I guess he told those elders a thing or two, didn’t he?”

5 hours ago, xero said:

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

Exactly. You do these things. You don’t make an issue over such things. You say to yourself, ‘Well, this is dumb,’ if you think it is, but you do them anyhow. Or not. Don’t do them if it is important enough to you, but then don’t cry if this or that privilege doesn’t come your way. 

We forget what stubbornness is. Because people are stubborn, persons are literally sent to their deaths, their lives are actually ruined. Compromises are not reached today in Ukraine and Israel because people are both truculent and stubborn. There they literally die on hills—they don’t just get their feelings hurt.

The entire tort system of law thrives because people are stubborn—1/3 of our wealth ends up in the pockets of barristers because people are stubborn and refuse to compromise. 

You don’t cheapen words like ‘tyranny’ and ‘ruined lives’ by using them in this context. Our ‘tyranny’ and ‘ruined lives’ is child’s play to that of the greater world. All a person would have to do to avoid it (in Xero’s situation) is to shine your shoes. I’ll shine mine as brightly as the expanse of the heavens if I have to; it’s not a big deal—and to make it such says as much about me as it does them. (As it turns out, I don’t have to. I haven’t worn shineable shoes in 20 years at least and nobody cares.)

On the one hand, it all seems pretty silly. The greater world solved this beard issue decades ago: 

And the sign said
"Long-haired freaky people
Need not apply"
So I tucked my hair up under my hat
And I went in to ask him why
He said, "You look like a fine upstandin' young man
I think you'll do"
So I took off my hat and said, "Imagine that
Huh, me workin' for you"

There. Done. Settled. Back in 1990. Whereas, we don’t settle it till 2023. But, in fairness, it ought be remembered that the overall world is going down the toilet and Jehovah’s organization is not.

More than once the Bible says that those drawn to the Lord must become like young children. And indeed they have proved to be that way, not just in the good ways but also the not-so-good. 

Paul said: “Brothers, do not become young children in your understanding, but be young children as to badness.” (1 Cor 14:20) Why did he say this—because they never became young children in their understanding?

So it has proved today, with issues taking longer to resolve than you might think would be the case. Those the Lord can work with are like ‘young children.’ Those whom he cannot are ones too insistent upon their rights to be molded. They are left to the reward of whatever their discord can produce. In short, “they are having their reward in full.”

6 hours ago, Thinking said:

Your looking at it the wrong way…you are victorious…..but no one’s going to admit it…..the stupidity of man made rules…is being uncovered….

years ago we had a young brother who was 6’5 and he was a pioneer….and he had a ned Kelly beard..( long one ) don’t know how he got away with it.

He stared them down.

Seriously. I think that’s what happened. Stared down the local elders, that is, not the GB who apparently didn’t have a problem with it, willing to completely defer to the local BoE, though it may have been a Branch thing. 

It was not in the Bible. It never appeared in Watchtower print. (other than many examples of ‘shaving one’s beard’ listed in the changes made on the road to baptism) The reasons for it, association with beatniks and hippies, disappeared decades ago. We’ve had articles to the effect that we don’t do rules, but primarily principles. And yet, no rule was a firmly enforced as the unwritten no-beard rule.

But—with no documentation behind it—you could stare them down. That’s what I imagine this Kelly beard brother did. I did sort of the same thing with blogging, which may be why I see it this way. He stared them down, not defiantly, but by being such a good example that, even while holding his ground on this matter, they couldn’t tell him no.

If an entire Update dedicated to beards being now okay seems like overkill (it did to me), one might recall that they tried underkill and it didn’t work. From the Sept 2016 Wt: “Does Your Style of Dress Glorify God?”

