TrueTomHarley

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

Except here on the open forum where some have hate-repetitive syndrome - they are relentless..... LOL.

Actually, I didn’t mean to put it on this forum, but on the closed one. It was a mistake. Ah, well....so far everyone is behaving themselves.

It must really confound those who accuse the JW organization of being a cult that few people are behaving better these days, or more reasonably, with more of an eye toward the public good. That #CultExpert tweets about how Jehovah’s Witnesses manipulate people, and I reply that their followers put his to shame for vanquishing COVID. Jehovah’s Witnesses immediately transferred all gatherings to Zoom and issued strong counsel to observe government-recommended social distancing—which our people will observe because they strive to be obedient. But his followers? Some will observe social distancing, no doubt—probably even most, but is his mission statement ‘Freedom of Mind’ really compatible with obedience to secular authority? You don’t think some will use their ‘freedom of mind’ to say: “Forget about you!—We’ll party on the beach if we feel like it!?”

Doubtless they expected ‘scare-mongering’—‘using’ the present crisis to scare new ones into the fold—and in fact, there have been accusations of that. But you really really have to stretch the point if you go there. The lead post on jw.org is the most socially responsible contribution imaginable, replete with suggestions on how to cope with isolation and resulting loneliness. With people beside themselves with anxiety, unable to cope in many cases, you don’t think that is a valuable contribution, perhaps THE most valuable? After all, if your psyche breaks down, all the physical relief in the world does you no good.

It reminds me of the verse on muzzling the talk of the ignorant ones by doing good. To be sure, hostile ones are still criticizing—but in doing so,  they are also plainly revealing their ignorance, and in some cases, hate.

In fact, I don’t quite go there with the CultExpert, for some of the groups he monitors really DO seem pretty strange—so I don’t go there, though I do think about it—I almost want to say: “LET them join a cult if it helps them get through this and save their sanity! What are you offering in lieu—that we should put our hope in the next crop of politicians? Haven’t we been down that road countless times before?”

Affirming some cult idiot’s charge that I am ‘using’ the pandemic to ‘recruit,’ (to anyone concerned about that, I reply that on the 200th contact I will ask if they want to convert and then they can say ‘no’—in the meantime, it’s just conversation—don’t worry about it) I have many times tweeted that lead post to persons, sometimes in response to a specific plea like with Mr. Fiend, and sometimes I just throw it out there—with good results in both cases. Sometimes the tweets are retreated. Unless you are a snarling ‘ain’t-cultist,’ people do not misunderstand—they know that you are trying to help.

As always, you tailor your tweet to the person. To persons who appear secular, you say (this one was lamenting a suicide she had read about): “It is a terrible thing. Healthy people struggle when their routine is uprooted, let alone persons unwell to begin with. I sent this to someone who tweeted that he was frankly losing it. There is a spiritual component to it, but it is mostly on combatting isolation and loneliness”—and I attach the link.

To someone decidedly irreligious, you might say: “As a suggestion—nothing more—here is a series of posts on how to cope with isolation and loneliness. Upended routines are driving everyone up a tree. My turn is probably next. Like Bob Dylan: ‘The riot squad is restless, they need somewhere to go.’” I like to play the Dylan card—it doesn’t mean that you have to. You also don’t exempt yourself—hence the ‘my turn is probably next,’

My new pinned tweet is: “With #mentalhealth under assault and even balanced people buckling under the stress, I can’t imagine a better read than this one on coping with isolation and loneliness from #JehovahsWitnesses,” as I include a link to the post. 

Note the hashtags. Ages ago my daughter said to me: “They’re hashtags, Dad, not crosstags.” Hashtags are fair game on social media, whereas tagging individuals directly is generally considered rude, unless you know full well that they will welcome it. Hashtags will draw in anyone else who monitors the subject—as an experiment, enter a hashtag anything on social media to see what comes up. You can even use it as your own filing system if you choose a hashtag unique enough.

It can, however backfire. If the hashtag is of any controversial topic, it can bring in people who want to argue, even insult. In the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, there are disgruntled former members—‘apostates’—that can be attracted—in fact, they almost surely will be. “Oh, yeah,” you can mutter. “They’ll come alright. As surely as flies to dung, they will come!” But you should not say this, because while you are comparing apostates to flies, you are also comparing yourself to dung—so you should seek another metaphor.

