The WTBTS has represented parents in cases like this, and attempted to stop or halt temporary custody proceedings. The court proceedings typically take longer to resolve than to receive a transfusion, so the WTBTS/parents can make a show of standing up for their religious rights without endangering the children. We have also had cases where the WTBTS/parents have taken full advantage of the civil courts to sue over the course of action after the child has received the life-saving transfusion. Again, safely after any danger to the child is past.
It's interesting when I read posts from folks that claim to be Christians while demonstrating their lack of faith in God by making the state ("Caesar") superior to the God that they claim to be serving, for their God is evidently impotent and doesn't deserve his worshipers' praise or respect, or not as much so as does Caesar is deserving of praise or respect it seems. In the age of AIDS, human papilloma virus (HPV), and folks coming up as HIV+ following a blood transfusion, you cannot really think that a judge will open himself or herself up to a wrongful death lawsuit for signing off on an order to transfuse a child at the behest of a doctor, a relative or concerned individual over the objection of the child parents, do you? Not in Canada and definitely not here in the US. Those days when doctors went to court to get a judge to force a transfusion upon someone are over. Or is it that you do you not read your local newspaper?
I'm not sure if you're talking about JGNat or me when you talk about a folk that claims to be a Christian. Just for the sake of clarity, I'm what you would call a worldly and I don't claim any belief in any God. Which means I don't think "Caesar" is above any God, because there is no God, and it doesn't make sense to say that "Caesar" is greater than nothing.
Maybe I didn't make myself understood when I spoke about rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's. Jehovah's witnesses are very obedient of "wordly authorities". Sometimes, by the way, they aren't, as they weren't in Mexico or Malawi. But let's not digress. What I meant is what Jehovah's witnesses would do if the "ruler of the land" passed an act that prevented parents from refusing blood transfusions on behalf of their children. You didn't answer that question. Maybe you didn't understand it then. I hope you understand it now. What would Jehovah's witnesses do if the government of the country they lived in passed an act requiring that children of any faith be given blood transfusions if that saves their lives?
You say that I cannot really think that a judge will open himself or herself up to a wrongful death lawsuit for signing off an order to transfuse a child at the behest of a doctor. Well, first things first: you don't know what I think. It is important to say that because, if I accepted your statement, I would indeed be letting you decide what I believe. In case this is not clear enough by now, I don't believe the same things you believe.
In your opinion, no judge would order that a transfusion be given to a child who is already at risk of dying, because the transfusion MIGHT pose a risk. I beg to differ. If I were such a judge, I would sign such an order. It would seem to me that saving the life of the child would be far more important. I happen to know that doctors sometimes prescribe immunosuppresors to prevent organ rejection. Those immunosuppressors may cause cancer later in life. The key here is, "in life". The patient accepts that risk because it is his chance to live a few more years, a decision which could be important, for example, if you have little children and you'd want to leave them when they were in a better position to support themselves. I happen to have a relative who has done just that. Is it wrong to proceed so, Eggnog? A friend of mine is a survivor of breast cancer. She had very low haemoglobin in her blood, so they gave her transfusions, which would help her withstand chemotherapy. Her cancer was controlled with very strong chemotherapy courses, but she is still alive. Was it wrong of her to do so? This is a direct question that can certainly be answered with "yes" or "no". I hope you will give me an answer.
I also want to use this true account of somebody's experience to refer to something you posted. Here it is:
But my point, again, here is that the risks associated with blood transfusions far outweigh the benefits that one hopes to obtain from accepting such as treatment for a medical illness.
In my dear friend's case, the risk of not taking a blood transfusion was death from cancer. Accepting transfusions meant she was able to go through the ordeal of chemotherapy, and live. She's still among us. Can you honestly say that "the risks associated with blood transfusions far outweigh the benefits that one hopes to obtain from accepting such treatment for a medical illness? By the way, you should not use the word "hopes" here. The actual outcome, not the hopes, of the treatment, are there for anyone to see.
It seems to me that, in your opinion, a blood transfusion is the same as giving the recipient AIDS or HPV. I speculate that you wouldn't mind if I added Hepatitis C and, in tropical areas, Chagas disease to the list of deadly ailments you can get from a blood transfusion. But blood has been used on many patients for many years and in most cases that has not resulted in disease. Therefore, receiving a transfusion is not the same as receiving a disease.
I have a question. Correct me if I am wrong, but I am under the impression that Jehovah's witnesses claim that they should abstain from blood and that the command to do so is found in the Bible. If blood transfusions were not reasonably safe, but perfectly safe, would Jehovah's witnesses accept them? The answer has to be no. YHWH's (in my opinion) alleged command would still be in the Bible. Blood being the way to get diseases is always advanced as "yet another reason" to refuse a transfusion. The main reason is always YHWH's supposed command. So, why should a practicing witness even bother to discuss disease?
