In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction

By Tom Harley

Those of the Enlightenment laud the “human experiment” that is democracy, Jehovah’s Witnesses laud the human experiment that is worldwide family. Theirs is John Lennon’s brotherhood of man not rejoicing that there is above us only sky but instead seeking direction from that sky. A family all but solving racism, a family uniting nationalities and social classes. Who wouldn’t want a double-shot of it? But even a recent circuit overseer likened it to “one big, united, happy, somewhat dysfunctional family,” a phrase I suspect is not in any outline.

Witnesses are ordinary folk, with all the foibles of ordinary folk, and sometimes a few extra thrown in since “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are ill do: I [Jesus] came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

What drives the Witnesses? Examine what faces these ordinary folk who star in a world-stage role that is alternately noble and strange. Some challenge is external: “A large door that leads to activity has been opened to me, but there are many opposers.” Some challenge is internal: “We have this treasure [of the ministry] in earthen vessels.” Translation: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Either way, “Do not be puzzled at the burning among you . . . as though a strange thing were befalling you,” says Peter. Don‘t be puzzled. Tackle it head-on. Start with the pure bonus, ‘Things that drive you crazy about the faith--and how to view them,’ for the goal is to endure: “When the Son of man arrives, will he really find the faith on the earth?” says Jesus. ‘Not if we have anything to do with it,’ reply ever increasing enemies.

"If errors were what you watch, O Jah, O Jehovah, who could stand?” asks the psalm. Is watching errors not the mission statement of today’s culture, typified in its media? Nobody stands as their enemies magnify, enhance, and even concoct evil reports—see it play out on the internet with any public figure, “admiring personalities,” until they destroy them. Ought Christians play that game?

"Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is stumbled, and I am not incensed? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness,” says Paul. Three times the apostle entreated God to remove a “thorn in his flesh” Nothing doing, God said. I look better when you are flawed. If brilliant people achieve brilliant things, it’s easy to see why. But when flawed people do it . . .”

Tips on the ministry within. How did Witnesses fare in the face of COVID-19? How to regard ever-present conspiracy theories that ripple through society? And what about those overlapping generations? How long can they overlap? What is at stake? What facts on the ground identify the times? Venturing to the edge of the universe, rewriting the textbooks, and dressing down the god of good luck is all in a day's work. Meet Mephibosheth, that faithful man of old whom nobody can pronounce his name at the New System Dinner Table. A bad boy turns over a new leaf, a theodicy that works, and my favorite circuit overseer finish up the offerings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Harley
• Release date: Jul 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215427989

Tom Harley

Tom Harley lives with his wife and dog in New York State. He plays bi-weekly games of Scrabble with his brother, who cheats. Lately he has taken up playing Splendor with his wife. She lost badly at first and was getting discouraged, so he gave her some pointers. Now he can’t beat her. Why did he do that?Tom is also a practicing Jehovah’s Witness for many years. He has many an anecdote to share with regard to spiritual life and is author of two special-focus books—one a defense the faith in Russia, and one a defense of it in Western lands.In his lighter moments—and he tries to stay light throughout, even on serious topics—he loves self-deprecating humor. He also likes the kind of humor where you make fun of yourself. He loves hyperbole. He also likes wild exaggeration to make a point.

Book preview

In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction

In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction

Tom Harley

"If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. - Paul

Other books by Tom Harley:

I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses: Searching for the Why

Tom Irregardless and Me

Go Where Tom Goes

Copyright © 2023 Tom Harley

All rights reserved

Dedication: To the old hen, whoever he may be

And to Bud—who used to say, "Kill a fly and 50 come to the funeral

Table of Contents

1. One Big Happy Somewhat Dysfunctional Family * Absurdities * There is no Y in Thai

2. Go Up You Baldhead * The Falling Knife * Hamburg

3. The Pebble in Your Shoe * Ideas That Have Stood the Test of Time * Let Scientists Be Scientists * Royster Says * Collapse of Absurdities * Liquor, Cigarettes, and Drugs * Making a Great Name for Oneself

4. Asaph’s Razor * The Prof on the Plane * Gaze into the Abyss * Galileo’s Telescope

5. Elon Musk Does the Babylon Bee * A Quick and Solid for Jesus * A Meeting with Ben Franklin * A Lesson from Aesop * Witnesses Don’t Do Politics * Can This Author Do the Babylon Bee?

