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TrueTomHarley

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Everything posted by TrueTomHarley

  1. Ah. There it is on Amazon. They’ve made a Kindle version of it which is not too dear. Purchased. To be sure, it’s more than I get for my books, but then I’ve never been through the Holocaust.
  2. I’m on that one, too, if I can find it, and if its not too much an arm and a leg as i suspect it might be.
  3. Oh yeah? Well, I can out-compliment you, any day. I like the handle, ‘Many Miles’ for its suggestion of ‘seen it all, not wound up too tight, and will help if I can.’ The profile photo is the coup de grace, homespun, simple, unassuming, nothing to be intimidated by. You might be a deposed Enron executive, for all I know, but the persona you have selected is very appealing.
  4. So here I am plowing through some Great Courses professor lecturing on the great questions of philosophy and I’m getting madder and madder because it just seems a primer for atheism. I don’t recall philosophy historically being on such a mission. Imagine being a student in this fellow’s class, where you have to spit back some variation of what he told you, otherwise you get a failing grade. The litmus test for the problem of evil, he says, is the Holocaust. He cites some scrawling on a barracks wall from a prisoner who soon thereafter died to the effect that if he meets God in the afterlife, God will have to beg his forgiveness. It’s not hard to empathize. Sometimes when your back is up against the wall and you’ve got nothing to lose you take a few shots. Nonetheless, there were hundreds of Jehovah’s Witnesses also consigned to the camps. They were unique among the prisoners—actual martyrs rather than victims—in that they alone had the power to write their ticket out. All they need do is renounce their faith and comply with the war effort. Only a handful complied. In the context of reviewing Carl Jung’s ‘Answer to Job,’ written in the early 50s, I explored the topic in a certain blog post, quoting first a Watchtower article, then adding my own comments: “From the Watchtower of 2/1/92: 'In concentration camps, the Witnesses were identified by small purple triangles on their sleeves and were singled out for special brutality. Did this break them? Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim noted that they “not only showed unusual heights of human dignity and moral behavior, but seemed protected against the same camp experience that soon destroyed persons considered very well integrated by my psychoanalytic friends and myself.”' “Why didn't the well-integrated psychoanalytic-approved prisoners hold up? Probably because they read too much Jung and not enough Watchtower!! Not Jehovah's Witnesses! They weren't hamstrung by having been nourished on Jungian theology. Job meant something to them. It wasn't there simply to generate wordy theories and earn university degrees. A correct appreciation of it afforded them power, and enabled them to bear up under the greatest evil of our time, a mass evil entirely analogous to the trials of Job! They applied the book! And in doing so, they proved the book's premise: man can maintain integrity to God under the most severe provocation. Indeed, some are on record as saying they would not have traded the experience for anything, since it afforded them just that opportunity. (another fact I find staggering)” https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2011/02/carl-jung-job-and-the-holocaust.html
  5. It’s just an exercise in writing, not to be taken too seriously. Sort of like what Schroeder said about that Watchtower. You might like this one better, also an exercise in writing: She was an impish little thing, trying to make me change for my burger and fries. But a nickel in the tray kept evading her gloved finger. “Look how I can’t pull out this nickel,” she mused, “it just keeps slipping away.” Suddenly she looked up brightly, and with wisdom far beyond her years - or was it that of a child? – she said “Oh, well. I forgive myself!” Yes. That permeates everything you do. It’s a very desirable quality.
  6. I far prefer the term ‘Golden Rule’ to ‘Human Rights’ as the former preserves all that is noble about human rights, while discarding all that is pretentious. Our own bodies do not respect our ‘human rights,’ crapping out on us when we need them the most and finally shutting down altogether. Moreover, it really seems that if they are ‘rights’ you ought to be able to do something about it when they are violated. Instead, rights are all-but violated with impunity today. We are reduced to saying people ought ‘take responsibilty’ and be ‘held accountable,’ neither of which happens with any reliability. Utter such lofty terms all you want; not much changes. This years favorite word: ‘Unacceptable’ Use in a paragraph: They finally hung that slippery politician that everyone knew should be hung. ‘Any last words?’ they asked him on the scaffold. ‘This is unacceptable!’ he cried, as the trap door swung open and the rope snapped taut. Unacceptable or not, off he went, every bit as much as if it was acceptable.
