TrueTomHarley

I have not yet offered any scholarships, but that may change. I’m not sure where all this Zondervan stuff started, but I wish that somewhere Rolf could have pointed out the conflict-of-interest in putting Big Business in charge of distributing the Word of God. He might, too, have highlighted the feat of inventing an entirely new publication and distribution channel so that the poverty-stricken fellow in a developing nation is not stuck with some 200-year-old turkey of a translation that he can neither afford nor understand. He might also point out how such a channel means that rigorously translating a ‘trinity’ scripture will not doom the Bible in the marketplace, as it would in Zondervan’s case. He might acknowledge that the GB can’t be all that bad to have pulled off such a stunt.

Somewhere down the road I will write a post about him. @Thinkingwas worried that he might be on his deathbed—and I must admit, his words could be taken that way—expressing regrets at the very end. But they need not be and I am more hopeful. Whatever regrets he may have that he was very forthright with he will have time to rectify. The purpose of people is so other people can use them to teach lessons. Just ask Moses. He was the meekest man who ever lived, but till the end of time we will be hearing of how he blew his stack at the miscreants and got sent right back to Bible 101.

Is that what you think this forum is for—so that we may get far? Have you seen any sign of agreement from anyone over the last five years? The best thing that has happened is that JTR began to realize who all his comments were making him friends with and did a reappraisal.

It can be learned. At Sheepandgoats U, there is a degree program on not responding to the ignoramuses. It is taught by a professor of impeccable qualtifications and sterling example - myself. Hesitate to sign up, perhaps put off by some examples that you have seen with your own eyes? Then consider a testimonial:

When my homeschooled son entered community college at age 16, he said in all innocence, “I had no idea that there were so many stupid people.”

JWI is not there yet, and it is but wishful thinking from me that he will get there—but he is showing signs of the strain. I almost saw Space Merchant flame out the other day—not quite, but almost. It is lonely here in Bible 101, with my dunce cap attached.

A laughing emoji! I already had to send myself back to Bible 101 on account of this fellow. I fear that upon graduation, I will have to take the course all over again. He is both hateful and stupid. I can deal with one or the other, but the combination......

This is well-documented in the recent US unrest. Check the arrest records of those carted off and it is seem from their addresses that agitators come from outside and take the lead in violence. Once the locals—already on edge—see that it is “okay,” (the Rochester mayor’s words) they join in, but it does not start with them. Of this rotter (who was doxxed, thank goodness), does it look like he is genuine? Too stylish, I think. “Um—excuse me while I make sure that my leather hat is not askew.” He is the worst enemy of blacks because they will take the hit for his misdeeds. photo by geordano of the Rochester D&C)

