TrueTomHarley

1 hour ago, Pudgy said:

I think, MM, your not attending meetings BECAUSE of the blood issue is a rationalism born of an entirely different motivation, but then again, i don’t care.

Sam: "Yeah, that's right! I don't care! I'm not trying to solve puzzles here!"

Dr K: "Well, I am. And I just found a big piece!" Despite denials, he presents to me as a man on a mission.

2 hours ago, Many Miles said:

they can't accept transfusion of donor red cells without losing fellowship of lifetime close friends and family due to the isolating effect of the sister policy of unilaterally disassociating the person.

 Nah. Overstated. If you cave on the issue or decide you can't conscientiously go along with it, you sit in the penalty box for a while until they let you out to resume the game. You do this even if you are firmly convinced the ref made a bad call.  As long as you don't cuss the ref out publicly or visibly offer him eyeglasses, he will let you back in.

"Ouch!! I'm not so sure about that call!" says Sportscaster Paul from the broadcast booth. They're sending Many Miles to the penalty box!! Oh, wow! It won't go well even with his temporary absence--he is one heckuva player, but--gasp! What's this? Many Miles is not heading to the box! He took off his skates, broke his stick, threw them at the ref, and is heading home! 'It is altogether a defeat that he has done this!'"

We overestimate our importance. If it wasn't them providing headship, it would be someone else who would also reveal human foibles. Get in that penalty box with Pudgy; he's there every time you turn around. He even puts himself there before the ref calls a penalty, and thus reminds me of my own daughter long ago, who responded to my wife's scolding  by putting herself in the corner unbidden.

20 hours ago, George88 said:

I don't have a problem when someone declares themselves apostates.

That may be the greatest understatement of all time.

Are you sure that your banjo-strumming, ‘I’m just here to learn, to help, certainly not to settle any disputes’ persona is not just a ruse? It sure seems like you are trying to settle one here:

19 hours ago, Many Miles said:

If that teaching is demonstrably wrong then the society has bloodguilt. If a person stands in even tacit support of that, natural law condemns them. Also, what God said to Noah condemns them too. Look close. Look very close. And, look hard. You don't want to be on the wrong side of that teaching.

18 hours ago, Many Miles said:

I can't attend public meetings. To do so would represent tacit support for a teaching I know causes many, many deaths

You might take into consideration that the teaching has, in all probability, saved far more lives than it has cost. This is because, here and there, courageous doctors have worked to accomomdate it. In doing so, they have both discovered and remedied previously unknown risks of transfusion. These remedies in turn have spread into the overall population, a thousand times more numerous than that of the Witnesses themselves. Seen in this light, it almost becomes a ‘no greater love’ situation—a small number die, many times more are saved.

It is hard to come to any other conclusion upon consideration of a 2008 New Scientist article, ‘An Act of Faith in the Operating Room,’ which reviews study after study and finds that, for all but the most catastrophic of cases, blood transfusions harm more than they help. The referenced ‘act of faith’ is not refusing a transfusion. It is giving one. I reviewed the article here:

https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2008/05/new-scientist-a.html

See how it criticizes common practices less than 20 years ago, such as giving patients a bit of blood after operation to ‘perk them up a little.’ It is not only unnecessary, but dangerous. Having learned from this, progressive hospitals tighten the standards for transfusion, often simply by lowering the hematocrit level which once triggered one, often by making use when appropriate of safer blood substitutes, often by not simply ‘topping off the tank’ after operation, recognizing such a practice is both unnecessary and dangerous. They owe it all to Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

The above does not negate that some have died due to holding fast to their understanding of ‘abstain from blood.’ However, it could be argued that the overall world owes a great debt of gratitude to Jehovah’s Witnesses for putting them on the right track. Should not the Governing Body receive a Nobel Prize in medicine for the reform they have triggered?

8 minutes ago, George88 said:

Why should you embrace deception? Have you ever wondered why someone who has distanced themselves from you still has the power to affect you? So why complain about an action that you yourself have orchestrated?

Whoa! once again! Georgie, I fear you will not believe this, but I really did not know @JW Insiderhad employed the trick in the very message he was speaking of it! I even wondered why the quote box appeared too big for the words contained. Ah, well, it’s just some sort of pesky technical snafu, I told myself, and manually shortened the box.

I mean, this is like finding a decoder ring in your Cocoa Puffs. I’m taking the next month to comb through all too-long text boxes in search of them.

