Would there be a backlash if the Blood Ban was lifted?

by Gill 49 Replies latest watchtower medical

• 

  Rabbit

  Gill

  Both my parents filled in their Advanced Medical Directive refusing ALL blood products. They made their suicide pact with the Watchtower Society's Help.

  I'm so sorry. I'm sure all my kids and other JW siblings and relatives have done the same. And they watched the same good person die...at the same time as I did. The WatchTower Gobs and their lawyers must be smiling. They've carefully played chess with their followers lives...while maneuvering to protect the WT Queen from legal liability at any cost. Now, they've given their pawns a carefully worded written test, er, "choice" that guarantees them death, in case of an emergency.

  Check mate. Don't pawns know they are expendable ? Nope.

  Rabbit
• 

  lrkr

  Why? I think at least 60% of the GB have convinced themselves that it is immoral to take blood and that it is a legitimate biblical requirement. As many as 1/3 believe that even taking fractions is a sin. There is a constant struggle back and forth on this matter. A few more of the old schoolers will have to die before anything changes.
• 

  M.J.

  It seems that if the WTS felt the need to lift the ban, for whatever reason, they would never come out and call it a conscience matter, not initially at least. They would still condemn it, yet remove the disciplinary action. Maybe secretly remove it at first. But they know how secrets have a habit of being leaked. Step one is done. No longer a DF'ing offense, but you are disassociated. Step two: "We still condemn it, but the consequences of your medical decisions are between you and Jehovah"...Don't ask, don't tell...which is the stance the WTS held back in the 50s.
• 

  monophonic

  [I say, if you want to keep a secret from a Jehovah's Witness, put it in the Watchtower magazine.]

  that's brilliant.
• 

  greendawn

  It depends on how the world will receive it if they take it in a bad way it is then not just a money issue and what they will pay for compensations but it couls destroy their moral authority if the public say that thousands of people died because of an erroneous cultic idea pressed on its members contrary to all common sense for nearly 50 years. How would that differ from Jim Jones and the massacre he caused?

  

  Jim Jones may look innocent enough but he made sure there was plenty of cyanide laced kool aid around in the jungle town he was trying to set up. The FDS has the blood doctrine to match.
• 

  Quandry

  I just think it would make a lot of people angry - not relief at "new light" but anger at the years of unnecessary suffering.

  I agree. It would have made me angry if I was still "in."

  But I remember sitting in the KHall in 1995 at the WT study when the change in generation was made. I remember looking around and seeing nothing at all unusual. No one seemed to think anything of it. Minds were instantaneously changed from believing "The generation that was alive and at an age of understanding in 1914 will by no means pass of the scene until the great tribulation," to some new gobbledy-gook that I could not understand, except that the doctrine was changed, and no one seemed concerned except me, so I was the one needing to change my thinking....

  Now, of course, we know that some on this forum were also angry at the change. How many years had some of us seen the words on the inside cover of the Awake magazine and not doubted the WTS? Had told people in service, our families, people at work...they needed to become witness and soon! because of these words. Now....well...did I say that?

  Yes, although many would be disturbed, and some leave, the majority would look at it as, "Well, see, aren't we glad we didn't run ahead of the Org.-we knew that it would be clarified in 'due time'." The same glassy look would come over those reading about a change in the blood policy at the WT study and things would go on as before. Those who were "disturbed" and left were "not of our sort" anyway.

  I hate that word "clarified" and the expression "in due time."
• 

  Mary

  I can think of several JWs who died unnecessarily, but can't imagine their relatives taking any action against the WT society.

  My opinion is: Yes. There are enough Witnesses who are probably only half convinced of the validity of the blood doctrine. There would be many who have lost family members due to the ban, who would sue the Society and I don't blame them. My father nearly died several years ago from the 'no blood' doctrine. I was a believer at the time, but if he had died and they reversed the stand now, I'd sue their asses off. I believe that's the only thing that's preventing them from making it a concience matter-----the lawsuits.

  Oh what a web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
• 

  M.J.

  if he had died and they reversed the stand now, I'd sue their asses off

  What's the matter, don't you think the concept of New Light/Old Light would hold up in court?
• 

  Mary

  What's the matter, don't you think the concept of New Light/Old Light would hold up in court?

  Somethin tells me the judge wouldn't be falling for that bullshit.....
• 

  5go

  My mother 'explained' to me, that the Society had introduced blood fractions being a 'conscience matter' as some of the brothers were spiritually weak and could not abstain from blood, whereas all of the 'spiritually strong' brothers and sisters knew that it was wrong to take blood or even blood fractions right up to death.

  My theory of how they will deal with it. They will strongly hint they haven't changed but then they say this is a grey area. They know that grey really is suppossed to mean black in a black and white mindset. Much like blood fractions was suppossed to go down.