TrueTomHarley

I noticed this story too....
 

The story of the day – perhaps the story of many days if they can resist taking shots at Trump, is the furniture store owner who made his two stores shelters for displaced Houstonians. “Mattress Mack” McIngvale (don’t you love the guy already?), ever philanthropic, says the city has helped him through tough times and now he will give back.

The generous deed put “poor” Joel Osteen in a bad light, for he was roundly condemned the day before for not opening his mega-church to the homeless - it seats 17,000. One fellow on Twitter declared the score: Publicity Capitalism 1, Prosperity Gospel 0.

This is unfair. Why credit publicity capitalism? That is merely the tool employed. Mattress Mack credits his Catholic faith. “I was raised as a Catholic. I continued my Catholic faith throughout my life, trying to do the right thing,” he says.
A good deed is a good deed. Credit it instantly and unbegrudgingly. It doesn’t mean I’m going Catholic on anyone. It doesn’t mean I think the overall picture favors them. But a good deed is a good deed.

And before slamming Joel too much, one must ask what do Jehovah’s Witnesses do with their meeting places. I’m not worried here. Assembly Halls are invariably put to good use as distribution hubs for relief work, which starts almost immediately – its regular use is suspended for a time. Kingdom Halls are also put to good use, though regular use there is not suspended. Or is it? I don’t really know, having never been in that scenario, but I don’t think so. Witness families, however, are known for taking each other into their homes in a heartbeat.

As for Joel – look, I don’t care for the guy – does he ever wipe that smile off his face? - but neither do I want to take cheap shots. He did eventually come around. Was he shamed into it? Or would he have gotten around to it eventually, once access to his own building was made smoothe. You can’t depend on the media to relay things accurately – they are anti-religious. 

Nonetheless, Mattress Mack is the hero of the day. It’s not as though he had two cavernous buildings wide open. He must have had to have move his mattresses somewhere. Go there and buy one – take it off his hands. Or actually no. He would have just flopped his mattresses down and let people sleep on them. 

Similarly, the one with the Witness bowler pumping his fist at a strike, the ten pins being ten - you name 'em - aspects of this system of things, is also a phony.
Gasp!! Is that woman wearing PANTS?!! Kick her over the edge!

Like I really should watch CNN to learn the truth about Trump or Breitbart to learn the truth about Obama?
I'll choose what I choose to see in proper context, neither cherry-picked nor skewed.
If tiny sound-byte snippets appeal to you - I have never known you to post anything else - they do not to me. I prefer comments well-rounded, in appropriate context, and not thrust upon me by someone who so pleadingly and pathetically has an agenda. I'm not opposed to looking at things, and I have looked at things. I will just not allow opponents to focus the lens for me. I'll do that myself.
Nobody is in prison, are they? You are trying to bake some acknowledged grains - even if they be more than grains - into a seven layer cake.
Please don't harp on this with me. There were two or three very long threads on this subject not long ago. I participated fully and you even threw in some cartoons. I don't want to re-invent the wheel throughout eternity. Go back and revisit those threads. Add to them if you think there is anything not covered.
I don't view this forum as your own personal courtroom, to cross-examine people at will. In any real courtroom, the judge eventually tells a lawyer to shut up when he does nothing but hurl accusations, repeat his same questions, and takes no note of the answers.

I do get warm feelies here. I don't think that's a bad thing. (I don't mean here, with @The Librarianand all; I mean in Jehovah's organization)
I am like most Witnesses who do not have to have every single duck lined up to declare this the truth. Actually, every duck is lined up, but I will concede there are a few chicks that have yet to straighten out and fly right - they being chicks.
@JW Insiderhas listed the main ducks, and he has appended a few more. In response to someone asking why I remain a Witness when bad things happen in the organization, I have written some additional reasons:
https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/42302-why-remain-a-witness-when-bad-things-happen/
Each of these desirable tenets is rare today. The combination of them in one faith is unique to Jehovah's Witnesses and that is why I have chosen the faith and am not likely to leave, especially for the greater world described in the last post. If you think your glorious freedom to engage your critical thinking without check has resulted in such a wonderful world, you are welcome to remain there.
When one has assembled the jigsaw puzzle and reproduced the box cover mountain vista, you are not easily put off by the critic who insists you have it all wrong. This is especially true if his own puzzle lies unassembled in the box.

I do get warm feelies here. I don't think that's a bad thing. (I don't mean here, with @The Librarianand all; I mean in Jehovah's organization)
I am like most Witnesses who do not have to have every single duck lined up to declare this the truth. Actually, every duck is lined up, but I will concede there are a few chicks that have yet to straighten out and fly right - they being chicks.
@JW Insiderhas listed the main ducks, and he has appended a few more. In response to someone asking why I remain a Witness when bad things happen in the organization, I have written some additional reasons:
https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/42302-why-remain-a-witness-when-bad-things-happen/
Each of these desirable tenets is rare today. The combination of them in one faith is unique to Jehovah's Witnesses and that is why I have chosen the faith and am not likely to leave, especially for the greater world described in the last post. If you think your glorious freedom to engage your critical thinking without check has resulted in such a wonderful world, you are welcome to remain there.
When one has assembled the jigsaw puzzle and reproduced the box cover mountain vista, you are not easily put off by the critic who insists you have it all wrong. This is especially true if his own puzzle lies unassembled in the box.