  7. It is a little like the signs we saw posted repeatedly at the Columbus Zoo reptile house. ”How do you know if an animal is venomous?” they say, and then answer: “If it bites you and you get sick, then the animal is venomous.” Pretty much the same answer applies here, I think. “How do you know if God has the right to rule? If Armegeddon comes, and you’re not around afterward, then he has the right to rule.”
  8. It is good and truthful, but not all of the book is satisfactory. I’ll put it in my next one, perhaps—which may be an exploration of ‘theodicy’ (why bad things happen). Does @Many Milesor anyone else know the origin of our ‘universal court case’ theodicy? I’d love to track that one down. @JW Insider once put me on the track of a Great Courses university professor exploring the subject and it was well-nigh insufferable. Not that I won’t have to plow through it again if I proceed, but I am reminded of a newly discovered and instantly favorite G K Chesterton quote: “The first effect of not believing in God is that you lose your common sense." I have no idea what you are talking about. Why be so hard on yourself? It’s like when a car group of friends drove near a certain industrial complex. Surrounding blocks had been snatched up for parking, but here and there were some stalwarts who hadn’t sold their properties. Thus, there were a few rickety houses completely surrounded by blacktop. “These people are so stubborn!” Sam (who had worked there) grumbled. “The company needs that property. They pay good money for it.” He reflected a few seconds, then said, “I’m stubborn—but these people are more stubborn!” Now, you know how brothers like to razz each other. Instantly, it started. “No! You, Sam—stubborn?! Don’t be so hard on yourself! How could you say that??!! Not you!” Sam was probably the most stubborn person to have ever walked the planet.
  9. There could never have been a Mission Impossible without him. No, but organizing does seem consistent with giving God a lot rather than giving him a little It may be that as long as you don’t work to sabarolf organization, as though a freedom fighter, you’re okay—even as you stand apart from it yourself. Or it may not be okay. I’ll err on the side of sticking with what my experience tells me has worked to a reasonably fine degree, given that ‘we have this treasure in earthen vessels.’ I remember giving that talk on ‘Unified or Uniform,’ contrasting the unity of the earthly organization with the uniformity often demanding by nations, which goes so far as to stuff people into actual uniforms. Yeah—I always figured it was something like that. You said it well: It makes a difference, doesn’t it? It’s a little bit like coming back from the dead when you finally get back on your feet. I put the following in ‘No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash,’ a book I took down pending rewrite that I haven’t gotten around to, so now it is nowhere: “After studying one book seemingly written for no other purpose other than to harp on dress and grooming and harangue about field service, the conductor said to me: “Tom, why don’t you comment? You know all these answers.” It was a turning point. He was right. I did know them all. It was time to stop sulking. From the circuit overseer on down, they had stirred up major chaos in the family. They had been heavy-handed and clumsy - but never malicious. And it had never been Jehovah. I had read of ill-goings-on in the first-century record. Congregations described in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 were veritable basket cases, some of them, but that did not mean that they were not congregations. Eventually things smooth out. Eventually 1 Timothy 5:24 comes to pass: “The sins of some men are publicly known, leading directly to judgment, but those of other men will become evident later.” “Later” may take its sweet time in rolling around but it always does roll around. Should I stumble when it becomes my turn? I’d read whiner after whiner carrying on about some personal affront or other on the Internet. Was I going to be one of them? . . . Recovery didn’t happen overnight, for I have a PhD in grumbling. Indeed, I was so good at it that few noticed I grumbled, for I had never left the library – I had only strayed from the same page. Now it was time to get on the same paragraph. Was that book truly a dog? They’re not all dazzling flashes of light, you know, for the treasure is contained in earthen vessels. Or was it the conductor? Or was it me? No matter. If life throws you for a loop, you thank God for the discipline and move on. “For those whom Jehovah loves he disciplines, in fact, he scourges everyone whom he receives as a son,” the Bible says Tell me about it. “Half of those at Bethel are here to test the other half,” the old-timers said. Yeah – tell me about that, too.” Everyone has a mid-life crisis or two, during which they have to reassess. It doesn’t even matter if it is a servant of God we’re speaking of. Everyone has a mid-life crisis.
