César Chávez

I suppose reasonableness and balance is the key 😀

I remember a while back, when I was "super holy" browsing a brother's library and noticing Bible literature that was not from our source. In my self righteous judgemental previous self I was shocked and almost stumbled. The said brother then proceeded to recommend some of those books saying how interesting they were especially if we are into deep research. I was beside myself with disgust and loathing, wondering how an elder could be saying this...and is he even an elder, probably more of a closet apostate.  Well that was then, and this is now. Looking back I see how immature I really was, thinking myself spiritually superior to someone else just because they read other things besides "our" things. It works the other way too, do we consider ourselves somehow more intelligent and superior to those who only read "our" literature? Everybody is at varying stages of spiritual maturity and it is ultimately between them and Jehovah what they chose to, or not to, research.
The brother by the way is still our brother. His daughter sings some of our songs.

Bingo.
It’s the pure nastiness of one, not to mention the pure dodo-headedness of another. These annoy far more than the posts themselves, though sometimes the two are hard to unravel.
After Paul makes his speech in the Areopagus, he says: “Okay. Been there/done that. If I don’t keep looking upon all these idols, maybe I won’t keep getting so irritated. Maybe I can get around to writing some of those epistles that have been kicking around in the back of my head.”
People have different interests. Most friends only have so much time for reading, and many have only so much interest. If they choose to read Watchtower-only material, why would I have a problem with that? They trust the source. If I recall correctly, @Thinkingmentioned a circuit overseer who acknowledged that spiritual food must be written for the masses, necessitating those with extra reading appetite to do extra study projects. I wrote about some of that here:
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/01/what-witnesses-are-allowed-to-read.html
If you go somewhere that ordinary theocratic reading does not take us—looking into the nitty-gritty of this or that complaint, for example, you have a responsibility to frame things in accord with the brotherhood, unless, like Rulf, you decide your complaints are so stellar and overriding that they justify your leaving the brotherhood, in which case you should do so. But where is he now? Doubtless the “scholars” he consoles himself that he will hang out with are few and far between—most “scholars” have concluded the further they get from God, the better—and his new best friends become some of the smarter adversaries here. Instead, I sort of like JWI, who comes up with some orthodox things, but still says “God’s people obviously need headship, as does everyone else, and the present arrangement is overall doing a good job.”
One long-ago article said, what if you come across some Bible account that seems hard to reconcile, even shocking? Do you do a 60-minutes blow-the-cover-off expose of God? Or do you reflect on how good he’s been to you, that you don’t have all the facts, and if you did, no doubt it would make a difference? Do you do a Jesus, who was overall quite merciful toward his disciples, even when they made blunders or veered into self-importance?

One wonders if the videos the WTBS published allowed for comments and ratings what this would do for the
I think Mr F is doing commercials for IKEA.
 

Speaking of retrospectives....I was reminiscing on a place I lived as a kid and found this
This is the sort of thing a lot of people don't get about Mexican culture. They look for and see magic everywhere. What's interesting to me is that you have JW's who aren't that different from these people. I'm not sure what's worse - seeing God acting everywhere or never seeing his hand in anything at all. (This is what I grew up around. My parents hired a sitter for me and my sister before we went to school and they later told me that she was a curandera)

I see a problem in isolating ones thoughts from those around us, however. On the one hand we could be exploring areas which are faith-building to us, but not touched on in any depth by the society and there are some who have controlling personalities who view with a jaundiced eye this sort of thing.
I remember years ago when I took the Bible tapes the society produced and with the aid of the Aid Book and the societies other materials, I spliced the recordings of all the synoptic gospels into one long, but completely chronological account. Then when I was running or driving about I'd listen to these.
The brother who was my book study conductor at the time submitted that this "de-canonized the scriptures". I ignored him of course.
But if no one knows what we're thinking and reading and we have no parity with others with whom we share common beliefs we could easily become lopsided. We are also engaging in a hierarchical judging of sorts w/regard to our brothers and sisters, rating some more highly than others because these share our viewpoints on these matters.
Quite frankly I'm not sure there's a perfect solution to any of this. I know from experience that there are things I think about that others would  consider off, and even wrong, but I can't help thinking what I think when I think what I thing to be true. I can't "un-believe" or "un-think" or "un-see" things I've come to see. But because I don't feel comfortable in sharing does that say more about me or about them, or is this just the human condition that we'll always have to contend with on this side of armageddon? I don't know.
It does feel a bit like sneaking around though. I've found myself even annoyed at times when listening to some brothers insert their own opinions which are simply one of many ways of applying a given scripture as if there was only one right way during meetings and madly scribbling my annoyances in detail in my personal notes (good thing no one has found them - instead it may simply be that others would see Bro X furiously taking notes and imagining these were notes of approval, when at times it's just the opposite, especially if it's when there's some idolatrous worship being given of organizations or men in certain positions as I've never held anyone in high regard as I know Jehovah could "raise up children to Abraham" from the dust of the ground and as Jesus said "no one is good, but God" so any hint of creature worship gets me pissed off. )