I do get warm feelies here. I don't think that's a bad thing. (I don't mean here, with @The Librarianand all; I mean in Jehovah's organization)
I am like most Witnesses who do not have to have every single duck lined up to declare this the truth. Actually, every duck is lined up, but I will concede there are a few chicks that have yet to straighten out and fly right - they being chicks.
@JW Insiderhas listed the main ducks, and he has appended a few more. In response to someone asking why I remain a Witness when bad things happen in the organization, I have written some additional reasons:
https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/42302-why-remain-a-witness-when-bad-things-happen/
Each of these desirable tenets is rare today. The combination of them in one faith is unique to Jehovah's Witnesses and that is why I have chosen the faith and am not likely to leave, especially for the greater world described in the last post. If you think your glorious freedom to engage your critical thinking without check has resulted in such a wonderful world, you are welcome to remain there.
When one has assembled the jigsaw puzzle and reproduced the box cover mountain vista, you are not easily put off by the critic who insists you have it all wrong. This is especially true if his own puzzle lies unassembled in the box.

This is SO TRUE .... especially in Toontown.
 
 

'Big Independent Thinking' is a clumsy term I devised on the spot to supplement the other 'Bigs.'  It is simply the stupid memes that catch on as wisdom, but invariably fall apart, often causing great harm. Here is an example from a book that the domineering @The Librarianrefuses to stock in her library, though it should replace at least half the rubbish she has sagging the shelves:
I found another atheist on the internet. This one was also raised a Witness, as was Brian. He too, was still a kid. It’s unbelievable! In his heady days of breaking break free!!!!!!!!!! he gushed on about his newfound ‘rationalism’ for the benefit of everyone else:
"Rationalism for me means a life of pure freedom. ..... But this means that this life that you’re living now is the most precious thing you’ll ever have. .... Because there is no Big Daddy to appease or suck up to, or be afraid of, you should be nice to people because it’s nice! You should treat people like you want to be treated! You should not steal or murder because it hurts people, and hurting people is wrong. Always. No one needs a god to tell them this.....Being a rationalist....If you say something irrational or realize the error in your own thoughts, a red flag immediately raises. .....rationalism is a worldview with no drawbacks, and only positives. It encourages honesty and truth.....It promotes interest in the common good..."
The idiot! The young naïve idiot! Why does he leave? Because he wants to go where there is no Big Daddy to suck up to! It doesn’t occur to him that with the gamut of human governments, the casinos that are world economies, the health woes that lead straight to death, he will do so much sucking up that God and the Governing Body will seem like doddering indulgent grandparents in comparison....‘C’mon, Tom, don’t be so hard on him! That’s the nature of inexperienced youth. They make mistakes.’ ...Agreed. All is forgiven. But what about the experienced liars that have misled him?
How lofty and soaring his words of rationalism sound! How much crap they are in reality! ‘The Toxins Trickle Downward’ (Economist, March 14, 2009) examined fallout from the financial crisis triggered by the misdeeds of those at the top of finance and government. Credit markets were now closed to the third world poor, commodity prices vital to their survival had collapsed, and remittances from citizens working abroad had dried up. The World Bank reckoned the crisis would account for 200,000 - 400,000 African lives lost, all children.
People at the top had used their “pure freedom,” to grind others into the dirt, and not to “treat people like you want to be treated!” (an exclamation mark, no less; oh, the joys of rationalism!) They were not “nice to people.” They “hurt people,” even though “hurting people is wrong.” Not only did they “hurt people” – they killed them, two to four hundred thousand of them!” All children! Plainly, we do need a “Big Daddy to appease” and a “god to tell us how to live.”
If you had had a son or daughter high up in the banking world back then, who was devising the complex financial instruments that would ultimately ruin us all, even killing the poor, you would have carried on about how well Junior was doing for himself, how respected he was in his career, and so forth. You wouldn’t have said ‘too bad he killed a few hundred thousand in Africa.’ You wouldn’t even have known about it. There is sufficient disconnect in this world’s construction so that the players on top can remain oblivious to the havoc they wreak below, oblivious to any need for soul-searching, until Eisenhower comes along and rubs their noses into it like the German mayor and the concentration camp.
The failure of human rule could not have been shown in more stark relief as in that article, with consequences so directly traceable to the human wisdom running the show. Russian President Vladimir Putin was both blunt and harsh: “Everything happening now in the economic and financial sphere began in the United States. This is not the irresponsibility of specific individuals but the irresponsibility of the system that claims leadership.” In 2016 America, all that remained was to Photoshop Putin with horns, gleefully pecking at his keyboard, doing his level best to hack the American election, but it was he who nailed it about unrestrained greed.
The 2011 film ‘Inside Job’ expressed dismay that no “specific individuals” were brought to justice: Charles Ferguson (film director): “Why do you think there isn’t a more systematic investigation being undertaken?” Nouriel Roubini (professor, NYU Business School): “Because then you will find the culprits.” Culprits and regulators alike belonged to the same social set and were members of the same country clubs; they had no desire to turn on one another.
Humans were not designed to rule themselves. It’s not an ability they have, the same as they cannot flap their arms and fly. Whether through greed, ignorance, pride, cowardice, or some mix of the four, the record of human rule aptly illustrates Jeremiah’s words:
I well know, O Jehovah, that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step. (Jeremiah 10:23)

Apologies if I cut off the sentence wrong.
The Bible uses the term. The organization simply picks up on it.
 
Oh give me a break. How meaningful can life be in a system where ISIS, dementia, cancer, or simple human greed can snuff it out in a second? "Sayanara!" your longtime employer sings out, as he packs up for overseas. "Dust off that resume, why don't you?  And that family and financial obligations you have? FUGEDABOUDIT!" It is as Solomon says: he's seen footmen on horses and kings slogging though the mud. Of course you can get some satisfaction out of life today. More power to you if you have. But many ultimately find it is like chomping down hard on cotton candy - though it looked substantial, there was nothing much there.
The thing you are orgasmic about is that you have chosen a place where no one can tell you what to do. Fine. I think it's a poor trade-off but there's nothing to stop anyone from choosing it. Yet by immersing oneself in 'the world' (I am not reformed from saying it) you are likely to find that manipulation from human scheming in the form of Big Government, Big Business or Big Independent Wisdom ultimately take such a toll that the Governing Body will look positively like doddering and kindly old grandparents in comparison.

