Barbara, you (and the late, great Ray Franz) have been one of my heroes for a long time, now.
XOXO
Here's an update to what has happened since I used the words, "Big News," five years ago
by AndersonsInfo 53 Replies latest watchtower medical
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Quandry
Thank you for giving us further updates!
Isn't there a scripture that says that God is not a God of cunfusion?
I remember when the "new light" about blood fractions was delivered from the Almighty to the angels to the governing body to the congregations that I was so cunfused, and felt stupid because it was not clear to me....JWs take no blood but we can now take fractions, or parts of something that was heretofore considered by God strictly and expressly forbidden? I wondered what form the new light could have taken so that the governing body, with no medical training, knew exactly WHICH fractions were allowed and which were not? Deep inside I felt something was wrong....if it is forbidden to take blood into the body, would it matter if it were part or whole? After all, if the Bible says do not kill, can you kill part of a person and not the whole? Can you lie about some things but not others?
It also made me think of a family I'd known in Florida. Many years ago, prior to any changes, their five year old daughter was diagnosed with acute leukemia, and the doctors immediately wanted to give her blood. Court was held and they in effect took custody away from the parents, although they let them stay with her as long as they did not interfere with any treatments. The small, close knit congregation that we were all in was abuzz. My husband and I, and another couple drove two hours to the Hospital. I took some homemade soup and the other couple took fruit. We wanted to comfort and stand by them, giving our support. Some years later, I found out that the other couple had told the parents, "If it were me, I'd throw her out the window (several stories up) before I'd let them give my child blood." Others in the congregation had told them they should get in the car and run with their family (they told the people they had four kids and now the dad would have no job...plus they'd have a dying child in a car...how long could people in far off places put them up, and what would happen to the other children when eventually the parents were imprisoned? At any rate, they were stressed enough already, and everyone was adding to it. As per the court decree, the child was given blood, but it didn't help, and she died at home a few months later. After all this, the dad and another child (now grown) died. I was really close with the mother, and I wonder how all this "new light" has effected her? I can't help but think that she may be bitter now, thinking that if she'd acted sooner and her child could have received the "right fraction," the outcome might have been different and she might still have her daughter. Or, since I've not heard from her in years (she knows that my husband and I are considered dangerous) perhaps she is still clinging to every pronouncent from the GB, trying to make sense of them.
The WT society, no matter what changes it does or does not make, is digging itself into a large whole....or might we use the biblical term abyss?
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Broken Promises
I was thinking earlier, after reading this thread... (yeah, dangerous I know!)
If anything, it's a lesson in the psychology of ex-witnesses. Trigger words such as "coming soon", "anytime now", "great/big news" etc are given more attention by exJWs than others would. We have been bitten before, so we are more skeptical of any claims made.
So when Barbara used the term "big news" (as she perceived it), it triggered off a variety of reactions, as we saw. Barbara meant nothing sinister in using the term, she used it quite innocently, unaware of the affect such a term would have on others.
Oh well, we live and learn.
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wasblind
Good Mornin' Quandry,
I said it before and I'll say it again, how can the light get brighter if the light wasn't lit to start with ?
according to the WTS in the Aug 2006 Awake, on page 12 " The Bible does not comment on these (fractions)
People died needlessly based on the decisions of the Bozo's in brooklyn
Each and everytime a JW try to throw that "the Light get bright " stuff at me I'm gonna show them the Aug 2006
Awake and boldy show them, where they wrote in their own words, that the decision they made about blood was
not back up by the inspired word. And then ask them, if it was never a light in the Bible to start with, how can it become
brighter?
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Simon
I think people have unrealistic expectations - they imagine some article can be published that will 'cause the WTS to disintegrate over night or that will 'bring down' the WatchTower.
The truth is, that will never happen. Change takes time and even if something 100% proves the WatchTower to be wrong / evil / mislead there would still be millions of people who would follow it.
Articles like the one referenced do more than point out doctrine errors though - they put legal responsibility on the WTS for it's behaviors and force it to accept liability if it continues doing what it's done in the past which then forces it to change it's behavior.
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Vidiot
andersonsinfo - "...blood transfusions are now said publicly to be a conscience matter and many elders have a 'Don’t ask, don’t tell policy'.”