Well I didn't say you should block him, just not respond. But I guess you have no self control Tom, so if blocking is what it takes then that's the way to go 👍😀

Yes. I think this is pretty much the reason some of us like to come here (and even more so the closed club where we can discuss deeper things without the distraction of opposers). If one has been in the truth for a long time, and has had much experience in the truth, then the basics just repeated over and over are not enough for some. There are always new things to learn! And sometimes these things can be a bit controversial and frowned upon by others, but I don't feel bad, in fact I feel positively enlightened 😀

I'd like to know more about him and his background (or have a zoom chat). One thing I've had to navigate, as have many others is that there's often this misunderstanding that being interested in exploring subjects such as the ones that we as JW's profess to be interested in (like Jehovah and the Bible) is somehow disloyal if we decide that we on our own wish to explore further.
A person can be faithful and quite frankly bored by material which is repetitive and containing nothing novel. It's not surprising that when you are truly interested in the material, that you eventually "make the truth your own" and strike off in some ways exploring areas not of interest to the average.
This doesn't mean you're a "bad person" or "unfaithful" or even "unappreciative". It just means that you're not learning disabled or perpetually fascinated by spiritual milk ("Yes, I know. God's name is Jehovah. Fascinating").
Of course this is where the novelty in exploration can cause people who don't appreciate things this way to assume that one finds something deficient in the relationship or that it is failing them in some way or that these have failed the other.
It can also (and understandably can) create conflict in the congregation. "Why is that brother reading that? Doesn't he appreciate the organization?". So if a brother or sister does have interests which aren't currently satisfied in this area it would be nice to know how these have managed to balance it out.
Are these living a double-life? They realize that many people simply don't have the capacity to be AS interested in these things and they keep it to themselves?
How do they do it? Should they have to do it?
My sister (a non-JW) once asked me (she's high functioning autistic w/160 IQ) "What do you DO at those meetings? Just believe the same things together?" and I laughed and said this is how it goes Mary "Bro X to Bro Y. I believe Z. and "Bro Y says so do I whereupon Bro X responds, his eyes slightly squinting "Mighty fine! Mighty fine!""
She laughed (apparently I'm one of the few family members who can make her laugh).
This reminds me of people who don't understand why when they value the same things, they still have problems in their relationships. The answer, I've read somewhere is that when there's a conflict of valued things, the relative importance of each to the other values isn't the same - hence the friction.
So you may have some who say they value learning about Jehovah and the world he created and they value the Bible, but they may value the relationships between people and stability and continuity more than the novelty which might come from a new idea or a new discovery or even the prospect of further exploration.
Take the great commission. I thought it was THE most important thing, but not everyone looked at it the same way.
When I was first appointed as an MS I remember how happy I was we had a project to remake the maps for our territory. Well I knew that we weren't really working the apartment complexes properly because no one liked getting kicked out or having the police called on them, so I knew they really weren't getting worked at all and to me it was a lie when people checked these back in.
So I decided to break every apartment complex into a separate territory so that people who really wanted to work these would work them. I redid all the territories in this way.
Then after six months the CO came by and did his inspection and asked me about the territories and I explained what I did and why and he seemed satisfied. ("Where is the history of workage for these territories?") Of course no one really wanted to work these and so because I was a pioneer I decided to do them and I'd make raids on the apartments by working a few buildings and then running out before security got me. But truth was that no one wanted them at all.
BUT we actually we finally telling the truth about our territory coverage. YAY!
Then Bro Brandt (I remember him now) came back and checked the territories the next time, and complained about me to the elders and I remember being behind the counter when he came up to me and asked me the same question he asked me before, and I said "For the same reason I told you the last time you asked." (I was a little sharp, but I didn't like the tone of his voice). Then he said "What am I going to tell the society?" and I said "Why don't you tell them what you told them last time." (pretty much knowing I'm not going to be an elder ANY time soon. But quite frankly he pissed me off. The black brothers w/me behind the counter were a bit surprised by me. One (who'd been a gang member) later asked me if I'd grown up in the hood, because I didn't show any fear. I said, no, but I did grow up in Laredo where you'd get picked on all the time for being a gringo.
The elders decided maybe someone else should be territory servant, but nobody wanted the job.
Next time around, though, I did have a private talk w/Bro Brandt and he apologized. He said "Bro X, what did the elders tell you to do w/the territories?" and I said "Nothing." and he said "They didn't tell you to try to estimate workage?" and I said "No. I haven't heard a thing. Which elders did you tell? Let's go get them, get a room and straighten this thing out." We did and these elders had some really shameful looks on their faces.
Thing is, now our congregation was finally having to take their commission more seriously because my remapping the territories made us look bad.
I remember thinking how maybe getting the phone numbers of a number of these which we were totally locked out of might help. This was before telephone witnessing became a thing.
So I looked around for telephone directories on disk and I found a few, but they weren't up to date. Then I did more research and realized that I could get a reel-to-reel tape from the utility department with names, addresses AND phone numbers! Everyone had to pay their utilities and their phone number would be up to date.
Yay! But before I could get the brothers to approve of the $800 for the adventure ( I would have paid for it myself, but I had to also pay this third party to perform some extractions of the data to csv so we could put these  in spreadsheets.
So for the lockouts we tried calling the numbers I could get even if these were old off the disks I bought at work for other telemarketing efforts and coupled this with direct mail to get the rest.
We did have one brother from Guyana who was up for innovation so we got all the difficult apartments and he acted as a general, we would get assigned maybe two doors and the congregation carpooled and parked outside and at 10 AM sharp, we'd all knock at the same time on our prescribed doors. BOOM! And we were gone before security could zip up their fly!
 
