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TrueTomHarley

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  1. I was surprised that Watchtower had so little impact. At the time, I thought that here and there beards would soon be appearing. Didn’t happen. Beards occurred rarely among the publishers and never (in my area) among the elders or servants. A part of me thinks the latest video is just reiterating what was written back then in Sept 2016, almost a ‘doubling down,’ made advisable since ‘an object in motion tends to stay in motion.’ Once ‘no-beards’ was a thing, as it was for decades, it would take more than a single paragraph for our thinking to change. I remember that Watchtower well because just afterward I wrote a gag post about conducting a Bible Study with Santa Claus. He was making reasonably good progress, was even attending meetings, but he eventually was stumbled and discontinued his study. Now, maybe, just maybe, he will resume it. Of course, I’ll still have to help him with the holiday thing, but at least the beard thing is no more. https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2016/12/how-is-mr-claus-doing-on-his-bible-study.html
  2. People drop off aged relatives in nursing homes, never to be contacted again, for reasons no greater than they have become inconvenient. Disfellowshipping is a last ditch effort, when all else has failed, of ensuring that members stay true to biblically required conduct. Essentially, it is a tool to stay ‘no part of the world.’ Is it necessary? No group has been able to stay true to biblical standards of conduct without some form of it. Anything done can be done differently, but the move to outlaw it is a tool to impede staying separate from the world, as though none should be able to excuse themselves from the ruinous experiment of human self-rule. Few things that are done must be done to the nth degree. Some time after a certain teen I knew well was disfellowshipped, he, who was learning to drive, dropped his family off at the carport, parked the car himself, and strode back into the hall. Without a coat—it was 20 degrees Fahrenheit! Throwing protocol to the wind, I said to him privately, ‘Wow, I know there’s to be no contact and all, but did they even have to take your coat?’ He smiled at that one, not too long afterwards was reinstated, and is doing well to this day. There is also pushback over those disfellowshipped who were baptized as teens or even younger, as in, could they possibly have understood the consequences of their actions at that young age? I suspect that in such instances, they are already being cut a bit extra slack should they err as they are growing up, but it is another matter of legal contention.
  3. No more counting time so I decided to go out with a bang and reported 50,000 hours to the secretary.
  4. “Those of the Enlightenment laud the “human experiment” that is democracy, Jehovah’s Witnesses laud the human experiment that is worldwide family. Theirs is John Lennon’s brotherhood of man not rejoicing that there is above us only skybut instead seeking direction from that sky. A family all but solving racism, a family uniting nationalities and social classes. Who wouldn’t want a double-shot of it? But even a recent circuit overseer likened it to “one big, united, happy, somewhat dysfunctional family,” a phrase I suspect is not in any outline. “Witnesses are ordinary folk, with all the foibles of ordinary folk, and maybe a few extra thrown in since “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are ill do: I [Jesus] came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” “What makes the Witnesses tick? Examine the pressures facing these ordinary folk who star in a world-stage role that is alternately noble and strange. Some pressure is external: “A large door that leads to activity has been opened to me, but there are many opposers.” Some pressure is internal: “We have this treasure [of the ministry] in earthen vessels.” Translation: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” “Either way, “Do not be puzzled at the burning among you . . . as though a strange thing were befalling you,” says Peter. Don‘t be puzzled. Tackle it head-on. Start with the pure bonus, ‘Things that drive you crazy about the faith--and how to view them,’ for the goal is to endure: “When the Son of man arrives, will he really find the faith on the earth?” says Jesus. ‘Not if we have anything to do with it,’ reply ever increasing enemies. "If errors were what you watch, O Jah, O Jehovah, who could stand?” asks the psalm. Is watching errors not the mission statement of today’s culture, typified in its media? Nobody stands as their enemies magnify, enhance, and even concoct evil reports—see it play out on the internet with any public figure, “admiring personalities,” until they destroy them. Ought Christians play that game? "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is stumbled, and I am not incensed? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness,” says Paul. Three times the apostle entreated God to remove a “thorn in his flesh” Nothing doing, God said. I look better when you are flawed. If brilliant people achieve brilliant things, it’s easy to see why. But when flawed people do it . . .” “Tips on the ministry within. How did Witnesses fare in the face of COVID-19? How to regard ever-present conspiracy theories that ripple through society? And what about those overlapping generations? How long can they overlap? What is at stake? What facts on the ground identify the times? Venturing to the edge of the universe, rewriting the textbooks, and dressing down the god of good luck is all in a day's work. Meet Mephibosheth, that faithful man of old whom nobody can pronounce his name at the New System Dinner Table. A bad boy turns over a new leaf, a theodicy that works, and my favorite circuit overseer finish up the offerings.” I have indulged a hobby to write a few books in the past, the first being Tom Irregardless and I. The preceding is the metadata for the latest: ‘In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction.’ Searchable in print at Amazon, also digital at other ebook retailers.
