TrueTomHarley

There is another application of Matthew 20:1-15 - 'pay them each a denarious' - that has nothing to do with time spent in the Christain way, which I like as much, or even better. It is: In any circumstance of life, you cut the best deal that you can and then you look ahead to the next deal You DO NOT look around, envious, at someone who may have gotten a better deal. Think of how much heartburn THAT would solve if we managed to internalize it. Neither do you gripe, like the initial vineyard workers, that the 'master' was unfair. Life will be fair in the new system. It is not typically so today. Maybe it is there in print somewhere. I haven't come across it. No matter. It is enough to stay within 'the pattern of healthful words' It is not necessary to but repeat the healthful words oneself.

Wasn't that Janet Joplin's? Did Joanie do it, too? or even write it for her? Al Capp used to call her "Phony Joanie."

I think the exhange between master and 11th hour people serves as an exhortation to preach, even stepping it up wherever possible. 'Get out there and let them know they are hired. They won't know it otherwise.'

If we accept the usual take that Matthew 20:1-15, about paying all workers a denarius, is about time spent in the Christian congregation and those arriving to it late have the same reward as those early, with its object lesson: 'don't gripe about it,' then how serious are we to take the questions within the parable? Do they mean anything or do they just flesh out the story? I'll opt for the former. The master's question smacks of a reproof: "Why have you been standing here all day unemployed?" Yet he accepts the laggards' answer: "Because nobody has hired us" and sends them also into the vineyard. Why shouldn't that be applied to the preaching work? At first glance, the master is taken aback that there yet are, at such a late date, so many just hanging around unemployed. But their answer is unassailable - nobody 'hired' them. It's not an exhortation to be active in the ministry and not to write off people as unresponsive? The master apparently agrees that it is just a matter of their not yet being reached.

It must also be remembered that , following a thorough discussion of spiritual food, it always becomes a matter of what they ate.

Essentially, zeroing in on the 1006 from the group whose overall abuse-prevention record is 10 times better than the general population is securing the barn door after the cows have fled. It was their job. It is not a worthless endeavor. Witnesses will learn from it themselves. But it pales in insignificance next to securing other barn doors so that their cows do not flee.

You would almost think from the way some carry on here, that a case of child sexual abuse "properly handled" means it did not happen. It is like the team of grief counselors called in after a school shooting. Of course, it is nice that they are called in. But it would have been even nicer had the school shooting not taken place in the first place. Therefore the transcending lesson to take away from this hearing is not the 1006 abuse victims whose cases were not handled properly in the eyes of Australian authorities. It is the 37,000 cases of abuse nationwide (in a single year) that would not have happened were greater society able to imitate the record of Jehovah's Witnesses.

He did, @Space Merchant You will have to back off on this one. As soon as the janitor would unlock the doors each morning, he was there with an armload of pamphlets, saving seats for his friends, just like Witnesses do at the Regional. There was a lot of boring stuff that had nothing to do with Witnesses and he slept through all that, but he came to when they got to the good part.

Yes, because when you discuss groups of people digitally or on paper, they become numbers. Yes, they are concerned with the smaller picture, not the greater overall one. I acknowledged that. Since there are no figures at all from any other denomination, we can conclude that their policies of child sexual abuse is defined by Sergeant Shultz: "I know nothiiinnnggggg!"

Let us look at this another way and appreciate what 'proactive' really is: 17 JW abuse incidents in the 17 months under consideration is one per month. Let us therefore call it 12, so as to equalize time periods with the other numbers considered. We have: 12 abuse incidents were reported among the 67,418 Witnesses in Australia during the same one-year time period that 41,621 abuse incidents were reported among the entire Australian population of 23, 968, 973. If greater Australia experienced child sexual abuse in the same proportion that Jehovah's Witnesses did, it would have reported 4,266 incidences, not 41, 621. (Do the math, or find somebody who can) That means there are 37,355 annual incidences of child sexual abuse that would not have occurred had the entire country been Jehovah's Witnesses. The ARC focused on 1006 JW reports of abuse over a 60 year period. This was their job and they acted honorably. They were not able to look at any other denominations because, for whatever reason, none of them tracked abuse among their parishioners. The other 55 case studies the ARC examined are all institutions of some sort. They could not be expected to focus on the 37,355 reports in one year. That was not their job. They focused on the 1006 reports over 60 years, which was their job. However, if they were truly proactive, they would have focused on the 37,355 preventable abuses. They would have recommended that all persons in Australia become Jehovah's Witnesses. This is because, expressed mathematically, we see that 37,355 > 1006 It is even more lop-sided than that because the 37,355 is in a single year, and the 1006 is over 60 years. How's that for proactive?

You could have just left it there. The spotlight is only on them because they were proactive enough to look into something everyone else ran away from. Other faiths did not know or want to know whether members actually applied Bible teachings or not. Through neglect of what turns out to be a most serious problem, they produced no record for the ARC or anyone else to hold hearings on. The other case studies the ARC investigated (there were 57 altogether) were social or govenment institutions or schools, who tracked abuse incidents. Other religions did not touch such things. The finding that should be spotlighted, though it was not because its mission was something else, is that children appear to be 10 times safer in the Witness community than in the general Austrailain popluation.

Because the Watchtower did what no one else was proactive enough to do. With an eye to keeping clean as a congregation before God's eyes - as clean as possible - which the Bible obligates Christians to do, they chose to look into reports of abuse, and not hide their heads in the sand, as did everyone else. That is why there is this list of 1006 over 60 years that you and Rook have focused on. Everyone else (except for clergy) have had crimes of child sexual abuse discovered independently by authorities, and no connection is ever made with whatever religion they belong to.

