TrueTomHarley

Nah, you screwed it all up. But behind the scenes, I contacted JTR and he made it right for you. “Is he doing more ‘heavy lifting,‘” he said. “Is he ever!” I replied. I haven’t seen Tucker and I haven’t yet read your post thoroughly. I will. One thing that I noticed: I spoke to a retired military man in field service who told me how he had felt a great sense of responsibility for those under his command. For some reason, in these racially charged days, you always have to say if someone was white or black. He was black. He spoke to how in police recruiting today a military background was a large factor—sometimes the only factor—that was taken under consideration for hire. This was true even of those who had had serious discipline problems. “You don’t think that if they are discipline problems in the military, they might not be ideal for civilian policing?” he said.

Uh oh—where’s that application for Bible 101? It’s here on the desk somewhere, isn’t it?

I think it is a combination of several reasons. de Vienne offers one when she speculates that they are “incurious as to their own history.” They are doers more than contemplators of the past. They lead with the heart more than the head. There is a plank devoted to such things, but it is not a rudder that steers the ship. @Arauna advances another reason—it must be in the other thread—that to a certain degree, history is unknowable, written by the victors, modified over the years by those of myriad agendas, and much of the original data is lost forever. Thus, because they are doers more than thinkers, they research the past, come up with what seems tight enough, and say (as one local sportscaster used to say) “that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” To do otherwise is to yield to thinkers who frequently not engage in doing if you light a stick of dynamite under them. “God gives his holy spirit to those doing his will,” they say, not those writing about it. It is a scholar-light approach that infuriates scholars too caught up in the suppose ascendancy of their own discipline—scholars who simply assume takeover rights. They get them in many venues—and the greater world offers testimony has to what happens when the world’s scholarship runs the show—you would think Srecko would reflect upon that before he carries on about how essential higher education is—but they do not get them in Jehovah’s organization. Once in awhile they get sent to the doghouse, but only when they howl too much. I say, I have no problem with this,” once I get over the problem I have with it—for I come from a world of readers and books. Still, I notice that they don’t add up to much when they are poured into the world vat, and may collectively even bring that world to its knees. I yield to Someone whose ways just might be higher than mine. He gives his spirit to those obeying him as leader. In general, when I hear any viewpoint of challenge, I look for deeds at least as much as ideas. Frequently, there are none, and the remarks can largely be dismissed on that account. That is my take on what Paul says on the prospect of confronting the self-styled superfine apostles of his day—‘when I see them, I will get to know not just their words—anyone has them and many have them in great abundance—but I want to get to know their power—their deeds. That’s why when Matthew4 5784 or someone, oozing malice, launches a new topic entitled: “Honestly—No Malice Here—But Let us Speak Earnestly About the Wrong-doing of the Witness Leaders,” I say, “Have you actually done anything besides quit? Do you have anything to show for yourself besides grumbling? ” Just any malcontent is going to throw a tirade about something I hold dear and expect me to engage in earnest debate with them? I don’t think so. I wait for JWI to do it on the basis of addressing the points, not the person—and Cesar with a flamethrower to do it on another basis—and then several pages in, after the original malice has been obscured, I override my better judgement and jump into the fray. The saying goes that ‘if you can do something, you do it. If you can’t, you critique it.‘ Absent someone’s “power”—their good deeds, their honest track record—I do not take them too seriously. They are critiquing—and the reason just may be that they ar capable of nothing else. At least Rolf has a track record—how hot it is and what has been allowed to go stone cold was my first initial question about his book. The saying is often escalated to a usually (though not always) unnecessarily cynical, “and if you REALLY can’t do it, you teach it.” Here we come to Dr. Gene Huang, who did not fit the pattern. He taught at Cornell, and was for years, among the most published authorities on statistics. His work provides mathematical support for scientists who study gene function. He became a Witness in the late 1990’s. I speculate in Tom Irregardless and Me that after a dozen years or so, when he has proved himself stable, he or someone like him is invited to look over our science offerings and contribute an update if they see fit. Many brothers seem to think that at Bethel, they assign such material to the Witness who did really well in high-school science, straight A’s!—he or she holed up for a few weeks, and “out came this book” on creation blowing the cover off evolution. No. Plainly it will be someone like Brother Huang “bringing his gift to the altar” upon invitation. However, will his work silence the critics? You know it won’t. The writings of evolutionists and those who favor “intelligent design” would fill a library so large that even @The Librarian (that old hen) would throw in the towel. So they take Gene Hwang’s book at Bethel—he is a heavy-hitter—and say: “That’s our story and we’re sticking to it,”—same as they do with history. Do other “scholars” debate their own competing version? “Yeah—well—we’ll see,” they say, as they envision a headline in the paper that they have seen so many times before: “Everything You Thought You Knew About Such-and-Such is Wrong!”