@JW Insider calls it an “intangible spiritual sheen” that the GB is shedding. @Anna calls it “revealing the man behind the curtain” I won’t go so far as to say it is deliberate, but they surely see it happening and make no effort to stop it. One brother said of JW Broadcasting—it makes perfectly clear that we don’t rely upon paid actors. “Image?—What’s that?” they all but say. As in keeping with this thread about scholarship, it’s well to point out that at least two of them freely reveal themselves to be among the least scholarly persons on earth. I say, “I have no problem at all with this”—after I got over the problem I had with it—after I got my head around it. It is for honest-hearted persons to get their heads around their course. It is not for they to get their heads around the facades and pretentious doings of those who like to think—they love ‘scholarship’—but as to deeds?-forget about it! “How can you believe, when you are accepting glory from one another...” Jesus says. That’s what scholars (as a class) do, and one of their first initial practical deeds is to say they will not declare the good news publicly as Jesus did because that will surely detract from their scholarly reputation. Not to diss scholarship—far from it that I should do this—but it needs to be knocked down a peg or two. It is not the be-all and end-all. Doing God’s will is what counts. Accordingly, the record of the GB members is life-long full-time service, door-to-door with the Kingdom good news, motivated by love of God and neighbor. It is humble work if there ever was one, and it is ‘doubling down’ on the humility in that a large portion of it has been in developing lands. They’re not blue-bloods born to privilege, as that obnoxious self-described Norwegian apostate (not Rolf—the guy from a neighboring congregation) seems to think they should be, as he sneers—just like Celsus did—about how they were once “window-cleaners” God! The pretentions of these people! Look at the world that your “scholarship” has collectively built before you ridicule those who have by-passed it—when it goes down in the giant flush, hold aloft your degrees for special consideration. I was surprised to find that JWI had a different take on the “superfine” apostles of 2 Corinthians 11. Chalk it up to a gentleman’s disagreement—but I still think he is all wet. Paul did the work. They wanted the credit. They were comfortable men—perhaps they thought themselves ‘scholars’—comfortably ensconced in their home congregations. Paul was so outraged at this ‘power grab’ that he “declared like a mad man, I am more outstandingly [an apostle of Christ]” And what was their [probable] response? “See, he admits that he is mad. Not us, though. We are smart and ‘balanced.’” If GB members reveal the “man behind the curtain” and shed their “intangible spiritual sheen” now, why didn’t they do it before? Here, @Arauna comes to the rescue with the common-sense point that the geniuses completely ignore—everything must be judged in the historical context of its time. Was FDR a liar for not ‘outing himself’ as crippled by polio? Were the press liars for not reporting it?—for they all knew. Obviously not—for the good of the country it was thought necessary to convey strength. It is the same with the sexual immorality of which numerous presidents have been guilty. Of one, it is written that he made a whorehouse out of the White House. The press knew. Why did they not out him? Again, it is the completely understandable urge to preserve demeanor for those providing the lead. Today, “grab them by the p***y” makes headlines. It has not historically been that way. So the GB’s reluctance to acknowledge human imperfection is completely within the spirt of the times. They are the last ones to accede to the new model that ‘leaders should spill’ because they are ‘no part of the world’ and it takes a while for it to register with them what has long since been normalized outside. The response to CSA accusations may be the prime example of this. When it turns out that instances of CSA can be found in the ranks of congregation members, they do not run to the press and say, “Us, too! We have some of that!” They have concern with reputation—JWI puts it well when he muses that they do not want to derail or sabotage the beneficial work they oversee. Was that wrong? It is being slogged out in the courts today, along with the ‘sins’ of every other person on the planet, as tort lawyers oversee the most massive transfer of funds in our age—with themselves netting a third. Surely it is worth a comparison with Peter in the first century. Was he wrong to chum with the Gentile Christians, then flagrantly avoid them when the “men from James” (Jewish Christians) came around? It is an incredible record of cowardice for one in position of leadership! And he had a track record! Wasn’t he the one who fell all over himself to swear that he didn’t know the Lord from a bag of beans? Was he removed? This is why it is so hypocritical to call for the head of GB members when they so much as hiccup. Arauna is very kind when she refers to the ones doing so as suffering from OCD.

To me this serves as good reason to think 24:45-47 is as the brothers say it is. Matt 24 and 25–both chapters devoted to end-time prophesy in which conditions will get really terrifying—and right in the midst of it is some nice little sappy story the moral of which is ‘always do your best?’ I think not. We lean into punches when we could just as easily duck them—and then the big slob’s own momentum would send him hurling over the edge. I don’t know why we do this. When confronted with a charge that this new teaching is not the same as an old, say, “Oh, we changed that.” I see no reason why not. It is only opponents who think this not permissible—we don’t say it (nor do reasonable people) What is “the light that gets brighter” and “tacking” if not an admission that things change? They are not the essential things, is the point, the core beliefs that everyone who became a Witness did so on that account, and the core beliefs—that distinguish us from any other religion—that opposers forget all about, and thus reveal they haven’t a spiritual bone in their bodies, as they harp on trivial matters of human imperfection, and imagine that Santa Claus should be running the show—showering presents on everyone and asking nothing more than a vague ‘be nice,’—which people define any way they like. The trick also is not to sanitize the present. It is to de-sanitize the past. It is to say, if opposers think they have caught someone in a ‘gotcha’, “So what’s new?” Show them all the crazy things done in Bible times. We don’t desantize the past nearly enough, I think. If we did, it would make it so easy to deal with faux pas of the present. Instead we chastise Dinah for hanging out with the riff raff and dismiss her brother’s retribution as ‘just one of those things.‘ To be sure, Jacob was displeased. But Eli was also displeased with his louts of sons and it turned out differently for him.

“How has your day been going?” I said to my dog. “Rulf!” it replied.

