Watchtower’s Dr. Dixon on Individual Consciences of Jehovah’s Witnesses

by Marvin Shilmer 22 Replies latest jw friends

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  thetrueone

  When you retrospectively think of how much this organization has strongly structured this NO BLOOD

  doctrine onto its devoted followers for the past 67 years, with issuing personal NO BLOOD cards for

  all its members to carry with them at all times, add that with the known amount of people who have

  died upholding this doctrine, it becomes pretty hard to believe that they would lower this policy down to a

  individual personal matter, without any discerning penalty at the congregational level placed upon making

  their own decisions. Really ? That doesn't sound like the WTS. to me.
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  sizemik

  The doctrine no longer serves any constructive purpose . . . and the scrutiny of it only causes trouble for WTS. They've been watering it down ever since the haemophiliac controversy. Who ever thought fractionated primary components would ever be kosher? Now spokesmen for WTS regularly insist that individuals are free to choose and are not disfellowshipped as a direct result.

  It may take some time . . . but the blood doctrines days are numbered IMO.
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  Marvin Shilmer

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  Now spokesmen for WTS regularly insist that individuals are free to choose and are not disfellowshipped as a direct result.

  Watchtower representatives are notorious for soft-peddling and misrepresentation on this point.

  In 1999 Watchtower attorney D. Ridley wrote of the consequence of disfellowshipping:

  “…when a family member is disfellowshipped, personal ties and non-spiritual association are not terminated.”— Ridley, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal of blood: obedience to scripture and religious conscience, Journal of Medical Ethics, 1999; Vol. 25, pp. 469-472.

  Earlier in year 1998 the lawyer emphasized the non-automatic nature of disfellowshipping because of accepting blood transfusion:

  “The suggestion that the Witnesses' refusal of blood is coercively influenced by their fear of being disfellowshipped ignores the fact that disfellowshipping occurs only if one is unrepentant about his unscriptural conduct, in this case about accepting transfused blood. Thus, it is not the fact of accepting blood but a Witness's attitude about accepting it that is important.”— Ridley, Honoring Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Advance Directives, Academic Emergency Medicine, August 1998, Vol. 5, Num. 8, pp. 824-835.

  Ridley would have people think that Watchtower’s organized communal shunning program presents no coercive effect to Jehovah’s Witnesses who want to accept blood transfusion because, according to him, 1) it’s not automatic that the person will be disfellowshipped and 2) even if they are disfellowshipped the only result is no more spiritual fraternization, as though normal social and family association is unaffected.

  More recently Dr. Jon Schilling (a Watchtower MD) told the audience of doctors that one of Jehovah’s Witnesses who conscientiously accepts transfusion of blood is:

  “… simply not one of Jehovah's Witnesses.”— Schiller J, Jehovah's Witnesses, in The soul of medicine: spiritual perspectives and clinical practice, edited by John R. Peteet and Michael N, D'Ambra (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 2011), pp. 171-187.

  To an audience of doctors that is a huge misrepresentation! Were it not for other sources expounding on the subject they’d have no idea that ‘simply no longer being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ means that a person will be treated by family and friends as dead, and that they should have no contact with you whatsoever unless they live in the immediate house or for otherwise absolutely necessary business. Normal family relationships and normal social association are a thing of the past. The person is one of the walking dead according to Watchtower teaching.

  Marvin Shilmer

  http://marvinshilmer.blogspot.com