TrueTomHarley

I’m just sitting here minding my own business, thinking up new insults for The Librarian and our “house” discreet slave, JTR.

I know of no other instance of any organization being successfully sued when the above conditions are so. Usually it is the rule that one of the leaders/clergypersons perpetrated the abuse and/or that it happened in one of their facilities. I wrote about this at the time, saying: “Do I understand this correctly? One child abuses another within a family, and it is the fault of the congregation elders?” https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/03/a-class-action-suit-in-quebec.html

I think not. The contexts are completely different. The superfine apostles that Paul fought with in Corinth were men very impressed with the wisdom of that Greek culture that Paul deliberately set aside. The first three chapters of 1 Corinthians makes that clear. Paul determined that he would know nothing among them except Christ impaled. He probably could have gone toe to toe with them in “wisdom” in a way that most others could not because he was educated as a Pharisee. He decided not to. Consequently he came to them with “fear and trembling” since he effectively approached them with “one hand tied behind his back.” Does this in any way fit the GB? They never have such “wisdom” of the educated world and are roundly derided for it. Their formal education stops at high school in almost all cases. The superfine apostles were that way, but the telling circumstance is that they hadn’t done anything to merit it. The GB are not that way, in my estimation, but the telling circumstance is that they have done something to merit it if they were. The superfine ones were comfortable men who wanted Paul’s authority but not his work. The GB have taken on his work. Paul almost loses it in his second letter comparing how his record bests the superfine ones in every way. So this, too, doesn’t fit the GB at all. They do have circumstances approaching that of Paul, as the superfine apostles did not. They have usually served full-time for decades, often in circumstances more lowly than of those that they would later lead. In no possible way can they be compared to the armchair superfine apostles of the Corinth area.

I will offer them moonshine from your still if I can get you to part with any. By the time kids are sent away to college, they are considered no longer children and capable of interacting with the adult world. If that is not so, then what parent would be so foolish so as to send them away?

what I meant is that I don’t plan to pursue it. However, JWI himself responded, so I will. He has extraordinary powers granted him by the Librarian (that old hen). He can divide into a separate thread if he wants to. One college kid asked, when I proposed coming back, “To what end?” It was a question I’d not been asked before. I explained that in my ideal scenario I would return 100 times and engage in 100 different conversations and on the 101st I would ask him if he wanted to be a Jehovah’s Witness like me and at that time he should say ‘No.’ I even asked him to rehearse. “Let me show you how it would work. I am going to ask you to become a Witness like me and I want you to say “No.” Would you do that? He agreed. “Would you like to become a Witness?” I asked. “No,” he said. “You see? Nothing to worry about. It’s just conversation. You’ll learn your way around the Bible in the meantime. The moment you tire of it, just let me know. No one is easier to get rid of than Tommy.” The anticult people try to spin our calls as “recruiting.” That’s why the outrage some have over the recent letter expressing condolences over someone’s loss. If they just took it at face value, they’d be okay with it. We should not let those scoundrels define the game. Are we “recruiting?” I suppose so, but in the most non-threatening way possible, so that only by really stretching the point could we be said to be doing it. And it is not an immediate goal—telling the good news of the kingdom is. College is far more indoctrinating than anything having to do with Jehovah’s Witnesses. The typical student is separated 24/7 from his or her previous stabilizing routine and people—a classic tool of brainwashing. (I didn’t actually go through the rehearsal with him. Our best lines always occur to us too late. But that does not mean that I won’t do it when the situation is right.)

I like the online study feature on the website. I like the cart witnessing. I do wish that we were not so all-over-the-board with the door-to-door but would more-or-less settle on a consistent presentation, like working with the Good News brochure—‘15 chapters, 15 hour discussions, after which you have a working knowledge of the Bible—not everything, but a foundation. It’s what we offer—do you want it or not?’ This incremental doorstop study approach doesn’t work for me. I have little patience for it. It’s too hard to find people home to string several together. In view of the new privacy laws taking effect, the method is even going to be harder to pursue. And I like the idea that once you engage with people in any way and that they come to learn of your faith, everything that you do becomes a witness. Not to divert from you thread, though (as I sometimes do) Continue.

We are not exactly a seamless team. Take it, Billy.

My dad worked at the nuclear Ginna plant on Lake Ontario from its inception.