 

I also subscribe to academia.edu. Yes, I think you are talking about Gerard Gertoux. (Although the link you provide somehow doesn't go to that article)  I believe JWInsider has been in correspondence with him quite a few times..
 

Technically, I cannot vouch for this, since I took Anna’s counsel (Do not feed the troll) to heart and blocked him. One can do this in settings—I had no idea.  But extrapolating from my previous interaction with him, the comment is worth an upvote, no doubt.
And how is this working out for me, blocking a few whose comments are utterly predicable, incessantly argumentative, with no capacity of mercy toward human foible, frequently bereft of reason, and have not budged one iota in years, so that all you do is engage in verbal fisticuffs, prompting the occasional rare first time visitor to say: “Wow—he’s not exactly letting God be the judge, is he?”
Quote the final words of Jack London for an answer, from his hilarious short story Moonface: “My days are peaceful now, and my night's sleep deep.” 
Admittedly, Jack’s protagonist offed his foe with dynamite, didn’t just block him, but since I am a servant of the Lord I have repudiated such unkind tactics.
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2020/09/a-review-of-the-jack-london-short-story-moon-facetheyre-always-throwing-goodness-at-you-but-with-a-l.html
(Plus, the ‘ignore’ option permits one to peak if desired.’ I did so once, and said, “Yep—same old boy.”)
 

I did exactly the same thing. Working a unit at a time. On my final run, with no bad experiences, I called on the manager. “There! See? Nobody cares if we call or not.”
Are you kidding me, she said. ‘The phone’s been ringing off the hook. It’s just that nobody found you in time.”
Apartments were a pain, heightened because some of the friends were LOUD. You’d want to be discreet and there they were as though using a megaphone behind you. I had some good experiences working my apartment territory, though. One fellow said repeatedly (like 4Jah might) that he and Jesus were tight. There was no need for me to come calling because he loved Jesus. He Jesused this and Jesused that. All the while, his wife was in the background urging him to not talk to me. Suddenly he whirled about: “WILL YOU SHUT UP!!” he screamed. And without missing a beat, he resumed for my benefit his lovefest with Jesus.
Exiting the building, a door opened. I had spoken to the man before who had blown me off. Now he was interested. “That’s guys a real yo-yo,” he said, and then invited me in for the nicest conversation.

