New Light on Beards

[Pudgy]

20 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I thought it was 1975 that bankrupted you. You have said that often enough—quitting that fine job in Africa and all.

[Pudgy]

14 minutes ago, Pudgy said:

35 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I thought it was 1975 that bankrupted you. You have said that often enough—quitting that fine job in Africa and all.

No, I have never, to my rememberance, used the word bankrupt here on the Archive before. I have never once said that before.  
 If you can show I am wrong, I stand corrected.

If not, you are extrapolating.

And for Anna…. what I said is what I meant. (… unless of course it is irony, satire, parody or intended as a joke …)

…. and the above superfluous quotes were a computer glitch during the few minutes the site was not responding ….

[Pudgy]

Oops. July 7, 2019, I did use the word bankrupt, in a completely different context.

 

[JW Insider]

3 hours ago, Pudgy said:

what program do you use?

canva and media.io

[Pudgy]

You know, someone really aught to send Bro. Lett a copy of the Before an After beard pictures. I think it makes him look very distinguished in a very positive way.

In addition, it would set a very positive example.

[Thinking]

8 hours ago, Pudgy said:

WOW!

I suppose in the interest of unity I should have tolerated during my entire adult lifetime, which is almost over, the unrelenting discrimination, ostracism, alienation, by the Elders, over and over and over in “the little back room”, being shunned and rejected by the Congregation brothers and sisters, in EVERY Congregation where I had a beard (… except ONE near Pittsburgh, PA, in 1977-1978), and having been sent home in bitter tears when I showed up for field service at a grocery store parking lot rendezvous for having a beard.

In the interest of unity, I should overlook and forget the 60 continuous, unrelenting years of boneheaded stupidity that made my life defensive and hard, denying me opportunities for service and Christian fellowship, and the life distorting, crippling, crushing loneliness I had to endure, each and every day.

Oops!

Silly me.

Your looking at it the wrong way…you are victorious…..but no one’s going to admit it…..the stupidity of man made rules…is being uncovered….

years ago we had a young brother who was 6’5 and he was a pioneer….and he had a ned Kelly beard..( long one ) don’t know how he got away with it.

[Anna]

1 hour ago, Thinking said:

he had a ned Kelly beard..( long one ) don’t know how he got away with it.

Obviously because he was 6'5!

[Anna]

I just found the remark about keeping up with Jehovah's chariot a little strange, and not quite sure what was meant by that.

"All of us need to remember that the earthly part of Jehovah's organization is always striving to reflect the heavenly part-to keep up with it, as it were. Remember how fast the chariot in Ezekiel's vision moved? Like flashes of lightning! (Ezek. 1:14) Any who seek to run ahead of that chariot, trying to force change prematurely,.."

It is obvious that the no wearing beards policy was never from Jehovah in the first place,, obviously not as he created men with the DNA to grow one. 

But somehow we have now compared this new decision  to the issue of circumcision in the 1st Century. Jehovah also created men with foreskins, but he was also the one to give the law about circumcision. But he never gave a law about needing to be clean shaven. That was a purely a man made law. So how was that trying to keep up with Jehovah's chariot and striving to reflect the heavenly part? Are they saying they failed in this regard? I think I would have probably left that part out....

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, Anna said:

I just found the remark about keeping up with Jehovah's chariot a little strange, and not quite sure what was meant by that.

It was clearly a call for loyalty, obedience, humility and unity. Those aren't bad things.

But the logic did seem a bit strained when they hitched it to the chariot.

What came across as odd to me was the logic that Jehovah's organization moves so fast that the earthly part of the organization can't keep up; it can only try. But we shouldn't try to keep up with Jehovah's organization because that would mean we will be "running ahead" of the earthly organization. In that case, keeping up with Jehovah's organization (the chariot) will cause division and show a bad attitude. It's always better to humbly stay behind Jehovah's organization, but keep up only with the earthly part of that organization. 

And that's the primary focus of the announcement letter, shown below:

[Note how, between points 5 and 6, the announcement letter blurs the line between the earthly and heavenly part of Jehovah's organization.)

[JW Insider]

[JW Insider]

I think I missed the point at first when I heard Brother Lett say this: Others might feel disappointed, saying, in effect, ‘I supported the policy about grooming for all those years. Now I feel let down!’ But is either reaction appropriate?