I spoke to and older black gentleman—he’d invited me into his house, where he had several Bibles and study materials revealing the student that he plainly was. It is dicey to point out that he was black because long ago I did that with another person, and Witness, from her pseudo-heavenly throne, launched a lecture my way about racism. I say it now (and then) to call attention to a basic humility and common sense which it seems to me whites are much quicker to shed. Okay, Witness?—it’s not a put-down. Anyhow, with this fellow—who really did know his Bible—a certain passage of Corinthians came up, and I made to read it. “No, no, don’t you read it,” he cried, in mock-panic, “you’ll screw it up!” He chuckled even as he said it, and so did I. He wasn’t wound up too tight—I found myself liking the guy. That’s how I feel about 4Jah, who posts one of my favorite groups of all time. I love The Who. But if he posts it, you just know that he will screw it up.

Do they look like they’re not even seeing each other when you see photos of any campus?

I wrote about Wayne Whitepebble’s son in Tom Irregardless and Me, how he “went to the university. He didn’t really want to go, and probably would not have were it not for his dad. Wayne had come up the hard way financially. Why should his son do the same? The lad was bright and landed a scholarship. He took the path of least resistance. “You’ve got to get me out of here!” the young man cried during the first week of school. “There’s naked women running around here!” Well, they weren’t exactly naked - or maybe some of them were. They certainly were naked compared to anything Willie was used to. “Deal with it,” Wayne Whitepebble replied. “You’re staying.” He wasn’t worried for his son spiritually. Hadn’t Willie had a fine moral upbringing? Hadn’t the family visited the local Kingdom Hall to introduce him around? Hadn’t Wayne asked the local elders to keep an eye on his son? During the first few weeks of class, an elder did try to visit Willie, but never found him in. “In time, Willie met someone he liked a lot. He went further with her than he had ever imagined he would. Thoroughly upended, he grappled with his thoughts and feelings, and then went further still. During those weeks, he attended two meetings at the new Kingdom Hall. How strange that he had once felt so attached there. Nobody there had a clue as to the challenges and pressures of his current life, much less the broadened horizons he was beginning to envision. “College life with Madison was an entirely new experience. Living in the dorms, darting to the stately buildings for classes, crossing paths with fellow students, speaking with professors - what a new world this was. There was much more to life than he had ever dreamed. There were, however, bumps along the way. Madison had been initially intrigued at his spiritual take on matters, but he soon came to realize that he had been raised 180 degrees out of sync with this new world, and he began to resent it. He’d been ill-prepared for life! Classmates moved about seamlessly where he was most awkward. To think his religion had had him believing in Adam and Eve! He’d spoken of those two once, and had never done it again. “His fellow students marched to protest injustice. What a difference he and Madison could make! There were real injustices. Yes, he’d learned about injustices back at the Kingdom Hall, too, but somehow it wasn’t the same. And to think that Tom Irregardless, when confronted with some news report he didn’t understand, which was almost anything, would dismiss it all with ‘it just goes to show we need the Kingdom!’ How long had he been saying that? There were injustices in the world that an enlightened person could do something about now, not just in some fairy tale ‘new system.’ In time, the atheists came along. ‘How could there be a God with all the obscene things going on today? What God could allow it?’ If there was a God, he would have fixed things long ago! Actually, wasn’t religion at the root of injustice? Even his former one - even that one was guilty for plodding along with blinders, ignoring real problems, pushing everything onto the ‘new system.’ When Wayne Whitepebble saw his boy a half year later, he barely knew him. How could those elders in the local congregation have been so negligent?” I freely admit that I am being imaginative. Ironically, the thing that seems the most far-fetched of all, the father saying “deal with it”—that actually happened (so I am told)—those were his actual words to his son over his complaint of “naked women”—everything else I made up. You would think that Rolf would find room for that somewhere in his book. Attending college as an adult is not the same as attending as a teenager.

Adam and Eve? Is he cool with them? They are not very popular in the university. I am not even sure that they graduated.

It seems barely possible that one could have been a JW for decades and later ask such a dopey question. It may be that the entire persona is a facade. It reminds me of how all my life I had searched for truth. I knew I had finally found it when I learned that there really was a people who were cool on beards. I don’t think so.