I don’t think I have ever been distracted in a prayer by rounds of ‘Poor Jud is dead.’ And folks are feelin' sad Cause they useter treat him bad But now they know their friend is gone for good Curly: Good. How can a guy seriously pray, as one ought to do at a memorial, with that playing over the sound system? It wasn’t good at all that my friend was dead. Still, I should have expected it, attending the memorial of 92-year-old Barbara, who had once played in the musical Oklahoma. She had been in Lil Abner, too, as the back-up Daisy Mai, and also a few other venues. After show business, she served as an administrator at NYU. After retirement she became one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and moved to upstate New York, probably because her youngest daughter lived there. She was 27 years as a Witness and became known locally as one of ‘the Golden Girls,’ pioneering with some other oldsters, none of whom had been show girls. “We have someone in our audience today who once worked with Mr. Rogers” [of Rogers and Hammerstein], said the program director at Hochstein Music School. Barbara used to attend all the violin concerts of one of the elder’s children—the same elder who gave her memorial talk, as it turned out. Everyone made a fuss over her after that announcement, and for a brief time she was transported back to the day. Only the Pioneer Service School conductor had been able to get away with calling Barbara (who never had a hair out of place) Babs—as in “So that everyone can have a share, please try to keep your comments to under 30 seconds. Except for you, Babs—15 seconds for you,” and by this tactic he managed to restrain most of her comments to under three minutes. After recalling a few anecdotes of Babs’ life, the speaker presiding said that “We are here because she is not.” He went on to let the air out of a few suppositions that invariably fail under stress—such as ‘she is in a better place now.’ She is not. Death is an enemy, not a friend, he pointed out, and cited 1 Corinthians 15:26. He went on to recall how death had not been God’s original purpose, how it had come about in the first place, and how the resurrection hope would one day undo it. She is unconscious in the meantime, as though asleep. I didn’t overlap with Barbara as much as had most others at the reception afterwards—people who had worked with her in field service for years. Probably the reason I struck a chord with her is that when she heard that I blogged, she did not say ‘Why in the world would you do that?’ (as many of the friends might) but she was very encouraging over it. Her son, too, was a writer, she said—the researcher and author of a book on a topic almost totally unknown to Western audiences, but the Eastern equivalent of Hitler’s concentration camps—Unit 731 in China under Japanese WWII domination. To this day relations between the two countries are strained. It became the subject of another of my blog posts. The son was there at the memorial talk and reception, looking very much an author, with two satchels hung around his neck—whereas everyone else had managed to stow their gear elsewhere. “Oh, he just talks and talks—you have to interrupt him,” his sister had told me, so I did, briefly, to express condolences and to say that his mom had been very proud of him. The three daughters were there, too, and only the Witness one had I known, so I made a point of meeting the other two. They are both retired professional women and both lit up at my mention that a shared interest in the arts is what had attracted me to their mom. We even spoke some of Barbara’s 2nd husband, Lloyd Barenblatt, whose professional career as an academic was ruined because he wouldn’t name names during the McCarthy era. Babs didn’t have a background typical of most Witnesses. More typically they have been raised on a farm out in the prairie or worked on a ship in the Atlantic or a workshop in Boise. I refrained from telling these refined daughters about Mickey Spillane, another writer who became a Witness, and who had observed of the ‘great’ authors: “What these guys could never get is that you sell more salted peanuts than caviar.” I wasn’t sure how they might respond to that. The resurrection hope to an earth made paradisiac under God’s kingdom rule is something very real to Jehovah’s Witnesses, and is what attracted many of them to the faith to begin with—most other religions either being disheartenly vague on the topic or promoting everyone to heaven, where they will float around and—well, who knows what they will do there? I don’t think that I have ever heard a Witness question the resurrection hope. I look forward to seeing my old friend there again someday.

He can hit a paragraph with the phrase ‘Governing Body’ at twenty paces, I hear.

Is it? I have not. They barely know I exist. It’s a wonder those three brothers of yours didn’t leave the planet. Lest you howl again, I do not suggest that you are dangerous. I do suggest that you either present that appearance or in some other way are FAR outside of any elder’s normal experience. Cops shoot people all the time. Usually they get to keep their job as it is concluded that they had reason to make the quick judgments they did, even if those judgments later proved wrong.

