What of all these changes in recent months? 

Jehovah’s Witnesses have counted their time in the ministry for 100 years. Now they don’t do it any more.

Next, it was beards. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been beardless since Russell days. Suddenly they start sprouting them.

Then it is changes on how disfellowshipped ones are treated should they return to the Kingdom Hall. And also a newer, softer, way of treating minors who veer from the straight paths in which they were raised.

And then—knock me over with a feather!—ties at meetings and in the ministry are placed on the chopping block. Forget about them if you want to! Look, I’ve seen photos of our brothers striding through the jungle with ties affixed!—and suddenly they’re optional! (A few shed them both at the next meeting and occasion for field service, but most did not.)

And then, sisters may choose to wear slacks. Again, a few did. Most didn’t.

I mean, that elder I love to tease—I told him I had expected him to show up in a Steelers sweatshirt! (which he did not)

More on the horizon? I’ve got my eye on that slick two-seater sports car, just in case. I also might fix the starred out L-word in Tom Irregardless and Me: “L*ck.” Wine glasses filled up (with Coke) just awaiting people to toast.

It’s even a bit surreal how fast things are changing. 

Vic Vomodog (we used to pull together in the work!) contacted me recently. He thinks that with all these changes, now he can:

****  The bookstore

Reference was made at yesterday’s Watchtower Study about how “For centuries, the relationship between faith and works has been hotly debated in Christendom.” Some insist it is saved by faith, and some insist by works. So the Study explored that topic, and it is a big ‘Duh.’ A child can understand it. Barely any ‘education’ at all is required. It is different ‘works’ in different contexts that Paul and James refer to.

[‘Faith and Works can Lead to Righteousness’—December 2023 issue]

So you begin to wonder why the learned one haven’t been able to settle it “for centuries.” Is it that “debate” is their method of choice, as though the way to settle anything is through triumph of the intellect? One brother pointed to a faulty silver lining in that approach; it enables professional debaters to say that it’s okay never to reach resolution because the Bible writers themselves couldn’t agree! However, said that Watchtower (paragraph 9): “Jehovah inspired both Paul and James to write what they did. (2 Tim. 3:16) So there must be a simple way to harmonize their statements. There is​—by considering their writings in context”—and, without fuss, they did it.

Or is it that God blesses those who put obedience first? As in, ‘obedient ones are blessed with understanding, but the ‘great thinkers’ never figure it out?’ As in, “Look! To obey is better than a sacrifice,” (1 Samuel 15:22) in this case, the ‘sacrifice’ of brainpower. As in, ‘You don’t have to know everything, but act upon what you do know.’

I suspect that’s why the scholars will never be running the show at JW Central. It’s too easy for scholars to take refuge in their scholarship and be unconcerned that no practical application is ever made of it. Said Jesus to the learned of his day: “How can you believe, when you are accepting glory from one another and you are not seeking the glory that is from the only God?” (John 5:44) The first activity interferes with the second—it is a trap scholars can easily fall into. Run with what you have, instead. If you don’t have everything, as you never will, figure it out on the fly.

Or is it some other factor? Is it that the faith people are such because they don’t want to do any works? Or the works people are such because they don’t have much faith, but do like to shine before others? At any rate, it is very strange that the relationship between faith and works can be cleared up in a single Study at the Kingdom Hall (it was just a refresher study anyway, not anything new) whereas the theologians have debated it “for centuries.”

Some of these points came up in field service the day before. ‘Here you are going door-to-door,’ one evangelical man said to us, ‘but don’t you know that salvation is by faith and not by works?’ ‘Yeah, everyone knows that,’ I replied. None of Jehovah’s Witnesses think they’re ‘earning’ anything. It’s just a matter of showing appreciation for a priceless gift. If you receive such a gift and it makes no change whatsoever in your life afterwards, one might justifiably wonder just how much you really do appreciate it.

