Posts by Tom Harley

104

When You See a JW Do You Get Flustered?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i used to dread seeing a witness coming toward me.

now i am quite comfortable and hope that they may say something to me..... does your blood pressure rise when you see a jw coming toward you?

?.

Tom Harley

"Tom, honestly, you're a waist of time. So far, you've been dancing around the issues presented to you without asking questions that truly matters."....Stephanie

Come now, Stephanie. The whole site is a waste of time, as is Facebook, as is Twitter. It is a diversion at best. I mean, I hope this is not anyone's daily bread.

And I have answered questions. I've just not allowed myself to be cross-examined as in a jury trial. Moreover, after I answer some questions, people continue to ask them. Blondie carries on at great length with things she thinks will trap me. But I have already answered her, several posts ago: we changed that.

I’ve tried to be polite. I’m merely here to represent a different point of view. Ostensibly, I am welcomed, but I don’t think it is for real. Certainly, the blogmaster has not chained up Outlaw, and he is a major di$traction, always$ nipping at my heel$, supplementing his bite$ with in$ulting graphic$. Alright, I get it, he think$ our people $hould $ub$i$t on honeycomb$ and locu$t$.

It was an experiment. I wasn’t sure how a regular Witness would be welcomed here. Now I have a better idea. Someone says that sometimes current Witnesses stop by, but they only stay a week and go. Perhaps you could ask Outlaw why that is. Same here, perhaps it is time to move on. I hope there will not be echoes of ‘what a coward he was for running,’ like the taunt from the Monty Python Black Knight.

104

When You See a JW Do You Get Flustered?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i used to dread seeing a witness coming toward me.

now i am quite comfortable and hope that they may say something to me..... does your blood pressure rise when you see a jw coming toward you?

?.

Tom Harley

Don’t you love Jeremiah, whose book has come up in the current JW regimen of Bible reading? He wimped out when first commissioned as a prophet. He was just a boy, he said. But he manned up when God assured him he would be with him.

He wasn’t like Moses who carried on and on and on until finally God said: “Oh, for crying out loud! Here, take Aaron along with you! You just stand there and look pretty, and he will do the heavy lifting. I would put him in charge, except I have seen some calf blueprints in his bookbag and that worries me."

Jeremiah blasts away at the rebellious people for chapter after chapter, fearlessly. Chapter 20 gives the first hint that he is human. ‘I’ve had it!’ he says, ‘Who needs this? All they do is come after me!’ But Jehovah is with him and gives him a second wind.

People back then did not benefit in the slightest from his words, nor do people today. Making fun of him and his role, there is even the expression ‘jeremiads,’ which essentially means ‘endless bitching.’ One wonders what God will eventually do about it.

Sometimes I like to point to Acts 28: 21-22, where all of Christianity is called a sect that is ‘everywhere spoken against.’ I wonder what the modern-day counterpart of it is. If a faith is respected or even accepted in the world today, that, in itself, rules it out as the successor of Acts 28. Look for the faith where members are individually praised but collectively maligned.

104

When You See a JW Do You Get Flustered?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i used to dread seeing a witness coming toward me.

now i am quite comfortable and hope that they may say something to me..... does your blood pressure rise when you see a jw coming toward you?

?.

Tom Harley

Many remarks are here and hopefully no one expects me to answer them all, for each has ten followups and I would never be able to leave, which perhaps is the point. One must pick and choose.

Several have raised the ARC hearings. In general, we got pasted a bit because we were not seen to help enough in the world's fight to handle its pedophilia problem. Apostates try to reframe this to suggest there would be no pedophilia problem without Jehovah's Witnesses. It doesn't fly, though, I admit it can be spun to cause us embarrassment.

The only reason there ever were records that everyone now wants is that Witnesses were proactive when few others were. They kept track so that a pedophile could not slip out of one congregation and enter another, and thereby endanger children there. This was not attempted at many other churches. In fact, it was not possible at some - many churches are completely autonomous in governance and keep no central records. A pervert slips out of one and easily slides right into another.

