Sheep and Goats

They Will Come as Sheep in Llama's Cothing

Since I started blogging, I've received many comments saying that, in spite of my name Sheepandgoats, the animals in my profile picture are not sheep and goats. I've paid no heed. Surely those comments were submitted by religious cranks intent on making me trouble or otherwise distracting me from my Mission.

However, this year for Ground Hog Day, my wife gave me the handsome coffee table book All About Animals. I thumbed through the pictures and…..by golly, they were right! Those animals are not sheep and goats. They are creatures from South America called llamas.

Llama
From Wikipedia

The llama (Lama glama) is a South American camelid, widely used as a pack animal by the Incas[1] and other natives of the Andes mountains. In South America llamas are still used as beasts of burden, as well as for the production of fiber and meat.[2]
The height of a full-grown, full-size llama is between 5.5 feet (1.6 meters) to 6 feet (1.8 m) tall at the top of the head. They can weigh between approximately 280 pounds (127 kilograms) and 450 pounds (204 kilograms). At birth, a baby llama (called a cria) can weigh between 20 pounds (9 kilograms) to 30 pounds (14 kilograms). Llamas are very social animals and like to live with other llamas as a herd. Overall, the fiber produced by a llama is very soft and is naturally lanolin free. Very intelligent, llamas learn simple tasks after a few repetitions. When using a pack, llamas can carry about 25% - 30% of their body weight for several miles.[3]
Llamas originated from the central plains of North America about 40 million years ago. They migrated to South America and Asia about 3 million years ago. By the end of the last ice-age (10,000 - 12,000 years ago) camelids were extinct in North America.[3] As of 2007, there were over 7 million llamas and alpacas in South America and due to importation from South America in the late 20th century there are now over 100,000 llamas and 6,500 - 7,000 alpacas in the US and Canada.[4]

Here: (not via Wikipedia) are pictures of actual llamas.

 

Now be honest. Mine look more handsome, don’t they?

How should I rectify this error? Of course, I could just flat out apologize, but….you know, I hate to admit being wrong. Moreover, might not an apology trigger lawsuits from readers outraged at being deceived so long? Be assured I did much soul-searching. In the end, stickler for accuracy that I am, honest conscience won out.

There! I’ve made a clean breast of things. Nobody can say I haven’t. And as an added bonus, for any misled readers who now have no idea what sheep and goats really look like, I found a site with lots of informative pictures. It is (not surprisingly) www.sheepandgoats.com

The people involved with this site appear fine and upright and have no connection with me. I notice that they sell sheep and goats. For the sake of authenticity and to prove to all that I am not a charlatan, I ought to buy one of each. Trouble is, I've grown attached to these llamas and I'm not sure they would get along. Winged Migration Man told me llamas can be "ornery."

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Alright, alright.....it's a lighthearted post. I admit it. But the atmosphere is lighthearted these days. It’s Lilac Festival here in Rochester. I've tentatively put the snow shovel away. Spring has pounced upon us emphatically. And I am about to take a stroll through the lilacs with the lovely Mrs. Sheepandgoats.  How can a person not be lighthearted about such things?

So far music highlights at the festival include Donna the Buffalo (another animal!....I like this group already), a backwoodsy Appalachian band with huge energy that had everyone bouncing. The female vocalist plays every sort of hillybilly instrument under the sun.....she must be Donna, you can't help but think. But no, their website tells us....the band just has a thing for Appalachia and buffalos. Here and there in the crowd you'd spot people in DtB sweatshirts: a goofy cavedrawing of a buffalo on the front, "herd of em?" on the back.

Earlier in the program was a young woman just now finding notice, Alyssa Coco, still in high school [!], who appeared with keyboard and three backup musicians, including a drummer so immersed in his material I could only think of a bobblehead. Mrs. Sheepandgoats liked her music, so I bought my wife a CD. I think it was the singer's mom at the CD table. That's fine at Lilac Festival, which is family oriented. You couldn't do it at the Water Street Music Hall.

Pedophiles, Priests, and Jehovah's Witnesses

People thought he’d sweep it under the rug. After all, he’s not supposed to be a touchy feely guy. Don’t they call him “God’s Rottweiler?” And the sordid mess didn’t even happen on his watch….why should he take the heat?

Instead, Pope Benedict tackled it head-on. While still en route for his April 2008 U.S.A. visit, he told reporters he was deeply ashamed for all the pedophile priests. ''It is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betray in this way their mission ... I am deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible so this cannot happen again in the future…..We will do everything possible to heal this wound.''

It was a true Oprah moment, the time that Americans love best. A rending apology [preferably with tears] from the top guy. Now, at last, Americans can “put it behind us,” “come together,” and “move on.” They love to do all these things….but only after Oprah moments…..and perhaps not so readily in matters involving religion, which is under the looking glass today.

Benedict won the highest praise that can be bestowed upon anyone in this country: "Basically, he seems like a nice guy, said John Allen Jr., a senior correspondent with the National Catholic Reporter. The man whose Jehovah’s Witness cousin remembers as a “naughty boy,” who was “everywhere he shouldn't [have] been….when I think today of what we did, it's a wonder that [we are] alive," was, at age 81, in the eyes of American Catholics, at exactly the right place at the right time. A childhood prankster no more.

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For there is nothing hidden that will not become manifest, neither anything carefully concealed that will never become known and never come into the open.    Luke 8:17

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Twenty years ago could anybody have foreseen the upcoming child sex abuse scandal among priests? Who would have imagined such a thing? Yet, a 2003 report from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice concluded that .2% of all U.S. priests had been proven abusers…..less than the popular imagination has it, no doubt, but still one heck of a lot of priests, considering the influence each has (4% of all priests have been accused, but not proven). Heightening the furor was the revelation that church authorities knew about the perversion, but did little to stop it. Instead, accused priests were transferred did parish to parish, sometimes with brief periods of counseling. In the new parish they’d carry on as before, among a new batch of unsuspecting children.

But the real shocker for me was the accusation, several years later, that Jehovah’s Witnesses, too, harbored pedophiles! Nobody wants to be accused of that, and nothing in my 20 year experience with the faith gave credence to the accusation.  Could it possibly be true, or was it just dreamt up and kept alive by soreheads upset with JWs for other reasons? You wanted to flat out deny that such things could ever happen among our people. Unfortunately, we are people, and one can’t quite go that far.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the last 30 years, it’s that child sexual abuse is rampant in society, eclipsing anything anyone could have envisioned. Everywhere kids are, sexual abuse is. Scouting organizations. Schools. Neighbors. All the time we read of respected persons in the community, even leaders of various sorts, found with their computers bursting with child-porn. Child molesters especially abound in the extended family and the step-family. It’s a sick world, as the slightest glance at the newspaper ought to daily convince anyone. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t claim to be immune to perverse influences. In general, though, applying Christian teachings equip us to resist those influences to a much greater degree than run of the mill society.

In the United States there are currently 80,000+ elders serving in over 12,000 congregations. In the past 100 years, only nine of them have been sued for child abuse in eleven lawsuits. In seven of those lawsuits, accusations against the Watchtower Society itself were dismissed by the courts. Is this to say no other lawsuits have been filed naming Jehovah’s Witnesses? No. But it’s this figure that must be used if one wishes to compare their organization with large churches in which pedophilia has been shown to be rampant among the clergy. It’s plain that there is no comparison.

Doubtless, additional lawsuits have involved ministerial servants, roughly the equivalent of deacons. All remaining lawsuits pertain to congregation members or their family, not “clergy,” and the lawsuits attempt to hold the parent organization accountable. No other religious organization, to my knowledge, has been subjected to the same scrutiny. Most of these case also have been dismissed. Some appear to be largely efforts to malign the Watchtower organization. This one, for example. Some cases, however, have been settled. Even one instance is shameful, make no mistake. But in an organization of several million people you will find many instances of almost anything.

