If they go out and refuse to use their guns, the one tool that could help them live, then, yes, they are committing suicide. That’s less debatable than the blood transfusion issue, since sick people don’t choose to be in a situation where refusing a transfusion may kill them.
And I will point out that I’d take JWs more seriously about the proscription against consuming blood if they’d actually perform the techniques that remove blood from food before cooking meat. It seems they’ve become more focused on an extrapolation than the scripture itself. (Other religions do this too, but at least they admit it.)
I’m inclined to agree with the lecturer. I do work in Paeds and getting a court order to give blood to a JW child is a matter of routine. The parents won’t give consent but they don’t resist much and I think many are actually quite relieved to have the decision taken out of their hands.
They usually don’t stay in the room when blood products are being transfused.
Thank you! Out of curiosity, what country do you work in? (“Paeds” is a bit of a giveaway that it’s not the US.)
I wonder how the reaction of patients and what they really want is correlated with specialty. That is, are parents more relieved to be forced by a court order for their children, where geriatric patients will feel guilt and self-loathing if it’s a court order for them? I don’t know the answer, I’m just wondering out loud. I know that even I, as a parent, make my kids eat healthier and take them to the dentist and for well check ups far more often than I go myself. It feels like I’m wired to want to take better care of them, physically, and I listen to doctors’ advice more for them than I do for myself. I could see, if I were a JW, that pattern holding, that I’d be more inclined to allow with good grace a forced transfusion (and perhaps even secretly want it for them), where I’d feel angry and guilty if I got it for myself.
Humans aren’t entirely consistent when it comes to the well-being of their offspring, I guess is what I’m saying. Even deeply held beliefs can get pushed aside when your little one is suffering.
I’m in Australia. I’m as certain as it’s possible to be about the decisions other people make that the parents would never accept blood products for themselves. Some parents resist more than others the transfusions without which their child will die but most are just quietly grateful that the decision is taken away from them.
These families almost always have great support from their congregations and other JW (non-family) members visit frequently. Sundays are always big visiting days and they come straight to the hospital from their Meeting. So I assume that the child isn’t regarded as irredeemably tainted by the blood products.
All that the Christian scriptures say is “You are to abstain form blood”. There’s not any extrapolation going on there as far as I can see. As Cecil said, the real mystery is why other Christian sects dropped the prohibition.
And I have no idea what these “techniques that remove blood from food before cooking” are. I assume you are referring to the use of salt by some modern Jewish sects. But that isn’t a Christian doctrine, nor was it Jewish doctrine at the time of Jesus. If it were Jews would have been effectively prohibited from eating meat, given the price of salt in those days. The use of “kosher Salt” is a more modern Talmudic tradition, and not one that all Jews accept. At the time that Christains split fom Jews the only requirement was that the animal’s throat be cut and the blood drained onto the ground. JWs still utilise that technique.
They do not, of course, feel any obligation to use techniques of other religions that were never part of Christian tradition, any more than Jews feel an obligation to undertake communion rituals.
Why you would take a Jew more seriously if she undertook Holy Communion is a little beyond me.
“Jews would have been effectively prohibited from eating meat, given the price of salt in those days.” Cite that salt was prohibitively expensive? Salt was certainly valuable, but that’s not the same as effectively unavailable to the masses.