  10. It took a while for me to realize that, among some branches of Christians, there is virtue in ‘moving beyond’ the Bible. Most Witnesses will assume that if they can demonstrate they are adhering to the Bible, they’re golden. Those other church people will hang their heads sheepishly. Or they will argue that something is not translated accurately, or interpreted accurately, or that it applied to a specific and temporary situation. Instead, ‘progressive’ Christians take pride in moving beyond the Bible. It is not a misunderstanding for them. It is deliberate. They will even look upon you pityingly for still practicing ‘primitive’ Christianity, as though a spiritual Neanderthal who should have evolved with the times, but hasn’t. The expression ‘primitive Christianity’—‘scholars’ will say that Jehovah's Witnesses practice it. We take it as a compliment, but it is actually an insult. It may not be intended as an insult, but the terminology itself is coined by those who view matters that way. In any other context, would you be flattered by being described as ‘primitive?’ Moreover, who would ever do it other than someone thoroughly steeped in evolution? Their philosophical view spill over into everything else. Humans evolved from the caveman. So should you, in their view. Grow up from your ‘caveman’ religion. Anyone seeking to adhere to the Bible as written will be described today as a ‘cult.’ This is certainly true of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but it is also true of ‘fundamentalist’ faiths which, in their own eyes, at least, are also adhering to the Bible. The branches of Christianity that are progressive, that ‘keep up’ with the times, that do not make a fuss about the morality it deems outdated, is never described that way. The criteria for cult classification used to be: if you fell under the spell of a charismatic leader, withdrew from society, and began doing strange things, you just might be a member of a cult. By this definition, JWs are not a cult. Their leaders are anything but charismatic—some are an acquired taste to listen to. They don’t withdraw from life, but continue in work, school, and the greater community. Do they do ‘strange things?’ It’s in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, but there was a time when speaking about one’s faith was not considered overly strange. They are not a cult by the old standard. By the new one, the BITE one that revolves around various forms of ‘undue influence,’ they are—but so is the Bible, since those forms of ‘influence’ are no more than attempts to carry out what was clearly written as policy for the first-century congregation. The real question is, ‘Is it such a horrid thing to be in such a ‘cult’ if that is exactly what the Bible advises? Or is it more horrid to insist upon ‘freedom of mind’ to the nth degree, as is typical today in the West? Look at the world such ‘freedom of mind’ has collectively produced—it can be argued that such ‘freedom’ does not serve humanity well. Witnesses will say that we need some ‘authority’ that is more than collective popular opinion, and so they put themselves where such authority exists. What we need is authority that reflects godly thinking and not just evolving human wisdom. Plainly, there will be some flaws in such authority, since everything humans touch is flawed. ‘We have this treasure [of the ministry] in earthen vessels [us—with all our imperfections] the NT writer advises. But when Christians cast off such authority in favor of something, say, more democratic in nature, they presently become almost indistinguishable from the evolving and declining standards of the greater world. Students of the 60s taunted police by calling them PIGS, doubling down when they saw it got under their skin. In time, one innovative officer responded with: PIGS—Pride, Integrity, Guts, Service. Why not do the same with CULT when applied to Jehovah’s Witnesses. CULT—Courage, Unity, Love, Truth. Let persons insist upon their ‘freedom of mind.’ They end up missing the greatest freedom of all: freedom from sin and its resulting death. The latest manifestation of that ‘freedom of mind’ obsession? An article about the decreasing popularity of religion (any religion, not just JW) among the young. “They. Really. Don’t. Like. Organized. Religion.” it states. That sentence (if it is one) says it all. I know the following in symbolic, but as symbolism goes, it doesn’t get any better. Todays ‘freedom of mind’ people are so fiercely independent they can’t even stand for words to be organized properly, lest one unduly influence another. You organize to get things done. If you don’t care about getting things done, you don’t organize. To spread the news of God’s Kingdom worldwide in a way that does not quickly devolve into a quagmire of individual opinion seems to Jehovah’s Witnesses a project worth organizing for. So they do. And they put up with how in any organization, ‘you can’t always get what you want’ even as they at the same time reap the benefits of organization.