Had they not been "shown the door," then you would have bitched about them living a life protected from the wild, where MEN have to struggle EVERY SINGLE DAY for existence, and one MISSTEP means INSTANT DEATH!!!
You're not the easiest guy to satisfy.
Did you also create the child baptism one with the misspelled word? Look, I have misspelled many a word here, as it is a here-today, gone-tomorrow thread. But if I were to design a graphic for posterity, I would get the spelling right.
I could design graphics, too. For example, I could picture the ten who jumped from the plane during a choppy flight. Eight are far below, with shoots open, and when the land they will resume their prior life. But two have grabbed hold of a wing, and, with tangled hair, sleet, fumes and dead birds slapping them in the face, they are desperately trying to unfurl a banner for the remaining passengers, who are barely noticing: "Jump off before it's too late! Join us!"
I could do that. But it is simply too juvenile. This from me, the guy who wears out his welcome clowning and who even kidnapped @The Librarianto make a point. (but handed her back - holy moly! that woman is obnoxious)

I will partially agree on this one. It's true. Not everyone is the guide leading the blind men into a pit. Some are merely the blind men.
We have a video of someone who left the truth and came back, cautioning others to not do it. "The world will chew you up and spit you out," he says. I don't care for that video. It is not true. Sometimes 'the world' chews you up but does not spit you out. Sometimes it spits you out but does not chew you up. A prime example of the latter lies in the hospital geriatric wing, where a relative works as a nurse. She tells of people experiencing severe letdown at the curtain call, who look around and say (not literally) "is this all there is?" These are not losers. These are persons who have had successful careers and have raised caring families. But as the end draws near and their bodies ungracefully fall apart, they say "is this all there is?"
Why anyone would throw away the freedom derived from Bible knowledge for the petty freedoms this world has to offer is beyond me.
You know, I kind of like this guy. He does not hide what he is. He is not like one who comes in positively cooing love for God and all his witnesses, if only...if only....it does not come out at first....if only they would assassinate those leaders of theirs. I can't stand people like that.
It reminds me of my ill-advised aborted experience at the apostate website. There was one idiot who would give only short 'sound byte' comments, always with insulting graphics, and whenever he mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses, he would 'dollar-sign' every 'S'. Okay. Got it. He thinks we should be like John, subsisting on honey and locusts. In time, whenever I referred to him, I would dollar-sign every 's' within a two millimeter radius. (this is not to call AM an idiot - believe me, the two are poles apart in presentation, though there is some overlap)

'Big Independent Thinking' is a clumsy term I devised on the spot to supplement the other 'Bigs.'  It is simply the stupid memes that catch on as wisdom, but invariably fall apart, often causing great harm. Here is an example from a book that the domineering @The Librarianrefuses to stock in her library, though it should replace at least half the rubbish she has sagging the shelves:
I found another atheist on the internet. This one was also raised a Witness, as was Brian. He too, was still a kid. It’s unbelievable! In his heady days of breaking break free!!!!!!!!!! he gushed on about his newfound ‘rationalism’ for the benefit of everyone else:
"Rationalism for me means a life of pure freedom. ..... But this means that this life that you’re living now is the most precious thing you’ll ever have. .... Because there is no Big Daddy to appease or suck up to, or be afraid of, you should be nice to people because it’s nice! You should treat people like you want to be treated! You should not steal or murder because it hurts people, and hurting people is wrong. Always. No one needs a god to tell them this.....Being a rationalist....If you say something irrational or realize the error in your own thoughts, a red flag immediately raises. .....rationalism is a worldview with no drawbacks, and only positives. It encourages honesty and truth.....It promotes interest in the common good..."
The idiot! The young naïve idiot! Why does he leave? Because he wants to go where there is no Big Daddy to suck up to! It doesn’t occur to him that with the gamut of human governments, the casinos that are world economies, the health woes that lead straight to death, he will do so much sucking up that God and the Governing Body will seem like doddering indulgent grandparents in comparison....‘C’mon, Tom, don’t be so hard on him! That’s the nature of inexperienced youth. They make mistakes.’ ...Agreed. All is forgiven. But what about the experienced liars that have misled him?
How lofty and soaring his words of rationalism sound! How much crap they are in reality! ‘The Toxins Trickle Downward’ (Economist, March 14, 2009) examined fallout from the financial crisis triggered by the misdeeds of those at the top of finance and government. Credit markets were now closed to the third world poor, commodity prices vital to their survival had collapsed, and remittances from citizens working abroad had dried up. The World Bank reckoned the crisis would account for 200,000 - 400,000 African lives lost, all children.
People at the top had used their “pure freedom,” to grind others into the dirt, and not to “treat people like you want to be treated!” (an exclamation mark, no less; oh, the joys of rationalism!) They were not “nice to people.” They “hurt people,” even though “hurting people is wrong.” Not only did they “hurt people” – they killed them, two to four hundred thousand of them!” All children! Plainly, we do need a “Big Daddy to appease” and a “god to tell us how to live.”
If you had had a son or daughter high up in the banking world back then, who was devising the complex financial instruments that would ultimately ruin us all, even killing the poor, you would have carried on about how well Junior was doing for himself, how respected he was in his career, and so forth. You wouldn’t have said ‘too bad he killed a few hundred thousand in Africa.’ You wouldn’t even have known about it. There is sufficient disconnect in this world’s construction so that the players on top can remain oblivious to the havoc they wreak below, oblivious to any need for soul-searching, until Eisenhower comes along and rubs their noses into it like the German mayor and the concentration camp.
The failure of human rule could not have been shown in more stark relief as in that article, with consequences so directly traceable to the human wisdom running the show. Russian President Vladimir Putin was both blunt and harsh: “Everything happening now in the economic and financial sphere began in the United States. This is not the irresponsibility of specific individuals but the irresponsibility of the system that claims leadership.” In 2016 America, all that remained was to Photoshop Putin with horns, gleefully pecking at his keyboard, doing his level best to hack the American election, but it was he who nailed it about unrestrained greed.
The 2011 film ‘Inside Job’ expressed dismay that no “specific individuals” were brought to justice: Charles Ferguson (film director): “Why do you think there isn’t a more systematic investigation being undertaken?” Nouriel Roubini (professor, NYU Business School): “Because then you will find the culprits.” Culprits and regulators alike belonged to the same social set and were members of the same country clubs; they had no desire to turn on one another.
Humans were not designed to rule themselves. It’s not an ability they have, the same as they cannot flap their arms and fly. Whether through greed, ignorance, pride, cowardice, or some mix of the four, the record of human rule aptly illustrates Jeremiah’s words:
I well know, O Jehovah, that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step. (Jeremiah 10:23)

