TrueTomHarley

Jesus with the organization that he leads results in persons of developing lands possessing modern Bible translations that, if need be, are free. Jesus ‘in the hearts’ of renegade anointed who refuse to cooperate with an arrangement because they think they are not given their proper place results in those persons stuck with an archaic translation that they can neither understand nor afford. That’s why I think he operates in the first way. My, you give Jesus little credit.

It was probably for you. I had no idea what he was talking about and only responded to what I knew.

Let me check. Is this the open or the closed JW forum? ahhh, it’s the open forum. HEY @James Thomas Rook Jr.! HERE’S SOME GOOD COUNSEL FOR YOU! It’s GAME ON, YOU PORK CHOP! And after I was so nice to you on the closed forum. (sorry) ”the riot squad is restless; they need somewhere to go”...Bob Dylan

The download is free.in EPUB or PDF.

It is well past time to kick back at certain dogs that are barking, even if I don’t get very far. You’ll be happy to know that your ‘contributions’ make up a substantial of the chapter ‘Money’ of Dear Mr. Putin -Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia. Don’t misunderstand. Ones who hated Witnesses before will still hate them. But most people recognize mean-spirited pettiness when they see it, harping upon what is essentially nothing for the sake of tearing down something noble. These are the ones I have endeavored to reach, as explained in the Introduction. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/815620 The Witness organization does a lot of things. It takes money. Duh. They are not afraid to say that. They don’t say it every single meeting, which is the pattern in the world of churches. You could easily miss it if you weren’t paying attention.

Yesterday in service there was one of those pissy little yappy dogs nipping at my pant leg. I was annoyed with its strength. You overestimate yourself, John.

Well, there you go then. Coordinated effort such as under the direction of the GB can result in real spiritual benefits to people around the world, particularly in developing lands. You sitting ALONE in your hut cannot, even if you are tight with Jesus. I think it is the selfishness of the independent course that most annoys me.

Come, come. This is why your side becomes disorganized rabble, each person flailing away, and ultimately accomplishing little. Worse, they soon take sides over the many divisive issues of this system and are presently at each other’s throats—despite each one’s ‘personal relationship with Jesus.’ Every project needs direction and someone to lead. It is no more complicated than that. Refraining from critiquing them over every little thing is not the same as ‘worshipping’ them. Many have tried to explain this to you, to no end. For the life of me, I cannot bring myself to explain something so obvious.

Hey, @Shiwiiiiiiiiiiiiii: THIS is where my little joke better fits: Did you hear the one about the ‘prosperity gospel’ preacher who tried to lure them in with Beatles tunes and got stuck on the first line? “You never give me your money. You never give me your mohuhuny.  You never give me your muhuhuhuhuhoneeee.” Let’s draw in a few more dense people and then see whether we can knock it out of the park.

No John. I keep a slave at home. In some respects I am behind the times.

Well, you’ve got me there. And he. I plead ‘No contest.” Probably he will, too. Yes. We’re going to get along just fine. I like being corrected by you and I do not blow it off as nothing, even if it does not trigger an immediate change. It surely will trigger a subtle one, in the ‘iron sharpens iron’ vein. A Christian ought to be uncomfortable to find himself out of the mainstream of the Body of Christ, and he ought be ready to yield to it. THAT is where I might fault some, if anyone is demonstrably unwilling to yield. I do not ever say that the slave is wrong. It is not my place, even were I to think it. I have said, however, that there is a downside to this or that policy, as I did with what is becoming my specialty: “It may be unavoidable, but the scriptural counsel to avoid apostates come what may has a serious downside. If a youngster of ours succumbs to the oldest trap of human nature- going somewhere out of curiosity because he has been advised not to, and he stumbles, he finds himself totally unsupported because we don’t know what is there ourselves. All we can say is that he shouldn’t go there, which opposers spin as proof that he should stay in order to escape from being “controlled.” I don’t know the answer, but it would be nice if there was one.” When I was asked to give the funeral talk by the widow of a good friend, I replied that I would but I didn’t know if it would be allowed at the KH, me being neither elder nor MS. It was. On the night of the talk, an elder there known for dotting ‘i’s and crossing ‘t’s asked me if I was using the outline. I told him that I was not and he was unhappy. Afterwards, however, he was. Another brother there with Bethel experience told me that they don’t mind at all ‘departing from script’ if one can improve upon it...they do it all the time. Many things that are eventually adopted HQ was initially skeptical of. The quick build KHs are a case in point. They kept their distance until they saw that the brothers with experience in the field could pull it off. When they were satisfied it could be done, they leant full support. The paranoid JTR often says of the GB, “Everything not expressly allowed is forbidden!” It probably is so in his case because everything he does is accusatory and crass. But in the case of brothers of good heart, I think it is not. They’re okay with probing about and experimentation at HQ, I think, so long as it is done in an appropriate way and so long as the one doing it doesn’t ultimately come to regard it as the hill he is willing to die on. I am ‘out there’ in some respects, but I do not think myself above theocratic arrangements. If the brothers at OPI said, ‘FalseTom, what are you doing?? You’re screwing up the works!!’ I would change course promptly. I have not kept myself hidden from them.

