by minimus 43 Replies latest jw friends
If a JW believes that the gb are only a bunch of men dictating policy as you say, then why should he continue to be a JW?
Why indeed FM....? But we were all there weren't we? We all believed that the GB were the conduit but then we started allowing ourselves to investigate the answers to the questions we had glossed over for so long.
That's what this site is about - helping those who have questions examine the answers.
The vast majority of JWs will take blood . . . the very day Watchtower comes out with new light saying that blood transfusions are ok.
TD "...are you suggesting that the Decree should be applied out of context?"
Some years ago I corresponded with the Society on these verses, and one thought I have not read elsewhere was :
... you will observe that the prohibitions in Acts 15:29 each relate to the way a person can defile himself in God's eyes. If a person takes into his body that which is unauthorised then he contravenes God's law, whether this be by eating food sacrificed to idols, by taking in blood, or by eating things strangled, or even by divinely prohibited sexual relations.
If this is how Luke thought, and being a physician it is feasible he thought this way, then it is what is taken into the body that is defiling. On the matter of prohibited sexual relations I think it is relevant that the Society views artificial insemination equivalent to adultery when the sperm does not come from the husband.
It is not how sperm/blood gets into the body but the fact that it does.
John Cedars survey is useful in this regard. Its going to vary with circumstance, age, the nature of the emergency, privacy/confidentiality, and perhaps most importantly the degree of commitment to the WT policy. There is a significant amount of non-compliance among younger JW's. Perhaps as much as 50%.
helping those who have questions examine the answers.
Well, the majority of people that leave JW is because they got angry at something or they rather be doing something else. Later on they look for ways and examine the answers after they already decided for themselves. But there are also those that are curious about what the apostates are thinking.
Getting back to the base scripture, there are 3 points of argument 1. Blood is being used medicinally to save a human life. 2. Blood is being used from a donor and not at the expense of someone that was killed. 3. A blood transfusion is not food to be eaten.
GB understands all of these arguments and so does JW. However, the direction coming from FDS at this time is that the transfusion of whole blood or any of its major components violates the base scripture.
And the JW minority that winds up accepting BT is out of fear -they don't want to die even if they also believe in the FDS, others that also make up that minority when faced with death rationalize and don't believe the gb is correct on this one. The rest of JW will face death putting faith in the gb decision.
Well, the majority of people that leave JW is because they got angry at something or they rather be doing something else. Later on they look for ways and examine the answers after they already decided for themselves. But there are also those that are curious about what the apostates are thinking.
I must have forgot to pass my reasons by you then.
And the JW minority that winds up accepting BT is out of fear -they don't want to die even if they also believe in the FDS, others that also make up that minority when faced with death rationalize and don't believe the gb is correct on this one. The rest of JW will face death putting faith in the gb decision.
Agreed. I don't see how any of this, which I already said most people, for or against the JW policy, would agree with changes the validity of the proposition that most Witnesses would change their view of what is acceptable and not acceptable on the whim of the GB and not their own conscience. I think you probably agree with this as well.
Greetings, Earnest,
Thanks for providing the quote:
... you will observe that the prohibitions in Acts 15:29 each relate to the way a person can defile himself in God's eyes. If a person takes into his body that which is unauthorised then he contravenes God's law, whether this be by eating food sacrificed to idols, by taking in blood, or by eating things strangled, or even by divinely prohibited sexual relations.
There are two problems here, both of which (IMO) are pretty severe.
1. Open conflicts between one Bible writer and another are not compatible with the JW view of the Bible and their understanding of its inspiration. Paul's more emancipated view at 1 Corinthians 8 must therefore be harmonized with the Decree and to that end, the JW parent organization offers the following explanation:
"What the decree in Acts:15,28,29 forbade was a Christian's being part of a formal, religious ceremony or his committing an act of idolatry." (The Watchtower October 15, 1978, p.30)
In other words, it did not matter if a pagan priest had uttered some mumbo-jumbo before slitting the animal's throat as long as the meat was not eaten as an act of veneration towards the idol.
That is all well and good, but the JW parent organization cannot have it both ways. They cannot on one hand, claim that the meat is defiling in and of itself while on the other, claim that the real issue is not the meat at all, but the finite act of idolatry done in connection with it.
2. Another facet of the same basic problem is the use of the term, taking in." Referring to disparate acts in generic terms implies an equivalency between them without actually having to demonstrate it, which is the fallacy of equivocation.
For example
Drinking a glass of water and drowning in the ocean can both loosely be described as, "taking in water," but there is a world of difference between taking water into your lungs and taking water into your stomach. The two acts are not physically equivalent.
Similarly, there is a superficial similarity between sex with your spouse and sex with some other person to whom you're not married, but there is a world of difference between marital sex and adultery. The two acts are not morally equivalent.
The relevance to transfusion should be obvious here. There are demonstrable moral and physical differences between the transfusion of blood and the consumption of blood.
In answer to the original question i think its a case of more would accept than the org would like to admit but nowhere near as many as you would think.
Probably about 10% - 20% or so - maybe higher. Depends on the circumstances - obviously different when there are HLC elders hanging around hospital beds in an emergency compared to a marginal JW going in for elective open heart surgery.
I had a route call with a retired consultant surgeon who worked for 25 years at Barts ( a top London hospital ) and once we got talking about the blood issue, as it was the highlighted article in that fortnight's Awake magazine. He said that he knew of a quite a few JWs who privately were prepared to accept blood in an operation ( ie have the blood matched and available to be transfused if required ). He reckoned a third or so ( including Bethelites , which he knew from the address that was given ) were privately happy with this arrangement , which was offered , privately , to any JW offering for elective surgery.
The practice was not to tell the patient afterward on a kind of "don't ask , don't tell" basis or if prompted , simply to tell the patient that the blood hadn't been required ( whether or not it had been used or not ). I remember being somewhat stumbled at what he said at the time , though it just added to the growing knowledge of hypocrisy in the religion that eventually led to me leaving.
http://www.sld.cu/galerias/pdf/sitios/anestesiologia/jehovah_witnesses_accept_bloodtransfusion_1.pdf
In their 2004 review of documents completed by 61 pregnant Jehovah’s Witness from 1997 to 2002,
Drs Cynthia Gyamfi and Richard L. Berkowitz found that about 10% of these patients were willing to
accept specific transfusion therapies contrary to the religion’s policy.
In 1995 Dr. Kaaron Benson found that most parents among Jehovah’s Witnesses permitted
transfusions for their minor children, and that many younger adults made the same choice for
themselves. Overall she found that about 10% of the Witness patients or their guardians were willing
to accept blood transfusion.
would change their view of what is acceptable and not acceptable on the whim of the GB and not their own conscience.
I replied to this previously on this thread and have tried to make a point numerous times:
What does the Bible say? What a JW likes it to say or believes it says or what apostates says it says? There is part of the human conscience that does things instinctively and you don't need to open up the Bible -namely empathy towards other conscious creatures and personal conduct. There is another part of conscience that is subjective, referred to by the wt as "Christian trained concience" and for this a JW has to open up the Bible and figure out what the Bible says, for example, the base scripture. JW base their conciences on what the WT says the Bible says. JW understand that a JW conscience will change based on what the wt says the Bible says. You call that a whim of the gb. JW see it as FDS, albeit JW conscience is affected.