On 7/31/2017 at 11:07 AM, TrueTomHarley said:
There comes a time when one must suck it up and move on - either stay or leave, but move on.
@b4ucuhear: Is that what I should have told my sister? My younger sister was sexually molested by an elder. She stayed despite that without making waves, until she started to see other things she found deeply disturbing and then she did "move on" as you say. Actually, she shouldn't have "moved on" because later on, most of the elders (the bad ones) were either removed or disfellowshipped - half of them were apostate (but that's not all they were up to). Of course nobody wanted to believe anything (even with concrete evidence) since they were regulars on the circuit assembly platform and on even on the district convention. It took about 10 years to sort itself out (should have been much quicker considering the evidence), but it did, (although it took other elders to step in and do what actually had to be done.) Still, 1 Timothy 5:24 will prove to be true if you wait, in one way or another. 
…….
TTH:  "This ‘superfine apostle’ in the 2 Corinthians 11:5 mold was a big honcho in the HVAC world and would freeze everyone out of the Kingdom Hall because he liked it cool - even locking the thermostat so nobody not under his control could touch it. One elderly sister declared she would no longer attend meetings – where was the love?
"It developed that this man planned to poison his wife so as to move in with another woman, and all the while maintain his position in the congregation. Joe Merlin sniffed him out in a heartbeat. ‘How can you guys be so naïve?’ he cried before one Body of Elders who could not believe what was right before them. But when the dust at last settled, one of them approached him: ‘You’re right, Joe - we are naïve.’ Sometimes Jehovah’s people are naïve. They are the ‘sons of the light’ whom the ‘sons of this system of things’ do end runs around."
From the chapter 'Dirty Rotten Lowlifes' in 'No Fake News But Plenty of Hogwash.'
……
@b4ucuhear I respect you for that. Knowing bad things can happen yet having the strength of faith and character to stay - as you seem - spiritually strong in the truth. Might I ask you to share with us what enables you to maintain your faith and dedication despite faith testing situations (whether you were personally in that congregation or not?)
……..
Why Remain a Witness when Bad Things Happen?
Here are things that have helped me. I’ll add some others, maybe.
First, the psalm that says if you love God’s law, there is no stumbling block. (Ps 119:165) Humans will let you down from time to time. God never does.
Second, Peter’s statement to Jesus when the latter said something outrageous. “Lord, where else shall we go?” (John 6:68) Exactly. Who else enjoys the basic spiritual truths and does the scripturally appointed work of Jehovah’s Witnesses? (Why would Jesus say what he did, knowing it could so easily be misconstrued? Can it be that he does so to separate the keepers from the bad fish?)
Third, recognition that the key is, not to try to sanitize the present, but to unsanitize the past. Meaning the congregation, Paul says that in any house there are vessels for uses both honorable and dishonorable, and one must keep away from the latter. (2 Timothy 2:20) Plenty of riff-raff back then, he is saying. The Hebrew scriptures even point to times and situations when God's people acted worse than the nations, so if they are instances today here or there, it should hardly be a shocker, even if it goes on for a few years. In OT times, it went on for decades.
Fourth, I like it that God mocks the wisdom of this world - wisdom which has given us the disaster we all must live in. From where is that wisdom dispensed but in the world’s system of higher education? Only Jehovah’s Witnesses eschew it, and despite that (or because of it) they have constructed a seamless system the envy of human governments that can’t reliably provide the most basic of services. We are the one religion of size that have not strayed from its ‘working class’ roots so as to suck up to the ‘better’ people. Acts 4:13 says the elites were astonished how the leaders of Christianity were ordinary and unlearned by their standards. That remains so today. Current GB members start out, not from a lofty perch above others, like in any other organization today, but from humble full-time service below that of most persons they later lead.
Fifth, a recognition that the crowd is always wrong. While some fear the prevalence of apostates will harm the true faith, I think, to the discerning one, it strengthens it. Hostility over Jehovah’s Witnesses is way out of proportion to any sins they have committed, and are often entirely bogus. Ann mentioned Muslims. They have tendency to produce murderous extremists and they have a sharia law that, taken seriously, does far more than shun transgressors, and savages Western notions of woman’s rights. Write an article about Muslims and you will receive many hostile comments. Write one about Jehovah's Witnesses and you will drown in hostile comments, though their numbers are far fewer and their transgressions far less serious. Don’t follow the crowd for evil ends, Exodus 23:2 says, or, as everyone’s mother said: if everyone was jumping off a cliff, would you jump too? If the crowd says the religion stinks, it must be good.
That’s for starters. 