6. Witnessing Pre, Post, and During Pandemic * The Single-Scripture Approach * Tossing the Ball * Assembling the Puzzle * Josh Grobin a Witness?

7. Ending Manipulation by the Man * Mrs. Recycling, Are You Trying to Seduce Me? * Look, Eric, Texas Tea!

8. People in Boxes * We Have a Way of Leaning into People * Quarter Walls

9. Conspiracy! Conspiracy! * Not the Worst Trial and Not the Last * Pandemic in the Rear View Mirror

10. People Held Accountable * A Pause for AI? * Mashing the Iron with the Clay * I Have All the Bitcoin I Need

11. Facts on the Ground * The Turning Point Year * Scaring the Children

12. At the New System Dinner Table * Time for One More Experience * Upside Down * Now Saving You * Who Will Survive?

13. A Nasty Review of a Defunct Book * Critics on Two Fronts * Crying Into My Beer

14. A Fable Agreed Upon

15. Wonks * With Apologies to Samuel and Bob * Think They’re Unintellectual Now? * Has Been--Shatner

16. Says the Cult Expert * Follow the Money

17. At the Edge of the Universe * Rewriting the Textbooks

18. The God of Good Luck * Throwing Badness

19. A Bad Boy Turns Over a New Leaf * Phasers Locked

Appendix * A1: A Theology That Works * A2: My Favorite Circuit Overseer

About the Author

Endnotes

1— One Big Happy Somewhat Dysfunctional Family

At breakfast in our Ithaca hotel, a Chinese family sat a few yards from us. Most likely they were there to scout out Cornell University for the teenage son. As they got up to leave, I nodded friendly to them and each smiled friendly back. The teenage boy encircled Grandma with his arms, nowhere touching, as though to safeguard her as she walked. You got the impression it was standard practice.

The experience serves as a fine intro to a discussion of one recent Sunday’s Watchtower Study. That study, Treasure Our Faithful Older Ones (September 2021 issue), and the one preceding it, tackled the challenge of gracefully aging, as well as how the generations interact with each other. The old people need to learn to let go, which is not easy because, like everyone, their self-worth gets tied up in what they do. So they must adjust in viewpoint, and this the Watchtower Study encouraged them to do.

The Bible is like an owner’s manual for the product that is us, I told the young woman in the dog park that I regard as my own personal territory. It gives good guidance on coping with the hassles we all face, while we await a better world. She conceded that was as good a summary as any she had heard and even approached me later to say she had enjoyed our brief conversation. But sometimes I’ll be working up a head of steam on this or that subject, telling people how things ought to be as their eyes glaze over. Yeah, they just think I’m an old fart, I say to myself. It is a good check. You can’t guide the younger generation if you bowl them over with words. Paragraph 3 of the study even cited Ecclesiastes 7:10: Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ for it is not out of wisdom that you ask this. Who would have thought it would be in the Bible that you should not drone on and on about the good old days? What young snot of a writer snuck that one in?

The scene of the world is changing. That same paragraph quoted this verse as well. Young people can wrap their heads around new things more quickly than old ones. They simply have minds more flexible. Isn’t there anything the young are better at than old people, the restless college kids asked Lil Abner creator Al Capp (who didn’t think much of them)? Yeah, they’re better at carrying luggage, he conceded. Nah—they’re better at all kinds of things, and within the Christian congregation is found about the best encouragement as to how the old can honor the young the same as the young honor the old. (1 Corinthians 7:1)

(Fast forward to another Sunday meeting: The speaker called for a picture displayed on screen, but Brother Allthumbs was at the controls! The pic displayed in time, but it was a very long time, during which the speaker made his point without it. Fortunately for young Allthumbs, the accompanying Watchtower Study specifically included a pic and paragraph about commending such a new attendant for his efforts rather than chewing him out for his blunders.)

