JW Insider

Thanks Melinda. ? I left out a fairly important three-letter word: NOT. Edited it above to correct it.

I attempted above to only address the actual point of difference, as I see it, between your view and my view of the GB. To be fair, I should probably acknowledge that you appear to be trying to make some additional specific points in your post, but there was nothing there that seemed very appropriate to comment on, because most of what you said just simply doesn't apply or I have always been in full agreement with it. The intent of some of your post wasn't clear to me. So perhaps if I try to respond to what I think you meant, you will be able to clarify further if you can see I'm not understanding you correctly. From what I can tell, your instant reaction to call me and my views heretical and your other attempts at defamation have become a kind of reflex for you. You apparently don't read what I am saying before quickly misunderstanding words that you don't like. In this case, I think the primary word you didn't like was "influence." You didn't like that I had said used the term "influence . . . emanated from the Governing Body" in the following question that I had asked: You might not have understood that I meant this in a very positive way. I mean that the Governing Body has positively influenced Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide with proper guidance and teachings. Yes, I know I have not held back from discussing non-Biblical influences in the past, too, but the question above focused only on the positive influences. It could be restated as follows: Is it possible that (through all the various publications, practices, encouragement of good habits, assigned Bible reading/discussion, reviewing of important Bible topics, etc.) that the Governing Body has already produced enough good influence on congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses so that they are readily capable of standing on their own in the event of severe persecution that would cut us off from communication with the Governing Body? I hoped the question was rhetorical, because it seems obvious that congregational elders and servants should already be trusted to help guide and teach a congregation in such circumstances. We already know there have been exceptional cases and extreme circumstances in the recent modern history of Jehovah's Witnesses where communication has been cut off and the Witness work and congregational matters went on without any major problems. And as I already stated in the post, we are reminded that we should be ready for such extreme circumstances. I also note that you might have misunderstood my use of the word "past." It didn't refer to Russell, Rutherford, and past GB "influences." It refers to the pattern of instruction already received, with good habits learned over the years. Many elders and servants had no ability to manage even a small project, yet past assignments over the years have taught many brothers and sisters to rise to the occasion to manage complex tasks. (Assembly organization, budgets, donations, paperwork, building halls, scheduling assignments.) I think you took some offense to the fact that I mentioned influence of the GB as if it superseded the influence of Jehovah, Jesus, the Bible, and the holy spirit. That wasn't the intent. For some individuals, unfortunately, I think it does supersede all these entities. But that wasn't the topic here. I meant it only as a guide for understanding proper spiritual influence. This is where I figured you must have misunderstood GB influence. I meant it, just as you said: "a GUIDE to the teachings of Christ" not a replacement for Scripture. I know where you are coming from, so I don't blame you for thinking I was here referring to areas where I believe the Bible gives us a clear reason to disagree. But in this context I was referring to the many areas where we can positively agree.

I Corinthians 12:27 is a perfect example of what I believe. It says: 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. (NIV) Anyone who believes that says there is currently another body to look to, such as a Governing Body, should be the ones defending against a potentially heretical view. I believe that there is a way to view the Governing Body concept in a way that is is not heretical, and not at odds with the Bible, and I have explained it before. Holding a specific, proper view about a group of 8 specific men in New York who make up this "Governing Body" is NOT, in my view heretical. For the sake of efficiency, an organization will find it useful, helpful, and proper to look to groups of older men for guidance. We have the example of Moses taking the advice of Jethro. We have the Sanhedrin. Jesus, in fact, wanted the combined experience and advice of the apostles to help guide the first-century congregations as they emanated forth from Jerusalem in the days following his death, ascension, and the pouring out of the holy spirit at Pentecost. So there is nothing necessarily wrong or heretical about a group of men selected for the purpose of efficiently running an organization. 1 Corinthians 12:28 mentions teaching and helping and guiding as proper ministries for some of the body of Christ to be involved in. It would therefore be proper for the body of Christ to select specific persons or even committees of persons to serve in various capacities as that body of Christ might choose using Scriptural guidance and advice. The potentially heretical view is the claim that these men and only these men currently make up the fulfillment of the parable Jesus gave about the unfaithful slave. (Yes, it is also a parable about a faithful slave, but the primary focus and majority of content in the parable is about the unfaithful slave.) Because then we would have a body of men who are not the apostles, wishing to be thought of as if they were apostles. It would require us to view a specific body of specific men as a Body within the Body of Christ. Looking to a body of men as a committee who are our specific leaders to follow is precisely what Paul spoke against when he spoke of those who would look to various "superfine" apostles. It is precisely what Jesus was referring to when when he said that we should [NOT]** look to specific persons as our leaders or teachers. The Bible often mentions the dangers of such arrangements. It even mentions the potential danger of looking to the body of apostles themselves as our leaders. This is what Paul emphasizes when he tells the Galatians that he did not look to the body of elders in Jerusalem for leadership, not even the apostles, those who "seemed to be" pillars in the Jerusalem congregation. [Edited to add the "NOT" in the above paragraph where Melinda pointed out the error.]