My #mentalhealth hashtag drew in some mental health people, some of whom expressed great appreciation. But true to warning, my #jehovahswitnesses hashtag drew in some ‘apostates.’

“The rather large elephant in the paragraph [about the comfort JWs offer] is the Jehovah’s Witness shunning policy.”

But I replied (in three tweets):

“There is hardly an issue here. Those who would trigger a ‘shunning policy’ are those for whom, at the present time, the last thing in the world they would want is to abide by the principles of those who wrote the article. Even so, they are welcome to take from it what they will.”

“The thoughts expressed in the article are non-denominational, offered freely to all, even those on the outs at present with JWs. It’s meant as a public service. One need not take it. One can always put trust in the politicians, medical staff, and economists to fix matters.”

I looked at the detractor’s profile and discovered that she was one who was trying to torpedo the JW organization’s status as a charitable religious organization, something that they plainly are:

“In fact, it is an excellent post for consideration of the @CharityComms, though not written for that reason. Look, nobody is everything to everyone. But they will recognize that we are well past the time for nursing grudges—not with C19 threatening the mental health of the planet.”

It shut her up! I couldn’t believe it! It is unheard of! ‘Apostates’ never ever EVER give up—I’ve had to block some—and yet she gave up. There is no finer proof of 1 Peter 2:15 than that: “For it is the will of God that by doing good you may silence the ignorant talk of unreasonable men.”

54 minutes ago, admin said:

I personally can't look at Al Gore the same way now.....

I haven’t been able to ever since I heard him adopting the manner of a southern black preacher (and doing it pretty convincingly, too) when addressing a delegation of black voters.

I can’t stand this guy. His manner is simply nauseating. Pour on the syrup or what? He turned my stomach then, he turns it now.

But I also suspect the stuff he is selling probably works—to call it a ‘cure’ is too much, but to say it helps—i would go along with that. If I recall it is silver colloidal something or other and that is a mixture that many swear by.

It is not that he hawks something that gets me. It is that he so throughly mixes it with his role as ‘evangelist.’ It is as though the Circuit Overseer had a line of goods that he sold at the Assembly Hall—and you couldn’t get into the place without passing his booth by.

On 4/20/2020 at 5:14 PM, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

 

Perhaps TTH can.(?)

The more I think about it, the more I am surprised that you would continue to ridicule this, now that it was acquired powerful circumstantial evidence that it may turn out just this way. 

A stretch? Not the most likely meaning of generation? Possibly. Still, the GB began saying ‘the last of the last days’ about 6 months ago, just before a virus and worldwide collapse that couldn’t fit better with such a description came along. Even if it seems from a distance not the most likely explanation, there is nothing illogical about it, nothing fictional, that you should continue to laugh your sides off. It is only your disrespect for those taking the lead that makes you do this. There is nothing about the explanation that rings false in itself, and now much that suggests it might be true.

You should reassess your ridicule. It smacks too much of Dathan splitting his sides laughing at Moses’ chart of how the earth would open up.

.....

“Zena! Zena! Oh no! Poor Zena. Why didn’t she listen to Jehovah?”

13 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Now   .... if you had chosen "tacky" or "frivolous", you might have a case.

I dislike this stuff. I am not a billboard and have never worn anything with a logo on it. It even took me a while to get with the program on wearing our badges during convention time when out and about, though I eventually did it.

The goal is to advertise the convention, and I can get my head around that. Alas, one brother didn’t quite get the sense of it. He worked in trucking, putting him sweaty and in tee shirt—he could not have looked more like a slob—overweight to boot—after the convention, and there he was at the restaurant, badge pinned to his belly.

19 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

I'm starting to come around, however, since my oldest son drives a hybrid electric/gas and it gets better than twice the gas mileage of my Honda CR-V. 

“Shouldn’t you be out chasing TSLA now?” I tweeted to the local stockbroker at a time where it was heading to the moon and I was searching for a playful put down of him for something he had said.

But he IS the local stockbroker, and he cannot appear to be flippant with other people’s money. He replied that chasing stocks is not his style.

I haven’t seen this and probably won’t at 1:40, but even as I write this I think that maybe I will

I did hear Rush on the car radio yesterday carrying on about this movie, though, making much of his observation that Moore hadn’t seemed to have recognized that his electric car was ultimately powered by fossil fuels, since that’s how electricity is generated. 

32 minutes ago, Anna said:

 

But this is the open club where anything goes!