Then there was crusty, cranky old Bro Manera. I remember being at an elders meeting w/him and floated the idea of turning unassigned territory into telephone territory that congregations could GET assigned and these could then work them any way they'd like - phone, physical, letters - the closest to in person was best, but the point would be to get to these people more frequently.
He didn't get it. He said "I think it would be confusing to the ones who were working it.". I blurted out "I don't think you get it. No one's working the territory because it's not assigned. Why not just assign it and get the job done w/whatever means can be made?" As all the other elders (except one) looked at me like I'd lost my mind.
 

Correctly handling the "Word of Truth", is the same as correctly handling a saw, a hammer, a level, or any other tool. 
WORDS are the tools with which we think.
If we use tools in a wrong way, what we build will be crap.
If we use words in a wrong way, what we think will be crap.
My considered dogged opinion is that Sen-yor Chavez is on the verge of hysterical panic.

FINLAND - Jehovah's Witness Leaders Suspected of Fundraising Crime
News If you have a religion in Finland and want to raise money for a religion, you need a permission to do so. Permission must be applied for from the state. Jehovah's Witnesses have raised money in the Watchtower without permission, which is against the fundraising law. Religions in Finland are allowed to raise money without permission with collection (in practice this means passing of a collection plate at the religious event). Because Jehovah's Witnesses do not practice that kind of collection, they should have applied permission to raise money. Collecting money with a bank account number is prohibited without permission.
The case is all over the newspapers in Finland.
Google translator:
The whole article: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fi&tl=en&u=https://www.is.fi/kotimaa/art-2000007917890.html
And the question of "why Jehovah's Witnesses have not applied for permission to raise money?": in order to obtain permission, a statement of religion financial policies is required. Possibly they didn't want open their financial policies.

I keep reading this competitive dribble from this ex Elder. She seems to like pitching people one against the other. All this rubbish about freedom and free will. All adults should have free will. And she seems to go on about food and a person's weight. I do wonder (that is thinking out loud ) if she has a weight problem herself.  Oh well, maybe she gets bored in her mum's cellar and just needs to type something, anything, just to show the world she is alive.  
 

Oh this is lovely  .  Basically saying "We have to continue to tell lies otherwise we loose the congregation". 
A core doctrine that is a deliberate lie.  Oh they of little faith. 
Didn't it ever come to mind about Jesus saying "Unless you drink my blood and eat my flesh ...... "  Shock happens, but when faith is strong then the faithful remain. 
Worried about being d/fed. Worrying about the 'flock' not having enough to 'fall back on'.  Absolutely no faith what so ever. 

I would imagine someone could create a universal JW - chatbot parsing internet posts and regurgitating responses from the respective JW phrase-bank.
I think some JWs are actually chatbots.
It makes sense that JWs never generate novelty since their existence is defined by the existence of those they oppose. And we know JWs oppose truth. 
JWs as such will cease to exist when the True Anointed remnant 'stand up' for God and Christ before Armageddon. 

Just another thought.  Did the Wt. retract their "news" (hogwash) about God sending a typhoon to Micronesia?  I haven't seen a retraction as of yet. 

@TrueTomHarley, If you'll remember at the outset, I said:
If I was weaselly, I would not have brought the correction to this forum that the Australian made, as soon as I saw it.
These words, I will always stand by:
And:
Mark 4:14 - "For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open."
For you, is it more important that article turned out to be wrong than the whole reason that the Wt dragged its feet before joining the redress scheme?  Were you quiet when you learned that the WT caved at the last minute simply because they would lose money otherwise? Did you write about it?  Did you make excuses for them?  The victims do not matter.  
News, truly it is not always trustworthy.  Much like the news from Micronesia a while back, in need of sand to build a kingdom hall.  Next thing you know, God sends a typhoon and lo and behold...sand in abundance!   But, your god must be fickle, since another typhoon took the lives of JWs who took refuge in a kingdom hall in the Philippines.  
Perhaps if you write about it, you can make sense of the contradiction.  Just maybe, you will spot the false news, now that more news about typhoons and kingdom halls, has emerged.  

Idiot opposers are like people standing outside a gym trying to convince people that they don't need to go to the gym or that they're in the wrong gym and ought to go to their gym. At some point, your message is received and accepted or rejected. Failure to get the point when it's been rejected is just idiocy.  It also undermines your own argument. It also suggests that these people want or need your help. Look up the word "officious" in the dictionary and you will find a really good definition of the persistent and pestilent sorts of opposers.

Cartoon Ducks can pronounce the word despicable, but they cannot pronounce the letter T.

We do give aid to others. And in this time of lockdown,  it has become crucial - so they need money to do this.... It does not fall like manna from heaven......

that is an opinion - your opinion... don't bother to reply in a barrage.