While it is possible to discover their names—the reporters always manage to do it—for a deranged lunatic supposed capable of even extracting revenge, their identities are kept secret. Perhaps that accounts for this unheard of situation with your hearing that you are trying to pass off as an everyday occurrence. I mean, “Maybe it is ME,” does not seem like a ridiculous idea for you to entertain. Just like usually in a courtroom, the defendant just sits there. But once in a while they have to put him in some sort of restraints.

Oh? And we were honored guests at one time? Reread the post. She didn’t say that the writer was a pest. She said ‘thank you from the bottom of our hearts.’

Indeed it is not, but since you constantly compare the two, all that I have said is appropriate. The ones at a court trial who decide guilt DO NOT EVEN HAVE TO TELL YOU THEIR NAMES!!!!!! Where is your outrage about THAT? Yes. That was the problem. Were it anyone else it would have been the sort of committee procedure that we all know about. What was there about your behavior (the reader might make an educated guess by reviewing your outrageous posts, but no more than an educated guess) so that they resorted to methods that nobody else has ever heard of or can imagine?

We have been through this before. For this to be true, there would have to be unimaginably extraordinary circumstances, for all of Jehovah’s Witnesses know that there are committees and all know how they work, and none of them have ever heard of such a thing. The premise of the complaint is not even true. As justice is dispensed in the adversarial justice system, the judge pronounces the verdict. But the ones who actually decide guilt are members of the jury, who “do not even have to TELL YOU THEIR NAMES.” You big baby.

Any task of any sort is made easier if you don’t have other parties screwing you up, even if only through ineptitude. This is all that GJ was saying. You deliberately misrepresent his statement to suggest that he couldn’t care less about the problem. You should be more ashamed of yourself than even you usually should be. What is he asking for? That laws about reporting CSA be consistent. That way he, as representative of one of the very few faiths that have attempted to monitor this evil, so as to mete out discipline and prevent miscreants from slipping unawares from one congregation into another (as they can anywhere else) does not have to do his job as though in a legal minefield. Why has what he pleaded for not been done? Given the seriousness of the problem and the stated priority of fighting it, seemingly no task should be easier.

There it is again. An experience of writing letters containing “some comfort from the Scriptures.” Here is from the recent Watchtower article on ‘Show Fellow Feeling in Your Ministry.’ A letter was well-received in this instance of a family whose child had died. “‘I was having a horrible day yesterday,’ wrote the bereaved mother. ‘I don’t think you have any idea what impact your letter had on us. I can’t thank you enough or even begin to describe how much it meant to us. I must have read your letter at least 20 times yesterday. I just could not believe how kind, caring, and uplifting it was. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.’” And to think that there are some on this forum of malcontents who have all but popped a vein over this venue. I can’t quite recall whether I have ever done this or not. I don’t think so, but it is possible. What I do recall is that in the mid-seventies, when the Awake! devoted an entire issue to the subject of depression—back when the topic was seldom breached in public, as though it were something shameful—that I was so impressed with it that I sent a copy to all the psychiatrists in the phone book. One of them responded—to point out that his own research had been included in the magazine.

The apostles did not “compare themselves to God’s high standards,” for they knew that to do so would be smug. They tried to keep them. They knew very well that they fell short. Instead, they said things such as with Paul: “I find, then, this law in my case: that when I wish to do what is right, what is bad is present with me. I really delight in the law of God according to the man I am within, but I behold in my members another law warring against the law of my mind and leading me captive to sin’s law that is in my members. Miserable man that I am! Who will rescue me from the body undergoing this death?” Romans 7:22 You really did manage to miss a lot during your time as a Witness. In your own way, you are no less judgmental than Billy—perhaps even more so.

Now, now. “If it is not perfect, it is filthy,” does not fly with me. Go argue it with Billy.

Ray Franz made it seem that way, too, much to the annoyance of those interviewing him. This is after he had departed from Bethel and had written many bad things about them, but he thought this topic was far overhyped. Nonetheless, I take your point, and have stated that those brothers wishing to portray it as though CSA could never ever occur within the Christian organization have inadvertently caused that organization much reputational damage, above and beyond anything to do with the crimes themselves. https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/04/lessons-to-be-learned-re-child-sexual-abuse.html I am told by an elder of about 40, who is a relative, that these days elders strongly urge parents to report cases of abuse (only to find that many are reluctant) I accept this as the way things currently are, since this person was completely unaware of my interest in the subject or of anything I had written.

