by minimus 26 Replies latest jw friends
As a "faithful Witness", I never had to deal with this on a personal level. I imagine the pressure must be extreme with the elders and others "supporting" you to do the right thing.
Do you think you would have given blood to your family member, especially your child if you were in that situation.
When I was 6 my dad was in an accident and doctors told mom that without blood he would die...dad fought the doctors and pulled the iv needle out of his arm...until they tied him down to be able to give him non-blood serum. He had his mind made up to die as a JW hero and I am 100% convinced he would have expected the same from us. Of course his survival was attributed to Jehovah and not the doctors...
We had to deal with this when our daughter was born with a hole in her lung. Fortunately it healed without having to operate and the team in the Pediatric Intensive Care were the best. I was able to have a very good talk with the head surgeon, we would not have let her die over the blood issue.
I do think some, not the majority of JWs would secretly take blood.
No way would I have blocked giving my child or wife blood Even as a teenager I thought it was BS. Once I was married and we wanted to start our family I realized that the religion had to go....or rather we did.
When I was in the hospital in labor with my son...they had me sign a paper on whether or not I would let them give me blood if something were to happen...I signed it "no" because my mom was standing right there...but if something really were to happen, I would tell them to give me blood for sure! I think survival would have kicked in, but if I were unconscious, I guess I would have died because I signed the paper...
Two thoughts about this matter struck me in the minutes after my daughter was born. First, there was, simply, no way possible that I would instruct doctors not to transfuse.
Second, I reflected on the fact that my parents would rather have seen me dead than transfused. I asolutely know this.
Even taking the Witness claim of an earthly paradise at face value, let's reduce this to its real character: Your son or daughter dies now OR you die later. That's the choice. So here's the trouble I have with the blood doctrine: Any parent worth a damn would gladly give up their life for their loved family member whether now or later. Any parent would push their son or daughter out of the way of an oncoming truck and take the blow themselves.
If God has a problem with such a demonstration of love at the final judgement, then God never was worth following in the first place.
I believed in the resurrection and eternal life in paradise. Of course I would have refused to give consent to blood.
In reality no child dies for lack of blood consent in the UK. A doctor can get a "ward of court" in an instant.
When I was a kid, there was a family from my congregation, in that situation. They got a court order against them in favor of the baby. They violated the court order, took the baby out of the hospital, and smuggled her into Mexico.
It was all anyone could talk about for a long time. Other than that, I have not been in the situation, nor do I know of anyone else who was faced with that choice and what they did. I only know of the one, because it was a circus for a while.