This fellow also went on and on about the pastor of his church. The pastor will quote this or that from the Bible and then you should not just take his word for it, he would say, but you should check it. ‘Yeah, we’re trying to make all our people pastors,’ is what I would have said had I thought of it in time—our best lines always occur to us too late. Of course, not all our people are pastors—we too have plenty of weak or immature Christians—but the Witness organization doesn’t cater to them by appointing just a single person to serve as the ‘pastor.’ There’s no reason everyone can’t attain to the role. Besides, a pastor is always at risk that his special qualifications and background doesn’t go to his head. Sometimes it does.

******  The bookstore

This will be a multi-part series. See Preface,  2nd Preface,  Part 1, Part 2,

A second indication that the Witnesses are not unduly hobbled by the mindset of ‘knowing things by revelation’ is that they don’t do ‘personal revelation.’ Many religions do. Witnesses rely upon a received text. The trouble with receiving your truth through personal revelation, and then attempting to read it into a text where it is not explicitly stated, is that you eventually run into someone who has also received their truth through personal revelation, only the two revelations don’t match. How in the world are you ever going to reconcile them? Jehovah’s Witnesses avoid that problem. Early on they developed a method of letting the Bible interpret itself. On a given question, look up all scriptures with any bearing on the subject, then seek to reconcile them. It works, whereas myriad personal revelation tends to produce a hodgepodge of confusion.

The third qualifier is that knowing things by revelation is exactly what you want when it comes to the big picture. It doesn’t hobble you at all. It liberates you and it is why people become Witnesses in the first place. “Here is a curious thing.” Vermont Royster writes after reviewing the material progress of his 1960s day. “In the contemplation of man himself, of his dilemmas, of his place in the universe, we are little further along than when time began. We are still left with questions of who we are and why we are and where we are going.” Not all will care about those questions, contenting themselves with technology instead. But those who do know it will come from revelation. In the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, that revelation is the Bible.

The problem arises when you rely on ‘knowledge by revelation’ not just for the big picture but also the small one. Do Jehovah’s Witnesses do that? If so, it is not so debilitating as it might first appear. The greater world, shunning knowledge through revelation for knowledge through observations and experimentation, Bacon’s kind of knowledge, comes to little resolution with the knowledge it collects. In 2018, the survey organization Pew Research reported that not only do most Americans not agree on answers to policy questions, but they also don’t agree on what the questions are. The majority of grown people are like sports fans. They cheer when their side scores and press their advantage. They wince when the other side scores and spin into damage control. But on no account do they examine the merits of the other side. They congeal at opposite poles and from those positions hurl abuse at each other on the internet —be it regarding human politics, public policy, health concerns, philosophical leanings, or whatever else is contemporary controversy. One advantage to the Witness who closely follows current events is to see this trait of people and thereby not become unduly concerned should the tide of criticism turn against them. It’s just the way people are. Read social media, see them hurling barbs at each other, and you can better endure when they do it at you.

If ‘knowledge through revelation’ has applied to the small picture has a downside, one can conclude from the foregoing paragraph that it also has an upside. When critics leaned on one Witness, that his people ought to involve themselves more in public controversies, he said, “Why should we? We have solved most of the problems that you are yet grappling with. Why should we trade the superior for the inferior?” Instead, Witnesses proclaim what works for them to a world that accepts or rejects it. Most do the latter. In which case, why weigh in? Jehovah’s Witnesses have no idea how to fix the problems of a world that discards the instruction manual. If there is a downside to knowledge by revelation, it is outweighed by the upside.

To be continued…

******  The bookstore

This will be a multi-part series. See Preface.

On all the important questions topics Jehovah’s Witnesses are spot on. In these present days, when atheists are perfectly content with a few decades of life followed by eternal non-existence, even holding fast to God is a significant win. But besides holding to God, they get it straight on who he is. They carted off that trinity doctrine that paints him unknowable 100 years ago, about the same time they discarded the hellfire doctrine that paints him cruel, someone you would not want to know. Within his lifetime people called C.T. Russell “the man who turned the hose on hell and put out the fire.”