It’s because of our great growth. Duh!

It’s not so much that you should be. It’s that he shouldn’t have been. It is anything goes here. That’s just the way it is. The one-sided action favors the perception that The Librarian, that old hen, is in bed with apostates. ( Yeccchhhh)

I think it was personal with Allen. I afterwards had some private communication with him and found that I liked him a great deal. He got under the Librarian’s skin, I think. It is very hard for me to justify why he was thrown overboard and the equally bombastic Rook and shrill Butler were not. I don’t try. I just explain what I think happened. The Librarian is one of those Witnesses who thinks truth emerges from vigorous debate. When you shine the bright light of TRUTH around, cockroaches disappear. (I think they just go elsewhere.) It is even possible that she is disfellowshipped. It is impossible to know with anyone. My practice is to update the words of Paul, “Every man is a liar,” to “Everyone online is a liar.” It is impossible to know, which is why the slave repeatedly advises young ones (and probably everyone else) to friend only those whom you know personally, counsel everyone here has chosen to ignore. On Facebook there is a originator of Witness memes, commonly copied by the friends, that is supposedly run by someone disfellowshipped. It is a huge page. His work is excellent and loyal, shared widely by those who don’t know his status. Who can say what his motive is? but it doesn’t appear to be bad. Someone who knows he is disfellowshipped because she personally knows involved parties created a major ruckess trying to get everyone to unfriend him. (I never had in the first place; his kind of material is not what interests me) It looks absolutely ridiculous to outsiders, and to even most of us, when you try to enforce congregation standards on the Internet. Talk about a bad witness! The one serious beef I have with The Librarian, besides her being an old hen, is that she drags people in through social media (I came in through Twitter) purporting to be a fine gathering site for Witnesses. I blew a gasket when I found that it was not, and one of the ones I came after was JWI, though to a MUCH lesser degree than I went after ones like Rook. I wrestled for some time whether it was right for me to stay here at all. In the end, I decided to and that move has facilitated two books, both loyal, and both absolutely one-of-kind, that I would not have been able to write otherwise. I hope that brothers enjoy it, but the brothers are not my main targeted audience in either case. I have gotten comfortable here now. I’ve even struck up some sort of semi-camaraderie with Rook, the old pork chop, who I sometimes think of as ‘my’ apostate. A good number of opposers here I don’t think are mentally sound. They probably (inaccurately- or is it?) think the same of me. Several I can’t stand, though in some cases I have caught a glimpse or two of what makes them tick. I have gotten to prefer the word ‘opposer’ or ‘detractor’ over apostate, partly because the latter makes for a ridiculous spectacle to ones like @adminand partly because, in my case, it pays to know that they, too, are people. They chose a wrong course, imo, but they are still people, and I benefit by putting myself in their shoes sometimes. There you are, Felix. As honest as I know how to be. Though it is very objectionable in many ways, I have reaped benefits by being here, and to the extent that my books are any good, Kingdom interests have also. There are so many sites 100% devoted to opposition, that this site cannot rate too highly on the JW HQ annoyance list. However, maybe because it is in some respects disingenuous, it is at the top of the list.