It is really sad to think that a judge would refuse to take a stand to save a life just because he could be sued. I am aware that this must be the case at least some of the time. Let me tell you that, if I were the judge, I would certainly force a transfusion on a child. I don't think there is a justification for letting someone bleed to death. I would do the same, by the way, if someone claimed to believe in the religion of the Aztecs and decided to sacrify virgins to their Sun God. I speculate that your morals would also compel you to act and prevent such a sacrifice. Something would be fundamentally wrong in a society where saving lives were not to prevail over other interests.
By the way, as far as we know, HPV has always been with mankind. So has hepatitis C and Chagas disease. It might be a little off-topic here, but we have to believe that Jehovah created HPV, for reasons that escape us. Incidentally, Noah's wife, or his children, had to have it. Otherwise, the virus wouldn't have spread. Hey, wait. Adam and Eve had to have them as well! If Jehovah put HPV in the world, can we break Jehovah's will and try NOT to catch HPV?
"No one has the right to force their own religion on someone else's child".
Great. Truly great. I am so happy that you and I fully agree on this. The logical question after this statement is, Does anyone have the right to force his or her own religion on his or her own child? Do children have a right to change religions? Do children have a right NOT to have any religion? Would a Catholic father be right to shun his child if he changed his religion and became a Jehovah's witness? I know your answer. It has to be no. Why, then, are Jehovah's witnesses parents right to shun their children if they leave the Watchtower?
To allow someone else to make the decision for the little girl (e.g., a doctor or a judge) would be to wrest the rights of the parent to raise their own children in the religion of their parent's choice, not to have someone else decide for the parents what religious scruples the child will or will not observe.
There is no such thing as "the right of the parent to raise their own children in the religion of their parent's choice". If parents had that right, then Jehovah's witnesses would indeed be violating the rights of so many parents when they knock on doors and give away books such as the old "Your Youth...". They gave it, for example, to me, against my parent's wishes. Let me state this again: parents have no right to raise their children in the religion of their own choice. When I was a kid, my family would send me to the door to answer to Jehovah's witnesses. I had no choice but to obey. Were those witnesses breaking my mother's right to raise me as a Catholic? According to yourself, YES, THEY WERE BREAKING THAT RIGHT. Pay attention: the fact that I don't believe that parents have a supposed "right" to raise you in a religion does not mean that YOU don't believe it either. You have claimed you do. In line with your beliefs, then, stop preaching to someone else's children. "No one has the right to force their own religion on someone else's child". Did you post that, or did you not?
I am happy to see that you agree that children are raised in the religion "of the parent's choice". Not the children's choice. That is also true for Jehovah's witnesses.
My understanding is that roughly two thirds of children raised as Jehovah's witnesses leave the religion when they come of age. I suppose this means that their being members of the religion meant that was their choice? When they have the opportunity to choose, most choose to leave.
You can claim that parents can choose the best treatment for their children, but, can you say that the best treatment is the one that consists of no treatment and results in death?
I don't know of any of Jehovah's Witnesses that would ever opt to not give their child the very best medical treatment available. Jehovah's Witnesses are not against receiving good quality medical treatment and they are willing to pay whatever the cost might be to protect their children from any such medical emergency that should arise. Jehovah's Witnesses will accept blood fractions, but we just won't accept blood transfusions, and will reject such being included as being a part of any comprehensive medical treatment rendered to them.
The sad truth is that Jehovah's witnesses do refuse treatment that would save their children's or their own lives. Have you heard about a witness who "put Jehovah first" and died as a result of not taking a blood transfusion? No? What would a practicing Jehovah's witness woman do if she were diagnosed with cancer and were told that she would need transfusions to withstand the effects of chemotherapy?
Again, you didn't answer my question. I hope you will answer it now: Can you say that the best treatment is the one that consists of no treatment and results in death?
I have a new question. Jehovah commanded the faithful witnesses to abstain from blood, or so the witnesses say. Jehovah's loving command means that witnesses might die. For example, haemophiliac witnesses have it more difficult than others. In my humble opinion, using blood substitutes or fractions is the same as finding a way to obey the letter of the command, but not the spirit. You are supposed to "put Jehovah first" and die if that is what it takes. Why, then, it is not wrong to take blood substitutes or fractions?
Jehovah also has some curious ways. Of he would have, if he existed. Blood transfusions are wrong; fractions are right. As in "eating a sandwich is wrong, but eating the individual ingredients of it, one by one, is right". Worldlies are supposed to donate blood if the "fractions" that Jehovah approves are to exist at all. Why should it be wrong for Jehovah's witnesses to donate blood, if "fractions" are accepted?
Say I am a worldly and will be destroyed at Armageddon. But my family needs me. I need blood to survive. I would think that, in any religion, saving another person's life would be a good thing to do. But a Jehovah's witness won't donate blood for me. He won't save my life if my life depends on a transfusion. He would, however, take blood that I donated and use it as "fractions". What can you say about this?