My first thought was the brother(s) who had to dismiss a brother at Bethel in 1979. The young brother was a Bethel elder, loved by everyone because he always seemed humble and ready to help in any way. He was counted on for a lot of accounting tasks, and Bethelite vacation days, and he was also in charge of requisitions for the purchase of non-Society books that Bethelites would order for their own personal libraries. (I got Josephus and Matthew Henry and Barnes' Notes and a few other books through him.) He came to breakfast one day with well-groomed but obvious weekend-length whiskers, not just "5 o'clock shadow." I remember thinking that he better go back to his room after breakfast to shave before going to work. He didn't, and he must have been called to ask what he was doing, because he was dismissed from Bethel immediately.

I imagined the disappointment and pain of the elders or committees that had to dismiss such a well-loved brother. I think it was Dean Songer who dismissed him, and Songer was probably the cleanest cut man at Bethel with a short 1960's NASA/FBI crewcut. He might have dismissed him with pleasure, but I thought of him anyway as someone who might have been disappointed in losing such a great asset to the Society.

Of course, if you were a brother, usually black, who could show medical or visible evidence of skin bumps and bleeding after each shave, you already had a reprieve. They had "skin in the game," but they would more typically suffer the loss of it, and surreptitiously touch up their wounds with bloody tissues at breakfast so that the scabs would be dry throughout the day.    

[TrueTomHarley]

6 hours ago, Thinking said:

Your looking at it the wrong way…you are victorious…..but no one’s going to admit it…..the stupidity of man made rules…is being uncovered….

years ago we had a young brother who was 6’5 and he was a pioneer….and he had a ned Kelly beard..( long one ) don’t know how he got away with it.

He stared them down.

Seriously. I think that’s what happened. Stared down the local elders, that is, not the GB who apparently didn’t have a problem with it, willing to completely defer to the local BoE, though it may have been a Branch thing. 

It was not in the Bible. It never appeared in Watchtower print. (other than many examples of ‘shaving one’s beard’ listed in the changes made on the road to baptism) The reasons for it, association with beatniks and hippies, disappeared decades ago. We’ve had articles to the effect that we don’t do rules, but primarily principles. And yet, no rule was a firmly enforced as the unwritten no-beard rule.

But—with no documentation behind it—you could stare them down. That’s what I imagine this Kelly beard brother did. I did sort of the same thing with blogging, which may be why I see it this way. He stared them down, not defiantly, but by being such a good example that, even while holding his ground on this matter, they couldn’t tell him no.

If an entire Update dedicated to beards being now okay seems like overkill (it did to me), one might recall that they tried underkill and it didn’t work. From the Sept 2016 Wt: “Does Your Style of Dress Glorify God?”

What about the propriety of brothers wearing a beard? The Mosaic Law required men to wear a beard. However, Christians are not under the Mosaic Law, nor are they obliged to observe it. (Lev. 19:27; 21:5; Gal. 3:24, 25) In some cultures, a neatly trimmed beard may be acceptable and respectable, and it may not detract at all from the Kingdom message. In fact, some appointed brothers have beards. Even so, some brothers might decide not to wear a beard. (1 Cor. 8:9, 13; 10:32) In other cultures or localities, beards are not the custom and are not considered acceptable for Christian ministers. In fact, having one may hinder a brother from bringing glory to God by his dress and grooming and his being irreprehensible.—Rom. 15:1-3; 1 Tim. 3:2, 7.

This paragraph was a big deal at the time, at least in my area. I never look at articles until just before we are to cover then at meetings (unlike when the magazines came in the mail and I read them through promptly), but this paragraph I knew about up front because brothers were talking about it seemingly the day after it was written. When that Watchtower Study finally came, that paragraph was like the elephant in the room that everyone was awaiting, and then Yessss! paragraph 17 finally arrived and you could talk about it. Some congregations spent extra time to ‘explain’ it.

I thought that would be the end of it. I thought at long last the issue had been laid to rest. I thought beards would soon be showing up—at first in publishers and then in MS and elders. Instead, it seemed like congregations doubled-down, as if with the attitude: ‘Well, okay, they can wear beards if they insist, but no way will they ever be appointed.’ A few publishers grew them, but nothing more.

’Look, we don’t have an issue with it,’ is what the GB finally said in this latest Update. It’s not new. It’s what they said 7 years ago only it didn’t take. This time, to make sure it wasn’t another misfire that didn’t take, they made it a big production, brought in bells and whistles, the chariot, and disclaimers for guys like those here who say, ‘It’s about time!’ and for the more rigid guys who drew a line in the sand and are now aghast to see it erased.

Old habits die hard. It may be that circumcism was once biblical whereas no-beards was not. The two customs don’t parallel in that regard. But in the regard of ‘old habits die hard,’ they parallel exactly. 

For me, it is like when the man who invented AI died. ‘Restaurant in peace’ the obits read, though there were a few harsher ones that said, ‘May he rot in hello.’