I wrote the book on apostates. Literally. ’TrueTom vs the Apostates” Everything there is to be known about them I know. They come in many shapes, sizes, permutations, colors, and genres. Some of them may even be misnamed. Some are too young to be apostates, though they must be treated pretty much the same. Call some of them apostates-in-training. They are more like the inexperienced one snatched away by some wave of the trickery of men. (Ephesians 4:14) Is JWI one them? It is probably good discipline for him to keep hearing it from every Tom, Dick, and Harry Witness that passes through here, for he undeniably is ‘out there,’ but I am not ready to throw him under the bus just yet, if only for fear that he may grab me by the ankle and pull me in, too. Are his views ‘apostate,’ even if they can also be found ‘on apostate sites?’ There are many of such views that have eventually become adopted by the Witness organization. Were they apostate right up until the moment they were adopted and then revealed truth afterwards? It makes no sense. There is some verse somewhere about not running ahead. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but it may be in John’s writing. Help me out, someone. Not you, Butler. That’s not good, to run ahead, but it mostly finds expression in those who are promoting a sect. Is he? It’s arguable, perhaps, but imo he is not. The prime component of what makes an apostate to me is a lack of submission to theocratic authority, and he goes out of his way to make clear that he has no problem with that. If you can’t even talk about something that (history has shown) might eventually be adopted, then it really IS true that eight men are the only ones authorized to think. Neither they nor anyone else would want that to be the case, I think. When push comes to shove, he is submissive to appointed authority. Let that be enough on a bayou backwater thread as this. If he set up a booth at the Kingdom Hall: “JWI’s Thoughts,” that would be one thing, but he doesn’t (you don’t, JWI, right?) Honestly. If he was an apostate I would know it because I wrote the book on apostates and he is not in it. (Yet. It is an ebook, after all, which has already been updated and no doubt will be updated again) Remember, ALL of us are apostate if you stretch the word too far, for Bethel clearly prefers we abstain from sites of off the grid spiritualality and yet here we are.

All you have to do to be a power player here is to hang around This is a commercial site, after all The only one who has ever been deleted is Allen, (as far as I know) which both JWI and I tried to prevent/undo. And he DID get abusive at times, which is a little different than obnoxious. Many here are obnoxious with no penalty whatsoever. That’s okay. But abusive is not. Even I was once penalized for being abusive. (for beating up on apostates, to a FAR greater degree than you.) I have preserved the experience, with embellishments, in the introduction of TrueTom vs the Apostates. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/917311 Butler is right. I shamelessly self promote (but it is for the best) None of these have that power. The ones that do, @admin and @The Librarian (that old hen) would not want you erased. You contribute to eyeballs on this forum, and that drives traffic, which drives money in the form of advertising. This is a commercial site. The worst you can do from their point of view is to disappear. JWI has been given minor clerical powers. They are mostly so that he can straighten out the messes that his posts mak in the form of launching tangents. The Librarian is a Witness, I would call her an ‘avante gard’ one, which to some means she is not. Admin is not a Witness and is ambivalent in how he feels towards them. Certain posts of his have not been encouraging, but he stays on his side of the fence. Business, you understand. You have made your point well. Possibly I may mention it again, but I have no plans to bring it up again. An ‘agree to disagree’ thing, and yours is undeniably the majority view among our people. Perhaps it must be that way. I will be with you as I am with him. In the words of the great American forefather, ‘I may not agree with what you say, but I will argue mildly for your right to say it!!’ That being said, that being said.

The post itself explains those things. if you don’t mind, I’ll pass, John. Many others have explained these things for you. I haven’t seen any of them make an inch of progress.

I did explain. All you had to do was read the next sentence.

I swear that that the fate of Roger Chillingsworth looms ahead for some of the most virulent haters, and it must make some of them very uncomfortable: Chillingworth cries out, “Thou hast escaped me!” Left with no object for his malice, Chillingworth wastes away and dies within a year of the minister’s passing, It is no surprise that Chillingworth dies, because the “leech’s” source of vitality has been removed. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/scarlet/section13/