Some of the criticism stems from a policy which you would think would be a good thing. Jehovah’s Witnesses police themselves. Elders in every congregation are prepared to hear disputes among congregation members that they themselves have not been able to resolve. They also hear allegations of wrongdoing and are authorized to impose various forms of discipline up to, and including expulsion from the congregation. “Church discipline” used to be practiced by many organizations….it is not unique to us. Many decades ago, however, church members tired of being disciplined, so most churches gave it up. Not so Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, critics contend that makes them “insular.”

In such a climate, a case of child sexual abuse might be brought before local elders, instead of secular authorities, and the elders might be stymied by the matter being one person’s word against another…..how are they to know which party is truthful? The secular authorities would have been stymied by the same thing until very recently…..in any contest between a child and an adult, the adult’s word was generally taken, and children were hushed up, even by parents too shocked to consider the implications of sexual abuse. But within a few short years, child sexual abuse captured popular attention. It jumped from something you never heard about to front page headlines. Surely people my age remember how sudden was the change of consciousness. “One person’s word against another” was no longer enough……after all, how likely were there to be other witnesses? Ones accused of molestation were suddenly confronted with those who specialized in the field, who probed thoroughly, and who often came up with corroborating evidence.

Might there have been real victims who went to congregation elders, rather than police, who later regretted not doing it the other way around? It's possible. Some have claimed those circumstances and have became embittered….it’s not too hard to understand. Others who don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses for philosophical and other reasons take up the complaints as if they were their own. Most states have laws now decreeing that any allegation of sexual abuse be reported to the police. Congregation elders comply with these laws, but in the early days such laws did not exist, and people did the best they could based on what knowledge was then available.

                                        From the blogs:

The written policy of Jehovah’s Witnesses is that a known child molester convicted may never be appointed to any position of oversight in any congregation. In this country, many states require that allegations of child sexual abuse be reported to police. Elders comply with this law. However, in addition to whatever consequences may come from police involvement, committees within the congregation themselves investigate. Penalties within the congregation can range up to disfellowshjpping (shunning). I’m not sure what more can be done to demonstrate seriousness on this issue. It is more than most religions do. You can’t shoot abusers.

“The policy of Jehovah’s Witnesses is that a known child molester convicted may never be appointed to any position of oversight in any congregation.”

That’s all?! Shunning–at least! He should never be allowed near your church again and in any country he should be reported to the police! The right thing is to denounce all such behavior sharply! Otherwise people are unaware of his tendencies and he victimizes someone else. (Which is what the school systems have been doing with molesting teachers, in many places, I’m sorry to say–just getting rid of them and not telling anyone and he or she goes elsewhere and starts over there. With the same behavior.)

“Shunning–at least! He should never be allowed near your church again and in any country he should be reported to the police! The right thing is to denounce all such behavior sharply!”…..Isn’t that what I just said? Shunning-yes, it happens. (and who else takes such measures?) And reporting to the police - yes, it happens. After which the full might of the law is thrown at such a person. About 20 years ago, police notification began to be required for all allegations of child sexual abuse from anyone in position to learn of it….health workers, school personnel, clergy. Without police involvement it was feared that such conduct might be too easily swept under the rug. If the law is notified and fails to convict, it is slander to publicly label a person as a child molester. But in the congregation (the only place our words have any meaning) you can still warn persons so they are protected.

"He should never be allowed near your church again." As you know, you legally cannot do that with any public place. What you can do is warn persons. Isn’t that among the effects of shunning? Depending on circumstances such ones may be publicly reproved. Again, it’s a policy that serves to notify all of the need for caution around such ones.

But I repeat, this conduct is very unusual among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Yes, if you scour the globe and bring all allegations together in one place - both substantiated and unsubstantiated, ranging from rape to touching a child’s knee - not just per annum, but all cases that have ever existed down through the years - yes, if you do all that, they accumulate, I grant you. But the broad picture is that child abuse is exceedingly uncommon among our people when compared to the world at large.

Screening With the Barenaked Ladies

If you don’t instill values into your kids, it’s not true that they will grow up free and beautiful and unencumbered, selecting their own values from the rich cornucopia of ideas....and thus escaping your stupid prejudices. No, all it means is that someone else will instill values into them. Moreover that someone else is not likely to have your kids interests at heart, at least, not to the extent you do. Heaven help you if that someone else is the entertainment media. That medium even pushes the percentages of Sturgeon's law, which informs that "90% of everything is crap."

You have to shield the kids somehow. You can‘t quite do what the entertainment industry tells you to do….watch this or that show with your child and then discuss its values or lack thereof. This is just their ploy to double the audience. Maybe it was true in your household that adults had equal leisure time with the kids. It sure wasn’t true in ours. And what limited parent-child time I had…..I sure wasn’t going to blow it all playing “bad cop.”

TV tickets might work. They did fairly well for us. You allot the kids so many TV tickets per week. Using them as they see fit, they would be able to watch 2 hours or so per week of commercial TV. (Public TV was unlimited. And we didn’t have cable….why torture them with unlimited channels they can’t watch?) I remember my son, at 6 or 7, telling someone how much he enjoyed TV….you learn so much. He actually thought that was its purpose. True, we found out years later that the kids had cheated around the edges a little….they’d found a way to counterfeit the tickets or whatever, but even so, it’s a policy I’d repeat in a heartbeat were I to come along with a second crop of kids, which Mrs. Sheepandgoats does not plan to give me.

Or you might just flat-out do away with the television. That sounds a little drastic, but here and there you run across families that have done just that. True, it’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but it’s really not that great of a baby…it poops an awful lot and you can well survive without it. As a single person, I actually went through long periods without a television and to this day there are long running popular TV series deemed indispensable of which I’ve never seen a single episode. Ironically, I found not having a TV was a good way to acquire one. People would come visit and notice the gaping hole in your living room. They’d feel uncomfortable, even a bit sorry for you, as if they’d found you naked, or with empty cupboards. The next thing you knew, they’d buy a new TV themselves and give you the old one! I can’t tell you how many TVs I got in that way. I think I only bought one. The method still works. A pal just bought one of those new half acre TVs and gave me his old 25 inch one, a decided upgrade over our storebought 19 incher.

The JW organization tries to help with tips for screening, not so much TV shows, but music. We all know that kids have unquenchable thirst for music, and the music industry fully conforms to Sturgeon’s law, and then some. So the Watchtower chimes in with tips as to how to look at a CD jacket, or what to make of a group’s name…..is it suggestive or even obscene? This way you can screen out the music that is inappropriate.

Such advise works after a fashion, but it tends to filter out almost everything. The Righteous Brothers might sneak through, but most other groups will be tossed out on their ear. The kids are not going to want to exist on just Kingdom songs. Mine sure didn’t, anyway. Even worse, the system can admit stuff that really is offensive…..some uncouth slob, for example, who goes just by his birth name and has a CD jacket featuring  trees or bunnies (rabbits)….you know, things God made. Nothing obvious to tip you off! Still, I followed the system for a time. I mean, it’s very imperfect, just like the movie rating system, but it probably is better than nothing, or at least it’s a starting point.

A group called the Barenaked Ladies rolled into town. They were giving a concert somewhere and my kids wanted to go. I consulted my system and it flashed red alert. Barenaked Ladies? What kind of a name is that? Surely these guys were up to no good. I mean, it’s not very modest a name. You can’t have bare naked ladies running all over the place. If bare naked ladies showed up at the Kingdom Hall, you’d tell them to cover up. I thundered my verdict throughout the house: “No kid of mine is going to any Barenaked Ladies concert!”

