Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?

[Matthew9969]

On 2/11/2024 at 11:59 AM, TrueTomHarley said:

Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?

Probably quite a bit, though simply fading would accomplish the same goal, minus the certain element of hypocrisy. Fading works fine for those who wish to leave. As long as one doesn’t go publicly reviling, robbing banks, or killing people, one is fine.

A consistent blackened screen without any participation always suggests to me PIMO as a possibility, save for obvious cases of infirmity, distance, hardship, etc. Nor is anyone fooled in the long run. Witnesses bond so readily with their fellow believers, even from around the world, because 2/3 of what they have in common is their spirituality/love of God. Begin to indicate that 2/3 is not very important to you, and in time relationships, even friendships, will shift.

I mean, I don’t think those meetings are boring at all, but if I did, I not only wouldn’t go but I also wouldn’t use Zoom in an attempt to deceive others into thinking I was. I like to think I have some backbone.

As a residential and business internet installer/trouble-shooter for the past 16 years, I have heard the sentiments plenty of times that people are a bit paranoid about their cameras being on. Some even conspiratorial about the cameras on their computers.

[TrueTomHarley]

23 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

I am glad that a large number of JW people are taking advantage of these opportunities, and I hope that they will not go to other extremes while using their "newfound freedom".

On the venues I have seen, a sense of optimism prevails among most, having ‘escaped’ from the ‘cult.’ Some of the younger one taunt GB brothers, reminiscent of adolescents mocking out their teachers. Some of the older ones greet new ‘escapees’ with, ‘Welcome to your future!’ They all but sing the song, ‘The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades.’

It is an optimism that prevails in few other places. Elsewhere, people are anything but optimistic about the future and a fair number are not even sure there will be one. Even the songwriter pointed out that the ‘job waiting’ after graduation is in the nuclear industry and the reason he’s ’gotta wear shades’ is the threat of conflagration.

Then there is an Amber Scorah who wrote a book upon going ‘apostate’ which was hailed by the media. The reviews lauded her ‘courage’ for facing the death of her newborn just following her ‘escape’ from a ‘high-control’ religion. ‘The dodo!’ I found myself thinking. Here she leaves a place where the death of a newborn would have unleashed scores of genuine comforters with a resurrection hope that never fails among Witnesses to soften the blow, to enter a community where there is no such comfort, but only the harsh loss itself, and she still counts it a victory! egged on by people who have donned the shades, know the meaning of the song, accept its possible outcome,  and still count it a victory for facing the future unafraid, without the ‘crutch’ of religion. It’s as though the closer the Atomic Scientist Doomsday Clock gets to midnight (now, 90 seconds to go) the more they cheer, so drunk are they that humans should rule the earth through their own self-determination, and not God.

I recall Amber’s name because I made a mental note to read her book someday, along with Rolf’s. I’ll probably never get around to either of them because everyone has a tale of responding to woe. Everyone has a tale of reacting to things that don’t entirely square (as though everything in the greater world does). Everyone has a tale of miscarriage  like Job and/or being undermined by characters like Eli, Bill, and Zop. Mine is as good as theirs—they should read my books, not I theirs!—which have the added advantage of showing how you can throw out the bathwater without throwing out the baby. Or, just read and meditate on the Book of Job. That will do the trick, too.

At our Kingdom Hall, the torch has been passed to a younger generation of elders. One of them handled the ‘Instruction’ talk last night, ‘Remain Loyal Despite the Actions of Others.’ Have you ever been hurt by another brother or sister? he asked. ‘It could have been accidental. It could have been deliberate; we’re imperfect,’ he said. He then related how he had had such an experience in another congregation at the hand of fellow elders. He gave no details, other than how it hurt him deeply and he wrestled for a proper reaction.

‘What about the sister in the picture?’ he returned to the text material, commented on the accompanying photo. Here she is being yelled at. Right outside the Kingdom Hall. That’s not pleasant, is it? It probably was traumatic. What will she do? Who will she tell? (the photo inset shows her in prayer) Will she tell everyone in the congregation? [laughter, because the friends are contrasting that with the inset] Will she go to another congregation? Will she leave the truth? He then returned to his own experience. ‘Do you want to leave the congregation?’ The CO had asked him, and pointed to one or two where they needed help. The CO presented it that neither option, stay or go, was wrong, but, ‘If you stay, you will grow.’ He did stay and did grow. He related how, by staying, he got to see how Jehovah handled the issue in time.

It is always a matter of stay or go in the face of adversity. Sometimes the go is to a different congregation. Sometimes it is to leave the faith entirely.