That’s a good way to put it. I like it. If you cut people absolutely no slack, you almost push them out. We do cut people slack in most areas. For example, if we cut them no slack on ‘loving violence,’ we would REALLY clamp down on those watching sports like American football, which has been PROVEN to drastically curtail life. (See the movie ‘Concussion’) But we don’t. We allow for the fact that all have missed the mark. This should not be the one area in which we cut people ABSOLUTELY NO SLACK. JWI spouts off on ‘the way things ought to be.’ So what? He has made it clear many times that he recognizes that there must be headship and that he acqiesces to it. He has picked some obscure backwater channel presided over by some 4th-rate school Liberian who really doesn’t like kids and who is counting the days till her retirement, easing her days with wine, while the children play mean tricks on her, lowering a cat from the ceiling that will first latch onto and remove her toupee like in Tom Sawyer, to pour out how he really feels for the sake of his ‘conscience.’ Let him. If he is a windbag, let that be his vice—probably he is not hung up on violent football. Challenge him on points if you like. I have done so, but every time he does, he defends his point so well that I have learned not to do it. I mean, what am I going to say—that his experiences are not his? He will agree in a heartbeat that what he says is subjective. Plus, he makes his posts so long that people skip over them, unless they are absolutely fixated on the points he raises, and if they are, they may as well get data from him, rather than from people who decidedly think ill of the JW cause and will make up falsehood. No, Felix, it is not that your point is invalid, but there are bigger fish to fry. Opposers say ALMOST TO THE PERSON that Jehovah’s Witnesses are ‘controlling’ and MANY say they were driven away on that account. You (forgive my bluntness) are here a case in point, striving very hard to ‘control’ him (with good motive—don’t misunderstand). Of course, it is in the nature of the truth that there is going to be authority, but in light of ALL opposers saying it and MANY friends conceding that it can at times be smothering, it pays to give thought to not being unnecessarily that way. My blog and book experience has led me to think of other areas where change may one day come. Elsewhere I wrote: It may be unavoidable, but the scriptural counsel to avoid apostates come what may has a serious downside. If a youngster of ours succumbs to the oldest trap of human nature- going somewhere out of curiosity because he has been advised not to, and he stumbles, he finds himself totally unsupported because we don’t know what is there ourselves. All we can say is that he shouldn’t go there, which opposers spin as proof that he should stay in order to escape from being “controlled.” I don’t know the answer, but it would be nice if there was one.

When was it ever anything else? From my point of view, that is almost the sole purpose of this site. Come, come, we must not squabble. We have the same goal, even if we go about it in different ways. I will allow that I am probably too flippant, and post in that spirit what you take seriously. For example, I did a quick & fictional snippet of Fred. That is my bad, and I apologize. JWI deals with egghead stuff that I only skim. Things dealing with dates are not my thing. These are not the ‘motivating’ things that cause people to develop a bad heart. Rather, if some have already developed a bad heart, they latch onto the fact that people ‘at the top’ disagree (Duh) and make maximum hay out of it. Or they find that there has been much hashing out over what eventually comes out as a unified whole, and they bail on that account. The one of good heart sees such disagreement & says ‘Ah, well, they’ll figure it out,’ and carries on without undo fuss. Since we have been wrong many times before, it seems a little foolish to insist that it will never happen again. ‘If they are on the wrong side of this or that bit of prophesy, they’ll figure it out and get on the right side,’ says the one of good heart. No. I don’t care about such things. Why some do I’ll never know, but it’s a good thing that they do. Everyone has a gift. I like to focus on what I think is more relevant - the qualities attributed to ‘apostates’ in Jude and 2Peter—an insistence on self-determination, and a disdain for authority. I am in my element when I get to kick back at those who would capitalize on genuine tragedies, such as CSA, to seek to destroy the ones preaching the good news. With a major ‘reform,’ making clear that there is absolutely no reproach in reporting vile things to the authorities, some of the most virulent of our critics lose something huge to them - a little like ‘what is Tom Brady going to do with himself after he retires?’ Some face withering away like Roger Chillingsworth. They almost have no choice but to find some pissy little thing that could conceivably allow something bad to yet happen and harp on that to the cows come home. Since I don’t care about the aspects of theocratic life that you do, I have probably overstepped in some places and drawn your reproof. I apologize. One of the prime things Jehovah hates is anyone spreading contentions among brothers. I won’t do it. When I once ‘liked’ a post of Captain Zipzeronada, a brother who was solid but rigid was stumbled. I apologized to him and didn’t do it again for the longest time - until the old pork chop said something to reveal that beneath his breathtaking pig-headedness, he was likable in some respects and I couldn’t resist. Our people do not typically do well online. They take shots at each other for not toeing the line in this or that aspect of service. Or they say: “This is what Jehovah has said:” to people who don’t necessarily care what he has said. They look ridiculous as they try to make the Internet behave like the congregation. As much as I appreciate your goal, if you told your circuit overseer that you were having a hard time purifying the Internet, what do you think he would say? You have to cut brothers some slack online. If they shouldn’t be here to say it, you shouldn’t be here to hear it. You know very well that Bethel isn’t thrilled about any of us being here.