Not to mention how they explain why God permits evil and suffering, and tell what he’s going to do about it. They preach the good news of the kingdom. They tell about the resurrection. They heed what God says on how to live, and to the extent they do, their “peace is just like a river.” And their “righteousness?” Tell me about it. (Isaiah 48:18) Like the circuit overseer said, we are all “one big, happy, united, somewhat dysfunctional family.” All is bliss.

And yet—and yet—there are a hundred aggravations. Basking in the big picture, you won’t notice them at first. But in time, they can be like that pebble in your shoe, driving you nuts with every step.

What is it with these aggravations? Some are because Witnesses hang out closely even with those with whom they don’t mesh. They don’t take the easy way out and put distance between themselves like Lot and Abraham. Some are because, should a respected Witnesses do dirt, it can seriously stumble a person because the congregation is the one place he/she didn’t expect to find any.

Yes! That’s the answer. Surely that accounts for it. Just smother your plate with agape love and you’re home free! And yet—and yet—there is one indefinable something . . . There is one—how can we define it? We can’t—it’s indefinable, unless, unless . . . what is it that’s so hard to put a finger on? I thunk and thunk and thunk about it and finally came up with the answer. Not me, really, but the Great Courses professors—college professors, every one of them. And I didn’t have to go to college to hear them. I found them free in the library and listen to them an hour each day walking the dog—which unfortunately died not long ago, but he lived to a ripe old dog age of 14, so I’m grateful for the time my wife and I had with him.

Six times the Great Courses professor (Alan Charles Kors) spoke about “ideas which had stood the test of time.” It took every one of those times for the words to sink in. It wasn’t just my obtuseness. The concept is hard to get your head around. But once you do, all is a breeze, like when you learned to ride a bike.

To be continued:

******  The bookstore

”Well well well. A 22lbs produce pack from the USDA—carrots, oranges, apples, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, potatoes, yams, and celery. Apparently all non-profits received a large supply to distribute. I’m very grateful. Elders distributed to the congregation members. But will this become a—gasp!— ‘Go to Donald’ type of thing?“

No sooner had I posted the above when my nemesis posted:

HOW IT WORKS:

https://www.ams.usda.gov/publications/content/farmers-families-food-box-program-faqs

It was a helpful link from someone who never ever posts a helpful link, and so when she does you wonder what she is up to. Wilma never posts things just to be helpful. In every case, she posts to denigrate her rivals the GB and to assure all that she can do things better. So why does she post this helpful link here?

Everyone knows her M.O. She is in a panic that the JW organization might get credit for this generosity and she wants to make sure that they don’t. She wants to make clear that this is a GOVERNMENT program, NOT a Jehovahs Witness program, and that people SHOULD NOT credit her rivals with generosity. 

Chill, you old battle axe, don’t worry about it. I plainly said that it was a USDA program for which I was grateful. USDA is government. Relax. I wasn’t giving your rivals the credit. I even said it represented a “Go to Donald” moment. The only credit I gave to the elders was for distributing the items.

But does this prompt distribution not show the value of organization, organization that she says ‘Who needs it?’ Why does the USDA do it this way—distribute to non-profits? Because they have a ton of aid to distribute and if they do it all at government facilities the lines will be two miles long. They also face the challenge of letting potential recipients know that aid is available. So they distribute to non-profits, taking advantage of the communication and distribution channels that they know will exist there.

Will everyone agree here that NOBODY will do this more effectively than Jehovah’s Witnesses? There may be some to do it AS effectively, but nobody will beat them at it. Organizations where all members are known and readily found and where there exist messengers to quickly deliver foodstuffs to each and every one of them cannot be an everyday thing.

