by choosing life 21 Replies latest jw friends
Welcome, Choosing Life!!!!
The blood issue continues to be a tragedy for JWs all over the world daily. The fact that it all makes no sense, has no impact on the JW thinking.
As I am frequently told by my JW mother: 'Jehovah chose the 'stupid' people of this world to be his people....not people like you who think you're clever'.
So one of the keys to being a good JW is to be 'stupid' and just follow the dictates of the WTBTS blindly. A very sad state of affairs!
It's not....but they didn't come right out and say, "Our bad! Sorry 'bout that!"They just reworded it later in newer publications and kind of just dropped that whole idea.
Yeah I can attest to that cos my grandma still believes that the heart is the seat of emotion and that organ transplants are essentially a bad thing and various other nonsense that was taught and quietly dropped later.
I think the org lost the battle on blood as soon as they backed down on accepting fractions. As has been pointed out earlier there was no mention of blood fractions in the teachings they follow cos in the bible blood is blood is blood. It's like saying you'll give up coffee and proceed to cut out the milk and just have it black.
The JW stance on blood is funny cos going back thousands of years nearly every pagan civilisation and religious movement held blood as sacred and beleived it held the life force of the person or animal and that's why many cultures ate the blood of the dead or vanquished foes to gain their strength and preists used blood in ceremonies to appease god or gods or had blood as a totem of life and something that was specially sacrosanct and an idol of worship. The apostle Paul when writing about blood was probably trying to distance his followers from many of the cults around at the time that used blood. Of course all these beleifs stem from a pagan false assumption that blood was a special part of the body and held the life force or soul of the person and that when that persons blood was spilled the core essence of their being was escaping and that necessarily belonged to god.
Now the JW's in taking their stand on blood have fallen into exactly the trap that Paul was trying to distance himself from. In believing that blood holds a life force and is specially sacred they are buying into an old pagan belief system. Also in holding blood up as a totem of life and making such an issue of it they have held blood up as a proxy idol of the god who put it their and have done exactly the same as the ancient preists who did so in their ignorance not knowing that blood was just an organ carrying oxygen to the cells and not specially designed to be unique to each person. The JW's have no excuse what with modern scientific knowledge about medicine but then the org always has had a tenuous grasp on scientific matters.