22 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Exposing your predictions can keep them from coming true. The opposite of self-fulfilled prophecy. I often place my predictions in 'white on white' text so that most browsers will make the text disappear completely. All you have to do is highlight the hidden text by selecting and you can read it clearly. In the olden days, when I cared enough, I had a lot of fun adding a sentence or two to the end of a post. They of

Whoa! It’s sort of like discovering, not only that the hand really wrote, “Mene mene tekel parsin, You fink!” but that Belshazzer clandestinely downvoted the remark.

4 hours ago, George88 said:

Arguing about why I should explain myself to someone when they can't even tell the difference is simply silly.

It is truly disheartening that you should have to do this, particularly for one who displays before all his lack of Bible education, thereby showing he should not stray from the Closed Club where all the other wayward Witnesses are, particularly a certain ex-Bethelite. Nonetheless, I appreciate the definitions. Thank you. 

Nine different subfields of ‘theology!’ And the thing is, you can doubtless earn degrees in each one! I’ll bet our guys at HQ don’t hold even one of them. No wonder they don’t like us roaming around online. They’re just jealous.

4 hours ago, Many Miles said:

You asked for it. So you got it.

It may be all as you say with rationality. I’ll have to give it more thought.

You must excuse me. My head is swimming after hearing the Great Courses philosophy professor, who seems bent on atheism, lecture on how you know you are you. He considers numerical identity over time, psychological identity over time, and finds logical problems with each one. Well, maybe the problem is our definition of what is a person, he says. Maybe a person is like an interstate highway that if you were anywhere on it you could say this is you. In other words, you are not just one point in time, you are a road that goes many diverse places. ‘But!’ he says, seemingly for the 2 millionth time, ‘There’s a problem! Unlike an actual highway which is laid down, the highway that is you will continue to be laid down until you die. Thus, it would seem that, under this hypothesis, you are not you until you die, and that doesn’t square with our intuition.

But! that problem is solved if we adhere to temporal omniscience, that is the notion that every moment of time, even the ones that are yet in the future, are already laid out somewhere. But!, he refers back to previous inconsistencies revealed when he discussed that burning topic of philosophy, so it can’t be that either. Well— maybe the entire notion of what is a person is wrong, he says, and goes off to explore that possibility.

Most of these points are illustrated with various Star Trek or Dr. Who episodes, many involving the transporter, which is also used to indicate problems with any resurrection solution such as is common in religion.

It is probably a good idea when you encounter someone like this in field service to wish him a good day and return to your car group, where the one next to you will make his quip for the umpteenth time that you are taking a great risk if you are cremated because what if you are resurrected on a windy day? This is a little tiresome, but infinitely preferable to the brother in the front seat who intones in his radio voice, “Friends, do you have bills to pay? You do? Well, please give it back. Bill’s head is getting cold.”

1 hour ago, Many Miles said:

I'll use longer words for those who need longer words. I'll use shorter words for those who need shorter words.

So long as the communication is clear all is good.

Yes. For me, if you pronounce Socrates with two syllables, thus making in shorter, I will appreciate the consideration. So-crates works just fine for me.

Step over into Macedonia, Mr Many Miles, and help us.

”No thank you, 

33 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

Many Miles does not look for the best market.”

Having made that irresistible (to me) little quip, 

34 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

Many Miles shares what he can where he can wherever that happens to be, to help whoever is there as best he can.

yeah. Me too.

35 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

I do not count converts on a report slip

Ta da! Now we don’t either, just like you!

Oh, I guess we still put converts on a slip, they won’t mind, I am sure, but not the time it takes to make them. 

Any time you change a practice dating back 100 years, it’s a gutsy move.

I think counting time for so many years is a reflection of the lowly roots that Christianity came from and so far still is. It is the mark of the plebs who were accustomed to the factory model in which when there was nothing to do you’d better nonetheless look busy if you didn’t want the boss to fire you.

Now that the model has been discarded (and good riddance!) probably all the educated people will come in.who were offended by the old way. Trouble is, when they do, they may say to the uneducated and ordinary, ‘Okay—you’ve done well. Amazingly well, really, considering your lack of education. But the smart people are here now. Step aside.’

We’ll have to see how it plays out. One thing for sure, dropping time requirements removes all sense of being ‘on duty’ or ‘off duty.’ It will vastly aid efforts to informal witness, as people will do what makes sense, not press on come heck or high water so that whoever is being spoken to ‘receives a thorough witness!’