The pedophile problem is absolutely out of control and authorities are beside themselves trying to reign it in. Everyone knows this. Turn on the TV. Throw a stone in any direction and you will hit ten pedophiles. People that must track internet child porn as part of their jobs liken it to Medusa; one look and you turn to stone.

This will not be easy to stem. It increases with time as internet porn whips up an appetite, but it has long been a staple of human existence. The Greeks, foundation of Western society, built their civilization around molestation of children; it was an accepted, even enshrined part of daily life.

The Witness policy is that when required by law, any instance of child abuse is reported to police, and any member is always free to report such an instance, required or not. Child advocates go apoplectic at this - why does not go beyond the law? One reason you do not go beyond the law is that in a clergy-penitent relationship, same as doctor-patient, or lawyer-client relationship, you get into serious trouble for breaking confidentiality. Instead, if going beyond the law is the gold standard, why doesn't that become the law? It is not as though governments do not know how to pass laws. In fact, our guy pleaded with the commission to make laws uniform across the board, instead of the patchwork that it is, for it would make our job ever so much easier. But the disunited world cannot even do that. When all was said and done, it was clear that our people wanted to cooperate and there will no doubt be policies to address their concerns, though the world's track record on controlling pedophilia is dismal.

Certainly errors on our part have been made and it is exacerbated by the reluctance of some old-timer rank and file members to 'air dirty underwear.' They must come to realize that we now live in a world in which people routinely stroll around in dirty underwear and have little comprehension or sympathy for a reluctance to share. The situation will continue to adjust.

To return to the thread's topic, many have stated Witnesses have no interest in staying at the door and get away quickly. Surely this is an example of how the one who measures can skew what is measured. Are those on this thread the typical audience JWs will encounter? Does anyone think that I stand there and patiently reason with Outlaw when he answers the door? I dive through the open window of my car. If it is a fight I am looking for, I can pick one with my spouse and never leave home. Witnesses find many a hearing ear, but none are on this forum.

Someone else is not unduly put out by ISIS running over strollers in trucks. It is just one of those things. Why, there were bad people in the past, too. Where is this promised presence of his? Why all things are continuing exactly as from creation's beginning. He has fallen into the atheist camp, for atheists reason this way. He likely blasts at members from this same thread on other forums populated by ones who have fallen into the old-time-religion camp.

104

When You See a JW Do You Get Flustered?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i used to dread seeing a witness coming toward me.

now i am quite comfortable and hope that they may say something to me..... does your blood pressure rise when you see a jw coming toward you?

?.

Tom Harley

The 'God's channel' can be seen in deeds, as much of more so than in words, and most here fail to appreciate the deeds, or even think that they are evil. It is seen in the representative fact of the 900 languages, nobody else having more than five, and thus taking Christ's commission to preach good news not very seriously, if at all. When you take your car to the mechanic, do you go to the garage that has equipped itself with every modern tool? Or do you go to the one content to operate with duct tape, vice-grips, and WD-40?

I suspect you will go to the first one, and you may not even think to check with the BBB for former complaints. This is perhaps unwise, for there are some there. But even that is not a deal-breaker. It is just something you possibly could have checked out before, and perhaps did in the year you had noticing that your car needed maintenence and getting to know and study with the guys at the shop. There, the seven Garage Owners made themselves known from the start - they did hide behind the stack of tires, only to spring out when you dropped your car off.

Someone here said that the money 'always went to Bethel.' Of course it always went to Bethel. What - does he imagine it was fired with a cannon into heaven? The point is, not that they recieved money, but what did they do with it. Generally speaking, most Witneses will agree that they have put it to excellent use, building an infrastructure to support the spreading of the Bible's message that is unrivaled.

And C'mon! What is it with Outlaw, who says most likely I am incapable of being truthful, even as he routinely taunts and assaults me? You think it is easy for me to apply the appropriate Proverb?