A modest person knows when it is time to change to a lower gear, the study said, so that he can continue to be active and productive in Jehovah’s service. Another paragraph cited Barzillai, ducking out of an assignment from David because at age 80 he thought himself too old and fretted he would just slow things down. I laughed aloud (Zoom-muted) at the elderly sister [Witnesses typically refer to one another as brother or sister] who said it was tough to let go as we begin to decline soon after 40. Yikes! She’s not known as a jokester, either. (2 Samuel 19:35)

About the only one who can’t get away with doing less is Sam Herd, forever quipping and playing the grumpy old man card. He mutters that, as one of the Governing Body, he would like to retire but they won’t let me. He does get to sit, though; I’ve seen it. But he didn’t sit taking his turn as GB speaker at the 2019 Regional—the last physical convention before Witnesses went virtual for the pandemic. He had to work then, like everyone else.

The speaker preceding that Sunday’s Watchtower Study was a brother who could creditably be accused of rattling on about the good old days. He is a Beatles fan who has been known to contrast those tunes favorably with those of today. Alas, we all know that the day we stopped listening to new music is the same day they stopped making it. There was plenty of rubbish back then, same as there is today. I think he’s trying to live down his image, but others tease him about it, and in post-meeting Zoom chit-chat he did succumb to hoping he had passed the audition.

He’s a good speaker—a pleasant man who keeps things lively. His talk was Making a Good Name with God, and it included much discussion of just what’s in a name. Before he came on board, in pre-meeting conversation, we had been batting around just that question. For the longest time, I was the only Tom in the congregation, but now there are two. What that means, the other Tom said, is that anytime you hear your name mentioned, you are not sure it is really you who is addressed, and you risk looking dumb if you cheerily acknowledge a greeting that is not yours. This happened to me once in high school. The fact that I still recall it shows it made a mark. A teacher approaching in the hall said, Hi, Tom! I happily answered right back, but he had meant it for the teacher just behind me, also named Tom! Feel stupid, or what? Most of my present hang-ups stem from that long-ago evil event.

Think that’s bad? said Joe. "You know how many people are named Joe? But I observed that he could always take consolation in there being an expression, he’s a good Joe," whereas there was no corresponding expression about being a good Tom.

Except at Thanksgiving, his wife chimed in.

Absurdities

During the late 2010s, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a series of hit pieces on Jehovah’s Witnesses. In passing, it mentioned a certain website where former members gathered in large numbers to commiserate with each other over the absurdities of their years in the faith. Why fight this? There are absurdities in connection with Witness life.

One inactive person who is not often seen did attend the meeting one Sunday but left after the public talk. She is one of those people who has been around forever, in and out of the Kingdom Hall, the sort who the circuit overseer used to think hugely significant when local elders would briefly activate her, but it would continue for only a short time. I had spotted her and figured I would visit with her briefly if possible. So I followed her out to the parking lot. I don’t usually speak coarsely, but for some reason I referred to all the b******t going on today in the world that people take refuge in Jehovah’s congregation to escape. She affirmed the b-word and then went on to grumble about things wrong with the congregation. "Oh, you mean the b******t here!" I laughed, for some reason finding that very funny.

Now, for the record, I don’t think there is any b******t with the home congregation beyond the normal boilerplate variety that occurs wherever diverse personalities gather. No complaints at all here. This person has a certain history of finding things just not right. I don’t doubt for a moment (though I didn’t mention it) that her discontent is stoked and reinforced via ill reports on the internet, the kind of things Witnesses are encouraged to know as little about as possible.

The absurdities of the Witness faith are mostly people things, similar to how your own family smacks of having more oddballs than in the overall world. It is not necessarily that they do. It is that being family, you are thrust into greater proximity to them. Thus, you become very much aware of their quirks.