The Bethel brothers do push back against apostasy, but with such a non-applicable vagueness that you wonder if they are not keeping something under wraps. They give the solution without mentioning the sticky scenario that requires it.  ‘The unanswered argument always appears stronger for that reason,’ I read somewhere. It makes those who examine it overestimate its strength and those who don’t can become almost superstitious, fearing the power of ‘poisonous’ words.

On 2/14/2024 at 11:21 AM, JW Insider said:

Going around saying these things never happened, or that they are all lies doesn't help. In fact, it makes things worse for those who end up believing that and trying to defend the WTS against what turns out to be true. We end up looking uninformed, or haughty, naive, or worse yet, like liars ourselves.

It can happen. Every malcontent wants to control the narrative. He wants your agenda to be replaced by his. To indulge him in all his accusations is dumb. However, to pretend he doesn’t exist isn’t all that much better. 

On 2/14/2024 at 11:21 AM, JW Insider said:

People who are curious enough to go venture online "on their own" are going to hear all these things sooner or later anyway, so why not prepare them.

Sure. It’s inconsistent to present investigation as bad when it was investigation that led us to become Witnesses in the first place. It’s enough to say, ‘Well, you wouldn’t want to hang out there, but if you go there at all, watch out for toxic people, hypercritical people, unforgiving people, and OCD people—all of whom present in great numbers.’

The brothers really do give excellent counsel on combatting apostasy, but it can come across as hamstrung by a determination to avoid specifics. In the latest monthly broadcast one of the helpers gives such a talk. It is overall pretty good. But it starts with something like, ‘have you ever heard negative reports on JWs? It might be about (he mentions a few things that no one cares about—maybe they did at one time, but not now) and then says, ‘or maybe it is about our view of disfellowshipping. Bingo. I’d love to see a talk specifically on this topic. Maybe this is not the occasion for it, but is there one somewhere? A talk explaining the need for such discipline, and backing it up with secular considerations, not just the biblical ones that resonate with fewer and fewer people today. Something along the lines of, https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2018/08/the-trump-card-of-christian-discipline.html, maybe.

No need to present a litany of court cases, which opposers want done. There’s hardly a point, anyway. The pattern today is that activists influence law to the point they sometimes replace it. Lower courts may be swayed, but higher courts, not yet so infiltrated, overturns negative rulings on the basis of higher principles. Will this trend continue? Who knows? As activist ‘wokeism’ advances, with it’s demand of ‘inclusion,’ sparks fly with any religion that wants ‘insulation,’ essentially, that wants to follow Jesus direction to be ‘no part of the world.’ In the secular world, we see that law is turned inside-out and upside-down in an attempt to advance political or social causes. Will such legal manipulation one day ensnare us at the highest court level? As it did in Russia, and then the ECHR overturned the Russian Supreme Count verdict against the JW organization and the next day Russia removed itself from it’s jurisdiction?

So far, the earthly organization has proved adept at tweaking and amending policies to stay a step ahead of ones who use law in order to shut them down, Russia notwithstanding.  Always, such tweaks and amendments are lambasted as hypocrisy by opponents. Sometimes the brothers are somewhat clunky in response, but they do respond with what generally makes things better, leading some to say, ‘Jehovah uses the world to discipline his people!’ something I don’t say, but if it results in better policies and better navigation amidst a sea of circling sharks, why quibble?  

If money is involved in any way, as it always will be with any large organization, then it is, ‘It’s all about money with them!’ Even if one takes this view, so what? ‘Is there any among you whose bull will fall into a pit who will not drop everything until it is pulled out?’ Jesus says. Preservation of money is an unremarkable concern in secular matters of life. Money has the power to do things, so you want to keep it if you can. It’s only the ‘love of money’ that messes you up, not money itself.

The reason kids do not walk up and down the street with a shovel in winter or a lawn mower in summer, the way they used to, is that nobody will hire them. The reason nobody will hire them is that lawyers have exploited the occasional accident to award multi-million dollar verdicts. That’s why I pulled into the street of my childhood home to see my 77-year old dad, raised on a farm, perched atop his 2-story suburban home doing a re-roof. ‘Hey, Pop, you don’t have anything to prove at your age,’ I told him. It is also why every town used to have a ‘Suicide Hill’ for winter sledding, but now none of them do. It is safety, to be sure, but safety mostly driven by money. That hill was mobbed when I was a boy; my dad would take us there, as did many dads. Every so often, someone would break his leg. He’d emerge from the hospital on crutches with a bill for $100. Today, that bill might be in the hundreds of thousands, and people on TV would tell how their lawyer ‘got them 10 times what the insurance company offered.’