NOTE: This is not a religious section of the forum, but I will respond based on the link between JW beliefs and certain expectations concerning the UN that are fairly unique to JW teachings.] The protection of the civil rights of various religious groups for some will look exactly like the suppression of religion to others. If someone has a religious investment in defaming other religions, then telling them that they can no longer defame others is considered to be an encroachment on their own religious rights. There is no perfect solution to this problem. We know that Jesus and the apostles, too, set an example of pointing out the hypocrisy and wickedness found in the leaders of other religions. The attitude of the world itself and its non-religious philosophies are also defamed in the Bible. So there is nothing unchristian about defaming religion and empty worldly philosophy. So what happens if there is a demand supported by international law to protect the civil rights of individuals by outlawing the defamation of their religion by another religion? This supposedly makes it impossible for religions which require the conversion of persons of other religions and ideologies. It is a necessary tenet of our religion that we promote it publicly just as 'Acts of Apostles' shows the earliest Christians spreading religion through conversion of others. There have been several interesting tests of how Jehovah's Witnesses have reacted to political or legal pressure by the rules and laws of various nations. When I first visited Jehovah's Witnesses in Mexico, Mexico had rules that supported the Witnesses. We could preach and convert people exactly as we do in the United States and elsewhere. But due to past problems with the political power of the Catholic Church, they also had rules that restricted religious organizations from owning property. The Watchtower Society didn't like this restriction even though other religions had no problem with it. So it was decided that it would be OK for Witnesses in Mexico to act like a non-religious, civic organization that basically taught people how to read (using WT publications), but without prayer and singing and use of the Bible in door-to-door work. The talks at the Hall were considered to be "educational" and the TMS was about speech training. There could be no purely religious talk, especially of the kind that spoke out against other religions. Of course, as soon as the rule changed so that the Watchtower would now be allowed to own property, then the Watchtower allowed singing of kingdom songs, prayer and use of the Bible in service. The Watchtower had suppressed these proper forms of worship among Witnesses for decades, until the property rule changed. In other places, most recently in Russia, Jehovah's Witnesses are being suppressed from Russia's own legal system, their national courts. (The undue influence from the Russian Orthodox Church also seems obvious.) In Mexico the suppression came from the rules of the Watchtower Society, but now the rules (in Russia) are part of the law of the land. Apparently, the initial design of the rules was not to stop Jehovah's Witnesses from worshiping, praying, using the Bible or singing kingdom songs. Any religion, including JWs, could still exist and Witnesses could do what they wanted, as long they wouldn't denigrate other religions through their publications and preaching activity. In Russia, we would have to become a religion that could not convert others using the current version of our message. But, in Russia, we would not have to act like a civic organization. The goal was to "blunt" the sharper edges of the religion in terms of its control over membership through its own sets of laws and punishments. Russia would allow the religion to go on, but to be independent of literature produced or translated from the United States (that demeaned other religions) and independent of the control from the United States. Of course, this is not how the hierarchy of Jehovah's Witnesses works. The new interpretation of the "faithful and discreet slave" requires a close observation of the latest changes made by a specific group of 8 men in the United States. The brothers tried to convince the Russian court that they were not directly dependent on rules emanating from the United States, but this was actually seen to be a false claim and the court didn't accept it. But this makes me think of a few questions. Is it possibly true already that enough influence has already emanated from the Governing Body so that Jehovah's Witnesses can now continue to follow the practices and doctrines already defined from prior publications and educational direction given in the past? This could be an important question because our publications have already promoted a view that, at any time, nations of the world could turn on Jehovah's Witnesses, and individuals might be "on their own" and will need to follow the direction of their local congregation elders. In some countries, the suppression could be so harsh that it may be difficult to find fellow members of a dissolved congregation. And this is also considered to be an indication that it may no longer be time for continued preaching work for the purpose of converting others, but time to remain faithful even if we seem to be on our own. Another question is a more basic one. Could our preaching work go on if we were not able to demean and diminish other religious choices publicly? Is this really the primary goal of the public preaching? What would happen if, in such countries, under such legal restrictions, our ministry transformed to one of good works for others of all religions, but especially toward those related to us in the faith. In the earliest public ministry mentioned in Acts, it is the sharing of food and possessions with those related in this faith in Jesus. That appears to be the big attraction of "the Way" -- those who would be Witnesses of Jesus to the most distant part of the earth. With a reputation of showing love and caring for their own, people were interested in what motivated them to such acts of goodwill and kindness toward each other. It was likely that the majority of those who were converted learned more about Christians from this reputation. Would such a new style of ministry work with JWs in Russia? What if JWs were the most well-known for how they took care of each other? What if they had the best practices for taking care of orphans and widows and honoring their elderly parents and other elderly members? If people came to them over their loving reputation and only THEN did the JWs happily explain why they do such things, might this actually result in an increase in those who want to follow them? There would be less need for JWs to formally go out to others. (There is some evidence that the actual growth of JWs in most places has been primarily through informal contacts, not formal door-to-door contacts.) I wonder if it's possible to transform a ministry to work just as well by having people come to us. Wouldn't Jehovah bless the work that is motivated correctly? Wouldn't Jehovah make sure that media was attentive to such stories of charity and goodwill?