My wife and I received a package Saturday around 2PM, after hearing reports of such a program that morning. I had volunteered to help as soon as I heard the reports, but there appeared to be no need of further help. I can well imagine that there were churches whose members learned of it Sunday morning at services, assuming that they happened to be there, and if they weren’t—too bad. It is not my aim to put them down—frankly I think we do far too much of putting church people down—It is only to point out that the attention of the JW organization to each member is not replicated everywhere. Even where the will exists, the means may not—you have to have volunteers to quickly distribute. There will be some outfits, I have no doubt, that are attentive to those in need and will connect promptly to bring aid. But it will not be universal, and in some cases It will break down completely since it was never built up.

It’s produce. It can’t sit around for days. It has to be handed out to each individual promptly. Members of the Witness community are broken down into service meeting groups, each under the oversight of one or more shepherds, who will know of any among them who is especially needy, and can therefore be prioritized. Apparently, there was plenty for all this time, but that may not always be so, and the elders will know how to best apportion. They are prepared to organize internal relief as was done in the 2nd chapter of Acts—coordinate members sharing with members—so that nobody is overlooked. In this case, the aid came from outside—a provision of Caesar (probably not replicated in too many of his domains)—and all there was to do was to distribute it promptly. I am very grateful to the government that is attentive to physical needs. Nonetheless, much of it would fall flat without proper expedition.

And Wilma says ‘Who needs organization?’ Is she nuts? This is why you need it. This is where, not only it is needed, but you draw yourself as close to it as possible so that there will be no question that you are a part of it. You become one of the embers that knows enough to pull toward the main fire so as to remain an ember. You don’t pull away from the fire so that, in time, nobody, including yourself, really knows if you are an ember or not.

“Be sure to tune in to the WomanfromtheHills broadcast at 2 PM on Facebook for a discussion which will be the same as last week's discussion—how my rivals are doing it all wrong and I can do better. Oh—and are you physically hungry? I think there is a government center somewhere in your area where they are handing out food. Get in queue. The line is only two hours in the sun. It may be that you will get some produce before it wilts and you can still be back in time to hear my address on how the Great Eight are good for nothing.”

The present policy of God’s organization is not to “taste” apostasy. I would never say that that is wrong. In fact, it is all but required by the Scriptures, such as at Matthew 11:19–they criticize you no matter what you do, so pay them no mind, and press full speed ahead. Or “Let them be. Blind guides is what they are.” That is why I am a bad boy for hanging out where I do.

However, just because a policy is right does not mean that there may not be a downside to it. As it is, many of our young have succumbed to the oldest temptation in the world, going where they have been advised not to, like the cat that curiosity killed. There they find material that they have never seen before. It is material that is mostly misrepresented, but they do not see how—some of it is presented convincingly.  It strikes a chord with some of them.

Ideally, parents or other older ones should be able to show them how it has been misrepresented and what is wrong with it, but they cannot because they don’t know what is there themselves—they have not “tasted” apostasy. That’s why I could see Ann’s point when she said that she kept on top of “apostate” things, lest one fine day her teenage son ask about them and she is not able to do more than say, “Don’t go there!” which the opposers unfailingly spin as evidence of trying to keep the kid in a “cult.”

As it is, last I heard, the kid is happily serving as a regular pioneer, has never displayed any interest in such things, and says: “Mom, what’s with all this weird stuff that you read?” But he is not everyone.

***

The reasons that some will turn aside are plain as day, clearly stated. Sometimes one could wish they were specifically applied to the courses different ones follow:

For there are many, I used to mention them often but now I mention them also with weeping, who are walking as the enemies of the torture stake of the Christ...[who] have their minds upon things on the earth.  (Philippians 3:18-19)

Look out: perhaps there may be someone who will carry you off as his prey through the philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary things of the world and not according to Christ; (Colossians 2:8)

...in order that we should no longer be babes, tossed about as by waves and carried hither and thither by every wind of teaching by means of the trickery of men, by means of cunning in contriving error. Ephesians 4:14

***

Don’t allow these malcontents to raise straw man arguments, [for whom a character in my first book, Tom Irregardless and Me was named ‘Bernard Strawman’] for example, making a huge fuss over JW understandings that have changed over time. To one such grumbler who grumbled over one such understanding, I answered: “They changed that. Where were you? They are very open about it, calling it tacking or light getting brighter. It is only you that try to spin a conspiracy out of it. It is not a piece of cake looking at the future. Look how many climate change predictions have proven wrong.” Such grumbling is but muddying the waters. The fundamental teachings of Jehovahs’s Witnesses have been in place for well over 100 years—from their beginning.