Inviting djeggnog to discuss the blood doctrine
by jgnat 317 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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dgp
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djeggnog
@dgp wrote:
It is always said that YHWH will punish or reward you on the basis of what you do. Apparently he would also punish or reward you on the basis of what someone else would do in your name.
@djeggnog wrote:
No. I didn't follow your logic here either.
@dgp wrote:
It should be easy to follow the logic. A two-year old cannot possibly make a decision about a transfusion, neither against it, neither in favor of it. How should she be accountable before Jehovah for a transfusion?
I never suggested that a two-year-old could be held accountable for a decision made for it by its parents. This is called a strawman argument, since it is you that make the argument and you that discount it down as being a bad argument. Furthermore, I have mastered the debate format, which is pretty much the same format whether one is involved in such in high school (as I once had been, actually several) and over many years since.
I cannot take your question here seriously since it assumes a fact that I do not believe to be a fact, namely, that a child has the same rights that any adult; it may be given privileges by its parents, but it doesn't enjoy rights per se. (If it did have the same rights, then there would be no need for parental consent forms.) Please do not read more into my responses to the rest of your post than would be wise.
How would it have value before any God if someone else refused a translation on your behalf, and you died for it?
Blood transfusions have absolutely no value before God. The only blood that has merit with God is that put on God's altar when Jesus' returned to heaven, his own.
I wonder how it is that Jehovah's witnesses don't consider this murder.
Ok.
@djeggnog wrote:
Why would this be murder? Murder is when you kill someone with malice aforethought. It's not reasonable to think that a parent -- any loving parent -- would want to maliciously kill their own child.
@dgp wrote:
You have a very particular definition of murder. In your opinion, it's not murder if there's no malice. That is simply not true. If I am drunk, shoot my gun, and someone happens to take the bullet, that is murder all the same.
You are certainly free to believe what you wish. What you describe here is manslaughter, manslaughter in the second degree, but not murder.
If I find my wife with another man and shoot the two bastards because my pain blinds me (and enrages me), that is murder even if there was no "aforethought" to the matter.
IMO, what you describe here is also manslaughter, voluntary manslaughter.
Common sense and the law have long recognized that it is not "intention" that matters, but "result".
I cannot agree with you here, but ok.
If we were to believe that murder isn't murder if there is no malice aforethought, then every criminal would claim not to have acted "maliciously" and that would be the end of the matter. No murder.
So you believe it is the accused that is required to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt against himself or herself? that the end of the matter is what the defendant claims?
In the same line of thought, it doesn't matter whether parents think they are protecting their children by refusing a translation.
No one should either think or reason on such matters without having first studied law, which you evidently have not done.
The children die all the same, and they die as a result of a decision of the parents NOT to give them blood.
What children? Most children of Jehovah's Witnesses do not die due to their parents' refusal to give their content to having their child transfused with blood. In fact, most children of Jehovah's Witnesses do better than their counterparts whose parents do consent to them having blood transfusions.
It's not a matter of whether it's "reasonable" to think that "a loving parent" would want to kill a child. This is a red herring. It's a matter of whether the child dies as a result of what the parent decides.
Ok.
@jgnat wrote:
DGP, the impossibility of a minor to make a choice like this is the very reason why the government/courts will intervene here in Canada on behalf of minors. If adults want to risk their lives to follow their beliefs, fine...but they cannot make that choice for minors.
@djeggnog wrote:
If what you say is true, that's too bad for Canadians, for when it comes to one's choice of religion or in what religion a child will be raised, such decisions have in the past been sacrosanct here in the US, but maybe what you are saying here is not true and children do have freedom of choice in Canada as they do here in the US.
@dgp wrote:
Some time ago I learned a trick that people use. It's called "responding to a question, but not answering it". This trick is often used by politicians that people take for fools. You ask them a question about, say, taxes, and they "take advantage of that opportunity" to speak about something else. They are aware that they evaded the question, but their real intent is to talk about matters that matter (forgive me for the repetition) only to them. I feel you, Eggnog, are doing this here.
Ok.
"The impossibility of a minor to make a choice" JGNat was talking about is clearly not about "choice of religion". It is clearly about "choice of transfusion".
This, again, is your opinion. I'm ok with you having one, but what @jgnat was talking about IMO is about religion, and by this I do not mean what you evidently mean: I do not mean a religion chosen by a child, for a child has no right to choose its own religion. Even though you (and @jgnat) disagree with me, whether a child received transfused blood is not the kind of decision that I child has the authority to make. Such a decision is in the province of its parents, period. If a child hasn't been given by its parents the privilege to decide whether or not it will spend the night at its cousin's house, then how could it possibly be seen to have the power to decide whether or not it will accept any medical treatment for itself as prescribed by a physician without the written consent of its parents?
You come off to me as someone in their early- or mid-20s, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you were actually in your 40s or 50s, and while I could be wrong here, it does seem to me that you were either home-schooled (where a fundamental grasp of certain concepts can impede comprehension of other concepts) or were unable to complete your high school education (although you might have earned a GED).