8 minutes ago, George88 said:

It is truly laughable when individuals with writing skills make false claims

Do you really not supplement your writing with AI? Say the word, if it is so, that will settle it for me. Otherwise, I truly can’t figure it out.

15 hours ago, Many Miles said:

The simplest approach would be to presume Paul is comparing non-teleological vs teleological.

Ah, rats! Now I have to look up the word ‘teleological.’

I’ve encountered it before, of course, and looked it up then, and said, ‘Oh, it’s that.’ Maybe I should have added it to my vocabulary—it has many syllables, more than rhinoceros—and unless you live in Africa, it comes up more frequently. But I think of that test Edison used to administer—I think his hiring of new staff depended upon it—consisting of myriad facts that he thought any contemporary person should know. Einstein took the test and failed it. Rather than being chagrined, he said the stuff was all in dictionaries, almanacs, and encyclopedias—you can look it up in two seconds if you need it.

I also think of Bart Ehrman, the Bible thumper who became a theologian but you can still see the Bible thumper in the theologian. He said that if you know a Latin expression and also a perfectly fine English expression that means the same thing, you should always use the Latin; that way people know you are educated. 

I’d be happier considering Paul’s teleological or non-teleological view if Paul himself had used the term. It is not as though he was too uneducated to pick up the lingo of the day. He received the bee’s knees of education, at the feet of Gamaliel, that learned worthy who bended the Sanhedrin to his will. I’d be happier if Jesus used such terms, or any of Bible’s faithful, even Moses schooled in all the wisdom of Egypt, or Daniel in that of Babylon, or Nehemiah in that of Persia. None of them did.

I get it that such words exist in order to facilitate knowledge, standardize the terms being the first step. Oh, it’s okay I suppose, but to lean too heavily on such vocabulary is to reveal a pursuit of knowledge different from how the Bible writers pursued it. A little might be okay, but I distrust a lot of it. I can’t help but think most (or all) GB members may not know what the word ‘theodicy’ means, even as (in my view) they have the only one that holds water.

The Bible is not for the high-brow and intellectual. It is for the low-brow and working class. That is why there is barely a mention of it in early secular history; the doings of the working class are of scant concern to those learned ones who write history. Of course, they are not of scant concern when it comes to harnessing their power for some greater project, such as war, or winning an election, or as factory workers for the industrial age, but if is something they originate themselves, it is ‘Can anything good come out of Nazarus? Supplying the answer to their own question, historians record but two or three brief mentions in early secular history.

I don’t think ‘rationality’ as a term should ever be used when discussing the veracity of spiritual things. It’s like playing on the gameboard and by the rules of your opponent; his first rule is that you can’t move any of your pieces. Use the terms ‘reasonable’ and ‘sensible’ instead. Witnesses subscribe to a way of worship that is backed by reasons—they can explain why they do this or that, and such reasons ‘make sense,’ they are not simply mysterious and incomprehensible dogma—beyond the mysteriousness and incomprehensibility that everyone faces—over the vastness of the universe, for example. A belief in God, say the Great Course professors, reflecting the way the world is today, is not rational. That doesn’t mean they disallow you doing it, but don’t go saying it is rational. They strive to examine all things via rationality, and the more they do so, the more unlikely they think God is. 

‘Well, how can you account for what every child knows, that ‘all houses are created by someone, so there must be a someone who created greater things? you will ask. They will regard you a little pityingly and explain how you are positing a spiritual being, a major escalation that their tools cannot detect. Occam’s Razor, more meaningful to them than all the Ten Commandments put together, says you can’t do that. The simplest explanation wins. No, they haven’t figured out how life originated, they admit, but their certain it will happen without offending Occam.

Possibly the meaning of ‘rationality’ has changed over the years, like that of ‘gay.’ My globetrotting cousin would grouse to no end that she could no longer use the word gay because the homosexuals had taken it. ‘I’m no prude,’ she would say. ‘If they want to ‘swing both ways’ (would she really wink just then?) I’m perfectly okay with that. But why couldn’t they have invented their own word? Why did they have to take the word ‘gay?’

