Comments from the Friends - Online Edition - Spring 1997

Elders "help" a JW who takes blood
[JW elder with false face]

EVASIVE and deceptive is the only way to describe The Watchtower's answer to a question from doctors as to what would happen "if a Witness wavered and accepted a blood transfusion? Would he be ostracized by the Witness community?" The Watchtower's response uses language that sends a strong warning to JW readers while giving outsiders the impression that the emphasis would be on "help" and "understanding":

The response would depend on the actual situation, for disobeying God's law certainly is a serious matter, something for the congregation's elders to examine. The Witnesses would want to help any person who has undergone the traumatic experience of life-threatening surgery and who has accepted a transfusion. Doubtless such a Witness would feel very bad and be concerned about his relationship with God. Such a person may need help and understanding. Since the backbone of Christianity is love, the elders would want, as in all judicial cases, to temper firmness with mercy.
-- The Watchtower February 15, 1997, page 20

JWs, of course, grasp that this means they would stand trial before a judicial committee, while outsiders reading these words miss the frightening implications. (See Dictionary of J.W.ese on current order form.)

Blood ban NOT "subject to periodic review"

"Won't you be reassessing your ethical stand before long?" The Watchtower quotes a professor as asking regarding the ban on transfusions. (February 15, 1997, page 20) Then it states the Watchtower Society's position:

The stand of the Witnesses respecting the sanctity of blood is a doctrinal belief rather than an ethical viewpoint subject to periodic review, he was told. The clear Biblical command leaves no room for compromise. (Acts 15:28, 29) Violating such a divine law would be as unacceptable to a Witness as condoning idolatry or fornication.
-- The Watchtower February 15, 1997, page 20

Interestingly, though, the Society once taught similarly that its ban on vaccinations was divine law, but has since dropped that ban:

Vaccination is a direct violation of the everlasting covenant that God made with Noah after the flood.
-- The Golden Age February 4, 1931, page 293

The fact is that, although the conservatives presently controlling the JW Governing Body may not bring up the sect's ban on blood for "periodic review," the ban could be dropped in the future whenever new members on the Governing Body are able to muster the needed two-thirds majority vote -- just as the longstanding ban on young men accepting alternative service assignments from their draft boards was recently dropped. (See Summer 1996 issue of Comments from the Friends.)

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