@b4ucuhear: "Is that what I should have told my sister? My younger sister was sexually molested by an elder. She stayed despite that without making waves, until she started to see other things she found deeply disturbing and then she did "move on" as you say. Actually, she shouldn't have "moved on" because later on, most of the elders (the bad ones) were either removed or disfellowshipped - half of them were apostate (but that's not all they were up to).... Still, 1 Timothy 5:24 will prove to be true if you wait, in one way or another."
Though I didn't think of it at the time, the passage I quoted had to do with the "superfine apostles" Paul had to battle. Elsewhere I said he was like Diatrophes. These jerks existed in the first century. It shouldn't be unexpected that they may have cropped up from time to time in the present. 
I re-listened to An Important Reminder recently. I loved that talk. Why does God permit suffering? Easy to answer. Why does God permit MY suffering? Suddenly hard to answer. You might remember the speaker develops three scriptural scenarios. The third is Uriah in the new system reading of how the letter he carried was from David to Joab authorizing his (Uriah's) murder. Wouldn't THAT be a hard one to forgive? But it get's worse. He would learn how Jehovah exalted David in time, even the son born to him and drop dead gorgeous Bath-Sheba, Uriah's stolen wife. [the obvious lesson here is to marry an unattractive woman, such as @The Librarian] Who could blame him if he concluded that with Jehovah, a Jew could do anything, but a Hittite, a man of the nations, was but dirt in his eyes.
The 'important reminder' referred to time and again is that it's not about us. It never has been. It is about the vindication of Jehovah's purposes. Even Abraham and Jacob (the other two examples offered) were not exempt from the ordinary travails - up and downs and injustices and hardships of this system of things. In fact, their special assignment brought on some troubles in excess of the run-of-the-mill stuff their contemporaries faced.
It's actually from @The Librarian - fine woman - that I learned our personal salvation was recognized as the issue of secondary importance to the vindication of God's name from as far back as Brother Rutherford's time. This is a good point. MY personal salvation as the topic that is the buzz of the universe doesn't quite cut it. Sanctification of God's name does. Thus (and here is the 6th reason I remain with the truth, come what may) the Jehovah's Witness faith is not, at root, selfish. Other church branches are. 'Me and Jesus' is the focus of most of them.

I think I'll add as the seventh one how the truth has preserved my marriage, and the older I get the more I treasure a solid family - with its ups and downs - rather than a string of failed relationships. Feeding on the wisdom of this system of things, you are almost guaranteed the latter. This is due to basic flawed assumptions on the nature of men, the nature of woman, and the nature of marriage.
For example, there is the 'soul mate' fallacy. I'll acknowledge a soul mate sounds good, but is there really such a thing? The notion leads to disillusionment when you invariably find that your wife/husband is less of a soul mate than you initially thought. What course remains but to search for your true soul mate? There is little encouragement to work through issues, and when there is, there is almost no encouragement to stick with it. However, working with the Bible's definition of love will make you a better person over time. It is like exercising a muscle. In contrast, too much focus on a 'soul mate' does nothing but make you a shallow person, whose preferences must be catered to.
Let no one read into these remarks that my wife and I fight like cats and dogs. We do not. But there have been times.... Is it not that way with any marriage? The truth has preserved my marriage and thereby made me a better person. Following contemporary wisdom would have destroyed it long ago, most likely. A certain relative belongs to 'the American Dream Church.' - a 'me and Jesus' church. They have put their three kids though college and all have fine jobs. They had fine careers themselves and lived in a most comfortable house. But the marriage grew cold and while the last youngster was yet it school, it blew up and dissolved. Studies indicate that when a marriage dissolves after the kids have left home, it nonetheless affects their marriages for ill. Most likely it is because they say: "if my parents could not do it, what chance have we?"
Distressed that they cannot hold together a marriage to save their lives, 'science-rationalist' people take comfort in the cavemen of evolution and spin their minus into a plus: "Toward the end of the twentieth century, career types were disheartened to realize they couldn't hold a marriage together to save their lives. But they didn't want to be disheartened, they wanted to feel good about themselves. So it became essential to come up with a explanation and, above all things, that explanation had to totally absolve them from responsibly, blame or guilt....all antiquated notions unfit for modern humans. Again, the cavemen delivered!
"You see, those cavemen had to spread their seed if they wanted to win the survival game, so it was no good staying in one relationship. You had to move on! But you'd better not move on too quick. No, you have to hang around four years, to ensure that your toddlers don't get eaten by predators! After that, the woman can ensure it while you go in quest of the golden waist hip ratio. Again, the evolutionary psychologists, who are taken seriously and not laughed off the planet as they ought to be, assert that this behavior got locked into our genes, to be passed on to progeny.
"I don't much care for this notion, but recent discoveries seem to support it. Out in the wilds somewhere, anthropologists have recently unearthed fossils of Yabbadabba Man, a boring ancestor if ever there was one. Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble are thought to be members of this species. They had one or two kids apiece and just hung around afterwards plunked in front of the TV, until even their own wives got fed up with them and tossed them out on their ear, though alas, too late in life for them to start anew and spread their seed. As you might expect, that bunch died out.
"Then there was Slambang Man, another recent find. These Romeos were forever moving on in search of shapelier babes. They each had hundreds, maybe thousands of kids, but they left them all to predators so they could go out carousing, and every last one of them was eaten. This species, too, died out, though they are eternally reborn with each new generation."
It does nothing but get worse. The very nature of the sexes is being redefined today, as well as the interaction between them. California, I just read today, may soon include a X designation on forms that have, since the beginning of time, contented themselves with an M or and F when questioning sex. 
Today's young people, sold down the river by foolish thinking masquerading as wisdom, have virtually no chance of forming a lasting relationship. I am grateful to Jehovah's organization for not allowing this to happen within the Christian congregation.
 
