TrueTomHarley

thank you, Celeste. I haven’t read her book. Someday I may. There just always seems to be something else to do.

Whenever human explanations make no sense, people can be forgiven for looking at superhuman explanations. I am convinced that being ‘no part of the world’ is more than someone fully part of it can abide. They can’t understand it. They can’t tolerate the implied judgment. Whereas, jihadists are easily understood. They are far more reprehensible due to the damage they cause, but theirs is a tried-and-true method of ‘changing the world.’ Reprehensible, perhaps, but easily understood. Changing the world is something people can understand and relate to, even when they oppose a given action. Staying ‘no part from the world’ is something they cannot. It relates back to who is going to rule the earth. Will it be man through nations or coalition of nations? Or will it be God, with his people standing apart from the turmoil or nations?

It is almost painful to see the critically-minded exploring biblical passages and, as though by design, discarding every key they come across. Time and again, you find yourself saying, ‘Not that one, don’t toss that one, you will need it, that one’s a keeper!’ Heedless, they say, ‘We are wise and learned adults, far too clever to be sold Adam and Eve (or whatever). What’s next? Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck? We will opt for a deeper meaning’ that isn’t accretive.' So reliably does this happen that one almost suspects some sinister power at work manipulating the wise to destroy every useful map, that they may wander forever in the critical wilderness, with nary an oasis in sight. Elaine Pagels writes a book (Why Religion? This one is her autobiography) in which she wrenches apart her soul, chronicling her unrelenting anguish at the deaths of both her infant son and, several years later, her husband. She is an excellent researcher and author, and her documentation on her own ordeals is as expressive as anything I have read. It is enough to make one ashamed at better weathering similar trial, except . . .except for the reservation that, through her training, she systematically threw away any key that might have helped her. Untimely death, though still horrific, is infinitely more bearable to one entertaining the Bible’s resurrection hope. You cannot throw away keys you never had, one might point out. If her education served to keep those keys shrouded, that is hardly her fault. Her only prior taste of Christianity was with the brand that spins the death of an infant as God picking flowers for his beautiful heavenly garden—who wouldn’t be repelled by that?—thereafter leaving her tastebuds for Christianity permanently seared. Consequently, though Pagel’s life work of religious legend and textual scholarship makes a fascinating read, both her education and religious experience have prejudiced her to overlook the keys. She never had them. Though it has long been a staple of preachers, the analogy of God picking flowers is nowhere found in the Bible. However, there is an analogy parallel in all respects except the moral at the end. It is found in Nathan’s tale to David, the tale of the rich man who slaughtered and prepared for his visitors the sole lamb of a poor man, sparing his own abundant flock. That man did not receive praise from David, but rather instant wrath. “As surely as Jehovah is living, the man who did this deserves to die!” the king said. (FN) Likely, Pagels picked up on the contrast between David’s wholly understandable response and the evangelical model that holds God behaves just like that cruel man. Preachers make a horrific mess trying to extract themselves from the moral corners their doctrines unfailingly paint them into—in this case, the doctrine that the soul lives on and can never die. One person who, unlike Pagels, did have the keys and did throw them away, all the time imagining she was taking a step forward, even when she desperately needed a certain key, is a woman praised to high heaven by an (one can only assume) atheist professor of theology at Harvard. Something is greatly off-base about the New York Times review (FN) of Amber Scorah’s book, Leaving the Witnesses, and it is not Amber. It is the reviewer, C. E. Morgan, who goes about her task with a humanist fervor that merits a review in itself. One wonders what she could possibly teach at that Divinity School or what might be the outcome for students who attend her class—students who likely went there because they wanted to learn about God. Her lavish praise of Ms. Scorah’s book: “She teaches us how integrity is determined . . . by enduring the universe as we find it—breathtaking in its ecstasies and vicious in its losses—without recourse to a God,” surely should give those students pause—are they truly in the place they thought they were? Or did they somehow get shunted off into Atheist Academy? Ms. Scorah herself, as presented by Ms. Morgan, is more conventional. Hers is one of the oldest stories of time—of someone disillusioned with her present life, so she reaches out for another, which upon seizing, she finds exhilarating. It is a coming-of-age story. It is a staple of literature. Since she is “leaving the Witnesses”—Jehovah’s Witnesses, one must at least consider how the Witnesses themselves might have phrased her departure, perhaps similar to the words of the apostle Paul addressed to Timothy: “Demas has forsaken me because he loved the present world.” Ms. Morgan cannot be expected to put it as did Paul, but since she teaches at the divinity school, one might at least expect her to be cognizant of that point of view. Instead, Amber’s departure is a tale of pure heroism for her—that of escape from an “extreme” religion—even worse than a “fundamentalist” religion, in her view—and it is “most valuable as an artifact of how one individual can escape mind control.” It would appear that any denomination of Christianity that has not interpreted away into oblivion the resurrection of Christ would be fundamentalist in Ms. Morgan’s eyes. “The anti-intellectualism of these [fundamentalist] authoritarian movements, their staunch refusal to cede ground to reason and empiricism, often confounds nonbelievers,” and it seems she counts herself as Chief of the Nonbelievers—never mind what her teaching title might suggest. “How can people devote the totality of their lives to the unseen, the unevidenced?” she laments, seemingly unaware that such is the very fabric of faith, of those who interpret “evidence” differently, and who will say, akin to Jesus addressing the Pharisees, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have evidence as our father.’ For I say to you that the devil is able to raise up evidence from these monied and agenda-driven stones.” (FN Matthew 3:9) But she will not say it. “How can faith subsume thinking?” she complains instead. Her frustration could not be more clear—‘We have fired everything we have at them and yet they keep standing!’ As bad as fundamentalism is, however, it is not so bad in her eyes as an “extreme religion” like Jehovah’s Witnesses. To establish that she has done her homework, she relates that from its 1870 inception, the faith “rejected Christian doctrines it deemed extratextual [not in the Bible], including trinitarianism and hell.” You would think she would be happy about that, for it is a distinct step toward reason—Witness leader C. T. Russell was known within his lifetime as “the man who turned the hose on hell and put out the fire.” The Witness description of death, “extinction or non-being,” is exactly the rationalist view, though it will be marred in her eyes by the caveat of a future resurrection from the dead. The notion that Christianity should return to its default state Morgan finds “dubious.” Yes, of course she would find it dubious, for it freezes religion in place. It halts evolution. It detracts from her authority at the Divinity School to proclaim a new gospel holding that dependence on God is for chumps. No, she wants religion to evolve, as does everything else in her Darwinian world. Witnesses also “actively proselytize, warning of an imminent Armageddon,” she complains, as though it is wrong to even suggest that an earth carved up into scores of eternally squabbling nations might not be exactly God’s dream come true. In short, she has found people—ordinary people for the most part—who disagree with her, and she oozes disdain for them. Children raised in such religion “experience a totalizing indoctrination that so severely limits the formation of an adult psychology that many don’t ever achieve maturity in the way secular society conceives of it.” Necessarily, this means that she thinks adults of that faith are, for the most part, immature children. None of them will be found among her social contacts or workplace, perhaps barring a support worker or two, with whom she may occasionally exchange a brief word so long as they keep their stupid opinions to themselves. The patronization is simply too much. Any time someone leaves one culture for another, there is some catching up to do—say, in the case of a person migrating from one country to another. Would Ms. Morgan similarly find it necessary to crow her superiority over the country and culture of emigration, say, where Hinduism is practiced, perhaps, or Spanish is spoken? She would recoil at the thought, but when it comes to religious views that stray from her worldview, it is as natural to her as breathing air. Let her “world” prove itself reasonably “free from sin” before she casts stones on those who have come to see things differently. Amber ran out on a “loveless marriage,” Ms. Morgan states, and her implication is clear that Jehovah’s Witnesses think loveless marriages are the bee’s knees, since she presents love as the balm that finally wakes Ms. Scorah up. I will take her word for it that Scorah’s book is as she says it to be—an “earnest one, fueled by a plucky humor and a can-do spirit that endears.” And yet it does not completely satisfy the reviewer—it shows too much the “the remnants of a Christian modesty not well suited to the task of memoir.” One can all but hear her plead, ‘Modesty? What’s that?! Come on, SPILL!’ as she redefines “miracle” into “enduring the universe as we find it — breathtaking in its ecstasies and vicious in its losses — without recourse to a God.” Look, if I were a student in her divinity class, about this time I’d be asking for my money back, assuming I wasn’t too brainwashed just then to think of it. I mean, I get it that she’s not going to use her tenure to save souls, but you still wouldn’t think God would be public enemy #1 at the Divinity School. But, her review has not yet come to the most gripping part. When it does, Morgan foresees another book. “Many readers know Scorah through her viral article in The New York Times about the death of her son on his first day of day care,” she writes. “This, one senses, is her brutal but beautiful route into a new book—a shorter, wiser one, sharp and devastating. Here she reveals a chastened existence, steeped in grief and unknowing without recourse to pacifying religious answers.” It is unbelievable! It is “wiser” to tell God to take a hike! If a religious answer comforts, throw it away! It is as though sawing off the tree limb upon which one has long perched and, as it comes crashing down to earth, whooping for joy at the liberation, like the Dr. Strangelove cowboy straddling the falling nuke! Scorah must have anguished with the notion that her child might not have died but for the abandonment of her faith—she must have. Pagels thought it—what might she have done differently that might have averted tragedy? Job thought it, especially as his three visitors pulled out all the stops to convince him that he had caused his own downfall. Scorah, too, must have for a time grappled with the notion of ‘retributive justice,’ same as Job. There is no reason to think it is so, but she is human. She must have grappled with it. She had the key, as Pagels did not. Swayed by the revisionists, she discarded it. She exchanged a backdrop of: “We do not want you to be ignorant about those who are sleeping in death, so that you may not sorrow as the rest do who have no hope” (FN 1 Thessalonians 4:13) for one that urges, “Stay Ignorant. Stuff happens. Get used to it.” Ms. Morgan reckons that exchange an unmitigated triumph of the human spirit! Anyone of sense would reckon it as does Paul, a “shipwreck of faith.” Keep smashing your head into the wall of critical education until you feel better. It is impossible for the biblically-literate not to think of the verse regarding those who, ‘although claiming they were wise, became foolish.’ (FN Rom 1:22) From the upcoming: [working title]: The Book of Job: a Workman's Theodicy

