They have quarter walls on the platform of the new Kingdom Hall I visited. Most taking the platform would walk up from the side, disappear behind one end of the wall and then reappear from the other end to take the speaker position. I only saw one person do it differently.

It is just a small thing. Hardly worth mentioning. Petty, anyone? I ought to rise about the temptation to say anything. But.....on the other hand........

IT DROVE ME NUTS! Why would anyone do it that way?

I know how this happens. Someone starting doing it thinking it looked more “dignified.” Others thought it was a progressive idea, and followed suit. That is how these things work. There is never a ‘rule’ though occasionally there is an unwritten rule which you cope with by just ignoring it.

The way you stop this nonsense is by deliberately flying in the face of it. Structures vary, but usually there is but a single step from the auditorium to the platform—it runs the width of the platform—and you mount that step any old place that you happen to be—let the stuffy other brothers think that you are uncouth if they must. What is more likely to happen is that they will come to think the other way is a little silly.

They see it done that way at the Assembly Hall and they try to carry over the experience to the Kingdom Hall. At the Assembly Hall, that seats 1000, well—of course! Just like in any auditorium, you have to enter through a door in the back and then come on stage behind a curtain or a half wall. You can’t just take stage directly from the auditorium because you would have to clamber up a 2 or 3 foot wall, and that would look ridiculous.

Entering from behind the short walls at the Kingdom Hall makes just the opposite impression. The walls are convenient places to store junk behind, most likely—unused mike stands and the like. It’s not for a pretentious means for entry when you can just walk up easy as pie from where ever you are!

“Sure,” says my wife. “You always know just the way it should be. Everyone is doing it wrong. Only Tom knows the way to do it!”

Finally, that woman is catching on! DO IT RIGHT, BROTHERS!

Talk (5 minutes or less) Week of Feb 4-10, 2018: 'Maintain a Realistic View of Your Limitations and Those of Others.'

‘When Jehovah’s Witnesses go nuts, they become quirky eccentrics, who nevertheless wouldn’t harm a fly.

When people of the overall world go nuts, you’d better call in the SWAT team.

(It is an introduction that plays to the audience. Certainly, nuts of the general world do not all require the SWAT team, but there are enough instances of such that the introduction works.)

Of course, ‘nuts’ might be viewed as a pejorative. Instead one might say ‘damaged goods’ or ‘pieces of work.’

(Here the speaker is on shaky ground. Is he calling members of the congregation, or even the entire congregation, ‘nuts,’ while excluding himself? Best defuse that one.)

It is like when many were away for a foreign-language assembly, and many more in seldom-worked territory. Just moments before the meeting was to begin, turnout was notably thin. I leaned over to Brother Oxgoad and said: “Do the friends think that you are giving the talk today?” He took a moment to process it, and shot back: “You’re a piece of work!” What was I going to say—that I wasn’t? In one way or another, we are all pieces of work.

(At that point it was time to go to the suggested verse.)

Romans 3:23 discusses the reality: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The word translated sin comes from a root that means “to miss the mark.”

(I played with a bow & arrow for a bit.) At first, we didn’t even hit the target, and once in a while, we still miss it altogether. Usually, though, we do hit the target and even come closer and closer to the bullseye, but outright hitting it doesn’t happen often.

Another way of saying that we ‘miss the mark’ is to concede that we all have rough edges. Rough edges aren’t a huge deal when each one keeps his distance, but in a close setting, like a family--or a congregation, they become more of an issue.

(It was time to refer to a video that most remembered as to how to deal with rough edges. Since I have written of it already in ‘Dear Mr. Putin – Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia,’ I will here do a copy and paste:)

“The video shown was entitled Remove the Rafter. It featured a disgruntled member who thought most of his congregation a bunch of sheltered oddities. Even if they were, he came to realize in the end that the only one he could change was himself. As the Bible verse he was considering, in order to give his assigned student talk, faded onscreen, two words remained a split second longer than the others: ‘rafter' and ‘straw.’ This happened three times, and on the third, the word ‘hypocrite’ also remained. It is Jesus’ words he considered: “Why do you notice the straw in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the rafter in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that straw from your eye,’ while the rafter is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the rafter from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the straw from your brother’s eye.’ As though to drive the point home, in the background, a workman carrying a rafter in the video briefly stood in front of a stopping bus advertising eye exams, so that a rafter actually did protrude from a eye for but a moment.