  11. Just to show @Thinkingthat we are thoroughly attuned to ‘down under,’ here are some pictures we took at the Columbus Zoo: No. He is probably more like this guy:
  12. To the extent that is true it would appear that I am the blockhead.
  13. Well—had you put it that way in the first place . . .
  14. “What do you say, you fornicating punk? Ya feeling lucky today?”
  15. You blockhead. I mean, Duh, if anyone discards belief in God they necessarily focus on only the inconveniences of being Christian in the present system, which no Witness would ever deny there are some, but they are compensated by realities to come. If there really is a God, and if there really will be a new system in which He rules unopposed, then he will enforce his own standards. Just like during that circuit assembly in the early 70’s in which two resurrected ones were bellyaching over everything under the sun, impervious to the correction that the loving elders (who weren’t packing guns) were pouring on like syrup, then the lights went out, there was a loud zap and a flash from heaven, and they were gone! Oh, yeah—a ‘dramatization’ it was.
  16. Well, there’s plenty in Australia worth fighting for, like this guy: Be honest. Doesn’t this remind you of Pudgy awakening from a nap? I dunno. I think of that verse where Jesus said God hides things from the wise and intellectual, while revealing them to babes. Can a babe understand the above? I’m not sure I can myself.
  17. Within the Christian tradition, there is nothing inconsistent about these two statements. Except for a few scattered early mentions—no more than mentions—in early history, there is no place in which one can learn of Christianity but the Bible. The ‘lies’ and ‘false teachings’ of the vast bulk of Christendom can immediately be identified as such. That the ‘soul’ is mortal and dies when the person dies, that with a single exception, ‘hell’ come from one of three original language words, none of which mean eternal suffering. That Jesus’s followers should be ‘no part of the world,’ whereas most Christian churches are fully part of the world—that God is not one-in-three persons, that the grand overall theme of the Bible is not, ‘be good, so you will go to heaven when you die,’—these teachings can be instantly identified by scripture as ‘false.’ Such ‘false’ religious teaching unfailingly paint those who espouse them into outrageous moral corners—such as ‘comforting’ bereaved parents that the reason their baby died was that God needed another angel in his garden, which is why he picked the very best—your child. Most of the main teachings of churches are not found in the Bible. It is the attempt to read them in that causes persons to throw up their hands in frustration and even disgust. Deprived of nourishment, flooded with junk spiritual food, inquiring minds are left to scavenge elsewhere. Some settle for atheism, some for agnosticism, some settle on churches that pay scant attention to biblical things in favor of a social gospel, even a political one. So, they are not just lies. They are harmful lies. They are lies that are near-universal in the church world. The GB has mounted a successful sustained, and worldwide assault on them. To ignore this and instead flail away about mistakes they may or may not have made is astoundingly small-minded to me.
  18. It is well not to describe religous interpretations as ‘lies’ when they cannot immediately be identified as such. With your patience—and you are certainly a patient and tenacious fellow—let me try to develop a point: Congregations are lately covering the Book of Job. Here, Job is giving his testimony: “Let God weigh me with accurate scales; Then he will recognize my integrity.” (Job 31:6) His life course is one of integrity toward God. If it was not, downfall would be justified, he believes, but it has been “If my footsteps deviate from the way Or my heart has followed after my eyes Or my hands have been defiled, … If my heart has been enticed by a woman And I have lain in wait at my neighbor’s door, … If I denied justice to my male or female servants When they had a complaint against me, … If I refused to give the poor what they desired Or saddened the eyes of the widow; If I ate my portion of food alone Without sharing it with the orphans;… If I saw anyone perishing for lack of clothing Or a poor man with nothing to cover himself; … If I shook my fist against the orphan When he needed my assistance in the city gate; … If I put my confidence in gold Or said to fine gold, ‘You are my security!’ If I found my joy in my great wealth Because of the many possessions I acquired;” (31: 7-25) All those things would be bad, meriting God’s disfavor, he believes, but he never did any of them! “Have I ever rejoiced over the destruction of my enemy Or gloated because evil befell him? I never allowed my mouth to sin. . . Have the men of my tent not said, ‘Who can find anyone who has not been satisfied with his food?’ No stranger had to spend the night outside; I opened my doors to the traveler. Have I ever tried to cover over my transgressions, like other men, By hiding my error in the pocket of my garment?” Have I been in fear of the reaction of the multitude, Or have I been terrified by the contempt of other families, Making me silent and afraid to go outside?” (29-34) No, his life is not characterized by any of those things. It is his testimony. He has always been upright. He’s ready to sign it: “I would sign my name to what I have said.” (31:35) It is all peremptorily denied by his three interrogators: Eliphaz: Is [your suffering] not because your own wickedness is so great And there is no end to your errors? For you seize a pledge from your brothers for no reason, And you strip people of their garments, leaving them naked. You do not give the tired one a drink of water, And you hold back food from the hungry. The land belongs to the powerful man, And the favored one dwells in it. But you sent away widows empty-handed, And you crushed the arms of fatherless children. That is why you are surrounded by traps, And sudden terrors frighten you; (Job 22:5-10) Why does he reject Job’s testimony, instead charging just the opposite? Because it conflicts with his own ‘theology:’ “What I have seen,” Eliphaz says previously, “is that those who plow what is harmful And those who sow trouble will reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, And through a blast of his anger they come to an end. . . . Even the teeth of strong lions are broken.” (Job 4:8-10) His preformed—faulty, as it turns out—theology tells him Job must have been ‘plowing what is harmful’ for him to be suffering now. Job, who otherwise might have agreed with that theology, undergoes the worst of spiritual crises to accompany his crisis on all other fronts, because he knows he has not been ‘plowing what is harmful’—quite the contrary. So he works out his angst by blaming God for being both cruel and unfair. This further inflames Eliphaz and crew, already riled that Job is resisting their ‘correction.’ Now they read false positive for apostasy and figure they must attack Job for that reason, too. Presently they are all but hurling epithets at the poor fellow. Before chalking up the above to the oddities of religious people (or applying them to Witness HQ), reflect that all of society is that way. If you have benefited from acupuncture, say, and want to tell the world about it, you will find yourself derided among the materialist crowd for advocating ‘pseudoscience.’ What about your own beneficial experience, you will ask. ‘It will be attributed to ‘anecdotal evidence,’ inherently unreliable. It doesn’t matter how many like testimonies you can gather; it will all be attributed to ‘anecdotal evidence’ by those whose scientific ‘theology’ admits to no other view—they can’t replicate your experience in their test tubes, so they assume you are either deluded or lying. Mechanisms may differ, but the overall pattern is no different than Job’s ‘anecdotal evidence’ rejected by those of a different theology. You can go along with the airy dismissal of ‘anecdotal evidence.’ Then one day you find it is your evidence they are trying to dismiss and you wonder how people can be so high-handed and stubborn.
  19. I suspect—and it may be that the ‘air’ of the day determines it, and it may afterward be subject to reinterpretation—that ‘everyone knows’ certain legalese is just boilerplate crap and other legalese actually means something.
  20. “not sure what you read as a typo” Maybe the penman had a close relationship with Jesus.
  21. Now I see where that Mission Impossible line came from.
  22. Hadn’t thought of that. Even if Aaron had caught Moses’ flash of temper, he might have thought, ‘I owe him one.’
  23. It seems like if we are going to do overstepping headship, we should criticize Aaron for not going all the way and saying to God, ‘Oh, come on! After all he’s done? It was just a little loss of temper, and goodness knows, they had it coming!’ That is the sentiment most of us have to come to grips with upon reading the account. Aaron was human. Would he not have had to come to grips with it too? The trouble with overstepping headship is that people don’t have the judgment to know when to do it. For every ‘proper’ time they do it, there are 5 improper times.
  24. I must be reading this wrong, but it seems to me the notion ought to fill you with dismay. Had you succeeded, you would have negated God’s means to save humanity. That’s a pretty steep price to pay just to get some licks in. Oh. Wait. My bad. You’re probably not speaking of success in the sense of stopping Jesus arrest. You’re speaking of outdoing the twelve and not cutting loose and run in his moment of trial. Well, yes, that might be a good thing to aspire to. Not so sure the twelve could be outdone, though. Sort of like all this commentary on what Aaron should have done if he just had a little backbone.
  25. Click and Clack, auto mechanics who had a schtick on radio, used to say the grates on the back were for keeping your hands warm as you were pushing it. (I do like the price, though)
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