Jehovah’s Witnesses facing tax turmoil
The secretive Christian group has begun legal action against the charity watchdog after it quietly revoked the organisation’s tax-exempt status over concerns with its opaque global structure.   https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?offerset=ta_4for4_premium&sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fnation%2Fjehovahs-witnesses-facing-tax-turmoil%2Fnews-story%2F64acd93d531eb6b7301dda758e7ee2ff&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&adobe_mc_sdid=SDID%3D7EC7ED7628D12DA5-58A80C25FED2095D|MCORGID%3D5FE61C8B533204850A490D4D%40AdobeOrg|TS%3D1618785359&adobe_mc_ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
I received this alert in my Google feed as well as the exjw who posted it.  I am not getting a subscription to the Australian newspaper to verify the article.  I'll leave that up to the readers here. I am sure it will come out in other news sites soon.  As usual, the organization puts money ahead of the lives of individuals.
This is the copied article supplied by the exjw:
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have taken legal action against Australia’s charity watchdog after it ­revoked the organisation’s tax-­exempt status over concerns with the religion’s opaque global donations structure and alleged failure to protect vulnerable people.
The organisation’s charitable arm, the Watchtower Bible and Tract ­Society of Australia, which posted an income of $32m in the year to August 31, has been ­accused of pushing cash offshore after directors splashed $16m of its total expenses on undisclosed­ ­donations and “overseas aid”.
The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission informed Watchtower in November of its intention to revoke the ­organisation’s charity status, citing a litany of concerns about alleged contraventions of the Corporations Act and a failure to comply with a host of governance and conduct standards.
Lawyer and abuse survivor Alec Spencer, a PhD candidate at James Cook University, said the ACNC’s decision was comparable to the abolition of the so-called “Ellis defence” in NSW in 2018, which ended the Catholic Church’s long-standing immunity to lawsuits.
“If registration were to be removed, it would serve as a wake-up call for many other religious charities who have systemically failed to protect sexually abused children,” he said.
“The removal of charitable registration would be an extraordinary outcome, both for the commission and the religious charity sector in particular.”
The charity, which is seeking judicial review of the ACNC’s ­decision in the Federal Court, has been accused of “operating outside of Australia” and breaching its requirement to protect vulnerable people, including children, when conducting operations overseas.
In a statement, Watchtower ­director Terry O’Brien denied the ACNC had moved to strip the ­organisation of its charity registration. “The ACNC has assured the ­directors that they do not intend to revoke Watchtower Australia’s charity status,” Mr O’Brien said.
However, court documents filed last week reveal the ACNC sent a notice to revoke Watchtower’s charity registration to the group’s directors in November.
The ACNC has accused Watchtower’s directors of failing to comply with key conduct standards, including a requirement to disclose conflicts of interest and a requirement to protect children who are accessing benefits under the charity’s programs.
If the court upholds the ACNC’s decision, Watchtower will lose its status as a registered charity and will not be entitled to receive tax concessions, including lucrative tax breaks.
According to an application for judicial review filed by Watch­tower, the ACNC’s decision is ­“unlawful” and an “unreasonable and inappropriate exercise” of its discretion.
The organisation, which has nearly 70,000 members in Australia, has allocated almost $120m from 2014-20 to “donations and overseas aid”.
“As a donor, I would be very troubled by this,” Mr Spencer said. “And as a regulator, their hands are tied due to the differential treatment bestowed on basic ­religious charities.
“The ACNC could deregister a charity but the decision and why that occurs is not disclosed,” he said. “It allows them to operate in a cloud of secrecy.”
Watchtower argues that the decision contains multiple errors of law, including that the legislation confers “no function with respect to child protection” on the ACNC.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse warned that there were systemic problems within the ­Jehovah’s Witness religion in dealing with abuse, including a failure to report credible alle­gations to the police.
The commission heard Jehovah’s Witnesses had documen­tation of abuse allegations by 1800 children involving more than 1000 perpetrators since 1950.
Former church member and child abuse survivor Lara Kaput said revocation of Watchtower’s charity status would be a “watershed moment” if it were upheld by the Federal Court.
“They were reticent to revoke their charity status because the charity commission knew it would set a precedent, and they don’t want that to happen,” Ms Kaput said.
An ACNC spokeswoman said it was unable to comment on the “particular circumstances of a charity” and whether or not a charity was being investigated.