Alas, it pretty well spelled the death of my system. It turns out that The Barenaked Ladies is just a good-times band….a fun, mostly  innocuous, wittier and weightier version of the Beach Boys or the Monkeys. Circuit overseers hum their music, for crying out loud…..songs like “If I Had a Million Dollars.” And who cannot spot the joke behind "I Love You Intermittantly," a song whose arrangements and vocals suggests eternal love, or undying love, but whose words say the exact opposite? It’s hard not to like these guys. And you can always just call them BNL, as newspapers often do, though doubtless for brevity’s sake, not modesty.

After that debacle, I changed tactics. I went with my boy to a couple of concerts at the Water Street Music Hall. He was thrilled to have the judgmental old man along. That’s how I came to hear Weezer, who I liked well enough allowing for generational differences……wait a minute….what are they “wheezing” from?…..it better not be marijuana smoke……but there was no sign of it. All they were was loud. At the lineup to get in, everyone held their hand out to get stamped, so I did too. “You don’t need a stamp” the bouncer waved me by, a little disrespectfully, I thought. (The stamp was to verify you were drinking age) “Aren’t there any grownups here?” I retorted. Yeah, the boy was real happy to have me along. But, as stated, the group really wasn’t that bad and I wasn’t displeased I’d come.

I went to another concert later to see some other group whose name I have forgotten. These guys were a little less wholesome. I mean, they didn’t smash guitars or burn bras or anything, but their presence wasn’t quite as agreeable as the other group had been. After that, we both weaned off of concerts for awhile

Years later, when the kids were grown and gone, did I throw in the towel by going myself to the Bob Dylan concert?                           

Salvation by Grace, Trinity, Hell, and so forth...

When I first began blogging about two years ago, I imagined that from whatever posts I wrote with a spiritual theme, about half would be directed toward the skeptic crowd and half aimed at the religionists. Like our Lord impaled between two thieves, Jehovah’s Witnesses are caught between two unsavory types. On the one side are the atheists who don’t like us because we are theists (an annoying word…..would you call a married man a wifeist?). On the other hand are the churches who also don’t like us because we fail to line up with their favorite doctrines.

In spite of my noble 50/50 intentions, I find myself writing 90/10 in response to a powerful Carolina force who’s name I will not mention but whose initials are Moristotle. A prolific commenter with boundless energy, he not only writes his blog but he also writes mine in that he plants ideas in my head - they swirl around, and gel into some post geared to something he’s brought up.

Now, this is not disagreeable to me, for I tire very quickly of fisticuffs with the religionists. Squabbling with someone over the trinity, for example, brings to mind that Monty Python scene with the Black Knight. You take off one arm; they keep charging you. You take off another; they don’t notice it. Take off a leg and it doesn’t faze them. Another leg and they keep on arguing, confident they’ve trapped you. You take your leave in disgust and they taunt you for being a coward. Look…almost all scriptures proving the Trinity are wordings that would instantly be recognized as metaphor or illustrative device in any other context, and you have to painstakingly go through every blasted one of them with the Trinitarian and then start at the first and do it all over again since nothing you said in the first place registered. Some people enjoy the exercise. More power to them. The field is theirs. As for me, if for some reason I’ve kept a car group waiting, upon my return I may say “I don’t believe I couldn’t get that person to see that Jesus and God are not the same.” You can see veins standing out on the necks of those waiting. “You kept us waiting all that time for the Trinity!?” they seem to be fuming.

Still, in an effort to respect my original Mission, here’s a few tidbits either from my blog or from exchanges I’ve had on other blogs. They've accumulated. They're too good for the dumpster yet too meager to merit a post of their own. So I'll present several together as a casserole. Perhaps I'll expand on some later.

One person takes issue with our stand on holidays. Most  holidays Jehovah’s Witness refrain from. Does that not border on child abuse? she suggests, recalling how eagerly she anticipated Santa. Yet in the next breath she worries that, deviating from Truth in this or that doctrinal way, surely I and mine are all apt to go to hell. There is not some incongruity here? Refraining from holidays is intolerable cruelty, but she has no problem with an all-powerful God who would hand someone over to be tortured forever and ever!

With a single exception, all instances of "hell" in English Bibles stem from one of three original language words (sheol, hades, gehenna) Find the meaning of those three words and you've found the meaning of hell. None of them refer to a place of eternal torment. A well known early Witness, Charles Russell was known in his lifetime as the man who "turned the hose on hell and put out the fire."

Salvation is by Grace, sir...that's the point. Religion cannot save, only Jesus does.

Well, of course, everyone knows that.

If "everyone knows" that salvation is by Grace, why does JW preach that you earn salvation by good works?

They don't. I think this accusation originates with people who do little or nothing in appreciation for Christ's free gift of life, yet want to feel morally superior to those who do. (Not to say that the writer was among those people. Most likely, she's merely repeating what she's heard) "Works" that Jehovah's Witnesses perform are in appreciation for that gift, and in obedience to Christ's command to "go and make disciples." (Matt 28:19) They do not imagine for one minute that they are "earning" everlasting life. The importance of Christian activity is supported by James 2:26: “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” KJV

Only 144,000 are going to heaven, huh? No wonder you knock on so many doors! There are 7 million of you! That’s a lot of people to beat out so as to grab one of the heavenly spots.

Well....the premise is wrong here.

Jehovah's Witnesses are unique among Christian groups in that they entertain no hope of future heavenly life. Instead, they look forward to everlasting life on this earth when it is ruled over by God's Kingdom, the same Kingdom people familiarly know from the Lord's Prayer. Should we die before that Kingdom comes, our hope is to be resurrected to that paradise earth. God first put humans on earth. He didn't put them there because he wanted them somewhere else. Life on earth is not "second class." to us. It is God's original purpose for humans.

Kingdom rule over earth is not too far away, in our view, and Revelation 7:9-17 is now taking place. This passage tells of a great crowd of persons gathered from all "nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues" who would survive the "great tribulation" and live on into the "new order," life under Kingdom rule. Almost all of Jehovah's Witnesses claim to belong to this group. I do.

The Bible also speaks of a "sacred secret," (Colossians 1:26) a "secret" first made known to the early Christian congregation, that there would be some from humankind, a comparatively tiny number, who would share in this heavenly government. Their ultimate destiny would be in heaven, not on earth. Since this "secret" was made known shortly after Christ's resurrection, and there are only 144,000 of these who will serve as "kings and priests," very few of them are on earth today. Most, we maintain, have long since lived their lives and been resurrected to heavenly life.

I'd like to know where in the Bible it says to keep files on your members, or how about where it says that child abuse should only be reported to elders not the police, and while on that note, where does it say again that you should not support your country? I'm also certain the Bible doesn't tell us there is no hell or that Jesus should not be worshiped. And where exactly does it say that God is not a trinity? I'm really curious where the scripture is that backs up these rules.

I'd like to know where in the Bible it says to keep files on your members  [I’m not exactly sure what “files” this writer was referring to, but I took a stab, in view of the point she brought up next]

The policy of Jehovah's Witnesses is that a known child molester may never be appointed to any position of oversight. Plainly for such a policy to succeed, someone has to keep track, otherwise simply changing congregations would be enough to thwart it. Jehovah's Witnesses should not be criticized for this. Rather, you should criticize churches who do not care enough about protecting children to have done the same. A simple police background check is not enough. Many known molesters have never been convicted. Nor are police records necessarily reliable. A report from Toronto last week laments that, due to loopholes, only half of the province's convicted sex offenders appear on the national list.

or how about where it says that child abuse should only be reported to elders not the police

There is nothing to say congregation members can't call the police in cases of child abuse. Where do you get this from? If they choose to contact the elders first, or instead of, then the elders contact the police as required by law in New York, and I think all of the United States.

and while on that note, where does it say again that you should not support your country?