It is the divine/human interface that is always going to be the problem. This was even true with Judas. He and God were tight. There were no problems there! But this upstart who claimed to be the Messiah—he was not to Judas’ liking at all. And those bumpkins that he was attracting—don’t even go there. None of the respectable people at all were buying into Jesus. “Not one of the rulers or of the Pharisees has put faith in him, has he?” said the Pharisees. “But this crowd that does not know the Law are accursed people.” (John 7:48-49)

Nicodemus tried to stick up for him, but he got shot down: “Our law does not judge a man unless first it has heard from him and come to know what he is doing, does it?” he asked. “In answer they said to him: ‘You are not also out of Galilee, are you? Search and see that no prophet is to be raised up out of Galilee.’” It is a slur. Galilee was out in the sticks, where all but one of Jesus’ twelve disciples came from. Only Judas was from cosmopolitan Jerusalem.”

The fellow was in a rush when I first contacted him, just about to leave to pick up the kids from school. He was apologetic about it, very nice, and allowed that I should visit some other time. When I did I told him it was to show a video that lasted exactly a minute (actually a minute and six seconds—I lied).

He said we should go into the darkened garage where a video would be easier to see. It is the short video ‘Would You Like Good News?’ and it points to a brochure of similar name. That brochure’s table of contents lists about a dozen questions people have raised about God. ‘Ask if there are any that grab their interest,’ the C.O. had suggested. If there are, there is a basis for short conversation. If there are not, off you go, nice as you please. I even thank them for their time. After all, people are busy, we call without appointment, which is pretty much unheard of today, and there is no obligation for them to speak with us at all. The fact that a given person does is reason to thank them for their time, in my view.

‘That says it all as to what we do,’ I told the fellow after the video. My instincts had not been wrong that here was a decent guy with an interest in spiritual things. “How people can not believe in God?—all you have to do is look around,” he had said unbidden. I even tried to stick up for “those people” with the observation that a lot of bad things happen today and some feel that if there is a God, surely he would have fixed them. He didn’t buy it.

Your building is right up there on route such-and-such, he said. But I told him that we had sold that one, and I gave him the party line—it was because of our great growth—(whereas if anyone else had done it, it would mean they are going belly-up). Well—it can be spun that way and so I do. The Halls aren’t all where they should be, so if you combine some groups here, you can sell off an underutilized one there and build one where you need it. This especially works when the ones needed are in developing lands. One underperforming dud of a Hall here can finance 100 over there—aiding ones who could ill afford it on their own—a significant advantage of organization.

It’s all valid to explain it that way. It works. It’s true enough. Having said that, that was not the intent when the Hall was built in the first place. The intent was to fill it to the rafters. Ah, well. With admittedly some hyperbole, Witnesses can put up and dispose of Kingdom Halls as readily as the greater world puts up and disposes of Coleman tents—they are very handy people—so it makes sense to do it this way. The arrangement that I thought could never be improved upon has been significantly improved upon—streamlined for overall efficiency—again, something that shows the advantage of organization.