A two-year old is not aware of what a transfusion is, or what it entails in terms of religion. Therefore, she wouldn't be "choosing" a transfusion. Her parents would, on the basis of their own beliefs, not the child's.
I agree; the child doesn't have the power to make its own choices in life. A child's parents have such power.
No one would allow the parents of a 20 year old, say, to choose for him.
Why a 20-year-old? Why not a 23-, 24- or 25-year-old? Perhaps you've never attended college so you may not be able to relate to college life where the college student that has never worked a day in its life -- the 23-, 24- or 25-year-old -- relies on its parents to pay the tuition, the rent, health care and any and all related expenses while it is attending school. I believe you are an adult, and you may even have one or more children of your own, but you sound rather clueless to me about this particular aspect of life, namely, children.
Why should it be different if the question were a life and death issue, and the person who would be dying were not capable of understanding the extent of refusing a transfusion?
I fail to see the connection between someone dying and their not being "capable of understanding the extent of refusing a transfusion." I'm going to assume from the context that you are here referring to a minor, that is to say, someone not yet 18 years of age, and that you saying that this 17-year-old, 12-year-old, even one-year-old child is incapable of comprehending the risks and benefits of having a blood transfusion. (I'm guessing here what it is you are trying to say -- what you say here sounds like how tennis greats, Venus or Serena Williams, or someone home-schooled as they were home-schooled might describe the decision to consent to a blood transfusion as one of "refusing [to have] a transfusion" -- so if I have failed to accurately comprehend the point that you're making here, please let me know.)
To answer your question though: Parents are responsible for making life and death decisions for their children, including things that might be viewed by some as mundane, like dietary-related decisions or walking home by itself when the child that normally accompanies their child on its walk home from school has a cold and its parents do not let their child attend school that day (most parents in 2011 think it to be irresponsible to permit their children to walk home from school without being accompanied by someone else), so it really isn't relevant what a child might be capable of understanding when such life and death decisions do not belong to the child.
JGNat was very clear. "If adults want to risk their lives to follow their beliefs, fine... but they cannot make that choice for minors".
Again, parents are responsible for making all decisions, including medical decisions, that affect their own children. It seems that you have made this topic about blood transfusions, and I have humored you (and others here) that have taken this thread off-topic, but I am here to discuss blood fractions. I have no opinion as to what decisions you might make for yourself or for your own children. Your decisions are your own, but, from a scriptural perspective, Christians ought to want to please God in the decisions they make, and whereas some Christians have no problem with accepting blood fractions, others might have a problem accepting such, and no one has a right to insert themselves in the decisions that parents make for themselves and/or for their children and their physicians, including congregation elders.
Incidentally, and not because I want to evade the point, but because you opened the door, CHILDREN ARE NOT FREE TO CHOOSE THEIR RELIGION. I chose to write in capitals because it's an internet convention that this means SCREAMING.
Ok. Perhaps I should point out to you thought that I'm not really new the internet, although, as I told @TD in this thread, I haven't mastered pasting Greek characters into my posts, but I'm have mastered typos (and I'm actually quite good at making them). You can scream whenever you wish, but if your point(s) is/are not understood, then screaming won't do anything to change this fact.
I was born to an atheist father and a Catholic mother and "naturally", my mother chose to rear me as a Catholic. I have Baptist friends whose parents were Baptists and, "naturally", they were Baptists, too. It should be unnecessary to point out that children are reared by parents in the parents' religions, and the feelings of the children are disregarded. Parents may be thinking that they are doing the right thing, but that should not prevent anyone from accepting the obvious fact that children aren't given the chance not to be reared in the religion of their parents.
I accept what is, in fact, an "obvious fact," that children do not choose their own religion, and that a child's way of life, that is to say, their religion -- whether they be theists (those they believe in one god), deists (those that believe in many gods), atheists (those that believe in no god) or Jehovah's Witnesses (those that believe Jehovah to be the true God) -- is based upon the religious mores (meaning, the moral and ethical beliefs) of their parents, that children have no say in how their parents may decide to raise them. I will add here that this is why the standing of the child -- whether it is considered by God to be "holy" -- is wholly dependent upon the believing parent. (1 Corinthians 7:14) Also, "as long as the heir is a babe" -- that is to say, as long as a child remains such -- "he does not differ at all from a slave" (Galatians 4:1), in that the "masters" of a child are its parents.
I said I didn't want to evade your point, and I am not evading it. With the previous paragraph, my point is that the children of Jehovah's witnesses aren't allowed the choice NOT to be Jehovah's witnesses. You will say that they are not baptized at birth, like my mother did with me, for example, but that does not mean children can choose. They can't choose not to go to the Kingdom Hall. I've read countless stories about children who weren't even allowed to be distracted while at the Kingdom Hall, and who were beaten simply because, NATURALLY, they couldn't sit tight. A two-year old haemophiliac child of two Jehovah's witnesses wouldn't be given the choice not to be reared as a Jehovah's witness, and you know it.