23 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

As much as the "broad and free freedom of communication" through today's predominantly digital means has its downsides, there are just as many positive aspects that will help individuals make "informed decisions" regarding their religious affiliation and dependence on certain ideologies of any provenance

The trouble with social media is that a comment from a principled and thoughtful person is immediately followed by one from a hedonistic moron who nonetheless carries equal weight. I am ecstatic about the internet. Something that would have taken me days to research I can now find out in seconds. But I haven’t lost sight of the fact that, by far, the greatest use of the internet is for porn. Closing in quickly is the spread of ‘misinformation,’ which is always in the eye of the beholder, lately countered with ‘fact-checking’ which is also in the eye of the beholder. AI Chat and, Lord help us, deep fakes, will presently make us all (except for some on this forum, of course) a flock of permanently-manipulated marks. AI tells us various things, but the Musk’s AI, fed differing algorithms, tell us another. And yet people are awed by artificial intelligence and count it as truly intelligent.

It’s not so much the thought that you may be ‘manipulated’ on the JW website that rankles; it is the ridiculous thought that you will not be manipulated elsewhere, only more subtly, with the always reassuring majority backing, and it accord with the modern spirit to let no one tell us what to do! Those who decry brainwashing the loudest are not so much concerned about brainwashing, but about brainwashing that is not theirs. Everything must be seen in the context of, ‘Government by God, or Government by Man,’ the universal issue that Watchtower publications put their finger on a century ago. 

Social media ‘exposes’ the faults of others, to be sure, but has it taken people anywhere other than it dawning on them they must rely upon themselves (not terrible in itself) because (the following is terrible) nobody is to be trusted. Twenty years into the widespread adoption of social media, has hatred been beaten back? Or has it increased ten-fold? These things are better seen in absence of any JW context, pro or con. Is there any figure anywhere, other than the occasional no-count entertainer or athlete, who garners overall public support. Or do we not just see the unseemly results when their respective enemies succeed in landing a punch or kicking them in the you-know-whats, revealing their shortcomings for all to see?

All the same, if social media exists and becomes all the rage, as it has, you’d better learn how to use it. You don’t want to be like the Amish man who says, ‘Forget these wicked cars from the Devil. It’s horse and buggy for us!’ You will overall lose, because Christians are destined to lose, as enemies are written to have their day in the sun, as they did with our Lord, before the tables are turned to make victory our of defeat. But, even as you do lose, you will likely succeed in keeping more of your own people and will draw in a certain number of high-information people who can recognize the big picture—the sort of people JWs drew in decades ago from the religious world before anyone ever heard of social media. A bit of training would help equip ones so inclined, just as we train in other aspects of communication. 

In Tom Irregardless and Me, I wrote about the JW website, then relatively new on the internet:

“Members of the Governing Body thus repeat the pattern they are known for with any new technology: They eye it with suspicion. They advise caution. They know that when the thief switches getaway cars, it is the thief you have to watch, not the dazzling features of the new car. They follow the thief for a time. Convinced at last that they still have a bead on him, they examine the car. They circle it warily, kicking the tires. At last satisfied, they jump in with both feet and put it to good uses its inventors could only have dreamed of.”

They have done that with the internet. They have not yet done that with social media. At present, the strategy still seems to be to hope it goes away.

 

[Srecko Sostar]

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Elsewhere, people are anything but optimistic about the future and a fair number are not even sure there will be one.

The prospects are bad. But that doesn't stop people from being fighters for their lives, no matter how it turns out in the end.
Let's say, the horror with plastic has long exceeded the possibilities to solve it. But have people stopped using plastic? How many materials do JWs and their organization use, not just plastic, which is already being shown to be harmful? Don't JWs and "God's Organization" use vehicles that pollute the environment? So, you yourself are active participants in generating the downfall in one way or another. Doctrinal mantras will not free you from the consequences that affect every inhabitant of the Earth. WTJWorg periodically postpones Armageddon and thus the "perfect total solution".

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Then there is an Amber Scorah who wrote a book upon going ‘apostate’ which was hailed by the media. The reviews lauded her ‘courage’ for facing the death of her newborn just following her ‘escape’ from a ‘high-control’ religion. ‘The dodo!’ I found myself thinking. Here she leaves a place where the death of a newborn would have unleashed scores of genuine comforters with a resurrection hope that never fails among Witnesses to soften the blow, to enter a community where there is no such comfort, but only the harsh loss itself, and she still counts it a victory!

The human mind seeks solace in various, unusual and even strange places. Hope and faith are subjective scenes supported by ideas from various sources. Even the Communists who fought against the Nazis had faith and hope without religion. They were atheists, weren't they? They are still there today. Both atheists and communists have not died out.

