Religion Series Jehovahs Witnesses Part 2

Here I am again posting on the JW's. So on the bill for today why jw's do not accept blood transfusions and why they do not celebrate holidays birthdays and other days.

I think I would like to start with why they do not accept blood transfusions. We would probably all agree that blood is a very important thing. I mean it carries important things that our bodies need. Blood is our lifeforce. When we lose blood we can get weak. When we lose to much we can die. So blood is important no one will dispute that. Now here are some things taken from reasoning from the scriptures a small brown book which jw's frequently use to carry on talks with about blood.

Christians are commanded to abstain from blood

they quote Acts 15:28 29 it says

"The holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you,except these necessary things, to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication. If you carefull keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper. Good health to you!"  One important thing to point out here is that they add in little snippets of their own explaination of the verses. 

They also quote Genesis 9 3,4 "Every moving animal that is alive may serve as food for you. As in the case of green vegetation, I do give it all to you. Only flesh with it's soul -s blood- you must not eat." Here they add in its blood.

They then say that animals should be properly bled and that strangled or animals that die in traps are not suitable for food. Also they mention that if there has been any blood added the food should not be eaten either.

Next they quote some scriptures about blood and sacrifices saying that only sacrificial use of blood has ever been approved by God.

Next we move on to a title actually focusing on blood transfusions.

Does the Bible's prohibition include human blood?

They quote Acts 15:29 "keep abstaining from...blood" It does not say merely to abstain from animal blood. Hmm clever way to put it I suppose.

Is a transfusion really the same as eating blood? is the next title.

They say "hen a patient is in a hospital sometimes they are fed through an iv tube. Now would a person who would never put blood in his mouth but took the transfusion be obeying the command to "keep abstaining from blood"?

They then mention some alternative treatments. such as saline solution ringers solution and dextran. They call them plasma vlume expanders. There is more here on blood transfusions complete with the exact questions someone may ask and the exact way to answer them. Most of the alternative treatmets they mention are to basically bring back the amount of liquid to the body which it looses when it looses blood.

So those are some of the things that are mentioned on why they do not accept blood transfusions.

Now on to celebrating holidays birthdays and such. Only two birthdays were celebrated in the bible and they both had ''disasterous results" Birthdays are seen as a pagan ritual. They say that since no birthdays were really celebrated in the bible by christians that it is wrong to do so now. Now why they do not celebrate christmas. First jesu was not born on dec 25 but on a day when they animals could be outside at night. I don't see why that matters but I will move on. They then go on to say that jesus' birth was not celebrated (well technically at the time it was) but his death was to be remembered. They don't celebrate things like rememberance day either. Because rememberance day has to do with war and patriotism. And they believe true christians would not have any part in war.

So there ends my large second post on Jehovahs Witnesses. There is much much more I could go over. And I might come back to them. One thing I want to mention if I havent already is that their bible was translated by an anonomous comittee. There is no absolutley no way to know who interpretated this version of the bible and no way to tell if it is trustworthy. Look at all religions carefully and always think for yourselfs do not be pulled in by anything that seems bad or odd to you.