John says: Billy the Kid (born Henry McCarty September 17 or November 23, 1859 – July 14, 1881, also known as William H. Bonney) was an American Old West outlaw and gunfighter who killed eight men before he was shot and killed at age 21. You say: (from history.com) “Just how many men Billy the Kid killed is uncertain. Billy himself reportedly once claimed he had killed 21 men-“one for every year of my life.” A reliable contemporary authority estimated the actual total was more like nine-four on his own and five with the aid of others. Other western outlaws of the day were far more deadly. John Wesley Hardin, for example, killed well over 20 men and perhaps as many as 40.” I say: Come, come. I cannot be everywhere. I have to think about God. You two get together on this. Just how many did he kill?

The present policy of God’s organization is not to “taste” apostasy. I would never say that that is wrong. In fact, it is all but required by the Scriptures, such as at Matthew 11:19–they criticize you no matter what you do, so pay them no mind, and press full speed ahead. Or “Let them be. Blind guides is what they are.” That is why I am a bad boy for hanging out here. However, just because a policy is right does not mean that there may not be a significant downside to it. As it is, many of our young have succumbed to the oldest temptation in the world, going where they have been advised not to, like the cat that curiosity killed. There they find material that they have never seen before. It is material that is mostly misrepresented, but they do not see how—some of it is presented convincingly. It strikes a chord with some of them. Ideally, parents or other older ones should be able to show them how it has been misrepresented and what is wrong with it, but they cannot because they don’t know what is there themselves—they have not “tasted” apostasy. That’s why I could see @Anna‘s point when she said that she kept on top of “apostate” things, lest one fine day her teenage son ask about them and she is not able to do more than say, “Don’t go there!” which the opposers unfailingly spin as evidence of trying to keep the kid in a “cult.” As it is, last I heard, the kid is happily serving as a regular pioneer, has never displayed any interest in such things, and says: “Mom, what’s with all this goofy stuff that you read?” But he is not everyone.

This speaks to what non-biased journalists have pegged as JWs greatest problem—the religion is “insular”—and almost by definition, “insular” does not spill. The trick will be to shed the negative aspects of “insularity” without sacrificing its positive aspects. After all, being “insular” and being the required “no part of this world” are practically the same. The very purpose of insulation is to separate what is desirable from what is harmful. The verse I think of is 1 Corinthians 5:9-10: In my letter I wrote you to quit mixing in company with fornicators, not [meaning] entirely with the fornicators of this world or the greedy persons and extortioners or idolaters. Otherwise, you would actually have to get out of the world.” The latter is impossible. The former is mandated. The trick will be to merge the two.