“She’s just mad that she can no-longer say ‘gay Paree,’ I told my right wing brother. But this was in the days of the French Fries / Freedom Fries fiasco, and my right wing brother said, ‘Why can’t she?’But

But rationality as defined today—my suspicion is that it was always that way— involves an attempt to prove faith by the standards of its advocate’s main tool, that of science. You cannot so prove it. Don’t try to play their game that says you should. It’s enough to ‘prove to yourself’ the good and perfect will of God. To the extent Christianity is an appear to the heart and not the head, it comes across as would a matter of taste. ‘Taste and see Jehovah is good,’ says the psalm. What if someone tastes and sees he is bad? Are you going to prove him wrong? No more than you can prove to the fellow who hates broccoli that it really tastes good.

15 hours ago, Many Miles said:

The simplest approach would be to presume Paul is comparing non-teleological vs teleological. Alternatively, it could be a comparison of a person who looks just at the here-and-now vs the future. It could also be the difference between those whose perspective is “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we are to die” versus those who live purpose driven. (Also 1st to Corinth) All these are pretty much the same thing. In each case, the latter has to do with rational thought as a method of thinking.

No, I don’t think any of this is right. It is an attempt to put Christianity into a realm where it does not belong. I read it as though you say, ‘A physical man attempts to solve the world through his reason and a spiritual man doubles-down on his attempt to solve the world through his reason. 

As for me, I will do my best to speak as did Jesus, as does the Watchtower in trying to imitate him. I will not strive to learn the educated world’s lofty language, as though seeking admittance to the club. As soon as they find out I believe in Adam and Eve, they will throw me out anyway. I will not seek that elevated plain. I will speak as does Jehovah’s organization, in full recognition that it is mostly the lowly and meek who respond to the good news. I will say—sigh—‘What do you say as to this, Many Miles? Do you agree? Yes, No, or Maybe?’

23 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

God bless you for having the patience to read that stuff. I have neither the time nor inclination. In public and private each has made it known they have no interest whatsoever in constructive dialogue.

Huh! Nobody has ever come to that conclusion before.  

(It is truly discouraging that ones should come here on the Open Club to advance that viewpoint, thereby revealing their lack of education in the scriptures, as though refugees from the Closed Club where all sorts of odd characters hang out.)

18 hours ago, JW Insider said:

As I recall, you had already listened to that particular Great Courses professor and it raised your curiosity about the history of this particular teaching. I thought that our version was similar to Ellen G White's (Seventh Day Adventist) 1858 doctrine that comes under the heading of "The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan." It is summarized here as:

The devil is always in the  ‘as I recall’ details.

I recall it somewhat differently and probably the truth lies in a compromise between the two recollections. I have on my shelf James Hall’s GC lecture series ‘The Philosophy of Religion.’ I’ve probably listened to close to 100 of the Great Courses lecture series. ‘Imagine how much you will learn if you spend just a half hour each day in the company of some of the greatest minds in the world,’ the introduction to each course says, ignoring only the great minds at JWorg. I vouch for the intro. I have indeed learned a lot. I am far, far less dumb than I used to be.

Usually, I get these GCs from the library. But the library didn’t have the one of James Hall, so I had to order it from eBay. No way would I ever ever have done that had you not put me on the trail. But now I think what you put me on the trail of was a conversational online snippet in which a Seventh Day Adventist pointed to that course, and said, ‘Yes! The professor covered our explanation of suffering and said it was the only one that made sense!’

So I plowed through the 36-lecture course, and sigh—will have to do it again, I suppose, if I am serious about this next writing project, and it is a dog and a half. Yes, it does cover his ‘theodicy.’ Yes, it does say it is the only one logically consistent. But it is not really ‘his’ theodicy. It is the only one Hall considers that posits ‘dualism,’ that is, that God has an opponent, a Satan, and that you can pin the blame on him. ‘That makes sense, the professor said. But he does not give any account as to how that situation came to pass, only that there is such a villain, so that it is somethng of a nothingburger.

Quite frankly, it floored me that out of the many theodicies this fellow considered, only one of them took into account that God just might have an adversary who does, causes, or triggers the evil deeds. Every other theodicy assumes God holding all the cards in every way.

I’m pretty sure I’ve reconstructed what happened. That said, memory is a slippery thing. I am chastened by @Pudgy correcting me long ago. I had not left 3 or 4 comments on ‘apostate’ sites, he said. It was more like 20. No, it was 3 or 4, I said. He repeated it was 20. I repeated it was 3 or 4.  He insisted, not only that it was 20, but that during his career, he had been a highly trained engineer and was therefore accustomed to being precise. ‘If you were a highly trained engineer, and no longer are, possibly the reason is that you cannot count!’ I shot back. ‘Why on earth would I lie about it?!’