Trump reflects a view of the world that US leaders have promoted for about two centuries. Internal documentation for U.S. political decisions are never released until many years later for "national security" reasons. But after they are released, it's easy to see that, to some extent, at least after learning what is really going on in the world, all US leaders themselves have obviously "known better." It is clear that they had to use various propaganda tactics to foist a specific world view on US citizens that aligned with prejudices about "US/American interests." Facts they learned as leaders had to be suppressed, spun or re-packaged for the public in order to promote the necessary fears and prejudices that allowed the USA to position itself as those leaders deemed necessary. The US public, as with most other "Western" nations by now (UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Israel) is so well influenced by propaganda that the people in their blindness will only choose leadership who are already fooled and ready to fool them some more. Citizens generally don't want people who can see a need for justice in the world, because most voting citizens only watch corporate-sponsored news (including so called "public" radio/television) and already believe that if it's good for the USA, it's good for the world, no matter how unjust to the rest of the world, in actuality. Saudi Arabia is the U.S.A.'s gas station. They buy US weapons for billions and the USA then helps them to abuse the rights of nations around them, creating as much chaos in that part of the world as the US believes it can possibly get away with. But I don't mean chaos through mistakes and blunders, which is how US history explains these messes after the fact. It is not by accident, but on purpose, that the USA has for example, supported terrorists around the world and even Al-Qaeda and Isis in Syria to keep the nation as divided as possible. Israeli news has not been as careful about hiding the same reasons their leaders have also pushed for support of Isis and Al-Qaeda. By about this time in history, the current civil rights record in China is much better than the current civil rights record of the United States. It's true that China filters out porn and Western "news" propaganda from the Internet, for example, but it's the USA that leads in incarcerations, capital punishment, and even methods of suppressing political dissidents. As far as Middle Eastern countries go, Iran has been a civil rights paradise, just as was Syria before the outside attempts to create a long-term civil war succeeded. Israel has a civil rights record that is one of the worst in the world. This doesn't mean that other governments are somehow "good" when compared to the US and its allies, but it means that there are complexities and prejudices that make a mess of the claim of hypocrisy. Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama all ignored the abuses of Saudi Arabia and even encouraged many of them. The same people who call Trump hypocritical may be just as hypocritical in the type of government they would promote in his place.