 

I bought a car from a private person for a significant chunk of money. You always worry when you do this. How to you know that you are not simply buying someone else's headaches?
That concern was alleviated by examining the paperwork. The man had every maintenance receipt neatly and sequentially folded, all from the same dealership, and each spaced  5000 miles apart. Since he had scrupulously maintained the car, I bought it without blinking an eye.
It's amazing how many will maintain material things, even becoming obsessive over it, but will not maintain themselves. And when they do, they confine it to maintaining their physical selves and not their spiritual selves, which is more important. I usually duck out of those 'what is your favorite scripture' games because it changes depending on the context. But overall, Matthew 5:3 ranks right up there and I use it in service all the time:
"Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need, since the Kingdom of the heavens belongs to them."
All of us have a spiritual need. But we are not necessarily conscious of it. Failing to recognize and care for it, a person gets sicker and sicker, like one deprived of vitamins, without ever knowing why. This is the eighth reason I have remained with Jehovah's organization. It tirelessly provide maintenance for our being. It steers clear of the pitfalls that ensnare most churches - slobbering over the latest offerings of human wisdom, honing in on politics, preaching 'prosperity gospel' As I write, the televangelist Joel Olsteen is taking considerable heat for not opening his 16,000-seat mega-church - it once was a stadium - to persons displaced from the Houston flood. "Jesus promises us peace that passes understanding," he tweeted. "That's peace when it doesn't make sense."
Nothing makes sense during hard times for those who consume this world's rational or spiritual wisdom. I'm grateful to Jehovah's organization for ever keeping the focus on spiritual things that do make sense.
 

I'll stretch the following into a ninth reason, though it is arguably a subset of the post above. It's a reflection upon the August broadcast that focuses on Genesis 3:16
  “…your long will be your husband and he will dominate you.”  
From the broadcast: "When God said that Adam would dominate his wife, God was not indicating  his approval  of the subjugating of woman by man. He was simply foretelling the sad consequences  of sin on the first couple. So abuse of women is a direct outcome of the sinful nature of humans, not a part of God’s will . Right down to our day, rarely have women been afforded the dignity that God wants them to receive. However, Jehovah makes clear in his word the Bible that women and men have equal standing before him. In fact, he indicated that women would play a vital role in the outworking of his purpose." 
 
I am reminded of @SuziQ (or is it @SuziQ1513?) commenting with resignation and even some anger that this 'is a man's world.' It is - and men have historically been jerks. When women enter into positions of leadership and people ask the question: 'do they really think they can do as well as the men?' that is not the right question to ask. The right question is: "How can they do worse?"
Anger over mistreatment has caused women to cast aside traditional norms in search of new ones, and redefining roles has reached the point where a happy and lasting male-female relationship is all but impossible. The comment from the broadcast shows that Bethel is no part of the mistreatment of women.
However, it also shows that it is. One of the things I like very much about the Governing Body is that they do not package Bible lessons for the masses below. They package it for themselves first, and from there it cascades down to the masses. They are ever conscious that they can and do fall short and so they feed themselves a diet of spiritual food to remedy that as much as they feed others. They earnestly want to live up to Jehovah's high standards, the same as they want everyone else in the congregation to. Busy as they are, they read the Bible daily there, just like the Israelite kings were told to.
The leaders of most organizations start 'high.' They are long accustomed to privilege and money. In many cases, they have never known anything else. But the leaders of Jehovah's organization start "low," - lower than most of those they will later lead. They bring to the table a life of full-time service in the lowliest of venues, some having served in third world countries that few other leaders would deign to set foot in. They typify the 'through the dust' flavor that the word 'minister' is derived from. 
Their reliance on God's word set's them in very good position to lead the worldwide flock, though occasionally it blinds them. Or does it? For example, they routinely refer apostates as 'bitter.' They don't really know if they are or not by experience. They take their own counsel and don't hang out with them. Instead, they just read the Book of Jude's description and assume it must be so. And who's to say it's not so, at least in the main? The ones that you come across on the internet hardly seem baskets of joy.

Apologies if I cut off the sentence wrong.
The Bible uses the term. The organization simply picks up on it.
 
Oh give me a break. How meaningful can life be in a system where ISIS, dementia, cancer, or simple human greed can snuff it out in a second? "Sayanara!" your longtime employer sings out, as he packs up for overseas. "Dust off that resume, why don't you?  And that family and financial obligations you have? FUGEDABOUDIT!" It is as Solomon says: he's seen footmen on horses and kings slogging though the mud. Of course you can get some satisfaction out of life today. More power to you if you have. But many ultimately find it is like chomping down hard on cotton candy - though it looked substantial, there was nothing much there.
The thing you are orgasmic about is that you have chosen a place where no one can tell you what to do. Fine. I think it's a poor trade-off but there's nothing to stop anyone from choosing it. Yet by immersing oneself in 'the world' (I am not reformed from saying it) you are likely to find that manipulation from human scheming in the form of Big Government, Big Business or Big Independent Wisdom ultimately take such a toll that the Governing Body will look positively like doddering and kindly old grandparents in comparison.