If the Enlightenment people applaud the human experiment that is democracy, Jehovah’s Witnesses do so about the human experiment that is worldwide family. That family is one united in spiritual matters, in which members strive to put away the old personality in favor of the new. Encounter a fellow member of that family, even one whom you do not know personally, even one from around the world, and you know most of what makes that person tick. What you know is the most important part, the motivational part that makes a person peaceable. The remainder is personal preferences, individual interests, and temperaments formed by heredity or environment. Such items are readily accommodated in the worldwide congregation where all strive to conform themselves to God’s image. (Colossians 3:9-10, Genesis 1:26)

However, even a recent circuit overseer likened it to "one big, united, happy, somewhat dysfunctional family. As though to corroborate, a younger relation of this writer, steadfast in the faith, looks back on how my wife and I had very poor cradar during the children’s formative years. It was stated as a positive, as reflecting a mindset of trying to help people. In doing so, however, one ends up extending hospitality in various forms, even if just giving rides, to some troubled people that the children might not otherwise so closely encounter. Those who are strong do not need a physician, but those who are ill do, says Jesus. It does work out that way. It is the ill that come around, which may include the emotionally or even mentally ill. The strong ones who blend into this world without a hint of discomfort stay away; never mind if seamless adaptation into a crazy world does not in itself point to a form of illness." (Mark 2:17)

Witnesses will say whatever absurdities they endure are compensated by the biblical truths and matters of faith that are found in the Witness community, many of them in the Witness community alone. A popular study book recalled by this author was entitled, The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, a take on Jesus’ words that his followers would know the truth and the truth will set you free. To this day, Jehovah’s Witnesses speak of being in the truth. But on the website mentioned in the Philly paper, most have reverted to atheism. Some have reverted to agnosticism. There are also versions of "Jehovah’s Witnesses Lite," which retain certain unique doctrines and discard whatever has resulted in friction with the overall world. (John 8:22)

Well, you do have to believe in God to be happy as a Witness. Surely, that is a big Duh. If you negate the upside, all that is left to focus on is the downside. Yet, even with the upside, there are some absurdities in connection with Witness life. Witnesses can even aggravate those absurdities by carrying on as though there are none, thereby making them the elephant in the room. Among the goals of this book is to put them into perspective, for they must be contrasted with what are often the obscenities in the greater world. Adversaries note the quirks of Jehovah’s Witnesses and attribute them all to bad things. I hope to note them all and attribute them to good things, or at least neutral ones. If you present a people, warts and all, it may win you greater credence with this skeptical generation than if you pretend no warts exist.

And if it is to be done, why not do it with humor? Why so serious? Do it with style. To the outsider, Jehovah’s Witnesses may seem deadly serious and preoccupied exclusively with their religion and the Society’s own publications, George Chryssides writes (under his pen name Ivor E. Tower) in a kind review of Tom Irregardless and Me. Harley dispels this stereotype. I’ll do it here as well. Christians have become a theatrical spectacle in the world, and to angels and to men, in the words of Paul the apostle. That being the case, let’s give them some theater! That book was a romping and riotous defense of Jehovah’s Witnesses and their place in today’s world. This book will be too. What better way to start than to address absurdities? (1 Corinthians 4:9)

Such absurdities are primarily people things. They would be easily solved by separating, yet family members strive to get along. They count it as a victory whenever they do, even if not a grand slam victory of perfect harmony. After all, anybody can separate, and that is the pattern in the overall world. People separate to align with like-minded people over any number of causes. Thereafter they hurl invective at each other 24/7 over social media. But to learn to get along with people of dramatically different personalities and mannerisms? As the commercial used to say, that is priceless.

One person’s absurdity is another person’s bread and butter. Two starkly different worldviews are involved, each finding aspects of the other, if not their entireties, absurd. The two worldviews are more contrasting than those two mainstays of human government, authoritarian versus democratic. The spiritual worldviews reflect government by God versus government by humans. The ideals of the latter are found in national anthems the world over. The ideals of the former are found in the Our Father Prayer, sometimes called the Lord’s Prayer. (Matthew 6:9-13)

That prayer begins: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. We can safely assume God’s will is done in heaven. Surely, He has it together up there. But His will done on earth will come when, and only when, His kingdom comes." Humans can do nothing to bring that kingdom about. But they can announce it.