This guy lives way out there, where I don’t get too often. It’s why I like the website, and specifically the online series of Bible study courses. They are self-guided, I explained, and you can take a day or a year to go through them all, building a foundation of basic Bible knowledge. In fact, I am looking forward to saying—the timing and circumstances will have to be just right—I would never do it with this fellow: “I don’t want to study the Bible with you. Do it yourself!” You don’t have to spoon-feed everyone elementary verse by elementary verse. People are smart. They can do it themselves, in most cases. I even think that keeps some of us babes ourselves—if we eternally are striving to present the basics.

photo: First Solids, by Squiggle

Anti-cultists mutter about the assumed “rights” of “religious corporations.” Such corporations need to be reined in so that they do not harm people, goes the charge. It sounds lofty, for who wants to be harmed? but it is only an attempt to neuter religion by depriving it of governance. It is akin to saying that the French people, or the Australian people, or the Nigerian, or the Russian, are fine people, but they should not be allowed to govern themselves—masking the unspoken hope that they can be better assimilated that way. It is the same way that you might seek to deprive enemy soldiers of their generals, thus “protecting” them from fighting for a cause you do not want them to fight for. People of religious bent form a corporation because it is the only way in which they can legally operate in the world of nations. They would have no interest in it otherwise.

Apostates don’t hate Jehovah’s Witnesses, many of them will tell you. They love Jehovah’s Witnesses. They want to help them. They want to break them free from their oppressive organization. It is like this writer saying that he loves Americans. It is only their government that he would seek to destroy. Surely, they’ve drunk too much of the Kool-Aid themselves. Some of them envision springing loved ones free from the Watchtower to their undying gratitude, like Dorothy freeing the guards from the Wicked Witch of the West and her winged monkeys.

My wife and I had people from Texas come into town to work on a Kingdom Hall remodeling project nearby and they needed a place to stay. Sight unseen, we handed them the keys to our house while we were heading away on vacation. Many people would die for such a brotherhood in which you can place such trust in total strangers.

At the Independence Day church, Mr. and Mrs. O’Malihan heard of this and decided to do the same. The first guests who stayed at their house broke their TV. The second set of guests tracked mud throughout the house. The third set found the Go Packs and raided the funds set aside. The fourth set emptied the house completely and the O’Malihans returned to four bare walls. Steamed, they contacted the Independence Day church headquarters. “Oh, yeah, that happened to us, too. No, they’re not congregation members – they’re imposters. But we have such a half-assed organization that any scoundrel can pull the wool over our eyes in a twinkling.”

It’s not a true story. I made it up for the sake of contrast. But the guests from Texas are true. The Witness visitors are quality individuals to start with because they are known to have dedicated their lives to God and they work under the direction of the organization that they are convinced he directs through his spirit. They are also screened through that organization so that, when you come to find that they need a place to stay, you know they are who they say they are. It doesn’t just happen by chance.

It is not like in the 1970s, when I, on a whim, drove to a St Louis International Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses and presented myself at the rooming desk with the expectation that someone would put me up for the four or five days. They did. The only way that they knew I was a Witness was that I said I was. I stayed with an elderly sister and her non-Witness husband who treated me as though one of their own. But that was long ago, and “wicked men and imposters have advanced from bad to worse,” says the verse. Today there is vetting.

You can do more with organization than you can without it. It is no more complicated than that. In the case of an organization such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, devoted to spreading “this good news of the kingdom throughout all the inhabited earth,” stellar organization of voluntary efforts has enabled an entirely new channel of Bible production and distribution to be invented, so that they poorest person on earth can yet have a low-cost, free if need be, modern and understandable copy of what he has come to believe is instruction from God.

That same organization invents a website, for spread of the Christian message, which translates into 1,000 languages. People speak a dizzying array of languages throughout the earth. If your mission is to teach them all a common message, then somehow you have to deal with that. In today’s digital age, one can hardly be serious about Christ’s commission to preach throughout the entire inhabited earth unless one has such a website. There is no excuse not to have one, and having one is powerful evidence that you are qualified to do the work you have taken on. After all, when your car needs service, do you take it to the garage content to operate with duct tape, vice-grips, and WD-40? Or do you take it to the garage that has equipped itself with every modern tool?