“At first glance, it is a slick move from the Watchtower video directors. But it is meant to illustrate a slick move upon the heart. The reason those two words remained, and then three, is that his heart was yet soft enough for them to register—having benefited from previous divine education. A hardened person would not have responded that way. The brother allowed the scripture to mold him. This is how God trains in the congregation, but it would all have been lost upon one who’s heart was molded primarily by this world’s education. Imagine how differently history might read if this verse was a staple of education, and not just a dreamy footnote. With Jehovah’s Witnesses, it is a staple.”

The talk concluded with words not too unlike the above two lines. Days later someone referred to ‘Brother Sandpaper.’ It was from one of those old syrupy memes that some just love, (I don’t) probably the one about how all the congregation members are like tools in God’s drawer that he uses to accomplish his purpose. (Even as I write this, it annoys me.) What is Brother Sandpaper’s function? To sand down our rough edges, which he accomplishes by being abrasive.

The thing irritates because it seems to suggest that Brother Sandpaper will always be Brother Sandpaper. And it seems to imply that he is yet lovable. He is not lovable, though he has some redeeming features, but that is not the same. His brusque and curt manner has stumbled many, and if that verse about tying a millstone around the neck of someone who behaves that way means anything, the sooner he gets his act together, the better.

When you give an illustration, it has to reasonably fit in all aspects. Like the book I am reading right now, The Fort, by Bernard Cornwall. The British force has encamped on the shores of late-1700s Massachusetts so as to curb the revolutionaries. The captain muses whether they will soon come to mount a challenge. “Aye, the bastards will come, all right,” the first officer assures him. “Mark my words, they’ll come, like flies to dung!” and the captain wonders at the appropriateness of likening His Majesty’s Naval Forces to dung.

It was hard not to think of the human immune system at Sunday’s Watchtower. We all have them and if kept strong they are pretty good at warding off all manner of illness. But they are under assault constantly. It is the same with emotional health. It is under assault constantly with pressures described as “strength-sapping” and “emotionally draining.”

Building up emotional health in the congregation will be members who are careful in their speech not to add to someone’s burden but to alleviate it. “Thoughtless speech is like the stabs of a sword, but the tongue of the wise is a healing.” (Prov. 12:18)

Also helping is reflection of the God we serve. “For you became precious in my eyes...and I have loved you....do not be afraid, for I am with you.” (Isaiah 43:4-5) And: “Do not be afraid, for I am with you. Do not be anxious, for I am your God. I will fortify you, yes, I will help you, I will really hold on to you with my right hand of righteousness.  (41:10)

Given the pressures and even atrocities of the day, the ones to be concerned about are those with whom it all runs off like water off a duck's back. One is reminded of Jesus' words that he called upon, not those who do not need a physician, but those who do.

At the Regional Convention, at least half of the videos were directed at young people. This is good because they are under more peer pressure than most not to 'go along with the crowd.' All young people experience this pressure, but Jehovah's Witnesses youth more than usual because what they stand for is more specific and the degree to which they stand is more determined. Besides, there are many young people who resolve the pressure not to go along with the crowd by going along with the crowd. Sometimes they go so far as to answer the wise words of their mama, "If everyone jumped off of a cliff, would you jump off, too?" with a "That's what I'm talkin about!"

Such talks at the convention would feature some Bible character doing something that took guts, and then the modern video application have some young person taking a bold stand based upon consideration of it. I don't remember the specific talk, but I do remember the specific video of a high school girl saying how she was really quite shy but got into the habit of, right from the start, at school's opening intro 'show and tell' session, reveal that she was one of Jehovah's Witnesses and thereafter let it be known, when all the kids are quizzing each other as to what they did on the weekend, that she engages in spiritual activity during much of that time. That is all she did.

"People started coming to me with their problems," she relates. Upon establishing herself as a member of something she thinks works better, all she has to do is be nice, cooperative, friendly, and it is easier for her to stand firm when peer pressure to do something she thinks wrong comes her way. People approached her, she said, and to the extent they did, she was ready to discuss what she had and how she found it had worked for her. Let me tell you, it works way better than haranquing people over religious doctrine, which few in the West care much about anyway, and the ones that do are inclined to do nothing but argue over it.