 

Well—now that you put it that way....

Alright, knock it off! This is my thread and it has to do with that stupid chart purporting to prove that there is no God.

I didn’t start it up so the ol pork chop could once again indulge one of his pet peeves and air yet another one of his grievances with the GB for the umpteenth time. Let him start up his own thread.

Tell him, ol hen. Tell him to start his own thread.

5 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Perhaps TTH can.(?)

Yes. The chart is used to account for such things that are yet in the future. Loan me that time machine you have stored behind the chicken coop. I’ll race forward, check it out, and assuming you have left me with a full tank of gas, return to let you know what I’ve found.

Most likely it is going to come down to some old buzzard who refuses to die, and everyone wishes he would because he remains the last overlapping link, but he appears more and more vigorous with each passing day,  and he buttonholes all he see to tout the virtues of his line of health supplements..

He and Witness will get along just fine. Kos can referee. There will be a war in the heavens to make revelation 12 look like child’s play.

2 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

I was a partaker.

The day you’re a partaker in the Big Event Is the day I tender my resignation to the entire cause.

1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

It is also important that we pay attention to DETAILS!

Many of Trump’s ‘lies’ are due to this sort of thing...

”I’ve said it a million times....”

FACT CHECK: False. it was not a million times.

I have barely seen a more stupid chart in my life, apparently designed to demonstrate that there is no God:

See original: https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/08/02/the-flow-problem-of-evil/

The dopiest part has to be the boxes at bottom and lower left. They pose a dilemma akin to: “Can God make a mountain that he cannot move?”

People who would have you believe that they are ‘thinkers’ assume they have knocked it out of the park with this ‘gotcha.’

The most skilled critical thinkers of our age employ their intellect to miss what is right before their nose. Their underlying assumption, entirely unproven, is that God should be Santa Claus, showering presents without regard for whoever is naughty or nice. If he doesn’t do that, then there must be no God.

[Edit....I played with this one all morning and eventually expanded it to something I put on my own blog. Comment on it here, if you will, not there, since my own comment section is selective and does not stay open long in any event:

https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2020/04/this-has-to-be-one-of-the-stupidest-charts-i-have-ever-seen-on-evil-and-suffeirng.html ]

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

I am sick a second time.  I had these symptoms 6 weeks ago and got over it....... but it came back today....

This is distressing. I, too, have a family member overseas hopefully convalescing in not very easy surroundings—outcome uncertain. He spent time in two hospitals, one very good and one very bad. 

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

Tom, I guess you are hoping to get very old or live through Armageddon

None of us want to die. It is inconvenient and it makes people feel bad. Death itself, however, holds no fear for us. This is not the ‘real’ life, after all. I have a writer’s bug, an urge to get down everything in writing, and hopefully adequate time to do it. But you never know—I could be gone tomorrow. 

Not to mention should the Great Day come in the interim. With sudden sickness and possible looming depression both coming straight out of the blue, how quickly human edifices fall apart. Maybe things will soon revert to business as normal, but that is by no means a sure thing. Maybe certain anticipated things will ‘speed up.’

Best hopes here to you. I pray you get well. I’ll continue to see you here setting straight the ignoramuses hopefully, but if for crazy human reasons I do not, I will see you in happier times.

I’ve heard the argument that God deliberately kept his name obscured so that its true pronunciation would not be sullied by so many profane tongues. Not sure I buy that argument, but neither is it stupid.

Still, that list is impressive. When I get a spare decade I’m going to watch all those movies.

5 hours ago, Arauna said:

That is why I sometimes watch documentaries about characters in history.

This is what ought be done unless you want to watch the ‘history’ in which Moses pops Pharaoh in the nose and gets the girl. 

21 hours ago, Joan Kennedy said:

David McClure was definitely an unique individual with a wonderful sense of humor. 

The guy was a hoot, ever quick-witted with a sharp sense of humor. His wife was the same and they would tease back and forth at each other all day. The small town that Dave came from was so small, Betty would say, that its greatest tragedy was the day the library burned to the ground. Both books were destroyed and one of them hadn’t even been colored yet.