Not everything has become more organized over time. Some things have become less so. Go back far enough and one could expect to be served a full meal at any convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I have seen an empty cavernous room, with only water and electric hook-up, converted to a full-scale kitchen capable of serving thousands in only a few hours’ time. With no knowledge of cooking, I almost ruined one, disposing of an unneeded vat of cooking grease by pouring it down the drain.

Feeding arrangements were simplified with the passage of time, for the members so sacrificing of their energies caught very little of the program in those days. Eventually, prepared meals gave way to various items of pre-packaged food, purchased beforehand, and distributed via a donation arrangement. One of those items was known as “a pasta salad,” and, as though anticipating my future role, I used to refer to it as “an apostasy” salad. I had been placed in charge of that food distribution at our circuit assemblies, so I used to say it a lot, offering everyone apostasy salads, ever suggesting that they try one. They were very good.

Today, Witnesses brown-bag it at their large gatherings. You cannot just waltz up to the directors of any huge organization and slip in your suggestions—they are slammed with things to do. However, the new method came about in very nearly that way. “You know, why doesn’t everyone just bring their own lunch?” a member observed in one of the local congregations, “we all know how to pack a lunch.” The circuit overseer included it in his report to the branch. The branch liked the common-sense idea. Should it be passed on to the Governing Body? It was, and they loved it. Everyone packs a lunch now, not through some lofty command from On High, but through the two cents of a local publisher.

If he can do it, maybe I can do it. My suggestion will spell the end of five or more persons in a vehicle—I am a known pain-in-the-neck on that point—save for special considerations of weather or safety. Four is ideal, and three is to be preferred. That way, one can always develop the experience of one-on-one speaking. I’m not sure I like the idea of “counting time,” either, that is, keeping track of how much time is spent in the ministry. It is done so that reports can be made and the needs for support can be assessed, but it tends to lead to quirky perceptions of being on-duty and off-duty, and even avoiding productive times in the ministry in order to accrue time in less productive but more convenient other times.

Ah, well. They’re small things. I probably won’t get them. It is true that people respond to goals. In any organized arrangement, there will be many things that do not go your way. The trick is to remember what is important and what is not. It is even true with big things. You don’t win them all.

Is it too much, the degree to which Jehovah’s Witnesses are organized? You could make a case for it. When a ten-minute talk at the Kingdom Hall focuses in on just how to handle the sound equipment, how far to hold the microphone from one’s mouth, at what angle to hold it, and what to do if you are the microphone handler and the one you hand it to is doing it wrong, there is a part of me that says: “Oh, for crying out loud! Just heave the microphones into the trash and tell people to speak up—the room is not that large!” It can get picayune. Still, that’s just the way people are sometimes.

From the book TrueTom vs the Apostates!

Daily my enemy has been hammering at the door of some woman’s rights groups, hoping that they will cooperate with him in his efforts to make trouble for his former religion. This strikes me as an extraordinarily disrespectful thing to do: to bludgeon them each day as though he understands their cause better than they. If they don’t ‘take the bait,’ they don’t take it.

Lately he modifies his approach and says that he ‘respectfully asks’ they give attention to his beef. He changes tactics because so many of his own people began to accuse him of ‘man-bashing’ that he took to blocking them. When I read what he was doing, I thought it was due to me, but since I had been behaving myself lately, I went to check and I saw that - no, it was some of his own people. Moreover, while I may have been sharp in my disagreement, I was never (especially) disrespectful.

I think it will turn out as when the ever-capable female British intelligence officer said to Foyle, about the full-of-himself male officer that she, for the time-being, had to play second fiddle to, ‘He is overconfident and not really too smart. He will overreach and fall of his own weight. I’ve seen it before.’ (Foyle’s War)

Nobody will appreciate women’s issues like a woman. However, to the extent that a man may weigh in, I submit that I am more on their side than he, and if permitted, I will develop this point over a few posts. Suffice it to say going in that I have several times written: “The question to ask in any discipline, is not ‘Can women do it better than men?’ It is ‘How can they do worse?”