How does Rolf feel about the wild beasts—2-headed, 7-headed, scarlet colored, image of, dragon. Would he decommission them?

What about Russia? Does he say anything about Russia? Does he imply that things would have been right as rain if his college-educated buddies had been running the show? Does he imply that of the first century?

It can go the other way, too with references to the “immorality of the soul.” But nothing matches reading aloud one of those interminable “Is it” questions of Fred Franz and only realizing that the very end you should have read it with the inflection of an “It is”—because it was a statement, not a question.

Ah. So the real headline to be taken from the Rolf book, obscured by 50,000 wet dream malcontent internet pages, is “Top Norwegian Awesome Scholar Proves that CSA Hysteria Against Jehovah’s Witnesses Is Bogus” In writing this headline, I hesitated to use the word ‘proved.’ Had he really done that? But then I deferred to the words of the other scholar on this forum, 4Jah, who said of Rolf’s book (without reading it): “I think this gentleman and his book proves the point I'm making here.” In fact, it ‘proves’ just the opposite. In a roundabout way, Rolf brings his gift to the altar. Are legal machinations against the WT on account of how they viewed elders in the 1940s? Or are they about sensationalized investigations of CSA? Put Rolf on the stand as star ‘expert’ witness for the defense—after lauding him as Moses descending with the tablets, opposers can hardly say that he is delusional—and knock the legal ball out of the park. In view of this service, compromise with Rolf. Appoint a panel to look at the GB’s doings. Get a few of the helpers. And, for balance, an impartial outsider or two like myself or @Arauna (you keep out of it JWI) We’ll have this ship righted again in no time.

Is his post still up where he said my remark was obvious click bait and I said ‘how can that be, you dodo, since there is nothing to click on?‘

I’d better bring up CSA before 4Jah soars to a font too large for the page. Does he mention CSA? Ray thought it was an overblown concoction of media. What say Rolf?

How can it be click bait, you klutz—there’s no place to click!

Does Rolf anywhere deal with the verses that say ‘no part of the world?’ If so, what is his take on that. Among the digs on higher education is that it facilitates force-feeding by the world.

I can instantly see this. It is true of me, as well. Bitterness has no place at....excuse me— “Hey, you rotten kids! Get off of my lawn!!!!” (Sorry—couldn’t resist) Of course you are not bitter. It’s quite plain. Nor am I. Not at all. Frankly, if you still hang on to bitterness at our age you will soon be dead from it. I posted in Twitter just now, and it doesn’t perfectly fit, but it almost does. 4Jah is right—I like to hear myself talk, or more to the point, I need someplace to go for a writing workshop. Why not here? For a long time I’ve practiced, if I follow one viewpoint on Twitter, I also go out and follow its polar opposite. In that way I’ve come to see that such polarization is everywhere, not just politics, not just my field of religion, not just social issues, but everywhere....1/3‬ It is very rare for people to switch from one camp to another. The notion that we are rational beings is largely a facade. In the context of religion, I say ‘the heart chooses its beliefs and then entrusts the head to devise a justification...2/3‬ ‪Who can say what makes the heart? But our individual experience no doubt are a huge factor, if not the dominant one....3/3‬ By this measure, Jehovah’s Witnesses (not those born into it) are a most unusual people. They have changed on fundamental outlook—something almost nobody does. And what their ‘apostates’ who have gone back to the things left behind? Aren’t they unusual, too? Nah—they just got cold feet as to the changes they made and retreated back to the seeming normalcy of Demas. Maybe that’s why (within limits) I can hang out here without taking offense at anyone, even should things be specifically directed at me. We are all but actors in a play. It is the play that is the topic to follow. The actors are not all that important. You don’t have to know much about the actors to follow the play—it can even be a distraction if you do.

It is not often that I throw such red meat to Kos for prophetic interpretation and possible escalation to anti-type. A few days ago I put before him for consideration the fact the Dennis Christensen suggests by both name and profession the one for whom he serves as a type. Now comes the added bone that the two prominent ‘TOD’ (Trashers of Doctrine) in our age have both presented with the initials R.F. Now those two facts are worth fleeing to the Australian wilderness to ponder over till the end of time! (I as missing more than ever the prophet JTR, who would also find this a hoot)

This kind of thing often fails because enemies will not let it remain low-key. It has made their day, if not year, and they will pump and pump until it becomes the only story that matters. But the young man again said, this time emphatically, “My Lord Moses, restrain them!’ Moses mildly replied: “Not a problem. Chill.” But the young man once again said: My Lord Moses, restrain them!!!!! Moses mildly replied: “Let’s stay low-key about this.” But the young man once again said: “MY LORD MOSES, RESTRAIN THEM!!!! (this is going to be good!!!!)“

Does anyone at any point reflect on how Moses was supplied helpers when the load proved too much for him? Might simply common sense suggest a governing body ought replace a ‘top guy’ as the number and complexity of the brothers increase?