Sigh—he was right. I apologized when I realized it much later. I had only left 3 or 4 recently. But long ago, I had experimented on another sit, which brought the total to around 20. Of course, a search on social media makes little distinction between recent and some time ago. Memory is treacherous. 

1 hour ago, Many Miles said:

Within the text we see what boils down to one person, the "physical man", that does not care to examine all things whereas the other person, the "spiritual man" wants to examine all things, and the latter does so without concern of whether this is popular among men.

Wouldn’t this put the materialist atheists who are scientists in the realm of spiritual men? Not only do they want to examine all things, but they insist that their tools, the tools of science, are the only means with which to do it. 

You spoke highly of acupuncture a while back.

On 11/26/2023 at 1:04 PM, Many Miles said:

Anyone today claiming acupuncture is pseudoscience is uniformed. For instance, scientific methods of information examination shows some peripheral neuropathies are demonstrated to respond to acupuncture. Such a systematic review falls within the realm of scientific method.

Practitioners of acupuncture will say it works by releasing/rebalancing the body’s chi, which they will describe as a life-force or energy. You will not be able to run this by the champions of science. They cannot detect any ‘chi’ with their science, so they insist it is pseudoscience. If you tell them of benefit of acupuncture, they will say that it is placebo. If you insist it is not, they will call you stupid.

2 hours ago, Many Miles said:

the "spiritual man" wants to examine all things, and the latter does so without concern of whether this is popular among men.

Do you think the spiritual man should look into what is described as ‘the deep things of Satan’ in the spirit of examining all things?

Thus far, I’m a little partial to @George88’s two preceding comments. If I didn’t fear their mix / fortification with ChatAI functionality, I would upvote them. I don’t want to get stuck upvoting, only to find I have upvoted a  ‘Danger Will Robinson’ robot. But I should probably work to overcome my phobia, as @Alphonse has.

6 hours ago, George88 said:

For if, wishing to fill up the number and measure of His creation, He had been afraid of the wickedness of those who were to be, and like one who could find no other way of remedy and cure, except only this, that He should refrain from His purpose of creating, lest the wickedness of those who were to be should be ascribed to Him; what else would this show but unworthy suffering and unseemly feebleness on the part of the Creator, who should so fear the actings of those who as yet were not, that He refrained from His purposed creation?

I think this guy [Clement] has been hanging out with the apostle Paul too much. 

4 hours ago, Juan Rivera said:

Rationalism is the notion that human reason is the sole source and final test of all truth.

4 hours ago, Many Miles said:

That's false, and thinking that way is a trap.

It does not take reason (logical construction) to know the truth that fire hurts you when you touch it, and so on ad infinitum.

Some things are self-evident. What's not self-evident we need to experiment to discover, or deduce from what we have already learned.

Where does 1 Corinthians 2:14-15 fit in? Or does it?

“But a physical man does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot get to know them, because they are examined spiritually. However, the spiritual man examines all things, but he himself is not examined by any man.”

Things that are “examined spiritually”—does rationalism help us to do this? 

Does the “spiritual man” hold an advantage over the “physical man?” Where does rationalism fit in? Are the results of things examined rationally superior to those examined spiritually?

3 hours ago, Many Miles said:

You do know what you just wrote, right?

Not at all. But if find that when my writing takes me into a tunnel, by continuing to write I eventually come out the other end..

9 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

So, the famously silly claim that God allows evil on earth because his credibility must be proven and that it takes time, a very long time, in which, among other things, millions of innocent children and adults will be subjected to the greatest suffering and torture, does not hold up to the argument .

The Great Courses professor (David Kyle Johnson: The Big Questions of Philosophy) says that it does makes sense. It alone is logically consistent. He traces it to Augustine and says, ‘Maybe God permits evil because it is essential to his pursuit of his greater goal of allowing free will.’ This is essentially what the Watchtower says, though they develop it more.. Moreover, you who sniff because uneducated ‘dumbbells’ say it today might not sniff upon learning that a highly esteemed and educated philosopher also said it.

