I posted this on another board on this site I didn't like the title and couldn't change it. I don't think anybody wanted to read it because they thought it was actualy about baseball based on the title.
You'd be hard pressed to find a day between 1976 and 1987 that didn't contain one of my showstopping hyperactive bugouts. Each one a classic in its own right. One particular summer day around the age of seven while watching a Phillies game with my Dad, my performance garnered a banishment to my room with my older sister who would help me memorize scriptures for my eventual debut as a fully functioning, contributing member of my local Kingdom Hall. Memorizing was not easy for me due to a lack of concentration. There were several culprits, sugar being the most popular; Satan a close second. Despite this my sister hit upon a verse that was destined to be stuck in my memory forever - 1 John 4:8. Oddly, this is a confusing scripture for a child to learn, circuitous logic is not ground the very young tend to tread on.
It is ironic that this was the first verse I "learned", as it seems these days Love is exactly the thing I find so lacking...in the congregation that is. I've come to the realization that the deficiency is due to time. Making sure you hate everything you are meant to hate as a true worshiper of Jehovah, doesn't leave alot of time to make sure you're loving (in the verb and adjective case). The danger is that love takes effort, hating is easy. But there is alot of stuff to hate out there, and a true Christian would be a disappointment if they were to not hate enough. Hate till it hurts. Hate starts at home. May the Hate be with you.
This leads me to this past Sunday and the abominable Public Talk I had the displeasure of letting infest in my ears. A South African brother who obviously has never been challenged on anything on his way to gaining tenure as an elder, gave a compassionless and reprehensible screed on the usual time-beaten topic of remaining free from the world. Only, he wasn't satisified to pass along the standard factory spew that his outline contained, he felt it necessary to use his bully pulpit to force feed an additional helping of ignorance to the smattering of those who showed up.
Things I learned from the Public Groupthink on Sunday:
- Jehovah hates those who don't serve him. This makes total sense because he's God and obviously can handle vast amounts of hate. Our hate capacity is but a drop in the proverbial hatebucket.
- At public areas, such as shops and other such places, people all push out of the doors at the same time because of "Me-ism", knocking over old people and babies, everyone only cares about themselves. Although I have not witnessed this myself, everyone should believe it because, those people don't serve Jehovah so, what? they're gonna be nice? Like, as if !!
- When "The Man" wants you to go to University, he's only trying to "increase the schools numbers to bring glory to them" . So why would you give them the satisfaction dufus? You'll need all your concentration making sure one of the Me-ists doesn't knock your illiterate ass over at the mall while you're doing business-witnessing.
- Women should not have opinions. Huzzah! If I had it my way, women wouldn't even be allowed to be elders let alone on the Governing Body...wait... anyway, you know what would happen then, we wouldn't be able to have teal and mauve decorated Kingdom Halls anymore. They'd nix that immediately. Doilies on everything!
In his conclusion, he stated four points we would need to remember to make sure we were right with God. Three of them were to do with hating with impunity all that God hates, and the last to love what God loves. What a terrible ratio. Everyone apparently found this Public Talk rapturous judging from the comments I heard after the meeting. Myself, I wanted to go ask him to provide references for some of his more bizarre claims (divorce has risen 20% in the last 12 months in the city I live in? Really? My BS senses are tingling). But I'm sure referencing quoted data in talks would not go over so big. Make up whatever stats you like bitches, God don't need no fact-checkin'!
When I went back out into the living room after learning my first scripture that afternoon 20 years ago, my Dad told me that Mike Schmidt had hit 2 homeruns in the time I was gone. That day I learned something that I will always believe... that Mike Schmidt was the greatest third baseman of all-time.