I have heard this. One quote from Russell that has been faithfully preserved since his death is, “If you stop to kick every dog that barks at you, you’ll never get very far.” Granted, if someone barks, they may be quick to assume that such person must be a dog—but you would have to excel in scholarship to know otherwise, and as stated, that is not their strong suit, nor should it be. The second thing that ‘scholars’ do—I’ve seen plenty of it here from people who think themselves learned—is to start quibbling over the Name—this pronunciation is better than that one and since that is the case, maybe it should not be used at all. Scholars reason this way. But if I go to another country and start ragging on the locals every time they botch my name, nobody says, “Whoa! That brother is scholarly!” They say, “What a pin-headed idiot!” Because the HQ brothers are not scholarly, they are inclined to accept that what is done is done, and what is written is written. Once in awhile someone like Splane comes along, looks it all over, and says, “We’re not doing anti-types anymore!”—maybe because too many have blown up in his face, but for the most part, the past is assumed to be stable past that can be built upon. It’s too bad they’ve tossed aside anti-types because I have a doozy for them. You think it is nothing that Dennis Christensen’s surname points to the one he follows, and his very profession is the same? They are going to twiddle their thumbs on that one, putting equal significance on the second Russian imprisoned for the faith—Mgoyahen Bloggabodidillyvich? Not to worry, though—Kos will pick up and run with it. I can’t believe how many seem to take for granted that the devil’s gameboard is not rigged, or that his rules of ‘critical thinking‘ should carry the day. They do not see for a moment how flawed the tool is—or perhaps more to the point—how sharp it is on the points for which it has merit, too sharp for its staunch advocates to handle without cutting themselves. It is the words of the prophet Tom Cruise: “You can’t handle the truth!” The notion that we are rational creatures is a joke. The heart decides what it want and then entrusts the head to devise a convincing rationale for it. For the most part, people read mainly so as to confirm what they already believe. It is amazing on social media how few are the people who change their minds on anything. Accordingly, for every verse in the Bible about the head, there are ten about the heart. Few of Jesus’ parables would stand up to rigorous critical thought—some of them barely make sense. But they target the heart, which is his goal. I also can’t believe how many may be stumbled over what Rulf or any fellow scholar will say—or even what complainers will say. “Well, we could be wrong on that,” I say to almost all of it, and move on. Do they in any case, speak to the fundamental reason that I was attracted to Jehovah’s Witnesses in the first place? “Finally—a religion where the people at the helm are smart and can be counted upon to say nothing wrong!” Did I say that? Does anyone? Of course not! There was religious truth found no where else, and we soon enough discovered (few did not know it already) that it was carried in earthen vessels. This is why whenever persons are ‘stumbled’ over something like Rulf’s input, they are simply seizing on something to justify a decision already made in their heart. Why can’t they just say, “I’m like Demas—I prefer the present system of things?’ Why can’t they say as with from John, “I’m leaving because—I gave it a good whirl—but I’m just not one of their sort?” I also note that Rulf has not left the faith, and that he does not declare he intends to. Nor do I take for granted that he will be given the boot, even though he seems think it a foregone conclusion. Maybe—I certainly won’t be shocked if it goes that way—but I’ll take it as a done deal only when it is done.

I like this. They surely know it, and yet they do it anyway. It is tremendously difficult to lead a large group of people. One person says: ‘Thanks for the new rule!’ His neighbor says, ‘Huh? Did you say something?’ I’ll bet they are amazed at how seriously some of their ‘offhand’ remarks are taken, as well as the lesser regard given for some of their more serious remarks. They don’t want to find themselves in the shoes of Lot, is my guess, whose sons-in-law thought he was joking. But I’ll bet they wrestle with just how strong to make various statements, knowing how different people respond differently. For the most part, they lay on counsel with a trowel—they’re not known for being subtle. But sometimes they are—as they wrestle with how to give adequate direction and encouragement, while not being “masters of your faith.” I think we suck up to scholars altogether too much. There is nothing scholarly about the “unlearned and ordinary” men taking the lead in the first century, and there is no indication that they regarded their “ignorance” as a condition to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps from. When the “scholars” began having their day in the sun, the first thing they did is to infuse long pre-existing philosophies into Christianity, making it all but unrecognizable. God gives his Holy Spirit to those obeying him as ruler, says Acts 5:32. It says nothing about their ‘scholarship,’ and one of the first things ‘scholars‘ do is refuse to obey. We should kiss up the them? I think not. “Okay, you did well, Peter and John—amazingly well considering how uneducated you are. Good job! But we smart people are here now, so shove aside and let us show you how to do it.” No. In the overall world of scholarship, any ‘scholar’ believing the Bible makes a mockery of the word. The first thing ‘scholars’ do is to declare Adam and Eve a ludicrous tale for primitive peoples, thereby gutting the means to understand anything of importance—why death? why suffering? It all goes out the window. People are left clueless on the most important questions of life as they imagine themselves smarter than anyone else. Not to put it down too much, of course. It is a gift that some will bring to the altar. But if those at the altar decline to spin that altar like the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ dial, hopefully the relatively few scholars that are JW scholars will be able to hold their peace. It is one component of Christianity—not nothing, but also not overriding. “Everything You Thought You Knew About Such-and-Such is Wrong!” is a headline that experienced ones have seen all too often. As for me, I can’t believe how many pig-headed scholars have not come around to my point of view. I do have George Chrysiddes who wrote some nice things about Tom Irregardless and Me, and I ignored all my ‘stupid’ friends for a month when he bestowed his great favor. I am waiting on Rolf to join in with effusive praise. But other than that, these guys who squabble no less than we ordinary mortals have mostly not come around.