You are again positing strawman arguments here as if I had taken a contrary position. I'm going to pass on this comment because it does sound to me like a rant.
By the way, I mentioned my own Catholic baptism with full intent. My father is a strong atheist and he didn't want his son to be baptized. My mother baptized me one day he wasn't home, and she reared me as a devout Catholic in spite of my father's disagreement. So much for choice, eh?
What does any of this have to do with blood fractions?
Let me play Devil's Advocate here. You consider the Catholic Church to be a Harlot. So, I wasn't reared in "the Truth".
Do you know what it means to "play Devil's Advocate"? Someone that plays the devil's advocate posits an argument that is the opposite of his or her position on a particular matter. I would suggest that you take the time to do a little research to learn the meaning of this and other concepts that you might have been using to learn what they mean. This is the kind of thing I do for a living when I do witness-prep work in cases where the client in a post-foreclosure eviction case is the defendant wherein I take on the role of the plaintiff as an advocate and ask the client the kind of questions that the plaintiff's attorney may ask the defendant during the trial in order to test either the credibility of the defendant's testimony or the strengths or weaknesses of the defendant's case.
To answer your question though, no, I do not consider the Roman Catholic Church to be a harlot, nor does the Bible teach the RCC to represent the world empire of false religion. This distinction belongs to false religion, period, and is not the exclusive domain of the RCC, so if by playing "Devil's Advocate," you meant that you thought that you were taking my side of an argument, first, you didn't do that, and second, you failed to advocate an opposing position or to make a case that is contrary to a position that I hold.
In your own terms, was I given the choice to be reared in the true religion, or did my mother choose for me?
Earlier you wrote:
My father is a strong atheist and he didn't want his son to be baptized. My mother baptized me one day he wasn't home, and she reared me as a devout Catholic in spite of my father's disagreement.
Based on what you yourself stated here, your mother chose to baptize you, and she it was that reared you as a Catholic over your father's objection, but a parent cannot make a child "devout" about a religion that the child did not choose for itself. All a parent can do is rear their children in a particular belief system, but only the child itself can decide to become devout in his or her parents' faith. IMO your being baptized as a Catholic doesn't mean that you had given your assent to become a Catholic, since, in most cases, children are presented for baptism by their parents, often without their even being old enough to comprehend the scriptural meaning that attaches to water baptism.
Was my mother's decision any different from the decision of so many other parents?
I don't believe so, but, as I say above, you are largely off-topic here, as your questions have gone far afield from discussing blood fractions.
@djeggnog
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S EIGHT
Still avoiding the fundementals:
Is it ok for a worldly person to commit a sin in order for a JW to benefit from the blood fractions donated by the worldly?
Can a brother donate blood so that another brother can benefit from the fractions extracted from the donated blood?
I cannot fornicate but I can watch other non JW's fornicating.
S8
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TD
djeggnog:
How did you know that this was a textbook case, @TD?
I have medical textbooks that illustrate and describe it. Long story, but I worked in a med lab years ago.
Why had your child's platelet count fallen so? If you do not want to say, then don't.
In this case, it was an adverse reaction to a prescription medication. When the membranes of cellular blood components become damaged, they're flagged by the attachment of antibodies and destroyed by special cells in the liver and spleen. There are a number of drugs that also attach themselves to blood cells at the molecular level and sometimes the body gets confused. Even salicylic acid can lower your platelet count slightly. The much more severe effect is a rare, but known side-effect of some medications. This is distinct from an identical condition with an entirely different cause known as Immune thrombocytopenic purpura. In this condition, the body is actively producing an antibody against its own platelets. Treating ITP can be much more difficult for obvious reasons.
You're probably right, but did you wife, who is one of Jehovah's Witnesses, accept these Jewish teachings that were evidently at play here? If so, what was your wife willing to accept that you have reason to believe other Jehovah's Witnesses do not?
Consent only requires the signature of one parent. This was a very stressful episode in our relationship and that's all I'm going to say.
There's nothing about the context that affects the words "απεχεσθαι...και αιματος" for the rest of the verse at Acts 15:29, which says "..εξ ων διατηρουντες εαυτους ευ πραξετε... " would literally be rendered, "Out of which thoroughly keeping selves well you will perform." Because Greek is an expertise of yours, you don't suffer from thinking in English as I do, but, still, I don't see any grammatical rules being broken by the NWT in rendering the rest of this verse, "If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper."
There's nothing wrong with the NWT's rendering at all. "...keep yourselves from these things" is perfectly acceptable and "Keep abstaining...from blood" is absolutely perfect because it expresses the continuation of an existing requirement suggested by an infinitive use of the middle voice. What I was referring to is the tendency of what appear to be some very young JW's on the internet to state the phrase, "Abstain from blood" as an explicit prohibition against transfusion medicine.