¡Perro no!

Whack-a-mole was probably named by someone who had seen the word "guacamole" and didn't know how to pronounce it. It's like the old song . . . Guacamole my shoes! Guacamole my shoes! Before you abuse, criticize and accuse - Guacamole my shoes!

As Janice Joplin once said, "My friends all drive [self-driving vehicles]; I Musk make amends." Or words to that effect.

Maybe. But if there are 250,000,000 registered cars and light trucks in the USA and 40,000 deadly accidents. (37,000-ish) per year, that's terrible. But this also involves 3.2 trillion miles put on those vehicles per year. But for now, there have already been several injuries and one death (Tempe, AZ) attributed to self-driving vehicles possibly before there were even 100,000 official street miles logged on these types of vehicles. Extrapolating, if we were to use one death for every 100,000 miles. That would be the same as comparing 32,000,000 deaths per year (cf. 40,000) after self-driving vehicles also reach the 3.2 trillion miles per year that standard vehicles have reached. I don't know how many miles have been logged by self-driving vehicles yet, but if 100,000 is right, and we were somehow to switch over completely right now, we could expect the entire population of the US (320 million people) to be run over and killed in exactly 10 years.

A gun should require more ongoing training than the average person will normally get. I see no reason why "Caesar" should not bear the sword and just hope and pray that "Caesar" will wield their weapons in a legal and responsible manner. Sometimes these videos are used as an incentive to push the wider, more general carrying of firearms by rank-and-file Joe Q Public, and even schoolteachers. But notice the importance of training and accuracy. Assuming this is not a fake or set-up video (for the purpose just noted), evidently the off-duty policeman fired three shots at fairly close range. But in the above snipped clipping I made from the original video, notice what would have happened if one of those shots went through the original assailant's underarm, or he spun around or fell to the ground more rapidly than expected. The bit of magenta clothing in the picture is a young girl being pulled by her mother. Every one of those shots was therefore not just aimed at the assailant, but also at the mother and child behind him. Many trained policemen have been in situations like this and accidentally shot or even killed innocent by-standers. Let's be careful out there!

Someone was just talking about how, in the new system, no one would be able to choose the color of a carpet in a Kingdom Hall. If, for example, one liked blue and one liked beige both of them would want to given in to the choice of the other person out of love and humility, since love does not try to get its own way. This would then be the same for every aspect of design, material, and coloring, not just the color of the carpet. Of course the argument is usually presented by atheists who would dismiss eternal life and ridicule the idea of perfection, not realizing that no two people would ever choose to excel at all the exact same things in the same way.

If I wore it, no one would believe that I had "NO BLOOD." On the other hand . . .

Thanks. Of course, you should be careful to follow such a statement with "But . . . " at least for the sake of certain opposers. Anyway, agree completely with everything you said above. I don't believe that, in the United States, most college degrees are worth the outrageous expense. They definitely were worth it through most of the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's if you were also an "educated consumer." There was a turning point in the 90's for some and in the 00's for most others, even before the financial crash became visible in '08. Starting in '08 it would be much easier to make a Peter Schiff style video. (That style of video can be made any time, of course, even when you want to fake a point, but you'd have to do a lot more editing to make it look like there was a consensus. Jay Leno could have proven that no college student knew that 2+2=4 merely by only including those who answered incorrectly, or with too long a pause, or were drunk, acting silly, nervous, etc.) Now there are still more jobs available to college graduates than non-graduates of course, and this is even more critical in an economic downturn. But that doesn't mean the degree was worth the expense. And it's stupid that you would need a degree to make coffee at Starbucks. The need to pay down a student loan does indeed make workers more controllable. That's a critical requirement of capitalists who wish to maximize profit even squeezing from those who believe they are well on the way to joining the "American Dream" someday. Student loans and car loans have been a big part of an abusive process to those who need them, but these problems are nowhere as big as the factors that fed 2008. Combined with the fact that the [banking&finance] criminals who abused taxpayers in 2008 are still fighting [bribing politicians] to be able to abuse with even less regulation now might though combine with student loans as a catalyst with these other problems to see a second wave [plunge] of recession/depression.