I'm not sure what the author means by that remark. Jehovah's Witnesses scrupulously obey laws, they diligently pay taxes, they stand for family values. Do those things not count as supporting your country? Or is he speaking of attitudes toward military ventures? At present this country is sharply divided over military policy. Does he feel one side or the other is not supporting the country? If so, which side?

I'm also certain the Bible doesn't tell us there is no hell

I've already answered this in my comment about the three original language words from which the English word hell is translated. None of them refer to a place of fiery torment. When you translate a word, you have to translate it according to its meaning, not according to what simply fits into your belief structure.

or that Jesus should not be worshiped. And where exactly does it say that God is not a trinity?

Since the Trinity goes against common sense, one would not expect the Bible to expressly deny it, any more than one would expect it to deny that the ground is really green cheese. Exactly the opposite. If the Trinity is true, one would expect the Bible to explicitly and unambiguously state it. It doesn't. The only verse that directly states the Trinity is found at 1 Jn 5:7 in the King James Bible. Virtually all modern Bibles have either removed or footnoted the verse, since it appears in no ancient manuscripts prior to the 16th century. In other words, it was inserted into the text, [!] most likely by someone intent on proving what the Bible otherwise does not say.

I'm really curious where the scripture is that backs up these rules.

There’s quite a few grousers who like to portray Jehovah’s Witnesses as an organization of rules “enslaving” people. Two thoughts on this. First, there’s no question that we do adhere to standards as close as we can approximate to that of the first century Christians. No apology for this.   

But where someone presents a list of JW rules, and some of them seem too petty to believe, in general, they should not be believed. They are usually the result of some discussion in the Watchtower or Awake, sometimes decades old, sometimes mentioned only once, with no intention of proposing rules, but only food for thought. To be sure, we have some folks who take every suggestion found anywhere as a rule, as acknowedged in the July 1 1994 Watchtower:

An elder could think that in order to be theocratic, the brothers should obey all sorts of rules. Some elders have made rules out of suggestions given from time to time by “the faithful and discreet slave.”

Don’t such folk exist anywhere? From time to time, these ones are readjusted.

For example, from the Aug 1 1994 Watchtower:

Responsible brothers today are equally interested in reaching hearts. Thus, they avoid laying down arbitrary, inflexible rules or turning their personal viewpoints and opinions into law. (Compare Daniel 6:7-16.) From time to time, kindly reminders on such matters as dress and grooming may be appropriate and timely, but an elder may jeopardize his reputation as a reasonable man if he harps on such matters or tries to impose what are primarily reflections of his personal taste. Really, all in the congregation should avoid trying to control others.—Compare 2 Corinthians 1:24; Philippians 2:12.   (page 18)

Or from the Sept 1, 1996 Watchtower (page 23):

We can have faith that Jehovah God by means of his holy spirit will influence the hearts of true worshipers. Thus, mature Christians appeal to the hearts of their brothers, entreating them, as did the apostle Paul. (2 Corinthians 8:8; 10:1; Philemon 8, 9) Paul knew that it is mainly the unrighteous, not the righteous, who need detailed laws to keep them in line. (1 Timothy 1:9) He expressed, not suspicion or distrust, but faith in his brothers. To one congregation he wrote: “We have confidence in the Lord regarding you.” (2 Thessalonians 3:4) Paul’s faith, trust, and confidence surely did much to motivate those Christians. Elders and traveling overseers today have similar aims. How refreshing these faithful men are, as they lovingly shepherd the flock of God!

There! Now back to those pesky atheists.

Homo Habilus, Erectus, and Piltdown

We've all seen those lineups of our evolutionary roots...a parade of characters emerging from the slime. The first figure’s barely slithering with butt yet in the water, but each successive fellow is more and more erect, till finally, there’s the guy in the front with briefcase and tie. Sometimes, when satirists are illustrating the backward evolution of something, say….the American school system, they turn the whole troupe around and march them back into the muck.

But the ancestors in the lineup aren’t so orderly as they appear. Since the parade’s inception, for example, the apelike homo habilis has been faithfully tailing the manlike homo erectus, and heaven help you if you were to question that order. But in 2005, scientists in Kenya found fossil specimens of each within walking distance of the other. Moreover, they were dated equally ancient. They weren’t ancestor-descendent at all, but contemporaries, more like Clint Eastwood and his orangutan! Evolutionists muttered about it some in scientific journals, but I never saw a word in the popular media. Ah well, they seem to say….if it wasn’t that slobbering ancestor, then it must have been some other.

The marcher who really takes the cake, though, is Piltdown man. He snuck into the lineup in 1912 and remained for forty years before he was unmasked as a fraud in 1953 and kicked out!

It was a laborer who discovered the bones at the small English village of Piltdown. In time, the place would yield forty separate discoveries. He turned them over to Charles Dawson, a local lawyer, who trotted them off to the museum. They sure looked old. Yes, they represented the missing link, proof that Darwin’s fifty year old theory applied even to humans! The find was announced to the scientific world, which swooned in ecstasy.

But forty years later they began to smell a rat. Weren’t those bones merely chemically stained so as to look old? And hadn’t they been filed here and there in order to mimic the passage of time? More tests were made and…..sonuvagun….it was just a pile of old bones, largely a run-of-the-mill contemporary ape with some other critters fused in! Someone had made asses of the world’s most respected evolutionists! “It really was a horrible, nasty, vicious piece of work!” grouses Andy Currant, featured on the NOVA documentary chronicling the farce.

Who would play such a mean trick?

Suspects were not few. Even Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator Sherlock Holmes, was considered! He lived nearby, he was a medical doctor, he collected fossils, and he was a showman. He even had motive. See….he believed one could communicate with the dead. He took photographs of ghosts, but when he showed them to scientists, they laughed at him. “Frauds, double exposures,” they declared, “easily faked!” “I’ll show you what a fraud is,” he supposedly schemed, and so planted evidence that would give him the last laugh for forty years!

(This better not happen again, Romulus Crowe, If it does, I’m on to you!)

The lawyer Charles Dawson also emerges as a suspicious character. When his Piltdown man was revealed as phony, researchers tested his other ancient treasures on display at museums. They were all forgeries!

Still another fellow comes to light….were they all in cahoots? Martin Hinton, a staff scientist at the British Natural History Museum (where Piltdown was housed) died in 1961. When they found his trunk decades later in a museum storage room, it contained all the chemicals and tools required to create the hoax. Moreover, there were bones doctored similarly, as if he were practicing for the great joke. (or was he only recreating the deception?) Mr. Hinton’s motive? He was peeved at toiling in obscurity, annoyed that his Museum superior passed him over for promotion, denying him fame and money! “I’ll plant a phony caveman,” he supposedly reasoned. “The ass will discover it, parade it as genuine. Scientists will see right through it, and laugh him into oblivion” What he didn’t reckon on was that evolutionists, desperate for any scrap proving human evolution, would lap it all up uncritically….just as they have in modern times with homos habilis and erectus!

Says Giles Oakley, son of the man who uncovered the fraud, “Egotism, pride, ambition, rivalry, these things affect [gasp!] even scientific judgments.”

Incredibly, nationalism even played a part in fooling the “great men,” as the NOVA documentary makes clear. British evolutionists were frustrated in the early 1900’s. The Germans had discovered Neanderthal man. “Prehistoric” men had also been found in France and Spain, and yet the Brits had squat. But these were the days of the British empire, on which the sun never set. Surely they must also be the cradle of civilization! Piltdown man put the Brits on the map scientifically, and British scientists were the last to acknowledge that they had been duped.

Sigh…..how to sum up? Shouldn’t we really defer to the words of Malcolm Muggeridge:

Posterity will surely be amazed, and I hope vastly amused, that such slipshod and unconvincing theorizing should have so easily captivated twentieth-century minds and been so widely and recklessly applied.

Alas, there is little sign as yet that anyone's amazed.

