Maybe you don't know it but this thread is bound to be hurting some people--Not me, I have proper reasons for some of the bad circumstances I lived in with my family. And there are plenty of times I wondered--how can I live like this. It is easy to find yourself living like a refugee.
Brace up for a bit of a ramble...
A good thing to remember about animals and filth is illustrated by that little dog in the shit-filled dog run: an animal raised in such away often maintains its tolerance of disorder in its physical surroundings. On the otherhand, sometimes a creature is overwhelmed by circumstances.
Hogs, for instance, are as clean as they can be, given half a chance. They will have their dumping grounds far from where they make their beds. And they do make their beds. They love to bath in fresh water--when they can!
Poor creatures--any one whose lives are so poor and wretched so as to stink and live in filth!
Well, cleanliness is next to godliness.
Maybe if we as JWs had earnestly preached the good news to the poor and dirty we could have turned the Borg on its immaculate and very deaf ear. There were so many of the dirty poor.
Just think. The FDS would have a cow! what would they have done with them? Send them out two by two? I am being facetious.
My bible teacher waited until I was well into the book before she arrived on Saturday with a gallon of bleach and a box of black garbage bags.I was overwhelmed by the work I had to do before she brought meetings and books into my life --and now study too!
When the witnesses came door to door they brought a sense of orderliness and organization that they projected right down to the molecular level. Salvation through hygienic living and taking good notes.The JWs in my hall had it in for brothers who wore white socks--even if they were clean!
One of my favorite quotes from the gospels comes when John the Baptist through his disciples sends the question to his cousin:"Are you the One or should we wait for another." Jesus just says "The blind see, the lame walk, the dead are raised up and the good news is preached to the poor. And blessed is he who is not stumbled in me."
Any of us so privileged as to be spared the squalor of this kind of poverty(Please let me not hear my mother's tsk-tsk:soap is cheap, soap is cheap!) don't realize it is knit into so much depression, sickness, hopelessness and, yes, habit that it does create a class distinction. It traps people and marks them.
It is little wonder that the rawest and happiest forms of christianity I ever see is around the poor--in their boot-strap church gatherings that peculiarly lack organization. They are so not troubled with epiknosis, by how many days it took to make the earth, they don't know the intricacies of chronology. They have great stories to tell of healings and helps from god.
Me thinks it's just as well we left them alone.
Love y'all,
Maeve