The Watchtower Study Sunday furthered that basic youth-supporting theme, with paragraphs discussing various situations. When another student approaches her teacher, and you know it is a science teacher because of the ascending apelike creatures on the chart in the background, she does not have to convince him to turn the whole troupe around and march them back into the slime from whence they came; he is not going to do that. All she has to do is tell him that she doesn't buy it. It is undermining to her faith and it is not sufficiently logical to be allowed to do that. To overturn the common sense model seen everywhere else that anything made has a maker and the more complicated the made thing is the smarter the maker must be will take proof more conclusive than what is offered.

Even the teacher, though he may mutter a bit, may be able to live with this because Watchtower publications speak of the six days of creation being "epochs" and the period prior to their commencement being "aeons." Jehovah's Witnesses are not young-earth creationists.

When the Watchtower wants to suggest a biology teacher, always the ascending ape chart is in the background; that's how it is done. It probably is done everywhere, not just in the Watchtower, for that one chart instantly conveys the idea as nothing else does. Icons are everywhere. Sometimes they are not even accurate. When a scientist was impressed with a discussion between he and I and wanted to reproduce it on his own blog, he represented himself with a double-helix. I got stuck with a cross! So I told him Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe that Jesus died on a cross but on an upright stake. "I knew that, actually," he said, "but an upright stake makes a ridiculous looking icon." What could I say? I had to bear my cross.

Several videos (back to the Regional Convention) feature Witness youths being put down, sometimes even by the teacher, and thereafter mustering up boldness to ask to address the whole class, always (in the cases shown) winning respect from students and teachers alike.

What about the victim of childhood sexual abuse within the Witness setting who remains faithful but it was anything but easy because her abuser basked in the respect of all until the day he died? Think it’s easy to answer that person? Think it’s easy to be that person?

If there is one thing that might be described as our gross planetary product, borrowing terminology from the economists, it is childhood sexual abuse. Thirty years of all-out war against it has made barely a dent. You can still throw a stone in any direction and hit half a dozen pedophiles. Within the month, three local cases of teachers busted for the vice (including a principal) has made the news.

Though the greater world battles the evil, it does what it always does. It focuses on symptoms and not root cause. It focuses on punishment—though it is not just Elon Musk who wonders why, two years after Epstein died in prison over CSA (‘If you were surprised to hear Jeff Epstein committed suicide in prison,’ one cynic said, ‘just think how surprised he must have been), and shortly afterwards his mistress was jailed, no one else has ever been implicated—didn’t he run a pedophile paradise island and there entertain some of the best-connected persons in the world?

(photo: OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia)

It’s rather like what Frederick Douglass said about slavery. Characterizing the proposition that the North (at first) was fighting to preserve the union irrespective of ending slavery, he said, “We strike at the effect and leave the  cause unharmed.” It is the same with the world’s approach to childhood sexual abuse. Strike at the cause and maybe then we can be more impressed.

How can continually focusing on Bible teachings with regard to sexual morality not be counted among efforts to stamp out the cause, not merely the effects? Nonetheless, while I might onetime have liked to say there was no CSA within the Jehovah’s Witness setting, such has not been the case. Be abused in that setting, and you are likely to think that setting is the focus of the problem, though those not so emotionally attached will know this is not the case.

So it’s back to square one. The perpetrator has died. The victim has remained faithful to God and the infrastructure she perceives He has set forth. What on earth do you say to such a person?

Maybe the verse that should carry the day is 1 Timothy 5:24

“The sins of some men are publicly known, leading directly to judgment, but those of other men become evident later.”  

What that judgment will be I will not venture to say, but it’s the notion that there has been no judgment that devastates. It will, should it fall under the purview of this verse, happen “later.” Will “later” be in the new system of things—or is the person’s goose already cooked and he won’t be there? Either way, no more will someone parade around in a false veneer of respectability while a victim is only too aware of his wicked underbelly. The emperor’s clothes will be shed, for all to see. How will he deal with that little problem?

I have a certain flare for dramatic reading, which compensates for lack of talent elsewhere, and I used to draw out this verse with a long pause before “later.” The effect of a long pause is that when the next word at last comes it hits like a hammer. (Pastor Ingqvist of Lake Wobegon tried to master this technique by emulating the TV preacher, but he began pausing in such odd . . . . . . . . . . . . places . . . that nobody knew what he was talking about.) The sins of some men with become evident—“not now,” I would insert the phrase, but . . . “later.”

The scripture was included in the public talk outline ‘Jehovah’s Eyes Are Upon Us.’ That talk, at least the way I used to deliver it, laid majority emphasis on, ‘Don’t think you’re going to get away with any wicked schemes—God sees it all even if humans don’t and he will see that you are clobbered for your bad deeds.’