Slavery in the Old Testament

People today tend to judge those of prior times in the light of today’s values. It's not a wise thing to do.

The most brilliant and learned people who have ever lived.....namely...us, of course.....come to feel a certain way about this or that practice, so anyone in the past who did not feel that way is barbaric, uncouth, uncivilized, etc. Or, to take the flipside, if we feel a certain way, then the truly learned and wise of prior generations also must have felt that way. But in reality, humankind (yes, even the wise and learned) run with a herd mentality....just like we all wear fat ties one year and narrow ties a few years later.

Slavery is universally condemned today. Yet the most elevated of the ancient world accepted it as a matter of course, and had no qualms about it.  Aristotle, for example, supported slavery as being in accord with natural law. Historians estimate that one of every three persons was a slave in the ancient world.

Sometimes we hear American forefathers like Washington and Jefferson condemned because they kept slaves, without regard for the fact that everyone of their class (wise, refined, prosperous) at the time kept slaves. The fact that they were the most progressive and just of slaveholders means nothing. They kept slaves....damn them..... and so deserve the loathing of today's learned critics, who remain supremely (and absurdly) confident that they themselves would have been immune to the practice had they lived back then.

They kept slaves in Bible times too....in Israelite times....it's codified right there in the Mosaic law....and on that basis today's critics claim moral superiority....again, as if they themselves would have been above it all.

But I'm uncomfortable with making rabid accusations of an ancient society, and much more so judging ancient peoples by today's standards. It seems too much a fulfillment of Proverbs 30:12….

There is a generation that is pure in its own eyes but that has not been washed from its own excrement.

It is OUR world, not theirs, which is on the brink of annihilation from any number of causes: environmental ruin, nuclear annihilation, terrorism, class warfare, economic chaos, and so forth. It is OUR world, not theirs, that lets 20% of its people go hungry, or without clean water, or without any prospects as children other than to become some nutjob’s "freedom fighter." If they were barbaric back there in the OT, our world is 10 times more so. You don't think we should have a better track record ourselves before we go pointing out how rotten they were?

But with regard to slavery, we may divide human history into two periods: when "God's people" were autonomous and when they weren't. For the most part, they were autonomous in the Old Testament (Israel of old was a sovereign nation), however there has never been a Christian nation, neither now nor in New Testament times. Rome was the power of Jesus day and Christianity developed in lands subject to the Roman Empire. Scripture might therefore be expected to be law of the land in OT times, but only a personal code of conduct in NT times. And when scripture was law of the land, we read of a "seven year temporary slavery" arrangement in Israel. How did that work?

Israelites back then, like everyone else, had an economy. And like today, through an interplay of hard work and dumb luck, some would prosper and some would become impoverished. What do you do with those who become impoverished? What do we do with them today? Has today's society found a workable and ideal solution? In ancient Israel, individuals, if they became desperate enough, could sell themselves into slavery to their more prosperous neighbors. (they were never taken by force) That's not so good, some might object, yet is today's solution to poverty really any better?

Though Bible critics rarely mention it, preferring  to take shot after shot at anything religious: after seven years, such slaves were set free! Sooner, if they became slaves before the designated seventh year. And not set free back into poverty. Each Jew was restored to his original hereditary possession, which he may have sold off during periods of poverty. Thus, there would never be generation after generation of permanent poverty, as there is today. Nor would the rich become so entrenchedly rich that ones born into it would come to look at wealth as their right and imagine themselves superior to the less well-off. The obscene lopsided distribution of wealth, characteristic of most societies today, never got a footing in Israel. Of even middle class Americans, one commenter explained: we were born on third base and so we think we have hit a triple.

Not many who rail against the Bible know of this arrangement,  but it compares favorably to anything humans have devised since. We believe it was divine law…..not from humans.

Furthermore, I suspect that many of the outraged who think freeing the slaves after seven years is seven years overdue would immediately rethink their position if they realized it would cost them, as it did those prosperous Jews. They would, instead, raise a clamor about how THEIR freedom was being infringed upon! Free the slaves, as long as its on someone else's dime! Here is a society, unheard of in human history, which regularly, as a matter of course, freed slaves! And all the gripers can do is carry on about how barbarous they were back then! Their system beat anything we have today, mainly because generational, perpetual poverty, the kind that engenders hopelessness and bitterness, never could take root.

Now, this is slavery only in the Mosaic period, the Old Testament. We’ll do the New Testament another time. Moreover, the above does not apply to non-Isrealite slaves, perhaps prisoners of war. Their prospects were less agreeable. True, there is some OT regulation to prevent unchecked cruelty (which is more than existed anywhere else), but even so, slavery is slavery) Now, we may fume over this, but what does the modern world do with enemy combatants? Can you think of any modern nation which has detained enemy combatants for years without trial or even habeas corpus? True, modern nations have (many of them) adopted the Geneva convention, which strictly regulates treatment for prisoners of war. This treaty is scrupulously observed by all signatories during peacetime. Wartime, of course, is a different matter.

There is even a provision in that Mosaic law that allowed for the possibility that the freed slave might renounce his freedom. [!]

But if the slave should insistently say, ‘I really love my master, my wife and my sons; I do not want to go out as one set free,’ then his master must bring him near to the [true] God and must bring him up against the door or the doorpost; and his master must pierce his ear through with an awl [ouch], and he must be his slave to time indefinite.    Exodus 21:5-6

All would see this voluntary slave about town, and would doubtless observe that he must really have a kind, just, fair, agreeable, etc deal, so as to choose servitude. It appears that this arrangement is a foregleam of what would appear in the Christian era. Peter, Paul, James, the early NT writers, all refer to themselves as "slaves" of Christ. Some modern translations soften the term to "servants," but "slave" is the original-language word.

On Day 439 Everything Changes: From Spitzer to Peterson

Taunters are taunting me. “What’re you going to do with your Eliot Spitzer category, Sheepandgoats, hmmm? It’s right there on your front page. What you going to do, now that he’s gone down in flames?….sigh….Oh, very well. I guess we can close out the category. He’s been such a colorful character, and local, that I just had to post a few times about him, here, here and here.

“On Day One, Everything Changes!” That was the promise following his crushing (69%) victory to become New York State Governor. We all waited for day one to arrive - he was almost a messianic figure. He’d nailed several Wall Street firms with billions of dollars in fines and sent some fat cats to jail. The Sheriff of Wall Street, he’d been nicknamed. Some pictured him a future President. What he did with corrupt financiers surely he could do with the obstructionist politicians that plague New York! But on Day 439 everything changed in a way he hadn’t foreseen, or anyone else. He was caught with prostitutes and  resigned in disgrace. Cheers broke out on the NYSE trading floor [!], and  prices soared*, temporarily snapping a dismal down trend.

*perhaps not for that reason, though there are pundits who maintain it was exactly for that reason.

These were no ordinary prostitutes. The one that triggered his downfall cost him $4300. For a single stand! Who would have thought they could cost so much? Had he economized with cheaper ones he might have escaped detection, for he had to transfer large sums of money to various shell corporations to pay the bill… allegedly $80,000 through the years! Now, in the United States, if you transfer $10K or more from a bank, that bank must notify the feds. And you can’t bust up the transfers into lesser amounts to avoid the $10K trigger…that’s a crime here, and that’s what they say Spitzer did. They dreamed up that law to thwart terrorists. But it’s netted many unintended victims, like philandering politicians. Crossing state lines to promote prostitution is also a crime here (the Mann Act).

Spitzer resigned on TV, wife at his side. “I cannot allow for my private failings to disrupt the people's work. Over the course of my public life, I have insisted — I believe correctly — that people take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor." The couple has three teenaged children. The wife’s plight provided silent ammunition for those feminists who say that a woman should never, ever, put her career on hold  (which Mrs Spitzer had done, sort of) for the sake of raising children - you just can’t trust husbands and when they go bad you’re behind the 8-ball.

