TrueTomHarley

That being the case, it saves swaths of time if we can discover what are the glasses another is using.
It has been mentioned before that if one is atheist, it will so heavily influence anything they utter that you simply waste your time addressing them—unless you are speaking specifically of atheism or if you are speaking to those beyond them.  Atheism is for them the force that refreshes, and if you could demonstrate that each and every accusation against human organized worship is false, they still would say, ‘Well, there’s no god anyway.’ So why should you go there with them? What you as a Christian view as commendable delayed gratification they view as a woeful and willful flushing of one’s life down the toilet. When you say, ‘Well, every project needs headship, so I’ll cooperate with these people,’ they say, ‘They’re even more deluded than you! Cult leaders, through and through! The farther you can get from them, the better.’
Within the realm of religion, find out if the other believes we’re in the last days, for it will so heavily influence anything they say as to make any other criticism of theirs irrelevant. There is no sense swatting the water downstream, for it is immediately replaced. Unless you go to the source—are we in the last days or not?—any subsequent conversation, unless it is directed at those lying beyond, is fruitless. The entire ‘life boat’ scenario that so much Witness action and thinking depends upon is absurdity to them. Addressing some controversy about ‘Tight Pants Tony’ as though that was something that really troubled them, is just spitting into the wind. Even if you win, you haven’t gotten anywhere. I’ll wear pants the size of parachutes if it fits in with lifeboat protocol. 
Find out, as soon as possible, how they feel about ‘the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus.’ Many people, even those religious, are repelled by the thought—how could God be so mean! they say. Find this out as soon as you can, because it will determine much of what they subsequently say and, again, you can find yourself quibbling with a point so far downstream—critiques over how Witnesses do this or that—as to quibble all day over a comparative nothing.
And, Lord knows, find out whenever you can if the person is ‘Proud to have come out of the closet’ gay, because if he or she is, you don’t stand a chance in discussing anything involving traditional morals as found in the Bible. Whatever you are debating, with you thinking that if you can make the point it may stick will not. Their ‘sexuality’ trumps all else.
All the above are largely matters of the heart, not the head. The heart makes a grab for what it wants, then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale. This leads the unobservant to think the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along. This is why one might buck at ‘rationality’ as the be-all and end-all. Rationality offers good insight into the head, but poor insight into the heart.
The best talks and writings are those that, while not ignoring the head, appeal primarily to the heart. Jesus did things that would infuriate any strict devotee of reason. He routinely spun parables that he declined to explain—let the heart figure it out. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. He answered questions with counter-questions. Try doing that with a modern ‘critical thinker.’ He launched ad hominem attacks. People may say that the ad hominem attacks of Matthew 23 are not really ad hominem attacks because the scribes and Pharisees actually were that way, but this wlll be said by anyone launching such an attack.
Allen Guelzo the historian lectures about how subjective history is, not at all how most of us suppose it. We get a hint he may be right when we recall the expression, ‘History is written by the victors,’ but he greatly expands on the idea by including new trends and waves of thinking among the ‘victors.’ That’s why (he does not make this point, but likely would if his lectures were given today) Americans pull down statues of Columbus and the forefathers that they once put up. History has (once again) flipped. The good guys have become the bad guys.
But doesn’t our modern day critical thinking solve the problem of subjectivity? he asks. No, it only makes the situation worse, he says, because it repackages our dubious biases as laudable critical thinking. “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity,” Dale Carnegie said. The trouble with critical thinking is that those who most heavily advocate it too often assume they have a lock on the stuff.
Accordingly, while your remarks must make sense so as not to explode the head, to go exclusively there is to miss where the action is. It is the heart that is the seat of motivation. One may be dubious of a discussion that appears purely intellectual, as though coming across ones fighting a battle that does not matter.
 