Excerpt: In fact, certain persons cannot go ‘beyond the law’ with impunity. A doctor in the U.S. absolutely dare not go beyond the HIPPA law ensuring confidentiality; it is a meticulously enforced law, leading some to wish that more major crimes were so quickly avenged. Three confidential relationships are bedrock to Western law: confidentiality of doctor-patient, lawyer-client and clergy-penitent,36 for none of these relationships can work without the expectation of confidentiality. If law is not written otherwise, it is illegal to go beyond the law in such cases. Without a clear legal mandate, a Witness elder cannot go ‘beyond the law’ because the default law says he cannot violate confidentiality in matters where the wronged individual would prefer it so. Geoffrey Jackson of the Witness Governing Body three times pleaded for such a consistent mandate across all territories before the Australian Royal Commission to Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse mentioned above. When it was his turn to testify, he said:37 Jackson: “Thank you for the opportunity to explain this. I think very clearly Mr. Toole pointed out that if the Australian Government, in all the States, was to make mandatory reporting, it would make it so much easier for us.” … Jackson: “The point being, here, another aspect that an elder needs to consider is he does not have the authority to lord it over or take over control of a family arrangement, where a person—let’s say it is a victim who is 24 or 25 years of age—has a right to decide whether or not they will report that incident. They also respect the family arrangement that the appointed guardian, who is not the perpetrator, has a certain right, too. So this is the spiritual dilemma that we have, because at the same time, we want to make sure that children are cared for. So if the government does happen to make mandatory reporting, that will make this dilemma so much easier for us, because we all want the same goal—that children will be cared for properly.” … Council Assisting (Stewart): “Leaving aside the question of overriding mandatory law from the civil authorities, do you see the possibility within the scriptures as you have identified them for a change in the practice of Jehovah’s Witnesses? In other words, would it be within the scriptures for the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization to adopt a policy which says that in cases where there are others at risk, a report must be made to the authorities?” G Jackson: “That is a possible thing for us to consider, and I think, already, the assumption is there, that if any elder was to see that there was some definite risk, that their conscience should move them to do that. But the point I was trying to make, Mr. Stewart, is there are other scriptural factors that maybe make that a little complicated, and it would certainly be a lot easier if we had mandatory laws on that.” He is pleading for sanity to prevail. Sometimes reporting is mandated. Sometimes it is not mandated, and in such cases, Witness elders run legal, even moral, risks in doing it. Where not mandated, they are not free to override concerns of family members if they choose not to report; yet they are held to account if a victimized one, years later, regrets that decision, and blames, not the family members who made it, but the elders themselves. Sometimes, doing their best to navigate a maze, our people have likely stumbled. Other times, the maze itself has tripped them up. Jackson pleads for an across-the-board policy, with no room for misunderstanding or misapplication, so that it won’t matter if a given family wants to avoid airing its dirty laundry on the 11 PM News. Even today, families do not line up to do that, whether religious or not. If going beyond the law is so laudable, then that should become the law. With the prioritized, near-sacred quest of protecting children, one would think nothing could be easier. Failure to go ‘beyond the law’ is an invitation to Monday morning quarterbacks assigning motives, invariably bad ones, to parties they don’t like. However, in most things legal, careers are built on complexity. They are all undermined when the course is made simple. The reader will have noted by now, and may even have been an exasperated by, this author’s disdain of the greater world for being so disunited; it has never presented itself otherwise, he or she might note. When the agency says “United Nations” and even affixes the Isaiah quotation about nations beating swords into plowshares, it is just joking. It is not to be taken seriously. It is just dreaming of an ideal it knows full well is unattainable. This author must be forgiven because he comes from a people who have pulled it off. He comes from where they are not just joking about such things and where the dream has become reality. Unity among Jehovah’s Witnesses is a commonplace and unremarkable fact. It is not in the Witness world that one hand plants the seed which produces the plant that the other will eventually have to uproot. So the following is admittedly sarcastic—which is risky because Thomas Carlyle said sarcasm is the language of the Devil. Forgive me. The Devil made me do it. Here is my fictionalized hearing with the commissioner, not speaking specifically of Australia, but for the overall world: Lead Commissioner: “Mr. Jackson, I hope that you people will straighten up and fly right and cooperate more fully with what we are trying to do. I emphasize the word “trying,” Mr. Jackson, because we are terrible at it and the overall track record of the world would be laughably bad were it not so tragic. But our hearts are in the right place. “Mr. Jackson, I am impressed by your humility, your distress at what clearly is a problem, and your overall demeanor. We have so many people strutting their stuff about here and you almost can’t stand them. We appreciate your willingness to work with us and we hope we can further work with you along this line. “You have pleaded with us, Mr. Jackson, to make our policies the same across all territories, for that would make your job so much easier. It is a reasonable request. Unfortunately, Mr. Jackson, we cannot comply, though we would like to, because we represent squabbling and disunited governing entities that cannot collectively tie their own shoe. You would think it would be the easiest thing in the world to do what you request. Unfortunately, it is impossible. “And this is just one area. Don’t get me going about international efforts to fight child sexual abuse. Children in many third world countries are routinely abused every day without anyone at all to stand up for them. That’s because there is no money over there, and consequently, no interest. But we do have a lot of money here. “We have a request for you, Mr. Jackson. I know it’s a bit irregular, but can you take this off our hands for us? I have looked into your organized nature and have concluded that you could do it. Aren’t you the people who set up and take down your buildings of worship almost as easily as our people set up and take down Coleman tents? I know you do not have grandstanding politicians who will push and shove to do whatever will keep them in their jobs, and that you can focus on the real issues, undistracted by personal agendas. I know you can separate the truly worrisome pedophiles from the run-of-the-mill ones, who appear to be almost everyone. I know too, that you care about poor people just as much as you care about well-off people. Listen, we just want to save our kids here, and we think that if we funneled all reports to you, you would be able to handle keeping a centralized list and handle its distribution. I know it is not your main line, but surely you can devote a committee to it. Ten of your people are worth 10,000 of ours because your people know how to work together and our people do not. The more people we add to our efforts, the more chaotic the overall picture gets. (in my dreams) from the book: Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia

Are you suggesting that Billy is out to destroy the GB? I never thought of that.