Learned psychological types, the sort who buy into evolutionary psychology, quickly weighed in. At last we know the real reason for Spitzer’s zeal in crushing wrongdoers, they lectured knowingly. It was all a sham! He’s just an alpha male, with all the vulnerabilities of the species. And what about the prostitution rings he’d broken up? Even more Freudian: he was just exorcizing inner demons, purging his own soul through nailing others! But I’m not so sure how valid that argument is, or how relevant. After all, he was elected to knock heads together, not to teach Sunday School. Still, once exposed, he hadn’t a chance. Americans want their politicians squeaky clean, a reflection of what they imagine themselves to be.

Besides, his “knocking heads together” style hadn’t worked well of late. Opposing politicians aren’t like corporate shysters whom who can throw in jail. They get mad, and they fight back. Though Spitzer scored some impressive early wins, he later bogged down amidst a style so abrasive that there was nobody to stick up for him when he got in trouble.

I’m not so sure the abrasiveness was wrong. At any rate, what had proceeded it sure hadn’t worked. New York is well known among states for its dysfunctional government. Years ago then-Governor Pataki appeared on TV with leaders of the two opposing parties. He hoped to project the image of firm and steady moderator, guiding these powerful but noble opponents to a consensus for the lasting good of New Yorkers. Instead, the two foes squabbled like children, and Pataki looked like an ineffectual ass, the other parties themselves being immune to embarrassment. The governor steered clear of TV after that.

With Spitzer’s resignation, state leadership defaulted to David Peterson, the Lieutenant Governor. Unexpected, the politically correct media had something to swoon about, for not only is Peterson black, he is also blind. A new category! He’s black and he’s blind, they gushed, as if blindness somehow made him more black or blackness made him more blind. Plus, he’s amiable. He gets along with everybody, they gushed again, forgetting that a year ago they had praised Spitzer for his being the exact opposite.

No sooner had Peterson been sworn in than he, too, confessed to some extramarital affairs. He wasn’t going to be blindsided the way Spitzer was! But all was cool with the media….he’s black and he’d blind, after all, and he enters with lots of good will. We’ve never had a black and blind governor. Besides, his marital woes were more garden variety. He hadn’t broken any laws, and he hadn’t hired any prostitutes.

A week later he admitted that in his younger days he had used marijuana and cocaine.

Alright, Mr. Peterson, don’t push it! Sure, Bill Clinton smoked (but didn’t inhale) pot and George Bush drank (but didn’t swallow) booze, but you’re only a governor. He’s probably okay for now, but one more Oprah confession, like shoplifting at K-Mart, and he’s outta here.

As NYS Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer took a lot of bad people out of circulation, including some high finance types usually thought untouchable. That should not be taken away from him. New Yorkers can be grateful. Advocates for market fairness say he’s done more to clean up Wall Street than anyone else in decades. For that, anyone who invests can be grateful. Still, I confess I wondered a bit when I read about the Theodore Sihpol case in the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Sihpol wasn’t a Big Guy, at least not in the financial world. He was mid-level. He had allowed a hedge fund to secure some closing prices after hours. There was no price favoritism. The fund got the closing prices, but it was after hours. Spitzer’s office threw everything they had at this fellow. He might even had settled, but the plea bargain they offered included jail time. So he fought back. At trial, his attorneys called no witnesses. They simply read the law. And it was clear he’d not broken any! Case dismissed.

Now, what are we to make of this apparent abuse of power? You can’t make omelets without cracking a few eggs? But as George Orwell said, any time someone uses that line on you, you should immediately ask to see the omelet.

All in all, it’s rather a sad story. Isn’t there some scripture somewhere about humans not being able to rule themselves?

Ruining Those who Ruin the Earth

When I was a kid, you never knew when the Russians were going to launch an air strike, maybe with nukes. So several times a semester grownups made us do air raid drills. We'd crouch under our desks with hands clasped behind our necks, a safeguard against flying glass. I envisioned sinister glass flying about at will, as if with wings, searching for young children to harm. In later years, when we were too big to fit under the desks, we'd file into the hallways and lean against our lockers.

Nuclear attack was a very real fear in the years following World War II. Nor was it only the United States who had to be wary of the Russians. Intoxicated with the decisive end to that great war brought by Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, General McArthur thought it well to pepper the Soviet Union with 50 of the new bombs - a pre-emptive strike that would have made Iraq look like a schoolyard brawl. President Truman, though, wouldn’t let him.

During the 1960s, with both superpowers pointing God knows how many missiles at each other, nuclear annihilation - not just attack - fired the popular imagination. Remember how Ray Bradbury's character in the Martian Chronicles trains his telescope on earth just in time to see it's final mushroom cloud? And who can forget Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes, encountering the half-buried Statue of Liberty and suddenly realizing just what planet he was on? ("They blew it up! Damn them! Damn them to hell!!") Not to mention the Twilight Zone in which that fellow goes into the bank vault to read, only to have the world end while he is so occupied. Far from being put out, he is delighted, since he can now read free from the eternal nagging of his boss and wife. Unfortunately, he breaks his glasses.

So when I became one of Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1970s and came across that scripture telling how God would "bring to ruin those ruining the earth," (Rev 11:18) I read it in terms of nuclear ruining. It was really the only means of ruining the earth that anyone could envision back then. Sure, they closed polluted Durand Beach in the early 60s, which only recently reopened, but nobody saw such things as a threat to the entire earth. These days an endless list leaps to mind, most some variant of man-made pollution. Taking first place has to be global warming, but through the years we've also learned to fret about global dimming, species destruction, air and water pollution, acid rain, deforestation, contamination of the food supply, and so forth. Wasn't there just some study detailing how pharmaceuticals have found their way into the water supply? In minute concentrations, of course, yet over time, and given the fact that such chemicals are designed to interact with living tissue, isn't it another "ruining the earth" scenario?

So there are several new avenues through which humans threaten to ruin the earth, and would surely do so, without the intervention of God's Kingdom. Not to mention that the first, the nuclear threat, has hardly gone away. Some think that threat greater than ever since there are more nuclear powers than before, and they are nuttier and more unstable.

The Bible uses the term "earth" in yet another way. It doesn't always refer to the physical planet. It can refer to the society living upon it. If we broaden our definition of earth in this way, we, as a consequence, add new social ways in which humans ruin the earth. In fact, when God gave his reason for bringing a flood in Noah's time, he declared that the earth was ruined, not by air pollution or global warming, but by human violence.

And the earth came to be ruined in the sight of the [true] God and the earth became filled with violence. So God saw the earth and, look! it was ruined, because all flesh had ruined its way on the earth.      Gen 6:11-12

Surely violence "ruins" the earth today. Imagine hatred so intense that people delight to die if only they can take a dozen or so with them! Violence considered unspeakable even in the 70s, enhanced with torture, becomes more and more routine. Television positively wallows in it. Even Moristotle, a gentle soul who will nonetheless disagree with most aspects of this post, will not disagree on the mushrooming of violence. Deep in the comment section of this recent post he refers to UNC-Chapel Hill (his employer, I think) Student Body President Eve Carson, whose "ATM card and car--and life--were stolen a couple of weeks ago by two young thugs." The reference has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of his comment, but is typical of how we respond to random violence....it crowds out everything else....we just half to highlight it. For this young woman, and loved ones, and the entire campus in proportion to how well they knew here, violence has "ruined the earth."

And can you not add economic concerns to matters that are ruining the earth? Costs of fuel and food have risen dramatically in recent months, incomes have not, and plenty of folk were stretched tight to begin with.

Of course, such things aren't really unexpected and are just part of the accumulating "sign" that human rulership is unfit and that God is fully justified in bringing its end, to be replaced with his own Kingdom rule. Only then will the earth really be free of injustices.