An "Abstain from..." construction is not grammatically complete when it references a physical object. We can easily test this by attempting to state the negation of action as a simple finite negative. The fourth and last abstention is a good example. It is different from the first three, because "fornication" is the name of a finite act. Therefore we can easily state that abstention as a finite negative by converting the noun form of the word to its verb form:
"Do not fornicate."
We can't do this with the other three abstentions because they are the names of physical objects and consequently do not have verb forms. Expressed as a finite negative, what does it mean to "abstain...from things sacrificed to idols?"
"Do not ______"
The idol sacrifice is the object of the abstention, but it's not the act to be abstained from and we need a finite act to have a complete thought. Most Christians understand this to be an injunction against partaking of the idol sacrifice as a formal act of worship. Pragmatically speaking, it means, "Abstain from idolatry" even though "idolatry" is not specifically stated. Idolatry would be one of the "things" to carefully keep yourself from; not the idol sacrifice per se.
Another way to look at the same phenomenon it is to examine how the meaning of an "Abstain from" construction can change depending upon the context in which it is spoken:
"Her obstetrician said, 'Pregnant women should abstain from alcohol.'"
"His dermatologist said, "Persons with sensitive skin should abstain from alcohol'"
Even though both doctors have explicitly said, "Abstain from alcohol" they're not talking about the same thing. We would understand the former to be a reference to drinking alcoholic beverages and we would understand the latter to be a reference to the topical application of alcohol. Although alcohol is the object of the abstention, the respective acts to be abstained from are derived from the context.
The abstention from blood is no different. Blood is the object of the abstention; not the act to be abstained from. With that in mind, some translators choose to make the necessary transition between subject and object via interpolation:
"abstain from food that has been offered to idols, from tasting blood, from the flesh of animals that have been strangled, and from sexual vice" Moffatt
"eat no food that has been offered to idols; eat no blood; eat no animal that has been strangled; and keep yourselves from immorality." TEV
"avoid what has been sacrificed to idols, tasting blood, eating the meat of what has been strangled and sexual immorality" Phillips
"You must abstain from eating food offered to idols, from consuming blood or eating the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality." NLT
"You must not eat food that has been given to idols. You must not eat the meat of animals that are killed by choking. You must not taste blood. You must not commit adultery. If you keep away from these things, you will do well. Goodbye." The Bible in Worldwide English
Another way to look at it is to consider what Bible commentators have said the reference to blood actually means in the context of the Apostolic Decree. I realize that Jehovah's Witnesses do not automatically accept the opinions of clergymen from other denomonations, but I think it's probably safe to infer a level of agreement when they're quoted in JW literature as authoritive sources:
The June 15, 1978 issue of The Watchtower said on page 23:
"In "Origin and Beginnings of Christianity," Professor Eduard Meyer commented that the meaning of "blood" in Acts 15:29 was "the partaking of blood that was forbidden through the law (Gen. 9:4) imposed on Noah and so also on mankind as a whole."
The October 22, 1990 issue of Awake! said on page 15:
"But those who respect the Creator's wishes do not treat it that way. 'You must not eat blood' was God's command to Noah and his descendants—all mankind. (Genesis 9:4) Eight centuries later He put that command in his Law to the Israelites. Fifteen centuries later he reaffirmed it once again to the Christian congregation: 'Abstain from blood.'—Acts 15:20."
The June 15, 1991 issue of The Watchtower said on page 9:
"The early Christians upheld that divine prohibition. Commenting thereon, British scholar Joseph Benson said: "This prohibition of eating blood, given to Noah and all his posterity, and repeated to the Israelites . . . has never been revoked, but, on the contrary, has been confirmed under the New Testament, Acts xv.; and thereby made of perpetual obligation."
There's explicit agreement with this in JW literature
The September 15, 1958 issue of The Watchtower said on page 575:
"Each time the prohibition of blood is mentioned in the Scriptures it is in connection with taking it as food, and so it is as a nutrient that we are concerned with in its being forbidden....And so also in the days of the apostles; it was in connection with eating meat sacrificed to idols that the eating of strangled animals and blood was forbidden.—Acts 15:20, 29."
Similarly, the book Insight On The Scriptures under the article "Paul" states:
"The decision then made was that circumcision was not required for Gentile believers but that they should keep free from idolatry, from eating and drinking of blood, and from sexual immorality. (Insight Volume II p. 587)
In context, the reference to blood in the Apostolic Decree is a reiteration of the existing prohibitions against eating blood. If transfusion is wrong, it's wrong because it is either physically or morally equivalent to eating blood and the Biblical condemnation is implicit rather than explicit. I don't know why anybody would think it's okay to lift an incomplete phrase from a specific ruling made in regard to a specific problem at a specific point in the early history of Christianity and invoke it in an entirely new context. I'm not accusing you of this, I'm just venting a little frustration I've experienced
I observed that JW's with academic qualifications in this area avoid that pitfall and some, like Rolf Furuli for example, have produced some very elegant reasoning. But it is fatally marred by speculation.