The home of the typical forum participant here: TrueTom's modest abode:

sigh ... If you only did one tenth as much to support the Christian leadership that has proven 10 times more effective in preventing child abuse, as you do your favorite politician.

They clearly do deserve it if their leadership oversees a 90% decrease over the child sexual abuse of the general Australian population.

So now you seem to be walking back on your acknowledgement that the JW organization is 10 times more successfull in preventing child abuse than the general Australian population. Or are you? I am not sure what you are doing. It may be you just gag at the thought of saying anything good about them, though they have clearly earned it. However, to draw an analogy that I think is parallel: Unilke Jehovah's Witnesses, who are politically neutral, or at the very least, keep their politics to themself, you wear yours on your sleeve. You have made it very clear who you regard as the better political leader, even calling HRC the Devil. Trump, in your eyes, is (at least) 10 times better in leadership than Hillary. Therefore, I would expect you to be maligning and castigating him, as you do here with the ones whose record is 10 times better. Don't let anyone give him any credit for anything. Blast him away. Say something nasty about past business dealings, or comments to Billy Bush. Don't let them tell you there is nothing to Russian collusion. Dig into it! You do not hesitate to do it and more with Christian leadership. Do it with the political leader you favor.

It [brazenness] means (among other synonyms): audaciousness, cheekiness, discoutesy, disrespect, effrontery, impertinence, insolence, rudeness, I can see where you might have a problem with it. http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/brazenness

Yes, I understand this. Pursue this point if you wish, but also point out, at least in a footnote, that the ones you are castigating are 10 times more successful in preventing child sexual abuse in the first place than the general Australian population.

Since this is the case, you might rethink how you approach this topic. Many of your posts would indicate - to the casual reader, which is what most of us are - that JW land should be re-labeled "Child Molesters R Us." But now you have agreed with my premise and concluson, which essentially is that children are 10 times safer in the JW community than anywhere else. Can it really be that this is despite the headship of the present human arrangement? It is they who put the diet of spiritual teachings together through print, media, and meetings. Okay, if you somehow feel they are still messing up everything, then you could assert that children would be 15 times safer in the JW community than without them. But that is the factor that you should always highlight, for that is the factor with the most implications. After all, were all Australia able to duplicate the success of Jehovah's organization, the country's abuse rate would be 90% lower, and they probably would not have felt a need to assemble a Royal Commission in the first place.

Because it is not, relatively speaking. Study 54 of the report, a follow-up to Study 29, makes possible an apples-to-apples comparison. Study 54 looked at the 17 instances of child abuse from the Witness organization that had been reported in the interim, from August 2015 to January 2017. Nine were historical cases and none involved an elder. All occurred in a familial setting. Of the seventeen, two had refused to report as they were adult survivors and it was their right not to report. The number of Witnesses in all Australia at the time was 67,418. An apples-to-apples comparison becomes possible with a pool size large enough to be significant. Out of a total national Australian population of 23,968,973, The Australian Institute of Family Studies reported 41,622 notifications of child sexual abuse, (2014-2015) and the Commission likely reviewed some of them. Seemingly, the safest place a child could be was in the Jehovah’s Witness community, for proportionately, one would have expected 117 incidents, 100 more than the actual number. (The disparity is even greater, since a 17 month period for the Witnesses is compared to a 12-month period for all Australia) Do the math discover from these figures that a child is ten times safer in the Witness community than in the overall world. What the ARC criticized was procedures for handling abuse cases that have occured. It was not their mission to look at whether, in a given setting, abuse was more or less likely to happen in the first place. Had it been, they would have awarded JWs a Family Glory award, just like Putin did to the Russian Witness family.

Well, now that you put it that way, the work stinks. But you shouldn't put it that way. It is a ridiculous description. 'Brazen' is nebulous whereas 'loose' is crystal clear? You're just beating a familiar dead horse, possibly one that has thrown you.

No argument with this. It might be good to acknowledge this more frequently than is done. Nonetheless, it is a bit like you hire a worker to reroof your house and he paints the house instead. Even though it did need painting, you are not happy. If he had painted in addition to reroofing, you would have been thrilled. But he painted instead of. So it is with preaching good news and charitible works. Preaching always has the priority. See, for example, Matthew 9:35: And Jesus set out on a tour of all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the good news of the Kingdom and curing every sort of disease and every sort of infirmity.

There is only one person in the world that this warning does not have to be given to. (Hmm. a twinge of hesitation as to whether I should even say this, for he does have significant redeeming features. Ah, well - one must go with the online persona one has adopted)

For example, I just read that Billy Graham died today at 99, the grandpa of the TV evangelists. I don't recall any financial abuse with him, and his final circumstances appear to be reasonably modest. When he traveled, it was not via VW Beetle and he didn't clip the Pennysaver, but they conducted operations as would anyone else on tour - I can recall Carlin or someone making fun of his expensive suits, but it is a cheap shot and everyone knows it - even he himself, probably, who was just doing what comedians do.

"Ah, Babylon 4, we have a report of a madman on the WNM forum creating a disturbance. Could you run by there and check it out, please? Careful not to provoke him though. He is the fastest gun in the West - and east, north, and south." "Roger, that, Dick Tracy - I'm on it, after I finish this donut. I'm pretty sure I know who you mean. He's a pretty harmless old pork chop, with stray dogs everywhere, but he sure does make a lot of noise."