He got tired in the afternoon—he was diabetic—and ceded the driving of his huge Chrysler to me. He sat in as I conducted an afternoon Bible study with Alex, nodded off, and his book hit the floor—the thud immediately woke him again. I later brought him to another’s home and that person asked him the procedure for Bible studies with a circuit overseer around—would he conduct them or would the regular congregation member conduct them? ‘Well,’ he explained, ‘I usually ask beforehand and if the publisher wants me to conduct, then I do, but if he says that he would rather conduct, then I just nod....”

He asked me as the chauffeur one afternoon to stop by the Photomat and pick up his pictures—vacation pictures—they were probably developed by now. The girl couldn’t find them. She explained that they must have gotten lost, that she was so sorry, and offered him a free roll of film.

”I’m not going to be satisfied with a free roll of film,” he shot back, in a manner that you couldn’t really tell—or at least, I couldn’t—just how nettled he really was. “Unless you want to take me on another vacation—then I’ll be satisfied—but otherwise”—he employed a hillbilly expression that I had never heard before (but that JTR knows well, no doubt), “there’s going to be blood in the sun lessen you don’t find my pictures.” He had that attendant tear apart her entire booth searching every nook and cranny for them.

Driving away without his film—the developed ones were not found and I think he spurned the free roll—he seemed a little sheepish to have shown himself so nettled. It wasn’t plain to me that he had been, but that girl had turned her booth upside down. “I understand that mistakes will happen,” he groused. “It’s just that cavalier attitude that I should be happy with a free roll of film that gets under my skin.” There is an art to human relations.

And as for his quick wit itself, it is yet another example of how people develop it as a defense mechanism, a compensation for times in which they were bullied as a child.

51 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

TTH:

 I liked that so much, I upvoted it twice!

I noticed that. I didn’t think it was possible to upvote twice. Wait till Allen and his friends discover that little trick.

Can you post laughing emojis repeatedly? Wait till 4Jah discovers that. He will post so many to a post that he will fall off the top of his doghouse and clunk his head, like Snoopy used to.

1 minute ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

I knew that James in Spanish was "Santiago"

I didn’t know that. Good post, Himee.    

24 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Changing it to Yahweh could just be seen as pretentious at this point.

I like this.

24 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

There are people who say Yeshua today, and it seems pretentious to me, even though it's a more accurate pronunciation.

Of course. 

Putting on airs is one of the most enduring human foibles of all time.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (1940) that children MUST salute WHEN told to do so, with NO excuses, the phrase “freedom of the human mind” was used to defend the minority, Jehovah’s Witnesses. The words were employed in the minority opinion. Today, the phrase “freedom of mind” is used to attack them! along with other ‘cults.’ It is an amazing reversal—from defending the rights of the minority from majority assault, to defending the rights of the majority from minority assault!

How does the minority pull off such a threatening stunt? Through ‘mind control’ and “brainwashing!’ It is an incredible charge and an 180 reversal of history! Freedomofmind.com is the url of the “cultexpert,” the founder of the BITE model, the means through which the nefarious minority manipulates members of the majority—through Behavioral control, Informational control, Thought control, and Emotional control. It is always someone else’s fault with these ‘anti-cultists”—its founder has progressed to calling half the country a victim of political mind-control! He’s not drunk too much of the Kool-Aid himself?

THAT is the takeaway point to be gleaned from the following article. It is not the point I had in mind when I initially wrote it. But it is the point that best endures:

....

Dave McClure

I worked with Dave McClure the circuit overseer—I used to stick to those guys like glue—one fine morning in the 1980’s. “We’re just calling on our neighbors in order to....” he began. The householder glanced at the Michigan plates on his car—it didn’t exactly suggest to a New Yorker that the man was a neighbor. “Neighbor?” he said. But Dave was never ever at a loss for words. “Well, I’ve got to fly the flag!’ was his chipper comeback. 

It was a perfect comeback. Michigan plates that year featured the most colorful backdrop of numerals against a flag that I have ever seen. Brother McClure was newly assigned to our circuit and hadn’t yet switched over his plates—you’re allowed a certain time interval to do so, I believe. I mean, it can’t be a requirement from the moment you cross the state line.

But it was a perfect comeback for another reason. When he was a boy, Dave McClure routinely got beat up by classmates for not flying the flag, or at least not saluting it. He told his experiences at a special assembly in Niagara Falls, New York. As only Brother McClure could do, he made getting beat up almost sound like fun—I mean, this is the fellow who, when in the presence of friends and confronted with something unexpected, would repeatedly and furiously move his hand from breastbone to abdomen and back again. He was just “staking himself,” as he would explain.