104

When You See a JW Do You Get Flustered?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i used to dread seeing a witness coming toward me.

now i am quite comfortable and hope that they may say something to me..... does your blood pressure rise when you see a jw coming toward you?

?.

Tom Harley

"Whiner" was in my original writing. I would not have used it here were I to write afresh, for it is an insult. Perhaps I shouldn't have used it. Sorry.

The things Sparky1 relatesI attribute mostly to backbiting and gossip, which happens anywhere. In fact, the closer knit an organization is, the more likely it is to happen. It is just people being people, though if you are the target of it, it seems much more.

As to promises that did not turn out equated to lies, whenever someone throws one of them at me, I say: "Oh, we changed that." And why not? It's not a piece of cake looking into the future - everyone knows that - so if you screw up, you back out and tackle the subject anew. Their are plenty of examples in the Bible of faithful ones doing or saying things that did not pan out.

Someone will say: "Here they have said we don't make mistakes and here they have said we sometimes do." I will reply that we changed that, too. It's a little embarrassing, but it happens. Only a ten-year old holds his breath and turns blue over such things, though I will admit that there are many ten-year olds.

Apparently, God is cool with it, even if he is not thrilled. If he was steamed, he would short-circuit jw.org so that it only read in English and Pig Latin, instead of the 900 languages it does read in. You understand that I use this as a representation of all that is being done to spread the JW message, not as a feat unto itself. If there was a working substitute somewhere, only absent the jerks, I would go there. But there isn't, and it becomes apparent to me that God puts up with jerks even as he is trying to overhaul them because that's what so many of us are.

The Witness world does its best to be Bible based and thus is 180 degrees from the non-Witness world in which Christianity will surely end up the loser. When Jesus was brought before Pilate, he didn't sweet-talk his way out of it, did he? and he said his followers would be as popular as he. So if one leaves the JW world, they have to adapt to a world they may have known little about previously, and this gives rise to stress, even bitterness if one comes to feel that they were not prepared for life.

Many Witnesses burn bridges leading to the other side. I am atypical in that I don't. That's not to say I travel those bridges frequently, but they are available if I want to see what's going on over there or even to communicate. It was an experiment coming here, and I probably will not remain long, and I apologize to whoever started up this thread, for I have stolen it. I will not steal her next one. Obviously, jehovah's witnesses .com is not the Assembly Hall, but without doing a lot of research, which I didn't want to do, I didn't know just what the makeup would be. Better to stick a toe in the water and see what happens. To a certain extent, it is because I am a writer, and I enjoy the challenge of navigating difficult shoals.

Everyone must admit I've been a good boy, unless the mere representation of the other side is to be a bad boy. I have not insulted, or if I have, only a little - certainly less than I have been slammed here by some. I have resisted many attempts to draw me into shoving matches or pissing contests. Many places you do not go primarily for reasons of times management. Personal stories you do not weigh in on because you know you are seeing only a tip of an iceberg - perhaps if the berg were to rotate the tip would look altogether different.

It's not been my intention to troll or otherwise act despicably.

104

When You See a JW Do You Get Flustered?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i used to dread seeing a witness coming toward me.

now i am quite comfortable and hope that they may say something to me..... does your blood pressure rise when you see a jw coming toward you?

?.

Tom Harley

Since coming here and more or less taking over a thread (for which I apologize) I have been asked several times to share, as though at an AA meeting. I need a place to do that, of course, for I am tired of the organization where they all come after me like backstabbers, to use someone’s description. Usually I take them out like Chuck Norris, but still it gets old. It takes some time to build up the trust to spill, especially with Outlaw coming after me with a Howitzer. Nonetheless, I’ve decided to do it, sort of, using words already written:

“After studying one book seemingly written for no other purpose other than to harp on dress and grooming and harangue about field service, the conductor said to me: ‘Tom, why don’t you comment? You know all these answers.’ It was a turning point. He was right. I did know them all. It was time to stop sulking. From the circuit overseer on down, they had stirred up major chaos in the family. They had been heavy-handed and clumsy - but never malicious. And it had never been Jehovah. I’d read of ill-goings-on in the first-century record. Congregations described in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 were veritable basket cases, some of them, but that did not mean they weren’t congregations. Eventually things smooth out. Should I stumble when it became my turn? I’d read whiner after whiner carrying on about some personal affront or other on the internet. Was I going to be one of them?