What about the propriety of brothers wearing a beard? The Mosaic Law required men to wear a beard. However, Christians are not under the Mosaic Law, nor are they obliged to observe it. (Lev. 19:27; 21:5; Gal. 3:24, 25) In some cultures, a neatly trimmed beard may be acceptable and respectable, and it may not detract at all from the Kingdom message. In fact, some appointed brothers have beards. Even so, some brothers might decide not to wear a beard. (1 Cor. 8:9, 13; 10:32) In other cultures or localities, beards are not the custom and are not considered acceptable for Christian ministers. In fact, having one may hinder a brother from bringing glory to God by his dress and grooming and his being irreprehensible.—Rom. 15:1-3; 1 Tim. 3:2, 7.

This paragraph was a big deal at the time, at least in my area. I never look at articles until just before we are to cover then at meetings (unlike when the magazines came in the mail and I read them through promptly), but this paragraph I knew about up front because brothers were talking about it seemingly the day after it was written. When that Watchtower Study finally came, that paragraph was like the elephant in the room that everyone was awaiting, and then Yessss! paragraph 17 finally arrived and you could talk about it. Some congregations spent extra time to ‘explain’ it.

I thought that would be the end of it. I thought at long last the issue had been laid to rest. I thought beards would soon be showing up—at first in publishers and then in MS and elders. Instead, it seemed like congregations doubled-down, as if with the attitude: ‘Well, okay, they can wear beards if they insist, but no way will they ever be appointed.’ A few publishers grew them, but nothing more.

’Look, we don’t have an issue with it,’ is what the GB finally said in this latest Update. It’s not new. It’s what they said 7 years ago only it didn’t take. This time, to make sure it wasn’t another misfire that didn’t take, they made it a big production, brought in bells and whistles, the chariot, and disclaimers for guys like those here who say, ‘It’s about time!’ and for the more rigid guys who drew a line in the sand and are now aghast to see it erased.

Old habits die hard. It may be that circumcism was once biblical whereas no-beards was not. The two customs don’t parallel in that regard. But in the regard of ‘old habits die hard,’ they parallel exactly. 

For me, it is like when the man who invented AI died. ‘Restaurant in peace’ the obits read, though there were a few harsher ones that said, ‘May he rot in hello.’

2 minutes ago, xero said:

My mother used to say whenever anyone would say "Small things for small minds", "Small pants fit small behinds"

I would have liked to have met your mother.

5 hours ago, Pudgy said:

…. but I look at the price I paid, and it bankrupted me.

I thought it was 1975 that bankrupted you. You have said that often enough—quitting that fine job in Africa and all.

15 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

More has been accomplished in this discussion than meets the eye. Maybe there's more life to it yet. We'll see.

Oh yeah, it happens all the time. A thread will deteriorate into a bunch of ‘treading water’ remarks, then a new wave comes along and everyone washes off in a new direction—must to the consternation of The Librarian (that old hen) who cries about her card catalogue and how it exists to keep separate topics separate. 

Sometimes a thread even deteriorates into, ‘You’re stupid!’ ‘No, you’re stupid!’ ‘When you were born the doctor probably slapped your mama and not you!’ and so forth. You come along with your shovel to bury the thread, then it catches another breath and it is Game On again in a new direction.

26 minutes ago, Pudgy said:

… just waiting for the blockbuster movie “Adam and Eve vs Australian Aborigines”.

I’m on it. It will be a fine successor to ‘TrueTom vs the Apostate!’

7 hours ago, Thinking said:

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

Well, in that case she would be ancient.

2 hours ago, Pudgy said:

I developed this understanding when I started integrating information from all sources, and STOPPED ignoring hard evidence.

It explains who Cain was afraid of and why they would want to kill him on sight, even if he wandered a thousand miles away.

It even explains who Cain “married” in exile.

It even explains the Aborigines in Australia, whose culture is 60,000 years old.

It would also rescue me from the young earth creationists. I’ve always been leery of these guys. As speculation goes, I kinda like it. 

X

3 hours ago, Many Miles said:

If x then y

Not x then not y because of x

Next, I will ask the Librarian how she feels about algebra. (that old hen)