In 1940, the Minerville School District v Gobitis U.S. Supreme Court ruling held that Witness children could be compelled to salute the flag. Walter Gobitus was a Jehovah’s Witness whose child did not. Witnesses view declining the flag salute in any nation as a matter of avoiding idolatry. They connect the salute with God’s words to Moses that “you must not make for yourself...a form like anything that is in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. You must not bow down to them...for I, Jehovah your God, am a God who requires exclusive devotion...” 

Walter, then 10, had told the local school authorities: ''I do not salute the flag not because I do not love my country. I love my country, but I love God more, and must obey his commandments.'' Didn’t cut it with the Supreme Court.

The Court decision signaled open hunting season on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Mobs surrounded them in their public preaching work. Many were accosted. Some were tarred and feathered, some were forced to drink castor oil. At least one was lynched. They were rounded up in their ministry and crammed into local jails, sometimes without charge—they were contemptible enough in the eyes of respectable society so as to be denied the rights afforded everyone else. One brother tells of how he would always carry a toothbrush with him in the ministry so as not to be unprepared should he spend the night in the hoosegow.

Note the majority Supreme Court opinion of Justice Felix Frankfurter: “National unity is the basis of national security. To deny the legislature the right to select appropriate means for its attainment presents a totally different order of problem from that of the propriety of subordinating the possible ugliness of littered streets to the free expression opinion through handbills.” Note his contempt for the “possible ugliness of littered streets” from handbills, such as Witnesses were known for.

Justice Harlan Stone was the lone dissenter. He wrote that “the guarantees of civil liberty are but guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them .” Note how “guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit” were presumed defenses for those who would think outside of the mainstream; note today how ‘anti-cultists’ have turned that logic on its head so that a ‘cult’ taking ones outside of the mainstream constitutes a violation of “the freedom of the human mind and spirit.”

Shortly thereafter, probably aghast at the violence they had unleashed, the Court had a change of heart. Three members signaled their changed views. Two others retired and were replaced by those thought more attuned to individual liberties. The matter came up for review again, wending its way though lesser courts until it ascended to the top Court. The plaintiffs in the case were named Barnett, Stull, and Lucy McClure. Dave was the young son of Lucy.

The decision reversed. The new majority opinion (released on June 3rd, Flag Day, 1943):

''If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,'' Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote. 

The new minority opinion , written by the former winner, now the loser, Felix Frankfurter, included the grumbling:

“As has been true in the past, the Court will from time to time reverse its position. But I believe that never before these Jehovah’s Witnesses cases (there were many more besides those concerning flag salute) …..has this Court overruled decisions so as to restrict the powers of democratic government.”

Yes, that’s how it is with governments, democratic or not. They want more power. They don’t want to give it up. A certain amount is necessary, of course, so as to maintain public order and safety. Witnesses cede it to them willingly and render obedience. But when they grab for yet more - the consciences and souls of their citizens, someone has to call them on it. And that someone has often been Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The topic came up 45 years later. The first George Bush thought it a fine idea for teachers to lead their classes in mandatory flag salute. His electioneering opponent, Michael Dukakis, did not. The New York Times reviewed the JW items of decades past and even tracked down some of the original participants. “Mr. Gobitis,” it wrote, “now a 62-year-old piano tuner in Belgium, Wis., has followed the 1988 salute debate closely, and a bit disgustedly. ‘It's hard to comprehend why they're raising this issue again,’ he said. ‘They're ignoring our constitutional development and history.’ It reminded him, he said, of a passage in Chapter 16 of the Book of Revelations. ‘To Jehovah's Witnesses,’ he said, ‘all this political fanfare boils down to is 'the croaking of frogs and expressions inspired by demons.’”

And you know, I just can’t get over the reversed use of that phrase, “guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom.” Then it was used to protect the minority from the majority. Today anti-cultists use it to protect the majority from the minority, lest ones of that minority ‘deceive’ them by ‘manipulation’ and ‘mind control.’ 

As for Dave McClure, my old Circuit Overseer, he would have been serving our circuit somewhere around that time. But if he ever had thoughts about the 1988 brouhaha, he never shared them with me. He passed away in Florida several years ago.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

I would recommend that you wait until there is evidence that something turns out to be verifiably correct

Isn’t ‘Queens’ a borough of New York? I think that you may come to rethink your doubting.