All the same, trialsome conditions are trialsome conditions. Jehovah's people may see light at the end of the tunnel, but it's a tunnel nonetheless. Sometimes people give up on the light and instead focus on the tunnel - some worrying about it, some trying to patch it up, some exploring it. It's easy to do. If Paul could speak of those who had experienced "shipwreck concerning their faith" (1 Tim 1:19) in his day, much more do his words apply in our day as the whole earth wobbles insanely and we all feel its effects. Doubtless that is why Jehovah's organization lays so much stress on "staples" such as meetings, service, prayer, and Bible study. These are the avenues...really, the only avenues...through which Christians can focus on the big picture of God's deliverance.

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"A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on rock, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown."
When he said this, he called out, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

His disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,
" 'though seeing, they may not see;
though hearing, they may not understand.' [Isa 6:9]

"This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

Luke 8:5-15   NIV

Watchtower Lightens Up in Brooklyn Heights

When their buildings were unconnected, Bethelites might walk sidewalks six-abreast at "shift changes," sweeping passerby into the street. So Watchtower connected buildings via underground tunnel, but this made them a "secretive cult," attempting to isolate their folk from the real world.

Watchtower owns 30 buildings in the Brooklyn Heights vicinity. They’ve been there since 1909. Brooklyn Heights was then, and remains, world headquarters for the organization.  Over the years, and especially in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, as neighboring properties became available, Jehovah’s Witnesses snapped them up to accommodate growth. Of course, they didn't buy indiscriminately...they looked them over closely. When the Hotel Margaret went up for sale, Watchtower kept their distance. With its all wood interior, surely it was a fire trap. A few years later the building burned to the ground! Our people, directly across the street, had to evacuate. The June 22, 1980 Awake! magazine relates the fire, and a subsequent issue highlights an excerpt from With New York Firefighters, the firefighters' house magazine:

“And, we would be remiss, indeed, if we neglected to mention those members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who, from their headquarters across the street from the Hotel Margaret, provided food and shelter for our firefighters during the entire operation. On behalf of the entire fire-fighting force, warm and sincere appreciation is extended to these kind and dedicated people.”

It's a challenge for any neighborhood to bear that much tax-exempt property, even if the tax-exempt organization was responsible for keeping the area respectable during harsher times. So it’s probably a win-win that Jehovah’s Witnesses are lessening their presence….selling off a few buildings….so as to consolidate all U.S. printing in rural upstate New York. Some of the printing presses they use…newfangled jobs….require straight-line paths greater than the Brooklyn properties can physically accommodate. So the buildings have sort of become obsolete. And if the printing operations move, then you don’t need the residential buildings to house the workers, do you? Last year (2007) the Watchtower put six of it’s eighteen Brooklyn Heights properties up for sale. (the other twelve properties are in the nearby DUMBO (whatever that stands for) neighborhood)

These six aren’t the first to go. The year before, the Sliver building was sold. I have fond memories of the Sliver building, since Tom and Pam Oxgoad, Bethelites for many years, used to live there.

Tom Oxgoad hails from near Rochester. He’s a pal, and many years ago he was accepted as a Bethel volunteer. He met Pam while at Bethel. We‘ve been down to visit a few times over the years. Once we spent the whole day roaming Manhattan, which is easy to do when you have a native guide. Many hours we spent at the Metropolitan Art Museum. (or was that on another visit?) Come evening, we bought some wine and cheese and holed up in their tiny Sliver building apartment. Didn’t it have a bed that folded down from the wall, or have I just embellished its compactness in my head? What I positively do remember was their view of the Manhattan skyline…absolutely breathtaking!

The Oxgoads had had their eye on the Sliver building for some time, waiting for a vacancy.  At Bethel, there is a seniority system when it comes to housing, but you have to be alert to new openings as well. Pam had been on the ball. She'd learned of an opening at the Sliver, the couple had applied and slipped in before anyone else knew which end was up.

The Oxgoads adjusted well to city living. Visiting speakers from the hills would show up for the Sunday public talk, Tom once told me. They’d rail against wicked big cities and how Nimrod founded Babylon and how Jehovah would flatten them all and so forth. Tom and Pam would wince….New York City, after all, was their home, and most of us grow fond of our homes, same as I've grown attached to Rochester and even see fit to write nice things about it. Alas, their Manhattan view was not to last. No sooner had they settled in, when they were reassigned to rural Patterson NY. One day their window view took in Manhattan; the next day it was grazing cows.

The timing is favorable for selling off some buildings. Brooklyn Heights is hot right now and properties command top dollar. "[Jehovah’s Witnesses] bought their buildings for their own use, not looking to cash out, at a time when the market was dead and you couldn't give real estate away in this area," said Andy Gerringer, managing director of Prudential Douglas Elliman Developments. "I don't know if it was savvy investing, luck or divine intervention."

Nor do I.

Everyone says the Witnesses have been good neighbors, though they’ve not mixed much with the greater community. “If families start moving in, it’ll probably get a bit livelier around here,” said one man. “They didn’t really interact with everyone around them.”

Like I say, it’s probably a win-win. But if we’ve been good neighbors to Brooklyn Heights, they also have been to us. The Oxgoads miss it a lot.

The Winged Migration Email

They’re building a garish church behind a certain writer's house, with it’s steeple in the heavens, flattening the forest as they go. But foxes live in the forest, this fellow keeps track of them, and now they are displaced foxes. Not to mention the birds which he faithfully feeds. Will they keep coming around with the woods leveled? So this fellow’s not too happy with anything that smacks of religion.

When he read my post on Winged Migration, he wasn’t too sure if I wasn’t making fun of the birds. Never cross an animal lover. Now, in fact, I think Winged Migration is one of the most beautiful films ever made, but maybe that point didn't stand out in my post. Besides, with the steeple of that church blocking sun, moon, and stars….he's in a foul mood.

………………………..

Blog Master,

I would like to complement you on you unique choice of a name for a blog. You appear to have a good knowledge of many things, but then that appearance is lost in some of the words you write. I do not pretend to be a scientist, or one that is very religious and in reading your “Winged Migration and the Evolutionists” you make light of the Theory of Evolution when maybe you need to crack a book on the subject. Anyone who uses Gary Larsen as a keystone for their writing might want to lay off The Far Side for awhile. Larson, unique as his work/play is, has swayed the mind of many a person into thinking about animals as he portrays them.

(I have put your words in italics, just in case you do not recognize them for what they are.)

We never see a person; do birds not care about us as much as we ourselves do?

Mostly people are not worth seeing, or caring about either. Birds find that people have a tendency to kill them so wild birds do not hang around people very much. Ask a Passenger Pigeon or a Carolina Parakeet or an Ivory Billed Woodpecker or many other birds that are extinct due to man.

Like how did that tern ever discover that such food bonanzas existed 11,000 miles apart? Does anyone have the answer? Do evolutionists?

Do a little research and discover plate tectonics. Antarctica was once tropical. You should know that the movement of the plates per year has been calculated to be about the distance a fingernail grows per year. It does not take a God given ability to adjust to changes that small over a period of time. If the wife had the refrigerator moved to the garage don’t you think you might be able to find it when you got hungry. That is what the theory of evolution is all about; you have evidently not been keeping up, only those that can adapt to changes will survive. Put another way only the strong will survive.

In winged migration you said “Ugly Birds”. There are no ugly birds but there are ugly people however.

Here is a frigate plying the waters, the birds land on deck. They strut to and fro, on short break from their journey. One or two catch a quick nap on the heat grates.

Do you know what a Frigate is? A Frigate would not have heat grates on deck!