Let’s face it - many of Jehovah’s Witnesses are nuts, but none are liars. In a world full of liars one should be able to overlook some nuts. If screwball things happened here, they happen everywhere - usually with consequences devastating to unity - usually with parties stomping off and forming separate factions…”

Hopefully someone will say “Thanks for sharing,” but I’m a little worried about what they may actually say.

104

When You See a JW Do You Get Flustered?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i used to dread seeing a witness coming toward me.

now i am quite comfortable and hope that they may say something to me..... does your blood pressure rise when you see a jw coming toward you?

?.

Tom Harley

There are many swirls and backeddies. Certainly you can find persons who have screwed up. Certainly you can find some who have been heavy-handed. But the overall flow is in accord with what Jehovah’s Witnesses have long said. The visibility of the Kingdom message expands, what with cart and website supplementing traditional methods. World conditions worsen. Just ask the boulevard stroller looking over his shoulder for the next crazed lunatic aiming for him and fellow pedestrians in his Mack truck.

So it’s time to mend fences. Everyone knows a large project needs organization, organization needs leadership, and with leadership a given policy or decision can go against you. It’s not rocket science. People know that ISIS is extremist. When opposers would put JWs in the same category, people think they are unhinged. There are thorns in this religion, they may conclude, but whereas ISIS never met a Westerner they didn’t want to kill, Jehovah’s Witnesses will not fight. They are not the same.

Even thorns isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, since it is usually recognized that anything with significant upside can be expected to have a significant downside, which ones here specialize in bringing out. But they are on the losing side of reality, here. They should try to conform, if possible. It may not be easy. Perhaps, in their shoes, I would not be able to do it.

In light of the obvious benefits or organization, it is inexcusable for any people claiming to be doing God’s will not to be that way. Surely, it cannot be good to go on record as insisting one’s own wrongs or preferences override the good of such cooperation. It’s better to mend fences rather to have one’s epitaph say “I was right.”

Tell Outlaw, who screamed that my prior post was not on topic, even calling me Genius, that it was. 'When you see a jw do you get flustered?' is the topic. Mine was such an encounter from the other person's shoes, which are the only shoes I am in.

104

When You See a JW Do You Get Flustered?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i used to dread seeing a witness coming toward me.

now i am quite comfortable and hope that they may say something to me..... does your blood pressure rise when you see a jw coming toward you?

?.

Tom Harley

Though no one else has lately, let us follow someone's admonition to stay on topic:

Many Witnesses give the impression that they are trying hard to extend the length of their visit. I try to give the impression that I can’t get away quick enough.

This is especially useful when you feel locked into a paradigm of one of those full-sized plastic clowns for punching. You punch it and down it goes but because it is weighted at the bottom it immediately presents its smiling face for another punch. I try not to allow that to happen.

“Look, I don’t like you. Possibly, I could come to like you, but I don’t now. Let’s get this over with and see how it plays out.”

Of course, I don’t say this. In fact, I don’t even feel this way. I am friendly, but not at first over-sincere. Unfortunately, sincerity works well for civil people, but given the vicious disposition many display online, it is only to be expected that some will note your sincerity and take it as an invitation to smash you in the teeth with a baseball bat.

Go short, instead: “I’m Tom. I want to read you a scripture, see what you think of it, and I’m gone.” My experience is that a scripture is read more frequently than happens with a more conventional approach. If they decline, I’m true to my word and leave. They frequently say: "No, but thank you for coming.”