Had they not been "shown the door," then you would have bitched about them living a life protected from the wild, where MEN have to struggle EVERY SINGLE DAY for existence, and one MISSTEP means INSTANT DEATH!!!
You're not the easiest guy to satisfy.
Did you also create the child baptism one with the misspelled word? Look, I have misspelled many a word here, as it is a here-today, gone-tomorrow thread. But if I were to design a graphic for posterity, I would get the spelling right.
I could design graphics, too. For example, I could picture the ten who jumped from the plane during a choppy flight. Eight are far below, with shoots open, and when the land they will resume their prior life. But two have grabbed hold of a wing, and, with tangled hair, sleet, fumes and dead birds slapping them in the face, they are desperately trying to unfurl a banner for the remaining passengers, who are barely noticing: "Jump off before it's too late! Join us!"
I could do that. But it is simply too juvenile. This from me, the guy who wears out his welcome clowning and who even kidnapped @The Librarianto make a point. (but handed her back - holy moly! that woman is obnoxious)

I think I'll add as the seventh one how the truth has preserved my marriage, and the older I get the more I treasure a solid family - with its ups and downs - rather than a string of failed relationships. Feeding on the wisdom of this system of things, you are almost guaranteed the latter. This is due to basic flawed assumptions on the nature of men, the nature of woman, and the nature of marriage.
For example, there is the 'soul mate' fallacy. I'll acknowledge a soul mate sounds good, but is there really such a thing? The notion leads to disillusionment when you invariably find that your wife/husband is less of a soul mate than you initially thought. What course remains but to search for your true soul mate? There is little encouragement to work through issues, and when there is, there is almost no encouragement to stick with it. However, working with the Bible's definition of love will make you a better person over time. It is like exercising a muscle. In contrast, too much focus on a 'soul mate' does nothing but make you a shallow person, whose preferences must be catered to.
Let no one read into these remarks that my wife and I fight like cats and dogs. We do not. But there have been times.... Is it not that way with any marriage? The truth has preserved my marriage and thereby made me a better person. Following contemporary wisdom would have destroyed it long ago, most likely. A certain relative belongs to 'the American Dream Church.' - a 'me and Jesus' church. They have put their three kids though college and all have fine jobs. They had fine careers themselves and lived in a most comfortable house. But the marriage grew cold and while the last youngster was yet it school, it blew up and dissolved. Studies indicate that when a marriage dissolves after the kids have left home, it nonetheless affects their marriages for ill. Most likely it is because they say: "if my parents could not do it, what chance have we?"
Distressed that they cannot hold together a marriage to save their lives, 'science-rationalist' people take comfort in the cavemen of evolution and spin their minus into a plus: "Toward the end of the twentieth century, career types were disheartened to realize they couldn't hold a marriage together to save their lives. But they didn't want to be disheartened, they wanted to feel good about themselves. So it became essential to come up with a explanation and, above all things, that explanation had to totally absolve them from responsibly, blame or guilt....all antiquated notions unfit for modern humans. Again, the cavemen delivered!
"You see, those cavemen had to spread their seed if they wanted to win the survival game, so it was no good staying in one relationship. You had to move on! But you'd better not move on too quick. No, you have to hang around four years, to ensure that your toddlers don't get eaten by predators! After that, the woman can ensure it while you go in quest of the golden waist hip ratio. Again, the evolutionary psychologists, who are taken seriously and not laughed off the planet as they ought to be, assert that this behavior got locked into our genes, to be passed on to progeny.
"I don't much care for this notion, but recent discoveries seem to support it. Out in the wilds somewhere, anthropologists have recently unearthed fossils of Yabbadabba Man, a boring ancestor if ever there was one. Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble are thought to be members of this species. They had one or two kids apiece and just hung around afterwards plunked in front of the TV, until even their own wives got fed up with them and tossed them out on their ear, though alas, too late in life for them to start anew and spread their seed. As you might expect, that bunch died out.
"Then there was Slambang Man, another recent find. These Romeos were forever moving on in search of shapelier babes. They each had hundreds, maybe thousands of kids, but they left them all to predators so they could go out carousing, and every last one of them was eaten. This species, too, died out, though they are eternally reborn with each new generation."
It does nothing but get worse. The very nature of the sexes is being redefined today, as well as the interaction between them. California, I just read today, may soon include a X designation on forms that have, since the beginning of time, contented themselves with an M or and F when questioning sex. 
Today's young people, sold down the river by foolish thinking masquerading as wisdom, have virtually no chance of forming a lasting relationship. I am grateful to Jehovah's organization for not allowing this to happen within the Christian congregation.
 
 

I bought a car from a private person for a significant chunk of money. You always worry when you do this. How to you know that you are not simply buying someone else's headaches?
That concern was alleviated by examining the paperwork. The man had every maintenance receipt neatly and sequentially folded, all from the same dealership, and each spaced  5000 miles apart. Since he had scrupulously maintained the car, I bought it without blinking an eye.
It's amazing how many will maintain material things, even becoming obsessive over it, but will not maintain themselves. And when they do, they confine it to maintaining their physical selves and not their spiritual selves, which is more important. I usually duck out of those 'what is your favorite scripture' games because it changes depending on the context. But overall, Matthew 5:3 ranks right up there and I use it in service all the time:
"Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need, since the Kingdom of the heavens belongs to them."
All of us have a spiritual need. But we are not necessarily conscious of it. Failing to recognize and care for it, a person gets sicker and sicker, like one deprived of vitamins, without ever knowing why. This is the eighth reason I have remained with Jehovah's organization. It tirelessly provide maintenance for our being. It steers clear of the pitfalls that ensnare most churches - slobbering over the latest offerings of human wisdom, honing in on politics, preaching 'prosperity gospel' As I write, the televangelist Joel Olsteen is taking considerable heat for not opening his 16,000-seat mega-church - it once was a stadium - to persons displaced from the Houston flood. "Jesus promises us peace that passes understanding," he tweeted. "That's peace when it doesn't make sense."
Nothing makes sense during hard times for those who consume this world's rational or spiritual wisdom. I'm grateful to Jehovah's organization for ever keeping the focus on spiritual things that do make sense.
 