Some of the nasty schemes that scoundrels were so sure they were going to get away with (until they didn’t) was the rotten sons of Eli laying down “with the women who served at the entrance of the tent of meeting.”  (1 Samuel 2:22) What if you knew about it? How could you not, the tent of meeting being at the time the center of worship? What a downer that would be.

Wussy Eli would scold them, halfheartedly—and I would read the following as though it were “the people” causing the trouble: “Why do you keep doing things like these? For the things I am hearing about you from all the people are bad.” “But they refused to listen to their father, for Jehovah had determined to put them to death”—huge stress on the italicized, slowly enunciated words, with my own: “All this time they thought they were getting away with something, but . . . “ Who did they think they were kidding?

Other lowlifes who earned their justified ends, even though they thought what they did had been in secret, were those rotters of old-time Israel carrying on outrageously, untroubled because “they are saying, ‘Jehovah is not seeing us. Jehovah has left the land.’” (Ezekiel 8:12) Turned out he was and he hadn’t. Gehazi, who went on to serve as another bad example, also met his comeuppance due to God’s vigilance.

All of these accounts were drawn out in an overly dramatic fashion that sort of embarrasses me today. Moreover, could I even do it today, and would I want to? The talk has been completely rewritten, a current speaker assured me, to emphasize the positive over the negative. You can go either way, as can be seen from this verse:

“The eyes of Jehovah are on the righteous, And his ears listen to their cry for help. But the face of Jehovah is against those doing what is bad, To erase all memory of them from the earth.” (Psalm 34:15-16)

The former used to be there and I would dutifully read it—no, not grudgingly—I gave it its due—but the rewards of the righteous was overshadowed by the punishment for the wicked. Today it is the reverse. Doubtless it is a good thing. Emphasize the good over the bad. It’s in complete accord with today’s emphasis that, as a default position, you think well of the other person, not regard them with suspicion. It is absolutely a shift of emphasis for the better. But it also doesn’t hurt to know that the scoundrels will be exposed—even if in some cases it happens . . . . later.

******  The bookstore

In that Watchtower Study about encouragement, it turns out that everyone can use it and everyone can give it. When it came to the paragraph on elders as recipients, the congregation we visited showered them with quite a few nice remarks. ‘I think we’re going to stay on this paragraph for the rest of the meeting,’ the conductor quipped.

Yeah. If they are shelter from the wind, the rainstorm, or the roasting sun, then they need a coat of varnish now and then - maintenance, the same as you would maintain any barrier. It turns out that they don’t need much; they are mostly self-maintaining. A little bit of encouragement will do, especially coupled with cooperation and acquiescing to the lead they take, not unlike how Hebrews 13:17 puts it:

“Be obedient to those taking the lead among you and be submissive, for they are keeping watch over you as those who will render an account, so that they may do this with joy and not with sighing, for that would be damaging to you.”

When it came to encouragement that anyone might give anyone, a verse cited was Philippians 2:3; do it “with humility, consider the other superior to you.” This led someone to observe ‘How can that be? How can two persons each regard the other as superior?’ The trick is to look for the one or more things in the other person at which they are better than you …there will always be something…and then hone in on that quality. Failing that, the trap will be that someone gives encouragement in a looking-down way, or a patronizing way, undermining its intended effect.

How many people really give encouragement, anyway? It certainly is not the pattern outside of the congregation. Look at social media and it would appear to be a scarce commodity indeed. It is good to surround oneself with people with whom encouragement replaces ‘cutting’ as a M.O.

Then there was that part about Paul needing encouragement, and even rescue “from the unbelievers in Judea,” as though they actually came after him, and were not just the apathetic persons Christians typically encounter. One begins to wonder if he is not speaking of unbelievers in the congregation making trouble, for battling apostasy is a steady theme in the Greek Scriptures; there is not an NT writer who does not deal with it.

Every Witness has heard the one about the 40 different writers, from wildly diverse backgrouds...some kings, and some day laborers....over a period of some 2000 years. What are the chances that they will write a coherent book? And yet the 40 that are Bible writers have done so, steadily advancing the theme of God's kingdom arrangment developing.

The speaker Sunday followed up with a comparison I have not heard before. It was that of 45 United States Presidents, all cut from basically the same cloth, over a far shorter period of time. Yet, would anyone say that they advance the same vision? Just ask Obama and then Trump.