BTW, the beef he has is over a paragraph in the December 2018 Watchtower Magazine dealing with woman finding themselves in abusive relationships. If the background facts were as he represents, one might almost concede that he has a point. But the background facts have been misrepresented in almost every case. I wrote up a reply, which I also sent to these groups. The jury is still out on which version of truth they will prefer. Possibly they will say, ‘If we never hear again from either one of these two jerks, it will be not soon enough.’ However, I have just forwarded mine a few times. He does his every single day. Even Jehovah’s Witnesses do not call every single day.

Okay, consider a few examples of respect for women, first from the Bible, and second from the people who do their best to follow the Bible. The first two involve Jesus’s relationships with women. In themselves they are not decisive; one could even say that they do not go far enough. However, in the context of the times, they are monumental. When Jesus appeared on earth, he didn’t instantly stomp out injustice wherever he saw it. Otherwise there would have been not much left. For the most part, he worked within the existing world, even as the laid down principles that would facilitate a better one.

The ‘woman at the well’ Jesus spoke with was the first person to which he entrusted directly the news that he was God’s chosen Messiah. Even his disciples he made jump through hoops to arrive at that bit of intelligence, which, from a Christian’s point of view, is the most significant announcement of all time. He told it to a woman (John 4:26). Moreover, she was not some hoity-toity religiously self-righteous woman. She was a woman who was ‘living in sin.’ Woman’s groups today will probably disagree with definitions and values of that time, but they will nonetheless accede that Jesus first gave the most important news there was to a woman.

The second example is found in the angel who announces Jesus’s resurrection. Who does he entrust this 2nd-most important announcement of all time to? Again, it was women. (Luke 24:4-11) Now, at the time, the testimony of a woman was considered absolutely worthless in that male-dominated Greek, Roman, and yes, even Jewish world. In effect, the angel showed contempt for that male-dominated society, and completely skirted it. Even Jesus’s disciples, immersed in that culture, did not believe the women. That was of no consequence to the angel; they’ll figure it out in time, the big dopes.

Update to the present. The intent of Witness detractors today is to paint the religion as obsessed with the ‘submission’ women are supposed to show to men. To the extent the religion, or Bible, speaks of ‘submission,’ it is far more innocuous, and essentially is simply to acknowledge that in any ship, there is a captain. God has assigned the roles as best suited for the stability of the family, which for the most part, means the stability of the human race. There is no tolerance made for abuse. Of course, that is not to say that abuse has not occurred, but it occurs no less in places wanting nothing to do with Bible principles. Unless I am very mistaken, Harvey Weinstein did not go door-to-door telling people about ‘God’s magnificent purposes’.

It is a spiritual or family-based arrangement only. I realize that more women than not in the women’s groups mentioned will say that it is antiquated, and they have moved on from it for the best. Point taken. Let it be said, however, that in Watchtower facilities it is an absolutely unremarkable fact of life that women will exercise authority over men in any areas where they have better aptitude, for example, in design, computers, medicine, and law. If the men working under them ‘cop an attitude’ (which has happened) they will hear about it. Men are ever inclined anywhere to parlay their usually superior physical strength into attempted domination. Watchtower headquarters will not let them get away with it. Detractors will catch wind of a woman working in the furtherance of JW purposes, maybe law, and write of how she can endure in the midst of domineering men? She doesn’t have to. They submit to her in these pragmatic areas where competence is all that counts, and ‘submission’ is completely irrelevant, being merely a spiritual or family matter of organization.

Women are not seething with discontent over there in Witness-land, as their enemies seek to portray them. Neither are there weak women who tyrant men play like a fiddle. Of course, there are some ‘weak women,’ but there are also weak men. On balance, they are about equal.

It is common today that if you do not embrace a given cause, you are said to hate it. Thus, some try to paint Witnesses, and Christianity in general, as inherently hateful and abusive to women. Other Christian denominations will have to speak for themselves. I don’t follow them closely enough to weigh in one way or the other. I can only speak for my own people, and I will speak more of them in Part 2