“You offspring of vipers, do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have evidence on our side.’ For I say to you that the devil, the one who is misleading the entire inhabited earth, is able to raise up evidence from these stones.”

“And now, brothers and sisters, step right around the corner into this Jerusalem exhibit, and . . . Oh, for crying out loud! There is BTK again, got in somehow and submitting everyone to his apostasy test. Can’t we get rid of this guy?”

There you go, @BTK59, I lured him in for you. Now you can keep his dialogue fresh for the next 30 pages by bickering with him. Throw him a lifeline. He’ll be ignored without your help.

20. What should be done when BTK is tossed out of the group still again for abusive behaviour? ”Aw, just leave the windows wide open, because you know he will instantly reappear under another name whether you do or not.”

The droves and droves of true Witnesses whom you seem to think flock to this platform, heedless of organizational counsel that they should not, should also recognize that no one (in the closed club) claims to be a stellar example of counsel to avoid any interaction at all with ‘apostates.’ But only you, not allowed in the closed club, thoroughly trash that counsel, as though contemptuous of it, and eagerly seek out people with whom to bicker with 24/7–thus enormously extending their shelf life, and all the while insisting you are the only faithful one around—and, alas, usually getting your head handed to you because of your reliance on name calling and dark condescension. Everyone else is at least partially checked by organizational counsel, and might be far worse without it. They do try to remain in the overall spirit of it. Only one person here puts himself above it and ignores it completely.

Maybe we can say it’s okay to join us but they don’t have to use the main auditorium; we’ll reserve space for them in the spare room where we keep the literature carts. Motive understood. Even BTK will acquiesce, I think. Meanwhile, hopefully they will not be like that guy on the Titanic who inspected the lifeboat safety inspection sticker, saw it did not incorporated the latest methods, and declined to board.

He did say it. He also made it clear that the DFing was on this own insistence, that his elders didn’t want to, and they acquiesced only after he badgered them repeatedly. Seems he had a little legal matter coming up and he didn’t want it to reflect badly upon God’s name should it not turn out well. Odd, really, to fall on his own sword in that way, when no one asked it of him. It is due to these circumstances that I and some others have had as much to do with him as we have. Alas, I can picture BTK walking out of the KH in discuss after that recent update advocating civil treatment of disfellowshipped ones.