When they say yes, I read them a scripture – you can choose whatever you want – and then: "I like this scripture because” and offer a sentence or two. It is now their turn, I point out. If you want to discuss or have questions or have observations or whatever, I can stay a bit. Otherwise, I move on.

If they seem agreeable, I’ll show them the video. “This runs almost four minutes, but you don’t have to watch it all. The minute it gets boring, hand it back.” They do hand it back sometimes. But not often.

For example, Job 34:10: "It is unthinkable for the true God to act wickedly, for the Almighty to do wrong."

The reason I like this scripture is that some people think he does act wickedly. And others look at all that's going down today and conclude there is no true God.

**Someone seeks to unsettle me by pointing out that Putin has my address and that of all my brothers. This does keep me awake at night. However, I console myself by thinking Putin may instead come to resent the forces in Russia that would maneuver him into looking like a total ass on the world stage - insisting the Witness website is extremist when every other country in the world can plainly see that it is not.

In fact, since he is so busy taking venting his wrath on people, he may say: "I can see why Harley would write me, and all of his people. But what of this character telling me to man up and kick them further. Is he presenting himself as my benefactor, helping me out? Isn't he part of the general world that was last week calling me a thug and a murderer?"

104

When You See a JW Do You Get Flustered?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i used to dread seeing a witness coming toward me.

now i am quite comfortable and hope that they may say something to me..... does your blood pressure rise when you see a jw coming toward you?

?.

Tom Harley

"You seems well balanced I remember you writing about going to a few punk rock concerts with your son and enjoying yourself, pretty cool as a dad !" - Introvert 2

I was a cool dad. This is not to say, as it never is, that I was a cool dad in the eyes of my kids. At least, not then.

Of course, you preserve such experiences. it is in the book

104

When You See a JW Do You Get Flustered?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i used to dread seeing a witness coming toward me.

now i am quite comfortable and hope that they may say something to me..... does your blood pressure rise when you see a jw coming toward you?

?.

Tom Harley

StephanieL says stay on track or else make a separate thread. Alas, I did and nobody came. So I visited this thread, posting on topic, and everyone stopped by to say hi. The first few were positive flamers, but then some came by with warm greetings and tried to keep the flamers in check. But they will not be able to do this, for upon leaving Jehovah's organization, persons quickly shed whatever unity they once had

In fact, it is likely that some who flame me also flame each other under different usernames on other forums, perhaps in the Hillary/Trump forum, or the atheist/believer forum, or the science-based-medicine/alternative forum. In other words, unruly as persons can be here, it is par for the course elsewhere, too. It has gotten to the point that many publications have discontinued their comments section because the nasty trolls immediately abuse it. That's the world anyone is happy to embrace? I prefer our website.

Nonetheless, this is not staying on topic. This is: since it gives some the willy-nillies to see Jehovah's Witnesses approaching, one would think they would welcome cart witnessing and the website as alternative, not-in-your-face methods of doing the work Christ said should be done. Instead, everyone I have seen here blasts at that means for spreading the Kingdom message as well.

Our website, however is getting huge publicity these days because Russia is insisting it is extremist and trying to ban Jehovah's Witnesses on that account. The Governing Body just once invited and encouraged individual Witnesses to write Russian authorities. From what I've seen, I'd be surprised if every Witness in the world does not write, for we care for each other. That's eight million personal letters to Putin or his associates, but with 6 officials listed, persons able to compose more than one letter if they choose, non-Witness human rights people joining in, opposers chiding Putin for not going far enough, one can easily imagine 50 -60 million letters within a two week period. Putin may sink them all at sea and never read one, but he cannot fail to know they exist.

He will know that there is one nation on earth in which every citizen cares deeply about every other. He has never seen anything like it. He will not forget it, regardless of the trial's outcome.

What with extensive media coverage, Time and the New York Times, for example, one can reasonably expect that millions will visit jw.org to see whether it is extremist or not. We can only imagine what may happen when they discover it is not, and perhaps that is the biggest contribution our Russian brothers make to the worldwide ministry.