No one can determine if you are serious or just uneducated. You have the tendency to display either of those things at random times. In 1955 I was stationed on the Light Cruiser Manchester and one time when we left port a flock of mostly yellow colored birds, sparrow sized, followed the ship till they became exhausted. They started landing on the ship and were everyplace that they could find to land, I feel sure they all perished, they evidently felt this was a safe island but were wrong. Did God instruct them do this or was it instinct, I think it was instinct.

They did it by exposing eggs of some of the birds to the sounds of people and film cameras so that the birds would not be afraid of them later.

No one can determine if you are serious or just uneducated. Sorry about repeating that answer but it appeared necessary.

One Manx shearwater was taken from Wales to Boston, (by scientists?…..did they blindfold it?) 3200 miles away. It returned to Wales in 13 days.

Did you ever hear of Homing Pigeons? Most folks would not question the repeatability of what these birds can do. Did they evolve this skill or did some unseen omnipotent intelligence give them this power? That is the question. In my opinion evolution is responsible for the behavior of animals and birds. If an omnipotent intelligence was in charge of all the things that some attribute to him/her I do not think the number of radical exterminations of birds, people and animals would have been allowed, I have been taught that our God is benevolent. All the folks killed by “acts of God”, war and disease could have been prevented by one so powerful. The great unproven flood of some centuries ago was “God given” supposedly, to remove the unfaithful and corrupt from this earth. It would seem to me that God would have been smart enough to change man to be a little more like what he wanted him to be, it would appear that God only wants to control everything by hanging a hammer over them, what kind of God is that? Yet, religions almost universally say that God loves us, that does not seem to be so, God only wants to control us. And shame be upon you if you stray from his supposed teachings. The poor birds and animals do not even have the guidance we have with all our preachers and churches. They are only destined to be at the mercy of man, and their actions and habits that allow them to exist are a matter of instinct and evolution, I somehow doubt that God even gives them the first thought.

The picture you have is a nice family group, but that one Lama is not happy. Any farm boy knows when an animal holds it’s ears back it is not pleased.

Winged Migration Man

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Now, notice that this fellow knows how to give counsel. He knows you don’t begin by saying “your writing sucks.” Instead you look for something which you can genuinely complement. Then you say "your writing sucks." In JW circles, they even serve “counsel sandwiches,” in which counsel is buffered on both ends by praise.

Opening:  Brother, you’re presence is always so delightful. We love your thoughtful comments at the meetings and your concern for the elderly, the widows, and the orphans..

Counsel: You have breath that would fell a T-Rex. Wanna try brushing your teeth once in a while?

Close: repackage the opening remarks and run them through again.

So.....how will we respond to this fellow?

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Dear WMM:

You have the ability to offer counsel. It is an art and I appreciate you’ve taken the time to offer it. You’ve put serious thought into your email. Again, I appreciate it. One cannot grow if one hears only from those who agree. And you manifestly have a love of animals. How can anyone not like that?

I like to write. It’s a hobby. Posting on a blog is a bit like an artist hanging his paintings. If I find some people read them….well, that's just icing on the cake, and more still if some take time to respond. I read a lot, think a lot, talk to a lot of people, and slap the results online. But I don’t imagine my posts are masterpieces, nor do I think they’re the final word on any subject. Some posts are serious, some are whimsical or flippant, and the lines of separation are not distinct. Sometimes people use the comment section to point out this or that blunder and I learn from them

I’ve never considered your explanation for the Arctic tern. It makes sense. To be fair, you must admit that I never said evolutionists had no answer…..rather, I asked if they did.

I don’t know anything about ships other than they float. Nor did I know those were heat grates. But the birds were landing on grates of some sort. What kind of grates were they, and what kind of ship?

The part about acclimating the eggs to film crews is accurate. I read it on a website explaining the filmmaker's techniques. It is in keeping with "imprinting," which we all know about.

And you're right, the lamas were grumpy that day. You may find it interesting that a little girl who was with us led the black one away temporarily. You should have heard the white one whimper!

Your final paragraph contains many good points. I've posted about some of them and put them in the various categories on the front page. On spiritual things, I defer to the opinions of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Their explanations on spiritual matters, IMO, is spot-on. Other posts on other subjects simply come from reading and pondering. I don’t claim they’re all brilliant, nor do I claim my writing is necessarily any good.

The reference to "ugly" birds was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. I agree with you. There are no ugly birds. Ditto for "do birds not care about us..." Meant to be tongue-in-cheek. The truth is that I regard Winged Migration as one of the most beautiful films ever made.

I almost wish your email had been submitted as a comment. I would have gladly published and responded to it.

Tom Sheepandgoats

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Tom:

I did not really expect the kinds of answers I received from you, and that is to my liking. One can not really determine in many cases what another is trying to imply. I am guilty of that very thing and it was my impression that you were attempting to cast some poor light on the production of “Winged Migration”, the director, his methods and the subject in general. I was caught by surprise when in your response you thought it was a beautiful movie. I also thought it was a beautiful movie but that was mostly because I consider myself a bird person. The reason that I say I am a bird person is that I religiously feed the birds every day and when I am not home I have some of my family come to feed them. I have been doing this for over 25 years and it’s very important to me.

Before I go on with the intended subject let me explain a little more about my relationship with the birds. The area in which I live was, until about 15 years ago, farm land and numerous portions were heavily wooded areas. We have about three acres of land with most of it being heavily wooded and the woods are mixed, being both deciduous and coniferous. A number of years ago there was 49 acres directly behind our house which was also heavily wooded. There is also a creek that provides water for birds and animals that runs along side our property. There was also a large wooded area to the side of us that was at least 200 acres. As you might visualize this was a tremendous area for birds and animals. Over the years housing developments and other development has taken place that has reduced the habitat for the wild creatures which in turn reduced their numbers. I wanted to live in the country where natural things were abundant and now those things are changing, most folks would call that progress. I do not appreciate the development but I can exist with it and I will continue to encourage the birds to come to a place where they show their beauty and get a bite to eat.

There are a lot of unhealthy and hateful responses that come to anyone that blogs, and I would never attempt to engage in such a project. I have trouble enough just understanding the folks that I communicate with now and them understanding me, so I would not even attempt to be an author of a blog.

I do remember seeing the birds landing on the ship in the documentary, and I do not remember what kind of ship it was. I have watched the movie twice and I find it hard to believe that I do not remember what type of vessel was shown. I served many years in the US Navy. I will make it an objective to look at Winged Migration again and will let you know what kind of ship it was in the film.

I did read a little about the documentary and it is a fact that doing things to imprint the nearly hatched embryo is a thing that can be accomplished. And once the eggs have hatched they imprint very easily on the first things they hear, feel and see.

Llamas are very peculiar creatures and they are beautiful animals, but they can be quite ornery from my understanding of them. Being in the same family with camels it is easy to understand their attitude. But if these Llamas were pets they were probably fairly gentle creatures.

I meant to respond also to birds flying to great altitudes to get to their migration destination. And I think that they have learned to do the thing that is easiest or will at least allow them to make that journey which has become an instinct to them. Birds understand how to take advantage of wind currents and it is not difficult for me to see that certain birds can exert themselves to fly up a matter of miles and then catch the jet stream to glide for maybe a thousand miles.

As I said before I am not a scientist but I do like to read and try to understand the principles that scientists attempt to put forth. Unfortunately most folks of science once they understand, or think they understand some scientific theory, will put up tremendous barriers to prevent their protected beliefs from being tampered with. On the other hand religion has the same attitude, and if one is content to believe in the supernatural as being responsible for all the birds, animals, fish, microbes, and the weather also, that is fine. I will not criticize their beliefs very strongly even though I do not agree with them, but am unable to know for certain that what I have a tendency to want to believe is correct. Some folks as you have mentioned have no flexibility and therefore have to come on as very hateful when they do not happen to agree with your point of view.

WMM