@b4ucuhear: "Is that what I should have told my sister? My younger sister was sexually molested by an elder. She stayed despite that without making waves, until she started to see other things she found deeply disturbing and then she did "move on" as you say. Actually, she shouldn't have "moved on" because later on, most of the elders (the bad ones) were either removed or disfellowshipped - half of them were apostate (but that's not all they were up to).... Still, 1 Timothy 5:24 will prove to be true if you wait, in one way or another."
Though I didn't think of it at the time, the passage I quoted had to do with the "superfine apostles" Paul had to battle. Elsewhere I said he was like Diatrophes. These jerks existed in the first century. It shouldn't be unexpected that they may have cropped up from time to time in the present. 
I re-listened to An Important Reminder recently. I loved that talk. Why does God permit suffering? Easy to answer. Why does God permit MY suffering? Suddenly hard to answer. You might remember the speaker develops three scriptural scenarios. The third is Uriah in the new system reading of how the letter he carried was from David to Joab authorizing his (Uriah's) murder. Wouldn't THAT be a hard one to forgive? But it get's worse. He would learn how Jehovah exalted David in time, even the son born to him and drop dead gorgeous Bath-Sheba, Uriah's stolen wife. [the obvious lesson here is to marry an unattractive woman, such as @The Librarian] Who could blame him if he concluded that with Jehovah, a Jew could do anything, but a Hittite, a man of the nations, was but dirt in his eyes.
The 'important reminder' referred to time and again is that it's not about us. It never has been. It is about the vindication of Jehovah's purposes. Even Abraham and Jacob (the other two examples offered) were not exempt from the ordinary travails - up and downs and injustices and hardships of this system of things. In fact, their special assignment brought on some troubles in excess of the run-of-the-mill stuff their contemporaries faced.
It's actually from @The Librarian - fine woman - that I learned our personal salvation was recognized as the issue of secondary importance to the vindication of God's name from as far back as Brother Rutherford's time. This is a good point. MY personal salvation as the topic that is the buzz of the universe doesn't quite cut it. Sanctification of God's name does. Thus (and here is the 6th reason I remain with the truth, come what may) the Jehovah's Witness faith is not, at root, selfish. Other church branches are. 'Me and Jesus' is the focus of most of them.

Albert, you make altogether too many statements complaining of sinister intentions at Witness headquarters. It borders on paranoia. To me, it indicates you have spent too much time hanging out with the wrong type of people and drinking in their wisdom.
No. Please. Don't go there. We are, to a great degree, who we hang out with. It's intellectually flattering to think otherwise. But it's also nonsense. That is why some god-awful style will come along and within 5 years we're all wearing it, wondering how we ever thought those geeky styles of yesteryear did anything for us. We run with the herd not just on small things like styles, but on all things. It's well to give thought to who you hang out with.
 
It would be nice if you didn't go there, either. For the sake of the piddling little freedoms that you gain by leaving the Witness faith, none of which ultimately amounts to a hill of beans, you throw away freedoms which are truly significant.
I'll concede, though, that if you were baptized young and later left on bad terms and you find yourself shunned by family because of it, that is not a good place to be. I can empathize with that. Having said that, it is entirely possible for a person baptized young who later decides to leave to do so without triggering shunning. I know several who have done it. Fade. Drift away. Or just tell a few that you don't want to do it anymore. There are some anti-Witness factions who encourage such ones to go out with a splash - tell them all off at the Kingdom Hall! By following their advice, you virtually assure that you will be shunned. Few governments will smilingly see their citizens declare them illegitimate, and it is no different in Jehovah's organization, which is often called a 'nation,' and is more of a nation in many respects than political nations on the globe.
I don't want to get into here whether it should be that way. The point is, it is. Thus, shunning is easily avoidable. One wonders why any outfit - often atheists do this - would recommend such a confrontation, knowing the disruption it will bring on a family. Of course, the lack of 'shunning' doesn't mean palling around as usual, and one who leaves often finds they lose all their Witness friends anyway, and even family, though not in so formal away.
The Witness faith is like the man who found the pearl of high value, and sold everything he had to secure it. Most people today would consider this fellow a fanatic. Jesus indicated his was the example to follow. So if you leave the faith, you'll find most Witnessed lose interest in hanging out with you. Like in most things, people seek out common interests. Just look how many families have been divided over Trump and Hillary. Do you really think that when Kathy Griffin holds aloft the mock, bloodied head of the President, her Republican dad (if he is) says: "that's my lass! She speaks her mind! It won't affect Thanksgiving dinner, though."?
Is it a good idea to allow Witness kids to be baptized at 10? It's a good thing for those who will remain. It's a bad thing for those who will afterwards decide to leave (with a bang). If only you could tell who was who in advance. Contrary to your dark accusation that JWs rope them in as young as possible so as to hold them hostage (sheesh) my son wanted baptism at age 10 and the elders told him to wait. His feelings were hurt over it, but he was baptized the next year. If you find something good, it is never considered wrong to 'dedicate' yourself to it at a young age. Successful businesspeople and even entertainers do that, to say nothing of athletes. I've never heard one criticized for it.

Few things in this world are less tricky than one choosing to become a Witness. One cannot do so without a lengthy period of voluntary study, seldom lasting less than a year in these parts. It is not a religion where one can impulsively "come down and be saved." Almost always, the one who studies the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses is in familiar settings at congregation meetings and a picnic or two - perhaps 5% of one's time is in unfamiliar settings - probably less. One is always in control of one's destiny.
Though it is not my intent to denigrate college here, college is far more 'controlling' than anything JWs originate, in that it separates students almost 100% from what is familiar - a classic tool of 'brainwashing.' 24/7 campus life is a far cry from life back home. The new people of Jehovah's Witnesses trickle in only to the extent and at the rate you want them to. The new people of the college experience replace and overwhelm your former associates from Day 1 - no longer is there the stabilizing influence of family, community groups, or familiar friends.
You just don't like the conclusions JWs have come to, and you mask it with concern about their 'controlling methods.'  Those 'methods' are far less controlling than that of the greater world's system of education.