  5. Great. Just great. My car breaks down exactly at the door of the Assembly Hall as I am dropping someone off! The downside? It’s embarrassing! The upside? (which almost became a downside; it was so frequent) For the next 2 hours, until the tow truck arrived, (trust me on this—it needed a tow) brothers kept coming out to see if I needed help. They are all so nice and I am reminded of my non believing dad 40 years ago at my wedding saying to his own brother, ‘C’mon Joe, let’s go out in the parking lot for a smoke. These people are so nice I can’t stand it.’ Being brothers, many of them assumed they could get me going right them and there. I had to explain it to each one to assure them they couldn’t. Among brothers, there are always some who really are mechanical. One of them diagnosed the issue. No, it probably wasn’t the slave cylinder, he said, but the master cylinder, since the clutch pedal wouldn’t rise on its own. At 194K the car has a right to misbehave. But the tow truck took so long in coming that I sent someone in to the chairman’s office to say if they needed an afternoon interview for the ‘Exercise Patience’ theme, I was available. The Assembly Hall was then being used for the Regional. No, it wasn’t all the fault of the towing company. Some of it was the roadside assistance app that couldn’t fathom how Tom Harley could possibly be the same as Thomas Harley and so kept issuing denials of service without comment. With a person, you could straighten in out in 2 seconds, but in the AI world it is not that way. It is, instead, like when your wife, though she has always been friendly, one day locks you out of the house without the hint of a reason. And no, I hadn’t waited till the last minute to address the issue. I had been nursing it for a week or two. Sometimes problems go away on their own. Besides, when I looked at the new models, the asking price was over $2500 more than what their own website says. ‘Yeah, well, there’s extra doo-dads that come with it,’ the salesperson says. Well, since I can order one—he’s already told me that—I’ll just order one without the extra doo-dads. You know how I am with a car. I check for cruise control. Everything else it has or doesn’t have, I get used to it. ‘So even though it says I can order a car, I really can’t,’ I tell the man after he says no. ‘Yes and no,’ he says. I can order if it’s something like color I want to change. But if I’m ordering because I think it’s going to be a penny cheaper—what hallucinogen am I taking?
  6. To find kids unfamiliar with phone books and convince them that a comic book is one.
  7. This is my problem too—lack of time. Still, I have ripping muscles and can rip a phone book in two as easily as looking at it. (Youngsters ask: ‘What’s a phone book?’) A fine looking bunch of people are Jehovah’s people. Women outside are pretty too, but one must never forget the following scripture, much more likely to be true there than here: “As a gold nose ring in the snout of a pig, so is a woman that is pretty but that is turning away from sensibleness.” (Prov 11:22)
  8. There are few things more conducive to stable mental health than writing. Any mental health practitioner worth his salt will suggest it in some form. Some very expressive verses you have penned.