That being the case, it saves swaths of time if we can discover what are the glasses another is using.
It has been mentioned before that if one is atheist, it will so heavily influence anything they utter that you simply waste your time addressing them—unless you are speaking specifically of atheism or if you are speaking to those beyond them.  Atheism is for them the force that refreshes, and if you could demonstrate that each and every accusation against human organized worship is false, they still would say, ‘Well, there’s no god anyway.’ So why should you go there with them? What you as a Christian view as commendable delayed gratification they view as a woeful and willful flushing of one’s life down the toilet. When you say, ‘Well, every project needs headship, so I’ll cooperate with these people,’ they say, ‘They’re even more deluded than you! Cult leaders, through and through! The farther you can get from them, the better.’
Within the realm of religion, find out if the other believes we’re in the last days, for it will so heavily influence anything they say as to make any other criticism of theirs irrelevant. There is no sense swatting the water downstream, for it is immediately replaced. Unless you go to the source—are we in the last days or not?—any subsequent conversation, unless it is directed at those lying beyond, is fruitless. The entire ‘life boat’ scenario that so much Witness action and thinking depends upon is absurdity to them. Addressing some controversy about ‘Tight Pants Tony’ as though that was something that really troubled them, is just spitting into the wind. Even if you win, you haven’t gotten anywhere. I’ll wear pants the size of parachutes if it fits in with lifeboat protocol. 
Find out, as soon as possible, how they feel about ‘the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus.’ Many people, even those religious, are repelled by the thought—how could God be so mean! they say. Find this out as soon as you can, because it will determine much of what they subsequently say and, again, you can find yourself quibbling with a point so far downstream—critiques over how Witnesses do this or that—as to quibble all day over a comparative nothing.
And, Lord knows, find out whenever you can if the person is ‘Proud to have come out of the closet’ gay, because if he or she is, you don’t stand a chance in discussing anything involving traditional morals as found in the Bible. Whatever you are debating, with you thinking that if you can make the point it may stick will not. Their ‘sexuality’ trumps all else.
All the above are largely matters of the heart, not the head. The heart makes a grab for what it wants, then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale. This leads the unobservant to think the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along. This is why one might buck at ‘rationality’ as the be-all and end-all. Rationality offers good insight into the head, but poor insight into the heart.
The best talks and writings are those that, while not ignoring the head, appeal primarily to the heart. Jesus did things that would infuriate any strict devotee of reason. He routinely spun parables that he declined to explain—let the heart figure it out. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. He answered questions with counter-questions. Try doing that with a modern ‘critical thinker.’ He launched ad hominem attacks. People may say that the ad hominem attacks of Matthew 23 are not really ad hominem attacks because the scribes and Pharisees actually were that way, but this wlll be said by anyone launching such an attack.
Allen Guelzo the historian lectures about how subjective history is, not at all how most of us suppose it. We get a hint he may be right when we recall the expression, ‘History is written by the victors,’ but he greatly expands on the idea by including new trends and waves of thinking among the ‘victors.’ That’s why (he does not make this point, but likely would if his lectures were given today) Americans pull down statues of Columbus and the forefathers that they once put up. History has (once again) flipped. The good guys have become the bad guys.
But doesn’t our modern day critical thinking solve the problem of subjectivity? he asks. No, it only makes the situation worse, he says, because it repackages our dubious biases as laudable critical thinking. “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity,” Dale Carnegie said. The trouble with critical thinking is that those who most heavily advocate it too often assume they have a lock on the stuff.
Accordingly, while your remarks must make sense so as not to explode the head, to go exclusively there is to miss where the action is. It is the heart that is the seat of motivation. One may be dubious of a discussion that appears purely intellectual, as though coming across ones fighting a battle that does not matter.
 

It is not commonly recognized how smart beavers are. Most of them are graduates of Dam U.

It is not commonly recognized how smart beavers are. Most of them are graduates of Dam U.

Without again copying @Pudgy’s cartoon, which reveals a certain — ahem—cynicism of social media that leans left, which is practically all of it . . .
the founder of the BITE model that is used to recognize ‘cults’ is very political, active on Twitter (sigh…X) and invariably comes down on the left side of most (if not all) issues. He has a book out called, ‘The Cult of Trump.’ It could be argued that when you think half the country has fallen victim to a cult, it is evidence that you have drunk too much of the KoolAid yourself.
BITE stands for all methods of ‘control,’ behavioral, informational, thought, and emotional. Ironically, nobody seeks to control information like many of these social media companies, going so far as to ban large swaths of communication, and those who engage in them, on the grounds of being ‘misinformation.’
I read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk.  He described the latter as very enamored with Asimov’s three laws of robotics—but also very concerned that most of his competitors are not. He has developed a feud with one of the Google heads (Page or Brin, I forget which), who has accused him of being a ‘specist.’ (one who favors his species) They used to be tight.
‘Um yeah, I kind of like humanity,’ says Musk, accounting for why he is fond of Asimov’s laws. He is in the minority. Most of these other guys want to let AI rip, go where it goes, go as fast as it can be developed, and if it one day outsmarts and outmaneuvers humans, swatting them as one might swat a bug that gets in your way, well—that’s evolution for you, survival of the fittest.

Without again copying @Pudgy’s cartoon, which reveals a certain — ahem—cynicism of social media that leans left, which is practically all of it . . .
the founder of the BITE model that is used to recognize ‘cults’ is very political, active on Twitter (sigh…X) and invariably comes down on the left side of most (if not all) issues. He has a book out called, ‘The Cult of Trump.’ It could be argued that when you think half the country has fallen victim to a cult, it is evidence that you have drunk too much of the KoolAid yourself.
BITE stands for all methods of ‘control,’ behavioral, informational, thought, and emotional. Ironically, nobody seeks to control information like many of these social media companies, going so far as to ban large swaths of communication, and those who engage in them, on the grounds of being ‘misinformation.’
I read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk.  He described the latter as very enamored with Asimov’s three laws of robotics—but also very concerned that most of his competitors are not. He has developed a feud with one of the Google heads (Page or Brin, I forget which), who has accused him of being a ‘specist.’ (one who favors his species) They used to be tight.
‘Um yeah, I kind of like humanity,’ says Musk, accounting for why he is fond of Asimov’s laws. He is in the minority. Most of these other guys want to let AI rip, go where it goes, go as fast as it can be developed, and if it one day outsmarts and outmaneuvers humans, swatting them as one might swat a bug that gets in your way, well—that’s evolution for you, survival of the fittest.