“The current GB is misguided and has lost its way?’ All they have to do is be there when the fat lady sings, and feeding the flock as best they can. No one else is doing so or has anything to show for efforts (or lack thereof). The fat lady may not be singing just yet, but she is seriously clearing her throat. We can’t wait too much longer for the ‘true anointed’ to manifest itself out of nowhere.

And here I tell myself so often: “Tom, do not reply to mean words with more mean words.” It’s back to Bible 101 for me!

That strikes me as not a bad answer from a 17 year old. Everyone has a smart phone these days and it is in the culture that if you see something you record it. It is the fellow cops who saw fit to not interfere that you wonder about.

We should never use such a dignified forum as the WorldNewsMedia to go tit for tat but What a piece of work you are! What is “worthwhile” is for the moderator to determine. It is the most ridiculous thing for you assume that this forum exists for you to level complaints, and that anything that does not earnestly address your beefs—as though persuasion was possible—is not “worthwhile.” You state—incredibly—that You’re joking! You would characterize what you put here as ‘spiritual?’ I think even your allies will choke on that one. Petty, mean-spirited, and blistering, maybe. Spiritual? Don’t make the servers crash. Tell me, when you attach laughing emojis, hee-hawing like a donkey, to posts that are not particularly funny from any standpoint—are we to take that as your ‘spirituality’ on display? And then, compounding all, is your odd seeming insistence that to call someone “a writer” is the greatest insult one man can heap upon another. Well, Rulf, who started this thread, clearly is “a writer,” and that did not demean him in your eyes, did it? You hailed him as Moses descending with the commandments, even without thinking it might be useful to read them first.

The thoughts are so spiritual that I suspect heaven itself cannot contain them.

I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t. I even promised the elders that I wouldn’t. But on and on he goes, slapping down @Arauna’s every remark as brainwashed and crazy. And then she posts something that she herself characterizes as just guessing, and he is all ears, wanting her direction so he can weather out the certain coming storm. I don’t understand some people. I really don’t.

I proposed (facetiously) in ‘No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash’ that there be ‘A Shooting Channel.’ Put all shootings on ‘The Shooting Channel’—white on black, white on white, black on white, black on black. Ban shootings on all other channels. Let viewers decide for themselves which ones are horrible and which ones are yawners. Otherwise, the media comes along later and starts a race war. Beyond question, the current happening is horrible. Still, when it is shown 20 times a day—how can that not be seen as deliberately stoking rage that will result in cascading calamity to totally innocent persons. The tiny Minneapolis businesses burned out in the days following were predominantly minority-owned. I think it is not such a foolish statement to say that those who would stoke this are “the enemy of the American people” It is an article of faith among the reformers of this system of things that “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” and that “When you shine the spotlight of journalism on this or that evil, the cockroaches disappear.” They may disappear, but that does not mean that they die. They just go elsewhere, and one is faced with the scriptural truth of Ecclesiastes 1:15: “That which is crooked cannot be made straight.“ ‘God’s kingdom come‘ such as Jehovah’s Witnesses proclaim is up to the task, but as for human efforts? The track record is not promising. More often than not, they take a horrible event and make it worse. Tweeted Sheryl Atkinson on May 30th: Minnesota officials: "Every person arrested last night was from out of state." Locals: "We don't know these folks." Exactly.

You cannot prove anything with regard to the faith. Otherwise, it would not be called faith. What you can do is demonstrate that this or that view is reasonable. Faith is a matter of the heart, supplemented by the head. It is not a matter of the head supplemented by the heart.