How about charging $100 to $175 or more for the majority of the seats? That accommodates the insane pretty well. That said, you made the jump to associate a kind of parity between the deaf and the insane. That was stupid. Would you like to buy an orchestra seat for "Phantom" this Saturday?

Yikes. Good catch, Jack. The persons who wrote and checked the Awake! article in 1988 were probably not dishonest, but they more likely just had no understanding about statistics and how this type of question is used in social surveys. The question has very little to do with the actual percent of students who hope that college gives them an opportunity for making more money -- which is probably always closer to 100%. Most pre-college students are making from $0 a year during High School or less than $1000/year in part time jobs. 100% of them SHOULD hope to make more money, even if they don't go to college for this purpose. Even more so if they are purposely or inadvertently preparing to follow the Bible's admonition: 1 Timothy 5:8 Certainly if anyone does not provide for those who are his own, and especially for those who are members of his household, he has disowned the faith and is worse than a person without faith. The way the question is presented, however, it is possible for all students to say that 100% of them go to college for more money AND that 100% of them go to college for a better job AND that 100% go to learn things of interest AND that 100% go to please their family, etc. The idea is to try to get a feel for the priorities that are in a students head as they are just starting college. A student could conceivably claim that every one of those reasons was "Very Important." All the survey above actually shows is what you said about how it only compares relative importance of motivational factors. It certainly does not say that only 70-some percent went to college to make more money. And the Awake! article is misleading when it says "spiritual goals declining." They probably were, but this survey says nothing about comparing these particular goals with their spiritual goals. Also, as noted above, providing for one's own, especially one's household is a spiritual goal according to 1 Timothy 5:8, or might even be considered by that verse to be MORE IMPORTANT than faith. All that question is really allowing us to see is that students either think that several other factors are more important than money, or that they are not willing to admit that money is as important as it probably is, especially when asked to weigh it against less crass and better-sounding motivations. When I hired people to work on my teams in IT departments (1985 to 2015), I didn't care too much whether a person went to college or not, as long as they could show the correct aptitude for technical testing, logic, programming, designing, data analysis, etc. But over the years, I began to appreciate that, in choosing among those of similar technical skills, those who went to college were almost always preferable. Even if it were for a degree in English, drama, psychology, education, sociology, etc., they were more likely to have better communication skills and more of what was more important to me: an "appreciation of ideas" (the second option of the survey). I would not have cared WHY they went to college, even if it was please their parents, or study for a career they no longer wanted, or even if they had already failed in a previous career. Of course, college holds out the hope and promise of better or at least a wider array of employment opportunities. But this is not always the way things work out. In the United States, both the educational and financial institutions are always looking for ways to profit off students by taking a percentage of any increased income they might get from college. Student loans are managed by these institutions to maximize the profit from each student. Colleges also maximize the amount of tuition that they can get away with.

So we should think like the scribes?

Isn't this meaningless, like saying that the sky is blue because the sky is blue? The whole point of the security council is to reject any condemnation of the "primary" nations who make up the security council. Note closely from Wikipedia: The United Nations Security Council "veto power" refers to the power of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to veto any "substantive" resolution. . . . The unconditional veto possessed by the five governments has been seen by critics as the most undemocratic character of the UN.[1] Critics also claim that veto power is the main cause for international inaction on war crimes and crimes against humanity.[2] However, the United States refused to join the United Nations in 1945 unless it was given a veto.[1] . . . The United Nations Security Council veto system was established in order to prohibit the UN from taking any future action directly against its principal founding members.