Ok, but this would be your opinion, right?
I think it's probably a matter of perspective and would depend on whether or not a person believes that the scales need to balance. On one side of the scales, we have crystal clear, black and white, plain and unambiguous statements about the sanctity of the gift of life and the severe penalty associated with even contributing to the loss of life. If an emergency medical treatment like transfusion is to be declined regardless of the consequences, then it seems to me that justice would demand that we have something of equal weight to place on the other side of the scales.
Therefore it becomes important that any equivalency between the consumption of blood and the transfusion of blood is solidly demonstrated by premises that can be tested and proven and not simply assumed. I'm not saying this can't be done. I just saying I have yet to see it.
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Mary
Mary said: If he accepts a blood transfusion to try and save his life, he will be murdered by God at Armageddon and will never get a resurrection---his eternal salvation is in [jeopardy].
djeggnog said: You don't know this to be true and I don't either.
Then perhaps you should try reading what your gods in Crooklyn say about this very subject eggnog:
Questions from Readers:"In view of the seriousness of taking blood into the human system by a transfusion, would violation of the Holy Scriptures in this regard subject the dedicated, baptized receiver of blood transfusion to being disfellowshipped from the Christian congregation? The inspired Holy Scriptures answer yes."-----Watchtower, January 15, 1961, p. 63
"They know that if they violate God's law on blood and the child dies in the process, they have endangered that child's opportunity for everlasting life in God's new world......it may result in the immediate and very temporary prolongation of life, but that at the cost of eternal life for a dedicated Christian."-----Blood, Medicine, and the Law of God, p.54
djegghead then said: His oncologist was evidently powerless to save him
No he wasn't 'powerless to save him' had he been allowed to take the needed transfusions. His bone marrow was completely shot. He need blood and no blood substitute would work in a case like his. Which part of that don't you understand?
but the doctor was perfectly willing to transfuse blood in violation of God's command to the world since Noah stepped off the ark in an attempt to try to give your brother a few additional years of life and at what cost to the doctor?
Of course the doctor was willing to transfuse blood because a) doctors are trained to save lives---they're not there to watch people being forced to commit suicide like the Organization demands. And b) there is no 'command from God' that humans cannot transfuse blood from one live human to another, found anywhere in the bible. And by the way, that command that God gave to Noah did not apply to the entire human race. If you bothered to actually read the bible, you'll see that the Israelites were allowed to sell unbled meat to foreigners:
"...YOU must not eat any body [already] dead. To the alien resident who is inside your gates you may give it, and he must eat it; or there may be a selling of it to a foreigner, because you are a holy people to Jehovah your God..."---Deut. 14:21
egghead said: but if a blood transfusion lowers the immune response, making it harder to fight infections -- and it does! -- and it predisposes a sick patient for the inset of infections that their immune system could have fought off were it not for the transfused blood having been introduced into the patient body, what guarantee did the oncologist give him that he would survive until the bone marrow transplant had been administered?
Your statement is so riciulous on so many levels it's hard to know where to even start. First of all, blood transfusions do not automatically lower the recipients' immune system, or virutally everyone whose ever had a BT would be six feet under. It lowers the immune system when it's not a proper match whereby it triggers a response from the patient's own immune system. The destruction of incompatible red blood cells is called a hemolytic transfusion reaction, the destruction of incompatible white blood cells causes a febrile non-hemolytic transfusion reaction (FNHTR), and the destruction of incompatible platelets causes post-transfusion purpura. No one here is denying that this doesn't happen on occassion, but YOU are trying to make it sound that every single time a person receives a blood transfusion, their immune system is automatically lowered.
This was the scenario: He did not have enough red cells, white cells or platelets to survive the chemotherapy treatment. In order for him to survive, he required several transfusions during the chemo treatment, which people do all the time. Please don't try and make it sound as though his body would somehow have been more able to fight off infections without the required blood because to anyone who has more that two brains cells working (which I doubt you have), that does not happen for someone whose own body isn't producing enough mature cells anymore. This was his only shot at saving his life you moron, yet the Govering Body members would prefer to see you die a shitty death needlessly rather than admit that they've been wrong all these years.
There are no 'guarantees' in life, but since he had a family member who was an exact match for the stem cell transplant, he would have had an excellent chance at surviving had it not been for the blood doctrine.