Shit, I didn't know this. Man, that must've chapped Jaracz's ass.
andersonsinfo - "Since the 'Big News', an Alberta Appeals court decided that people could sue the Watch Tower for secular misrepresentations of blood made by Watch Tower."
Shit, I didn't know this either. Is this likely to work its way up to the federal level up here in Canada?
satinka - "Sadly, we see time and time again, that Jehovah's Witnesses never want to admit they were wrong about anything."
They can't, at least about significant things like their stance on transfusions.
They percieve (correctly, IMO) that if they admit to error about something that big, the inevitable question among any remaining R&Fers (with half a brain) will be "what the hell else have they gotten wrong???" I can attest personally that that often marks the beginning of the end for those particular R&Fers.
I suspect that up until recently, the GB was hoping that it could hold out until synthetic transfusion blood was approved by the FDA (and subsequently declare it a full "concience matter" with no recriminations for its use), but the seemingly endless delays in said approval are clearly backing them into an extremely uncomfortable corner.
I'm left wondering if GB2.0 and their small private army of pro-bono lawyers will actually blink as the ponderous but implacable juggernaught of the developed world's secular justice system gets up in their face more and more, or if it'll snarl and raise its hackles even more the way it's doing with higher ed, the internet, and a 21st Century socio-political environment that keeps stubbornly refusing to follow their Fred-Franz-penned eschatalogical script.
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Pistoff
Many thanks, Barb.
The blood issue is an issue that will drive many out the door, in my opinion, and cause many more to suffer from unrecognized cognitive dissonance.
My reason for this:
I have been a witness all my life, born in and baptized at 17; in all of those years, I have absorbed all of the information from the slave about blood.
Our brains, IMO, store all of it and compare it in the background.
As an example, for decades the idea that when blood was outside the body it was to be poured it was included in any discussion; these days, not so much.
But compare this to the idea that fractions are used for vaccines, which are acceptable to witnesses (the ones who weren't subjected to older witnessses, who can remember the diatribes against vaccines by the Golden Age in the 20's and 30's).
Or the fact that Factor VIII for hemophiliacs is OK for witnesses.
This was made from blood that was not poured out.
So the disconnect, the dissonance, was there all along.
As a wise person told me when I was making my break, we ex witnesses are sick emotionally and spiritually. I was a little taken back by that at first, but now know it is true; it takes time to recover from being a witness.
But the blood policy is a major cause of problems to active witnesses.
They are faced with the fact that they denounce child sacrifice, but are willing to offer up their child's life for beliefs the child may never embrace. (Pew Research Poll states that the retention rate of JW's is less than 40%)
I had a very good friend who nearly died from a bleeding ulcer, and another who did die. He was a father of a 3 yr and 1yr old daughter; he was a father, husband, son and member of the congregation. No one talked much about it when he died.
As far as "big news", often what is big news is not recognized as being such until years later. This is a good example of that; here was a bright, educated attorney who published a scholarly paper about the intransigence of the leadership of a large religion and about a policy that is indefensible from scripture, inconsistent, subject to constant and unheralded change, and one that kills affected members.
Big news, indeed.
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life is to short
Thank you so much for the update Barbara and all the hard work you do and it is big news. It takes time to break through the years of lies that have been told.
When you think of the changes that the Catholic Church has had to make that 15 years ago no one would have thought it possible and now yesterday it again made news about a Monsignor being tried for not telling members of pedophiles in the Church even though he is not a pedopohile. It is ground breaking news
It takes people like you and Carry who fight tirelessly to make change and I am so glad that you have fought so hard. So many people will not put themselves out to fight like you do. It makes me so sad to here that you have been attacked with words of discontent at what you have done.
Where are those who try to discredit you? Why are they not stepping up to the plate like you. The JW's would not be exposed to the child abuse problem or the blood issue if not for you. THANK YOU so much.LITS
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chicken little
Thank you for your Big News article, I for one am grateful for any information that confirms all the suspicions I had about blood. I exited in 2007 but had been in great doubt after giving birth to my third child in 2000 and finding out that it was ok to have the injection against rhesus negative blood. I was so shocked to think I had risked my second childs life based not on God's word but men. So keep up the good work! It really helps people to see the light.
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Leolaia
Thanks Barbara for the review.....I was unaware of all that has happened since.
Here is the other thread with the news: http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/scandals/103578/1/Journal-of-Church-and-State-WT-NO-BLOOD-EXPOSE