He is. Nonetheless, his example has helped me. I had a ‘take no prisoners’ approach when I first became active here. Nobody gonna saying nothin bad bout God nor the earthly organization on my watch. I was not free of ad hominem attacks. Nothing like you, of course, but I was not free of them. I was also given to sarcasm. He reined me back that. Sometimes you have to see where people are coming from and why. If you address a topic, just address it. Just answer a question. If you employ any sarcasm at all, even though the rest of your answer is brilliant, the other person will zero in only your sarcasm, and the overall reply is lost. Of course, it still stands for members of ‘the public’ who frequent this fine site, but it also sets a bad example for them. I look upon almost with awe on how restrained he keeps himself when interacting with you, kicking back only when your adhominems and weird accusations become intolerable, and even then in a restrained way. Anyone else rather quickly collapses under your dark strangeness and throws themselves against the electric fence, like concentration camp inmates who have lost hope. To be sure, I don’t share his interest in this particular matter of 607. If it is wrong, it will be changed. Probably, the rapid deterioration of this systems of things will make the point moot, anyway. And you can always say, ‘Oh, to blazes with it! ‘Generation’ means ‘era,’ and in that way get another 60 years out of it, if not more. Why doesn’t he state his point just once or twice and move on? I think it is quite clear that is what would happen if not for you. He states a point in a scholarly way. You apply accelerant and make sure the entire ‘public’ knows about it. In this way, you facilitate ‘apostasy’ far more than he. It is crucial that you stop doing this. Absolutely vital. The public should drop everything to figure it out. Start with the excellent book (my latest) ‘In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction,’ available at Amazon, and most ebook retailers. Take note of the metadata: “Those of the Enlightenment laud the “human experiment” that is democracy, Jehovah’s Witnesses laud the human experiment that is worldwide family. Theirs is John Lennon’s brotherhood of man not rejoicing that there is above us only sky but instead seeking direction from that sky. A family all but solving racism, a family uniting nationalities and social classes. Who wouldn’t want a double-shot of it? But even a recent circuit overseer likened it to “one big, united, happy, somewhat dysfunctional family,” a phrase I suspect is not in any outline. “Witnesses are ordinary folk, with all the foibles of ordinary folk, and sometimes a few extra thrown in since “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are ill do: I [Jesus] came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” “What drives the Witnesses? Examine what faces these ordinary folk who star in a world-stage role that is alternately noble and strange. Some challenge is external: “A large door that leads to activity has been opened to me, but there are many opposers.” Some challenge is internal: “We have this treasure [of the ministry] in earthen vessels.” Translation: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” “Either way, “Do not be puzzled at the burning among you . . . as though a strange thing were befalling you,” says Peter. Don‘t be puzzled. Tackle it head-on. Start with the pure bonus, ‘Things that drive you crazy about the faith--and how to view them,’ for the goal is to endure: “When the Son of man arrives, will he really find the faith on the earth?” says Jesus. ‘Not if we have anything to do with it,’ reply ever increasing enemies. "If errors were what you watch, O Jah, O Jehovah, who could stand?” asks the psalm. Is watching errors not the mission statement of today’s culture, typified in its media? Nobody stands as their enemies magnify, enhance, and even concoct evil reports—see it play out on the internet with any public figure, “admiring personalities,” until they destroy them. Ought Christians play that game? "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is stumbled, and I am not incensed? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness,” says Paul. Three times the apostle entreated God to remove a “thorn in his flesh” Nothing doing, God said. I look better when you are flawed. If brilliant people achieve brilliant things, it’s easy to see why. But when flawed people do it . . .” “Tips on the ministry within. How did Witnesses fare in the face of COVID-19? How to regard ever-present conspiracy theories that ripple through society? And what about those overlapping generations? How long can they overlap? What is at stake? What facts on the ground identify the times? Venturing to the edge of the universe, rewriting the textbooks, and dressing down the god of good luck is all in a day's work. Meet Mephibosheth, that faithful man of old whom nobody can pronounce his name at the New System Dinner Table. A bad boy turns over a new leaf, a theodicy that works, and my favorite circuit overseer finish up the offerings.” It is essential that people read this work. (I have a collection or two of the Bill Watterson cartoons ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Some are named things like ‘The Essential Calvin and Hobbes.’ Watterson said he chose such titles because few things could be less essential than a collection of cartoons. I admit, I tease you a bit when so many things with you are ‘essential, and ‘crucial.’)

I’ve seen entire armies vanish. If you exercised the correct wisdom belonging to true knowledge and the correct knowledge belonging to true wisdom, you would realize this explains some missing years of Nebuchadnezzar. I banned him. He crossed a line. It’s okay to move it back again. Once he gets an idea in his head, it’s impossible to get it out, so I corroborate it instead. It is crucial and essential that you understand this. We must not deceive the public.