If the two spiritual worldviews consume less public notice than the two worldviews of human government, it is because they threaten no arms race. The weapons of those who announce the kingdom are words only. Tell them no and they go away. The other side may indeed use force, but it is that of simple human thuggery. It is not the force that threatens all humanity with nuclear annihilation, something always a concern with the two contesting human worldviews.

An increasingly secular world sometimes outlaws the worship of God. More typically, it seeks to transform it, as though into a spice-adding flavor in a dominant secular view. But any serious attempt to let spiritual concerns dictate one’s life course is apt to bring out in force the anti-cult arm of the secular world, asserting that such attempts give evidence of brainwashing, of yielding to the control of nefarious others who are intent on diverting from what those anti-cultists regard as the real life. Never mind that the Bible defines the real life quite differently. (1 Timothy 6:19)

Everything lies in one’s overall viewpoint. Everything lies in what one regards as real and what one regards as fake news. If you think the Titanic is going down, you resolve yourself to a few inconveniences. You accept that what some might view as restrictions are actually guardrails that no one of sense would ever complain about. But if you don’t think the Titanic is going down, those guardrails become an iron curtain that must be torn down.

As for the Bible psalmist, he witnessed outright attacks on his worship, which he described as

like men wielding axes against a thick forest. They broke up all its engravings with axes and iron bars. They set your sanctuary on fire. They profaned the tabernacle bearing your name, casting it to the ground. They and their offspring have said in their hearts: All the meeting places of God in the land must be burned. (Psalm 74:5-8)

Jehovah’s Witnesses in several countries might well identify with this psalm. "Why, O God, have you rejected us forever?" that psalmist laments in the opening verse. Rejected forever? Well, it may have felt that way at the time, but it was a little too soon to tell.

Perhaps the greatest of the absurdities are those I inflict upon my own daughter. Dad! she complains. "It’s getting so I can’t say anything to you that I don’t see later on the internet! You think calling me Amy cuts it? My friends all know who I am. To make matters worse, I admit to being influenced by Sidney Harris’s newspaper column popular during my formative years, Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things." Bear that in mind should the narrative meander.

There is no Y in Thai

"There is no why in Thai" is a saying of a certain Southeast Asian country, a saying representative of many in that region. If you are in some government office—say for a passport, permit, visa, license, and so forth—and you keep saying, Why? Why? you have lost before you have begun.

Instead, what you do is say, Thank you for telling me which form I need to bring. Thank you for telling me how to do it right. Then, when you return with the form, you say, Thank you for telling me what additional form I also need. Thank you for helping me this way.

Sound crazy? Not in that part of the world. It does sound crazy in my part of the world. Though, it is the format I should have followed in Pittsburgh because the more raucous American way did not work. After Pop died, my brother and I figured we’d transfer ownership of his 10-year-old Cobalt to our sister living there, the one most in need of a replacement vehicle. Since the power-of-attorney forms were all in place, and I feared there might be something lacking with the death certificate paperwork (I forget just what it was), I attempted at the motor vehicle office to transfer it the power-of-attorney way, as though the 94-year-old were still alive.

Nothing doing. A certain document was a copy. It had to be original, with a raised seal. ‘Look, this is just a Chevy Cobalt we’re talking about, I said, that a 94-year-old father wants to gift his daughter to replace her old Saturn.’ The plea fell on deaf ears. I leaned into the clerk some—not so much as to provoke one of the uniformed people nearby, but enough to convey that I didn’t relish driving 300 miles to retrieve the proper raised-seal document. It did no good.

That route exhausted, I tried to go the death-certificate route with the documents that I had feared weren’t quite up to snuff. Not only were they not up to snuff, but I also suffered an accusation of having tried to defraud the state of Pennsylvania with the power-of-attorney documents! I did not try to defraud the state of Pennsylvania! I shot back. "I was thinking of trying to defraud the state of Pennsylvania, but I changed my mind!"

It was all for nothing. I raised hackles all around, including my own, to no purpose. Raised seals are raised seals. I drove 300 miles to retrieve what was needed.

In Southeast Asia, saving face is very important. You do not lean into officialdom because they must save face. It is not a personal face they must save, though it is that, but more importantly a societal face—including your own. You should be embarrassed to be carrying on so outrageously. The fact that you are not