This is true of Isaac Asimov, who died of AIDS from a blood transfusion. I discovered this in writing up a post about him. It wasn’t widely known—his family hushed it up. And it was not acquired until his later years. All the same, it’s not a nice way to go, it probably shaved a dozen or more years from his life, and who knows what he might have written in that time:
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2007/07/isaac-asimov-an.html

Well, now that you’ve established your position in the pecking order, no.
You had me saying, ‘Oh, he’s not such a bad guy after all,’ until that line.

Mine too. Maybe if I had the experiences you report I would feel as you do. I have had calamity in my life, but not that one.
Isn’t this your 6th or 7th mention of The Fugitive? Though there is tragedy in the world, those not immediate victims continue to go to the movies, to concerts, to plays, to read books, to surf the internet, until in Eliphaz’s words, ‘it becomes your turn.’ Maybe all such activity should end until there is no more pain, but it does not.

Mine too. Maybe if I had the experiences you report I would feel as you do. I have had calamity in my life, but not that one.
Isn’t this your 6th or 7th mention of The Fugitive? Though there is tragedy in the world, those not immediate victims continue to go to the movies, to concerts, to plays, to read books, to surf the internet, until in Eliphaz’s words, ‘it becomes your turn.’ Maybe all such activity should end until there is no more pain, but it does not.

Well, now that you’ve established your position in the pecking order, no.
You had me saying, ‘Oh, he’s not such a bad guy after all,’ until that line.

Well, now that you’ve established your position in the pecking order, no.
You had me saying, ‘Oh, he’s not such a bad guy after all,’ until that line.

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.
 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.
 
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:
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?

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.
 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.
 
That may be the greatest understatement of all time.

So, you're saying that you're only open to what aligns with your beliefs. But let me tell you, the progress of science, which even involves exploring fragmented blood, represents a groundbreaking innovation that challenges traditional norms. It's time to break free from that mindset and embrace the potential that goes beyond the limitations set by old-fashioned dogmas.
Why? Because you are the one setting that standard, not God. Another false equivalence lies with a patient who is bleeding profusely. You claim that the patient can be saved by giving them a transfusion. That assumption cannot be definitively proven by science, as there have been numerous cases of patients dying even after receiving blood during surgery. Even if someone is receiving a large amount of blood to compensate for the loss, it may not make any difference. Doctors cannot perform miracles, and they cannot guarantee a patient's survival when they are experiencing severe bleeding.
The Governing Body did not establish a definitive standard for the implied meaning in scripture. Rather, they provided a guiding principle for individuals to conscientiously consider when making personal decisions. This principle is not intended to protect them from legal liability in secular courts, but rather to showcase that scientific progress now allows individuals to make conscientious choices that can profoundly impact their own lives.
 

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:
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?

@Many Miles I haven't fully read your above response, but I will follow up. 
Can you disclose or tell me a bit more what is your relationship with the Congregation and if you consider yourself a Witness? I’m intrigued in learning where you are coming from? I don’t mean to be nosy, and fully understand the repercussions. 
To give you some background. And please don’t take this the wrong way. I am of the belief of using your real name, unless doing so would risk your career or livelihood. Real names makes us accountable for our words, by tying our reputations to what we say and how we say it. Transparency contributes to authentic dialogue, anonymity detracts.  I’ve said in the forum before that I am not a fan of anonymous internet dialogue because it artificially separates persons from ideas and arguments, and in this way it assumes a false anthropology, as if we are mere intellects, and not embodied beings with feelings and biases and emotions, character, histories, etc. In my opinion, so long as a person remains anonymous or hides his or her identity behind a moniker or an avatar she remains incapable of entering into authentic dialogue, because authentic dialogue requires the personal authenticity by which we reveal who we are, where we stand, and take responsibility for our words, by allowing them to be connected with our personal identity by those who we enter into dialogue. Maintaining anonymity, for example, hinders the development and expression of sociability. I don't think that ideas and persons can ever be fully separated. All dialogue is between persons, and it involves the character of the participants.
My reason for including some biographical facts here and elsewhere in the forum is not to persuade other Witnesses, but only to explain that I don't think that ideas and persons can ever be fully separated. The more I know about you, the more I can determine your credibility, your sincerity, your authenticity, and likewise the same is true the more you know about me.
I'd be glad to learn more specifically what your position actually is from a JW framework. Feel free to write me privately to discuss your thoughts.

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.
 

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.
 
 

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
 

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.

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.”

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.

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.