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

What about the sister in the picture?’ he returned to the text material, commented on the accompanying photo. Here she is being yelled at. Right outside the Kingdom Hall. That’s not pleasant, is it? It probably was traumatic. What will she do? Who will she tell? (the photo inset shows her in prayer) Will she tell everyone in the congregation? [laughter, because the friends are contrasting that with the inset] Will she go to another congregation? Will she leave the truth? He then returned to his own experience. ‘Do you want to leave the congregation?’ The CO had asked him, and pointed to one or two where they needed help. The CO presented it that neither option, stay or go, was wrong, but, ‘If you stay, you will grow.’ He did stay and did grow. He related how, by staying, he got to see how Jehovah handled the issue in time.

We are obliged to solve our problems and challenges ourselves. The only question is whether they taught us this when we were little, that is, whether they gave us a good foundation to continue growing and maturing while facing difficulties. With or without God, read; organized religion. 

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

So far, the earthly organization has proved adept at tweaking and amending policies to stay a step ahead of ones who use law in order to shut them down, Russia notwithstanding.  Always, such tweaks and amendments are lambasted as hypocrisy by opponents. Sometimes the brothers are somewhat clunky in response, but they do respond with what generally makes things better, leading some to say, ‘Jehovah uses the world to discipline his people!’ something I don’t say, but if it results in better policies and better navigation amidst a sea of circling sharks, why quibble?

Some JWs brothers and their lawyers are not honest when they present their testimony in court. Also, it is duplicitous to use the politically established scope of today's civilization on "freedom of religion", to introduce lawlessness and dishonesty through religious ideology and interpretations.

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

If money is involved in any way, as it always will be with any large organization, then it is, ‘It’s all about money with them!’ Even if one takes this view, so what? ‘Is there any among you whose bull will fall into a pit who will not drop everything until it is pulled out?’ Jesus says. Preservation of money is an unremarkable concern in secular matters of life. Money has the power to do things, so you want to keep it if you can. It’s only the ‘love of money’ that messes you up, not money itself.

"So what?" ........., "It’s only the ‘love of money’ that messes you up, not money itself."

Do you have a detector that measures someone's "love" of money? Because, I get the impression that you are sure that those who manage money and make decisions about money in the "Corporation" are all "money haters".

lol

 

[George88]

1 hour ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Let's say, the horror with plastic has long exceeded the possibilities to solve it. But have people stopped using plastic? How many materials do JWs and their organization use, not just plastic, which is already being shown to be harmful? Don't JWs and "God's Organization" use vehicles that pollute the environment?

Srecko, you're quite the comedian, haha! Are you also going to pin the blame on JWs for air pollution and the deterioration of soil on Earth? Don't forget to throw in the depletion of the ocean, and while you're at it, why not accuse the Watchtower of being responsible for all the problems in the universe?

Remember Srecko, while you're busy overthinking, you're part of the problem, not the solution. LOL!

[TrueTomHarley]

3 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Let's say, the horror with plastic has long exceeded the possibilities to solve it. But have people stopped using plastic? How many materials do JWs and their organization use, not just plastic, which is already being shown to be harmful? Don't JWs and "God's Organization" use vehicles that pollute the environment?

What about all that fresh air and clean water you consume, resources that could be put to fine use?

Really, Srecko, you don’t think you’re grasping at straws here?

3 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

The human mind seeks solace in various, unusual and even strange places. Hope and faith are subjective scenes supported by ideas from various sources

If she wants to saw off the branch she has been sitting on and congratulate herself on her liberation from the tree, it is her choice. My bad for implying a deficit of sense.

3 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

We are obliged to solve our problems and challenges ourselves.

As with your commentary on Amber, it would appear that your beef is with faith and religious community itself. That being the case, one wonders that you spend so much time on the one faith that has solved racism and will not pick up arms on any account.

3 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Some JWs brothers and their lawyers are not honest when they present their testimony in court. 

Probably another ‘eye of the beholder’ scenario. Just like how the one who doesn’t agree with how an opponent frames matters is always ‘arrogant’ on that account. I admit, I do not follow trial testimony closely or at all, but I have suggested in the past that since everybody hates jury duty and nobody believes a court outcome anyway, that the answer is to try all cases on Facebook and settle guilt or innocence by likes. It’s not like I’m trying not to do my bit.

3 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Do you have a detector that measures someone's "love" of money?

I do have one of those things. I have measured the Bethel brothers on it. They check out okay.

[Anna]

11 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Here she leaves a place where the death of a newborn would have unleashed scores of genuine comforters with a resurrection hope that never fails among Witnesses to soften the blow, to enter a community where there is no such comfort, but only the harsh loss itself, and she still counts it a victory

I thought the same. Her writing is so sad really, yet we're supposed to feel happy for her....

[Srecko Sostar]

10 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

What about all that fresh air and clean water you consume, resources that could be put to fine use?

Really, Srecko, you don’t think you’re grasping at straws here?

I would use @George88 Georg's words, we humans are only part/causers of the problem. Are we the solution?