I hear he went down into the abyss locked in combat with a mortal enemy who was yelling ‘Fly, you fools!’ and imagining he had saved the day. Only, unlike the movie, he remained suppressed and it was his adversary who emerged in renewed form. he he he )))))))))) You know, whatever happened to Srecko—another one who has disappeared? Maybe he and Pudgy also went down into the abyss, locked in mortal semi-disagreement.

Please don’t get them started. I have a hard time controlling those misfits and yo-yos as it is.

Ring ring . . . “Hello?” “Good evening, madam, this is the AllenGeorge Fire Department. Are there any fires raging in your area?” ”No, I don’t think so. Only that pesky kid JWI roasting potatoes again. He has a little campfire going in the back yard, but it’s going out.” ”It is??!!! This is serious! Why didn’t you call? We’re on our way! Alphonse, crank up the siren so everyone hears! George, grab the accelerant! There’s not a moment to lose!”

Only very occasionally, and with full recognition that God’s own lovable creatures, the beavers, are mostly graduates of Dam U.

You realize, of course, that no one facilitates and magnifies this ‘corruption’ more than you. It is rather like a hot potato on a shelf that everyone tiptoes around, and in time it will cool. Then Allan/BTK/George/Alphonse etc says, “HEY, LOOK AT THIS POTATO! LET’S PUT IT IN THE MICROWAVE AND HEAT IT UP!”

I’m still dealing with that image of a hot potato that no one wants to touch.

We’re getting ready to stone him as you speak.

They tell me that brothers giving that talk in his area routinely point to him as a cautionary tale. Not a word from him. It’s almost like the removal of the constant feature. That is the downside of online relationships. They disappear one day and you haven’t a clue why. Hopefully, one of the roaming hogs bit his hand and as soon as it heals up we will hear from him again.

I just got appointed head of a thread. Call that not having a purpose?

Got it. I now head a new thread. Cool!

They almost all do it in today’s world of theology. Long ago, in answer to the question of where did we originate our explanation of suffering & evil, you pointed to a Great Courses lecture series by a Professor Hall. Our theodicy was there, you had heard, and the prof said it was the only theodicy that made sense. In fact, it is only the fact that the theodicy involves Satan that makes it logical from his point of view. All other theodicies he considers do not. He confines his entire exploration, save for this renegade theology, to what he calls ‘ethical monotheism’—that is, one God unopposed. Since he himself comes from an evangelical Lutheran background, it surprised me that he has shoved Satan into such a tiny footnote, a player only in his last theodicy considered. I think he has done it to join the world of contemporary scholars, who are thoroughly embarrassed by the thought of a Devil. It makes all their progressive efforts to repair the world and improve mankind pointless if there is a devil you can pin all the bad things to. Several times in his lecture, Hall points out this theodicy involving the devil is extremely unpopular today, to the point where he seems to assume that his audience may not even have heard of it! Consistent with this modern understanding from the scholars, the Book of Job is separated into 1) an ancient Jewish ‘fable’ consisting of chapters 1,2, and 42, and the poetic portion, consisting of all that remains. Frankly, I think the intellectual appeal of this approach is that, by separating the book into two portions, it puts you into position to understand neither, thus ensuring modern theologians will have a job till the end of time. You can debate the meaning of the poetic portion forever, with no one able to call your bluff. But the moment you integrate the ‘fable,’ it all resolves fairly quickly. But it resolves in a way repugnant to today’s theologians, so they don’t go there.

Seeing there is a lot of energy here, let me mention a translation issue. Still working on a commentary of Job here, and by extension, all theodicies. The last chapter of Job reads, “All his brothers and sisters and all his former friends came to him and ate a meal with him in his house. They sympathized with him and comforted him over all the calamity that Jehovah had allowed to come upon him. Each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring.” Only the NWT, so far as I can see, says Jehovah allowed the calamity. Every other one I see says that he brought it about. I have no problem with us believing he allowed it. Job 1 & 2 all but demands that interpretation, but the final verse says it differently. Anyone with insight as to where this unique translation comes from? No problem here if JWI shuffles this away to some other category. But if he bans me for bringing it up, it will be truly sad, indeed puzzling, and he will miss the crucial fact that I can respond with the words of Paul to Elymas, “O man full of every sort of fraud and every sort of villainy . . . you enemy of everything righteous, will you not quit distorting [my] right ways?" It is essential that he realize this.

Fascinatingly, and equally crucial to recognize, Mac Truk, lead singer of Mac Truk and the Buldozers, was actually banned for being a band. Where’s the love in that?