Johnson extracts a similar lesson from the Book of Job, in which God finally weighs in but doesn’t answer any of Job’s questions, much less his charges. Instead, he says ‘Where were you when I did such-and-such?’ Whereas Carl Jung (Answer to Job) just thinks God is being a bully, Johnson rightly draws the inference that maybe there are greater questions at work to be settled that Job doesn’t know about.

That doesn’t mean that Johnson accepts this ‘theodicy.’ He is atheist. 

People speak of weighty issues as though they are in vacuum, but atheism changes one’s outlook on everything. If you do damage, or allow damage to happen, and you can fix it, that makes huge difference from one who does damage, or allows it to happen, and cannot fix it. Thus, a doctor who breaks a child’s arm and sends you his bill is different from a doctor who breaks a child’s arm in order to set it properly, and upon doing so, sends you his bill. Holocaust is horrific—not to minimize the human suffering involved, but if you can fix it, even that memory in time becomes like a bad dream, a former thing no longer called to account.

But if you’re atheist, there’s no fixing anything. Any damage done is this life is damage done permanently, since this life is all there is. That’s why, while I can understand people falling to atheism, I can’t see them embracing it as though, it, too, is ‘good news.’ It’s a great tragedy, if true. You ought to be sad about it, as H.G. Wells was when he cited the demoralizing lack of faith that ensued in the wake of rapid acceptance of evolution. It’s not good. It’s bad. But eventually, when they accumulate enough, perceptions flip, and it becomes yet another instance of what’s bad is good and vice-versa. That everlasting life you once envisioned? It’s like paper gains in the stock market; they were never real anyway. The sooner you awake from that notion to ‘live fully’ the two or three decades you have left, the better. ‘Imagine’ that, as you are dying of Covid on a ventilator, there is ‘above you only sky’—and learn to find comfort in that prospect.

You should always ask, in any forum where one is critical of the faith, ‘Has this fellow gone atheist or not?’ Criticism of the human the organization to declare the genuine good news may really just be attacks on the belief in God. Nobody would deny there are flaws in the earthy organization, to the point where one may unexpectedly take one on the chin, but if you don’t believe in God, they are everything, whereas if you do believe in God, they are merely painful, like that sliver jabbing you in the butt when you slid over in the lifeboat to make room. Atheist critics come around and say, ‘Do you realize you could wake up one day and say all your life has been wasted?’ Of course you do. It’s called ‘shipwreck of the faith’ when that happens. It’s not as though the notion has never occurred to a believer. “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are to be pitied more than anyone,” Paul says at 1 Corinthians 15:19

Although black and white thinking in general is not a great thing, and one does well to banish it in most day-to-day considerations, certain issues, such as belief in God, are indeed black and white. This is true even when such belief results in inconvenience, such as when a car group of sisters was rear-ended by a cop in an actual black and white who was insufficiently focused on his driving. Had they been atheist, it wouldn’t have happened.

18 hours ago, George88 said:

Rights! The story of Job in Job 31 comes to mind. In his boldness, Job dared to confront God, demanding to be proven guilty or declared innocent. This raises a fascinating question: Did Job, despite his misguided assumptions, have the right to question the very Being who created him? How does the modern mental state change when we presume to question our creator, as if we possessed greater knowledge than him?

He did confront God and that might read shocking to some. In the end, though, all was forgiven and he was cut considerable slack due to the agonizing stress he was under. His three interrogators, on the other hand, were cut less slack, since they used their good health to pound their fellow into the ground with their ‘holiness’ and assumed ‘theology’ which held that if you suffer, it serves you right. You must have done something wrong.

The scripture from Job that makes our day as Jehovah’s Witnesses—you can almost hear the cymbals crash at Kingdom Hall when it is cited—is “until I die, I will not renounce my integrity.” Right it is that it should be highlighted, for it demonstrates that man can, under the worst of circumstances, maintain integrity to God.

But it is part of a package: The full verse reads: “It is unthinkable for me to declare you men righteous! Until I die, I will not renounce my integrity!”

Part of keeping his integrity lies in not letting these three bullies gaslight him, not ‘declaring them righteous.’ He knows who he is. He knows he is not what they say, a hypocrite who fully deserves his own downfall. Defending himself before these three louts is part of ‘not renouncing his integrity.’

Apparently, not renouncing his integrity even involves challenging God. Job begins his speech with a preamble just 3 verses earlier: “As surely as God lives, who has deprived me of justice, As the Almighty lives, who has made me bitter.”