I know you're bitter, that you hate Jehovah's Witnesses, that you hate "the cult" to which your brother belonged, that you hate the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses, and I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses, so you hate me, too, and I know that I would be dead right now if you could choke me out, or stab me to death or you'd empty all 17 rounds of a Glock 9mm into my body
Oh Christ......are you trying to get in your daily 'persecution fix' eggnog? I have no desire to kill you or choke you or stab you or 'empty all 17 rounds of a Glock 9mm' into your body-----where do you come up with this shit? I think you're an idiot, a brainwashed fool but as for killing you? Can't say I'd ever consider it. As for hating the Govering Body---you at least got that one right. They're the ones that make the rules that has killed tens of thousands of Witnesses over the year and what I'd like to see happen to them is that they be charged with Assisted Suicide every time a Witness dies for refusing a blood transfusion that could have saved their lives. They'd be getting "New Light" pretty damn quick on the subject.
we believe in things like free will, in not violating one's own conscience, and we also believe in a person's right to make informed choices.
ROFLMAO! Free will? Ya right. The WTS believes in about as much Free Will as what the Third Reich did. As long as you obey the leaders, don't read any books that are unfavourable to them and never ask too many disturbing questions, then yes---you can live under the delusion that you actually have 'free will'. You most certainly do not believe in letting a person decide life and death matters by using their own conscience as I already showed you from your own stinking literature that accepting transfusions is a disfellowshipping offense and that you are 'jeapordizing your eternal salvation'by doing so.
You believe in stripping folks of their right to self-determination
Oh my holy god. This, coming from a guy who belongs to a religion that forces their members to committ suicide when a perfectly viable treatment can save their lives? The Watchtower Society does not allow their followers the "right to self-determination", because if they did---they wouldn't disfellowship people who were guided by their own conscience!
That there are men -- soldiers that have returned from the war in Iraq -- that were faced with the choice of having both of their legs amputated or dying in a number of days or weeks from the inset of wet gangrene in them that have chosen to die because they did not wish live the reset of their lives without legs and believed their wives deserved a whole man. They died so that the family could move on.
Your drone above bears absolutely no resemblance to what happened to my brother in law. He was not a vegetable or a war amputee and he would not have been any "burden" to my sister. He simply needed the BTs to get him through so that the stem cell transplant would grow new bone marrow for him. Where do you come up with this shit?
Your brother died because of his love for God. How ridiculous is that?
No, he died because he was born and raised in this cult that allow no free will or self-preservation. These things are all sacrificed on the alter to a bunch of senile, gross old men who are far more interested in retaining their power over 7 millions lives, than to give a crap about how many of them actually die.
Eggnog, you're an asshole, plain and simple. You have no real convictions other than the tripe you read in the Craptower magazine and are little more than a zombie for the Borg. I guess this is the easiest way for you to get your time in on your Field Serve-Us Report because you obviously aren't spending any time at the meetings or knocking on doors. Gee.....what would the Govering Body say if they knew you were visiting and associating with 'apostates'?
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moshe
Thank you TD-
In context, the reference to blood in the Apostolic Decree is a reiteration of the existing prohibitions against eating blood. If transfusion is wrong, it's wrong because it is either physically or morally equivalent to eating blood and the Biblical condemnation is implicit rather than explicit. I don't know why anybody would think it's okay to lift an incomplete phrase from a specific ruling made in regard to a specific problem at a specific point in the early history of Christianity and invoke it in an entirely new context.
Why TD, they're JW's, that's why! Djeggnogg has helped me to understand this tidbit - for JWs, facts/ logic and WT directives/dogmas are mutually exclusive in the mind of a JWs. Logic can never trump a confusing WT dogma, never and the GB is always right.
JWs just don't do well solving puzzles or finding their way out of a maze.
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ProdigalSon
Jehovah, The Bloodthirsty god
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Will Power
Jgnat said:
If abstaining from blood is strictly a religious choice, why does the Watchtower society cite concerns over blood transfusions (i.e. hepatitis)? Does this not create an aversion to blood, aside from the religious reason? Why would the society do this?
I think we know why. In the event a bible discussion comes up, it will turn into circular reasoning, then the alternate will be needed to fall back on. It would be cool to stick to one subject in a discussion eh?
Putting so much emphasis on Asymbol of life - even to the death - puts blood right up there with birthday cakes, national flags and crucifixes. This "life" that is "in the blood" its like the manmade version of "the immortal soul" (term for it used by some religions) or the "spirit of Christ Jesus that lives in you" (Romans, Galatians, John).
To keep things in line with JW doctrine it is always a physical thing since the abstract and spiritual is uncontrollable from New York. Literaly the bible says if you choose to live by the law you will die by the law. Where as the mature believer by faith lives by the spirit of the law (ie. it is the man's life that is sacred, not his blood)
Jesus talked in parables (repeated by the apostles) about HIS body and blood, about drinking his blood, his life in the blood, the wine is his blood...... Even in our advanced civilization, think of how difficult it is for some people to understand abstract concepts - can you imagine what it was like back then - when magic and curses, demons and superstition ruled the world.
My questions (after all that) are..... What part, if any, did the other blood cults of the time play in the warning given to "abstain" from blood?
and
What part, if any, did the push to "give blood" during the war as citizen's patriotic duty play in the watchtower's stance against it?
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