My ultimate goal is to drive the gin-soaked Librarian into insolvency, the old hen.

“The Witness organization cannot be expected to defend itself on social media, if on any media. It takes the scriptural view of Jesus at Matthew 11, noting that grumblers slam him no matter what he does, before finally saying, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ “wisdom is proved righteous by its works.” It is like David who kept mum as ‘all day long they muttered against him.’ ‘It is like the plowman who knows that if you look behind while plowing, the furrows get all flaky.’ They don’t do it. The common view of opposers is that the Witness headship is telling members what to do, while it cynically manipulates all from above. That view is wrong. They practice what they preach and they do it themselves. The organization headship cites Hebrews 13:7 about ‘imitating the faith of those who are taking the lead among you.’ They don’t go on social media at all. They prefer a less raucous channel, and content themselves with news releases at the website that inform but do not kick back at the critics. “It is scriptural. It is proper. But there is a downside. By staying mum on specifics, essentially our enemies get to define us to the news media who refer to a cover statement about “abhorring child abuse” as “boiler-plate” and then go to former members who will eagerly fill their ears with accounts that we could counter by adding context but don’t. What’s a reporter to do? He goes to who fills his ears. “It will fall upon the Witness journalist to do it, if it is to be done, and there aren’t many of them. If fourteen years of blogging, not shying from controversial things, does not qualify me to take a shot at it, what does? If you are in a spiritual paradise, or even a vacation paradise, you do not have to concern yourself with removing the trash. It may be even dangerous to do so, because there is broken glass and used syringes. It’s not for everyone, and maybe for no one. But I thought I’d give it a go, and I at last got under this fellow’s skin, the big baby.” ...  If it was up to me, there would be an ‘Opposer Servant’ in each circuit. He would say: ‘Look, follow Matthew 11 if you can. But if you can’t, if you simply must have a specific reply to the negative publicity that is becoming frequent fare for mainstream news outlets, here is training on how to deal with them.’ Regarding my book itself, I repeated the thought: “The book is not recommended to all Witnesses. Read it if you want a specific reply to charges laid against the faith. For those able to focus upon forward motion only, the book is not recommended. For those not, it is. The line that invariably gets the largest applause at Regional Conventions of Jehovah’s Witnesses is: “Would you like to send your greetings to the brothers in Bethel [headquarters]?” The hard work and integrity of these ones is appreciated by all. So not everyone will feel the need to check out every derogatory report.”

TTH: Hopefully that has not happened. TTH: Without weighing in on whether he is bad association or not, he is one of the very few who offered constructive criticism of CSA matters. Whether he should have done so on this forum is a matter for others to haggle over, but the fact is that he did and I benefited from it. For example, the Philadelphia.com slimed JWs with a front page lead that must have been seen by everyone in the city and well beyond. It was too much for me. I subsequently declared war on this sort of thing. I submitted a reply to them. This was a big deal for me, to reply at length to a prominent source and tell them they owed it to their readers to publish my reply as prominently as they published the slam. There was a chance that they would do so. I didn’t want to screw it up. I ran it by JWI privately, knowing he has Bethel experience, he reasons well, and he wants to see CSA matters resolved WITHOUT burning Bethel to the ground. (the solution of the opposers) He did not disappoint me. He made valuable suggestions, most of which I accepted. What follows is what I sent to the Philly source, followed by the refined version that is an early chapter of TTvtAp. https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2018/07/an-open-letter-to-the-philadelphia-inquirer-because-they-did-not-acknowlege-much-less-print-the-sent.html https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/01/four-incendiary-articles.html  So he helped me. A lot. I don’t care if he is bad association or not. If I was worried about bad association, I would not be here. Nor would you.

TTH: I am probably one of the few here who has not read Ray’s book. I might someday but have no immediate plans. Such things are just red herrings to me, a distraction. I mean, if my books were about personalities, I would go there. But they’re not. My books are what of Jehovah’s Witnesses as a people have done, not so much the individuals in it. I tell a lot of stories, but internal ‘power struggles,’ if they are that, do not interest me.