I wouldn’t exactly call it the pure language, but I am glad to see that it is catching on. Just a heads-up, JWI, in case Allen comes around trying to impress you with his diploma from Bible 101. It is genuine, but not earned in the traditional way. He argued so unceasingly with the results of every test, quiz, term paper, and lab project, that we finally gave him a diploma just to get him out of our hair.

the Librarian. It’s a long story.

Okay, JWI has posted a new topic. I don’t want to catch any of you saying irrelevant things. I don’t want 4Jah talking about CSA. I don’t want Allen talking about Zondervan. I can post some of my vacation pictures, of course, but everyone else had better behave. You want me to blow you in to the Old Hen?

Mr Rook would not be so thin-skinned to see it that way. He would have had a good belly-laugh over it. You would have us believe that you were his friend? You did everything you could to separate him from his God. Remember, he was on my side of the Great Issue, not yours. He came to have the same problem that Rolf is going to have—having “false friends” sucking him dry for info, kissing his feet with praise, ecstatic at the ‘dirt’ they think he is spilling, then turning around and saying he is delusional for not abandoning every last vestige of Witness belief—just like you do with JWI. At the same time, his genuine friends distance themselves. At least Rolf will find some companionship within the airy world of ‘scholarship’—no such luck for JTR. It was worse for JTR. Rolf makes perfectly clear that he regards his faith as true. I gather that he is not too different from JWI, who has issues with some organizational matters, but has no problem acknowledging that there must be leadership and cooperating with it on that basis. In contrast, JTR came across as a ‘spiritual terrorist,’ and it is only upon close examination—which the average Witness will be not inclined to do in view of his outrageous remarks—that one can see his love for Jehovah was genuine. Even his own kids deserted him—something he freely admitted—this despite the fact that he was not under congregation censure.. You simply cannot go about harshly criticizing ones held in high esteem—ones loved for their hard work and example—and expect to keep your friends. The loudest applause at any convention is at the question, “Would you like to send your greetings to the brothers in Bethel?” It’s like if some would come around and pretend to be my friends, saying the nicest things about me, yet they absolutely cannot stand my wife, and never fail to hurl abuses at her. Is that going to work with me? Will I be taken in? I don’t think so. And yes, the earthly organization is likened to a beloved human—a mother, as that AlanF, with the IQ of a Descartes and an EQ of the Sesame Street Cookie Monster, changed to ‘mommy,’ hoping to infuriate people. I like to think with JTR it was a case of Psalm 141:5 and that he has time to undo the damage. Of course, you always have time to undo it with Jehovah if your turnaround is genuine, but I hope it is with family and friends as well. “Should the righteous one strike me, it would be an act of loyal love; Should he reprove me, it would be like oil on my head, Which my head would never refuse. My prayer will continue even during their calamities.” I like to think it was that way here with a few who slammed him pretty hard but also made clear that the rebuke was not personal—and that he as a person had some very appealing qualities. I tried to do that, and I had some acknowledgement from him in ‘thanks’ emojis, not just upvotes. Others did this, as well—his spiritual brothers with his best interests at heart. I could well be a little too Pollyanna in reviewing how it has turned out—but his last few comments very neatly tie into a Pollyanna view—so that’s the one I’ll take. He wasn’t really wrong in the factual nature of anything he said—he was ‘wrong’ in how he had processed it. You can’t go about life being hypercritical. You have to be ready to move on. You can’t go digging through the diamonds to find the dirt. You have to be ready to forgive. It is an important theme of Jesus that he came to feel he ought more fully get his heart around. You kept telling him how he could bask in a fine relationship with God while sticking it to the visible organization. He had too much common sense and honesty to fall for it. He knew that path leads inevitably to become fully part of the word—in time, doing all that the world does and thinking it can be offset with a smiley God emoji. Mark Smith’s book Secular Faith points out that the typical church member has more in common with atheists than with members of his own denomination of 100 years ago. That is what happens in the absence of an earthly counterpart to the heavenly organization. JTR knew that. That was among the things he meant when he lamented that he should have been closer to Jehovah. Go ahead, you idiot—slap another braying emoji on this one.

You have not figured out yet that JTR was one of my aliases?