It won’t do it with me, either. That doesn’t mean that I buy into it, but I certainly don’t regard it as too absurd to mention. Did they shoot it down at JWTalk? I’m not surprised. I’ve seen it elsewhere. As though brothers say, “Oh, no—things may be bad, but they’re not that bad.” As though they must prove that they are responsible persons who would never buy into fringe ideas that the “loonies” originate. As though the kings of the earth struggle with the onslaught of the 4 horsemen through valiant and honorable means, and would never stoop to what is underhanded—for they are honorable individuals who realize that the fight must be fair. Rather than prove themselves responsible, I think they just prove themselves naive, and when those who shape opinion command that we put no stock in such “conspiracies,” they think it is their part to acquiesce. It is probably just as well that they do not embrace conspiracies because there really are a lot of nut cakes out there and it is impossible to know what is true and what is concocted, but so many appear to think it really is their duty to shoot these things down. As for me, when I see the rot of human mismanagement, I assume that I am seeing just the tip of the iceberg. As with an actual tip of an iceberg, there is hardly a way of knowing what lies beneath the surface and so I do not devote much time to it. Unless I really have some relevant knowledge, I don’t go there, and even if I do have some relevant knowledge, I don’t go there much—but very likely whatever there is there is substantial. If we are to look at things from God’s point of view—that the 6000 year experiment of human rule is permitted so as to demonstrate its failure, then the more spectacularly if fails, the better. “Conspiracy theories” roughly correspond to “each one’s hand will be against his own brother.” I see no reason to insist such things could not happen.

Whoa. They worked together on overlapping shifts. Any bad blood between them? ”If Chauvin and Floyd were not meeting for the first time in the moments before Floyd’s death, that could potentially mean that there was a deeper motive behind the murder” says the source. What if it turns out that the motive has nothing at all to do with race?

I think I like the above post and so I bestowed you the highest act of love one person can give to another—a ‘like’—but I did it mostly for your take on the 1rst century and the modern JW work to restore it. However—what did you mean by the above quote?

Yes. I think so. Someone asked Rush Limbaugh his reaction to the Boy Scout bankruptcy. In answer, he spoke to a radical leftist move to destroy anything standing for traditional family, using their own occasional failures to bring them down. I hadn’t thought of that before, I but think there is a common theme—that JWs are part of, but by no means the whole target of a movement that would remold anything of traditional family or God. And, no—I don’t listen to Rush 24/7. Unless I am driving somewhere with the radio on, I don’t listen at all. But I did, 30 years ago, record the show and listen each night. I also, before that, listened to Larry King each night—and he is of the opposite politics. In his heyday he had the most interesting show of all. Each night he interviewed an author, each one of a different field of interest. One hour of his own Q & A, followed by 2 hours of call-in questions from the audience. He was so good. He would not let callers ramble on with long-winded speech-making questions—he forced the windbags to be succinct. He kept focus on the guest and made his own comments few. Unfortunately, his show got bought out by some network and they changed the format completely, putting him on only interviews with puff celebrities, and his newsworthy relevance fell off a cliff. Before that I would zip through Books on Tape from the library during my mundane work, and only stopped when the library ran out of books other than the bestsellers of the day. “Stupid janitor forgot to leave an extra roll of toilet paper—I’m screwed,” someone tweeted. I tweeted back, “I read 50 of the BBC’s top 100 books of all time via Books on Tape, far more than anyone else on the thread, while working as a janitor. Sorry about the toilet paper.” Larry King famously did not read the books beforehand of the authors he would interview. He said he did it that way so that he could approach each book with a layman’s curiosity and not his own pre-formed opinion. He was probably just being lazy, but that does not mean that what he said was not true—he could more easily approach topics with honest curiosity and without bias. I find myself doing something similar with books such as Rulf’s, which I may someday read but I am in no hurry. It is in my area of expertise—why should I drop everything to wolf it down? It is someone’s takeaway from their own experiences. I have my own experiences and my own reactions to things he responds to. Why should I assume his are better? Did he go to a fancy-pants school? So did I. I don’t make a big deal over it because it has never done me any good (my fault, not theirs) but if he starts slobbering over ‘higher education’—well, I know that world well. None of us are Jesus, of course, but I like the response to his Sermon on the Mount of how people were astounded. “When Jesus finished these sayings, the effect was that the crowds were astounded at his way of teaching. for he was teaching as one having authority and not as their scribes”—the scribes that had nothing original to say but would just expound upon the opinions of each other. Jesus ignored it all to contribute his own (actually God’s) take on things. Everybody has a few books in them and if they do not have the wherewithal to write them, that does not make their stories any the less valid or interesting. I may get around to Rulf, but he’ll have to wait his turn. My story is as good. As it is, there is a certain idiot here (he will not have read down this far because he cries foul at any sentence longer than a dozen words) who crows about all that Rulf has “proven” the moment he is aware of the book, without even reading it. I’ll know that I have arrived when I release a book and AllenSmith gushes on about how I have knocked the ball out of the park simply by virtue of writing a book, without having read it.