  9. Here’s a Pittsburg sign that still stands—unmolested and sans pyramids. In front of old Carnegie Hall, taken about 2 months ago:
  10. Appeals to governmental powers do not always fall on deaf ears. The JW archives tell of a slandered Witness in danger of losing her son: “The brothers and sisters in Anna’s congregation composed a letter attesting to her good example as a mother. A brother carried the letter to Moscow and delivered it to then-leader Nikita Khrushchev. Remarkably, Khrushchev ordered an inquiry into the matter. Anna was exonerated, and her son was not taken by the authorities.” Something similar has happened with Putin. [See prior post.] Today “the rights of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia must be fully restored…..The Russian Supreme Court has taken the first step in this direction, …[ruling that] recognition of a religious organization as extremist does not prohibit its followers from exercising their right to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion.” In other words, do you want to arrest them? You first have to establish they have done something illegal. It is not enough that they exist. (Copy and paste all Russian language articles into https://www.deepl.com/translator for translation.) Maybe it just became too outrageous. Letters of support for Timothy Zhukov painted Russian “justice” as too much a word belonging in quotes. He had appealed his arrest based upon the constitution that guarantees freedom of worship. For that he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. It prompted these published letters: “A citizen of the Russian Federation wanted to use the article of the Constitution and this is his right. However, the law enforcement agencies decided to condemn the citizen for this, and even recognize him as mentally ill. Where is the Law? Where is the justice? Night arrest, interrogation - continuous violations of the law. As it recalls the events of the first century: "Then Jesus said to them: as if you went out against a robber with swords and stakes to take Me" (Bible, Gospel of Mark chapter 14 verse 48). I would like to praise Timothy, in such a terrible situation he remains a faithful Christian, he endures everything courageously!” Miroslava, November 11, 2021 and “Marvelous! A person shows respect for the highest law of the state, using the 51st article of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, and the investigating authorities themselves see this as a reason to doubt his sanity. It is as if a mirror image of the events of bygone days described in the Bible: “When he defended himself in this way, Festus interrupted him.“ You are out of your mind, Paul, ”he shouted,“ great learning drove you to madness! ”(Acts of the Apostles 26: 24, New Russian translation) …Victor, November 12, 2021. Zhukov himself is a lawyer—thus, even from the secular perspective, the “great learning” works. He has recently been compensated for his confinement. One thing the Witness organization can be depended upon: They will not allow villainies to be “done in a corner.” (Acts 26:26) Did continual denunciations, each time highlighting the absurdity and thus painting the country itself as absurd, finally trigger a tipping point? Such as this recent item in the Washington Post? A few days after the November 2021 Supreme Court reinterpretation, a Witness was acquitted of extremism—the first Witness to be acquitted of that charge. The ultimate results of the High Court’s decision wait to be seen. “Few believe this is a signal to an end to mass repression against Jehovah's Witnesses,” one source says. Another speaks of theologian Andrei Kuraev, who is asked to interpret just what the Court’s ruling will mean in practical terms. He is hopeful—guardedly—“that this document of the whole Supreme Court may be evidence of some serious changes in approach.” Kuraev is included in I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses: Searching for the Why, as is Timothy Zhukov. He is no friend of Jehovah’s Witnsees, but he is a friend of common sense. He has maintained all along that the original 2017 declaration equating Jehovah’s Witness with extremism is ridiculous. That decision “is far-fetched and very unconscionable. Because the Jehovists are radical in only one respect: they are radical pacifists.” Of the current decision that you can’t just beat up on them if they aren’t doing anything wrong, he agrees. But he knows where he lives. “The Supreme Court's decision is one thing and policy may be something entirely different. I am afraid that in Russia when there is a conflict between a legislative document and the order of an immediate superior, the latter will win." So time will tell. Kuraev’s forces of common sense are up against some truly bizarre thinking. Graniru.org* reports (November 23, 2021) that the charge of "eschatological extremism," for which prosecutors were seeking a 9 year prison term before the latest Court opinion thwarted them, must be upheld “since the end of the world, which these political prisoners [Jehovah’s Witnesses] expect, will result in mass disturbances and violations of Russia's territorial integrity.” The prosecution’s “independent experts objected in all seriousness: ‘Violent acts committed by Jehovah, who is not a subject of law and cannot, due to his divine nature, be influenced by the texts presented for examination, can in no way be prevented by applying anti-extremist legislation. Moreover, any acts committed by Jehovah, even if they are violent, cannot be unlawful.’" *https://graniru.org, (https://www.facebook.com/achivchalov, Nov 23rd entry) It recalls to mind a cartoon I once saw of God preparing to hurl a lightning bolt. He is stopped when an angel tugs at his sleeve: “Not America! Think of the lawsuits.” Seems the angel should have said it of Russia.
  11. Okay. My bad. I’ll yield on the point. It was just a throwaway transitional remark anyway.

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