Of course he ‘dares challenge his Creator!’ Unless there really is a hellfire, he couldn’t possibly suffer more than he is doing at present! What’s he got to lose? What’s God going to do—kill him? That’s exactly what he wants. Although we go on and on about Job’s faith in the resurrection, even writing a song about it (and it’s a good song, too), the context of his remark appears to show he doesn’t have any faith in a resurrection at all:

He says: “For there is hope even for a tree. If it is cut down, it will sprout again, And its twigs will continue to grow. . . . At the scent of water it will sprout; And it will produce branches like a new plant. But a man dies and lies powerless; When a human expires, where is he? Waters disappear from the sea, And a river drains away and dries up. Man also lies down and does not get up. Until heaven is no more, they will not wake up, Nor will they be aroused from their sleep.” (Job 14: 7-12)

so that the verses we like, the verses that follow, read as though something he would like to see, but fat chance that they will! Wishful thinking they appear to be, no more: 

“O that in the Grave you would conceal me, That you would hide me until your anger passes by, That you would set a time limit for me and remember me! If a man dies, can he live again? I will wait all the days of my compulsory service Until my relief comes. You will call, and I will answer you. You will long for the work of your hands.”

It’s a little hard to tell for sure, but those first verses hardly seem a preamble for a speech lauding God for the resurrection hope.

Nonetheless, God makes it all good at the end. Job makes no accusation to God beyond what can easily be explained by the suffering he undergoes. His companions, under no stress at all, go well beyond anything Job says. ‘What does God care if you do what’s right? It’s impossible to please him. Even the angels can’t do it!’ — they revisit the point several times. ‘The very heavens are not clean in his eyes,’ say they.

While one might come online and chew out an Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar, one does not do it with a Job, condemnatory though some of his reasonings were. That role must be reserved for God. Even Elihu, who has words of correction for Job, makes clear his motive: “If you have something to say, reply to me. Speak, for I want to prove you right,”  he says to Job. (33: 32) In the meantime, he’s not going to take advantage of his health to bully a sick man, as the other three fellows do: “Look! I am just like you before the true God; From the clay I too was shaped. So no fear of me should terrify you, And no pressure from me should overwhelm you.” (33: 6-7)

He’s not going to be a Zophar. No one wants to be a Zophar, who to put it in modern terms, visits a patient on a respirator with COVID-19, who has lost his entire family to that plague, has lost everything else as well, who says something rash in his agony, so Zophar responds: “I have heard a reproof that insults me—my understanding impels me to reply.” (!) You almost expect him to challenge Job to a duel! It’s his mission to defend God from any ill talk, regardless of circumstances, but there are times to give it a rest.

You can’t tell a person that their experience is not theirs. No one should try. Everyone will have their say until God debuts with 70 questions to make you say, as did Job, ‘maybe I was a little rash.’ They’re not going to say it to me, or you, only to God after he makes an appearance. Meanwhile, nobody wants to be a Zophar.

4 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

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.

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. 

8 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

Have you read Under Two Dictators (1949) by Margarete Buber? It's an contemporary firsthand account of how female Bible Students coped with Nazi concentration camp oppression. In this case Ravensbrueck. Some of what went on, notably regarding the eating of blood and a couple other things, is pretty telling. A now deceased GB member's wife, Gertrude Poetzinger, was in the same camp at the same time, and she confirmed Buber's account.  It's worth the read.

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 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

You have good memory….Optimistic

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.

5 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

suffering

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.

15 hours ago, George88 said:

In his boldness, Job dared to confront God, demanding to be proven guilty or declared innocent.

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

14 hours ago, Many Miles said:

That's a pretty fatalistic perspective.

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!”

15 hours ago, Many Miles said:

Though the most we can do is try our best, I hold a positive view that we do not waste our time when we share our experience and training to help others

Yes. That permeates everything you do. It’s a very desirable quality. 

18 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

But, if Armageddon comes and a bunch of people are destroyed, objectively we can say whatever was responsible for the event had the power to destroy a bunch of people and did so.

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.

53 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

It cannot answer the question whether God has a legal right to be God. It is presumptuous to attribute such importance to oneself, to a human being

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.”

7 hours ago, Thinking said:

Why do a re write….its good and truthful….it would help others who have been hurt…..

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."

7 hours ago, Thinking said:

it had become a part of my occasionally obnoxious and overbearing personality. 

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.