Can Titanium and Aluminum be far behind?

I had some respect for Christiane Amanpour in the past even from the time when she spoke for CNN when CNN was the voice of the US State Department. I thought that her particular perspective helped move CNN away from just a state-run propaganda tool, and that her recent absence was punishment for it. But she is back, and I realized from the way she worded things tonight across from Anderson Cooper (regarding tonight's US air strikes on Syria) that it is motivated by more than just the fact that CNN is very excited to be able to report on explosions. She went right back to her old role of restating questionable items as absolute facts, which is of course, the method that our state propaganda has needed to reinforce the military's views from a supposedly "neutral" perspective.

People are already suspicious of the mainstream media outlets from other countries. RT for example is considered fake news here even when (or especially when) it is being more accurate than any mainstream US outlets. And of course, it very often really is fake news, too. Here, it would take someone outside the mainstream ideologies, one who could recognize the great overlap between the supposedly divergent ideologies of, say MSNBC and FOX. I think that Michael Parenti and Noam Chomsky already did an excellent job with their own attempts, Inventing Reality and Manufacturing Consent, respectively, but their own ideologies make their findings seem suspect to most. https://lorenzoae.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/chomsky-vs-parenti/

True, and China has already surpassed the technology of most US (non-nuclear) weapons. And a large percentage of US weapons are dismal failures in the field, continuing to disappoint some of of the major buyers who are currently allied with the US.

I am no fan of Fox, nor Carlson, but I agree. I am equally ashamed of MSNBC and CNN and NPR among others. Trump has become the perfect distraction so that most of the major networks don't worry about asking difficult questions about foreign policy. Of course, there are times when any one of these networks will be correct on certain issues, but it must serve an existing (and very predictable) ideology. I assume Trump is always looking for ways to remain popular with an anti-Hillary/anti-Obama base, but with a very limited and obsolete political world-view. This will probably continue to serve him well for another few years because his opposition offers little more than "We're not Trump" in response. (And the fact that most Americans are politically gullible to the propaganda of only one of two camps.)

Thanks for collecting so many of the salient points in a single post. Most people in the United States who feel that they are getting the truth through true freedom of the press, speech, etc., believe the major networks that only pretend to be showing two sides of an issue. I caught a very lucid piece of questioning by Tucker Carlson on FoxNews, who asked a Republican Senator why the US would be so anxious to attack Syria without attempting an investigation into the so-called chemical attack in Douma. The Senator's response was that he must be a supporter of Putin to even ask such a question. White Helmet propaganda videos are still very sloppy and full of contradictions, and individuals among them have been caught in blatant lies and acts of terror of their own. Fortunately, Trump appears to be backing down on his own rhetoric today, and the White House admits that they realize the fight would quickly escalate into something "messy." The US still has limited proxy control over large parts of Syria where most of the oil fields are, but is accidentally tipping its hand in some of the recent admissions to this effect.

Matthew 8:14 14 And when Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever. 1 Cor 9:5 5 Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? 1 Timothy 3:2 2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife,

I just noticed that I said this without a proper qualification. Most of us know that there is no reward for good works, such as preaching, pioneering, giving excellent talks, going to Bethel, serving as a missionary, ministerial servant, or elder, or Governing Body member, etc. Jehovah rewards his servants, not for the good they do, but for the proper loving motivation in the heart. But, true proper motivation will result in actions. If we truly love God (faith) and our neighbor we cannot help but act upon that love. We will show our fellow human neighbors and brothers mercy, patience, love, empathy, kindness -- all fruits (outgrowths) of the proper spirit in our hearts. To the extent possible in our own circumstances, that automatically translates to action (good works). True faith cannot exist, therefore, without good actions that follow. Not everyone can do the same amount however (the widow's "mite," workers who arrive at the 11th hour, etc.). But if those who put in more work are jealous or disturbed by the lesser work others have done, then they don't understand that it was not the work that was rewarded, but the proper motivation. They don't understand what this means: "I want mercy, not sacrifice"