Hi Where i live in England,a young mother has died because she had just given birth to twins and complications set in and she needed a blood transfusion to survive, just because she was a jehovah's wittness she refused this blood transfusion and died.

Now these twins are without a mother and its because of these jehovah witnesses that are against blood transfusion,they just want to realise that our loving God who they are supposed to be representing would not have expected this young mother to die and leave her twins.

Those jehovah wittnesse have got a lot to answer for and as usual they are giving out the wrong messages about the love of God to other members of there so called religion.

Love and God bless   Love Juditha

I suppose it's in the end good that her wishes were observed but it seems to me Juditha that there's always problems when we replace a relativistic (all issues considered) assessment of each situation on its own merits to decide the greater good with black and white rule based definitions of 'good behaviours'.

There's plenty of wrong been done by people thinking they were doing good in the world. (maybe even the likes of Adolf Hitler who thought he was doing right by Germany - if he was in it out of self interest he certainly got it wrong)  Rules are the best of a bad lot when the people concerned don't have the intellectual wherewithal to make optimal judgements informed by wisdom and compassion.

I guess that ultimately that's all of us once the question becomes sufficiently complex to go beyond our competence. As for example in the way science and business interests persist in commercialising technologies without first figuring out or caring about their downsides. Aw sure, it'll be all right...

The other issue is that the urge to power and control drives people into trying to make unwise rules for others.

And that in a way points up the catch 22 in all of this - if somebody had forced that lady to accept a transfusion, then that too would have been imposition of a rule.

Maybe its the nature of life that there's no clean solution - that in the end its about learning, often the hard way...

Maybe this is inappropriate to say, I'm not sure.  But at least it was the mother who died as a consequence of her belief system rather than her children.  I think the story would have been much worse if the babies needed the transfusion and she refused and they died.

If there is an error in what the Jehovah's Witnesses believe, it is the same error that I think all the organized Christian denominations commit. Somebody forgot to tell them how to let God move through what they do so that they accomplish their goals. Perhaps the JW's original message was submission to God's will (not so different than what the Catholics claim). How that got focused on or made equivalent to refusing blood transfusions is a mystery to me. But it is no stranger than what other religions have done in the name of following God. When you get hooked on following the rule rather than the substance, you get problems. Why didn't some good people of other denominations come and lay hands on this new mother and stop the bleeding?

By the way, before I was born, I had an aunt who, according to my father, was allowed to bleed to death after the birth of her second child in a hospital . So let's not deify the medical profession either.

The Book of Ecclesiasticus (200 BC) in the Catholiic Old Testament teaches that God heals both through the power of faith and breakthroughs in the medical profession. It also teaches that God heals through the latent potential of herbs.  This might sound bland until it is realized that very little was known about the healing potential of plant biochemistry in 200 BC.  Protestants don't consider Ecclesiasticus authoritative, but it is clearly respected and used by Jesus and is therefore valuable in illuminating the unstated assumptions of Jesus' teaching.

Don

If we are here, in the physical world, there are certain common physical laws (like gravity for one) which we can all agree on - at least in a practical sense.  

If bacteria are introduced to the body blood stream and multiply, in general, a person will die without antibiotics.  If bleeding occurs and can not be stopped, if a person is not transfused they will die (in general).  Modern medicine can cure these infections and transfuse blood to prevent death.  It is just a way of dealing with practical physical laws.

If a group prays over a bleeding person, and the family/patient refuse transfusions for bleeding, they are denying a key part of what God has made available to them, namely the help of their fellow men/women, and a logical cure to the problem.  

We are here in the physical to love and interact with each other.  Miracles that defy the physical rules may rarely occur, but how can one say that God is not there, waiting to help in modern medicine?  Why do we have to oppose God and Medicine as two different forces?  Are not physicians/nurses part of God?  Prick us, do we not bleed?

It is silly to contrast God's ability to cure with man's and only accept help from fervent prayer, when it is manifest right here, in the physical in modern medicine.

Matthew

There seems to be a remarkable similarity between this type of "too holy to medicate" thinking and suicide bombers who are "too holy to live in peace". If we apply the ideas of good and evil it all gets very ambiguous and becomes a matter of personal perspective.

Somehow I have the image in my mind of a rather unhappy woman in spirit looking back at her orphaned children with intense regret and a great deal of confusion. Perhaps we might send her our love for doing the best she knew to do, and our confidence that she is worthy of God's love and nurturance as she finds the next steps on her path.

dave

My understanding of our time here on earth in the physical is for us to learn lessons - that what happens to us is pre-planned before the soul enters the new born baby. Part of our spiritual development.
Yes, we do have free will along the path of life, but ultimately what happens has still been preordained. Thus, the family and babies left behind will have their lessons to learn from the loss of the mother, very sad as it may be.
Everything happens for a reason.

roger :)

religion is so silly

Silly, maybe. But what better excuse do we have when we want to inflict our personal moralities on others?  

Religion is a good excuse for wars, invasions, Inquisitions, barbarity, inhumanity of all sorts, and if nothing else, brainwashing. As Marx pointed out, organized religion is the opium of the masses.

d

Yep!

Hey there,

in the end it lies within the ones who advertise themselves as THE ONLY ones that found the right way to salvation. Their way.
Some are that reckless, that it does not matter for them what they misuse to please their greed for power, wealth and to convey their sense of mission.
So it is not directly religion, it is the fraudulent sector of the human mind, where the "I want more" creeps around.
Religion in this case is a robe, as being religious is, also in our times, a value. If someone advertises himself to act in service of god, it is always something that makes this someone credible and trustworthy.
But what he actually does, he exploits the people's need for divine intervention, one could imagine that this someone sells his/her kind of ideals, as the way for salvation, like "fight for me, then you gain salvation".

If one goes that far to refuse medical care, to act like a god wants, it is surely brainwashing, in fact, mentally misusing people by such insane ideas of service, how could god want someone to die, if there is a way to cure? Why do they worship Jesus on the other hand, who kind of cured sicknesses (in case it was described metaphorical, it was also curing in the sense of crashing down mind barriers, best example, "making the blind man seeing").

Just keep in mind, that religion is output of the human mind, and there are always boltholes, that leave room for exploitation. The organization of religion is not, as far as I am informed, determined via any source believers rely on.

A sad chapter, but religion seems to be "the" device misused for manipulation per se. It is plain, clear, and simple egotistical attitude that is what should be the target, because it is, what makes thoughts of exploitation possible, not religion for itself. It is the people, not the basic ideas of religion, to practice faith as a community.
Greed driven organization brings dogmatism, and dogmatism is just forcing one's idea on others minds. Not a gods/goddesses work, just human failure. Just the ones who think they are big numbers are reckless enough to tear down everything, just for own pleasure's sake.
But one more additional point, derives from my humble opinion, religion got on the wrong track, when people forgot that every single one is only A DIFFERENT APPROACH to come closer to divinity.
If religion is taken seriously, and not misused as fraudulent propaganda, it points out equality, acceptance, respect, bringing across values, that are good in the sense of the real meaning of good. Not the "good", that greed-driven egoists sell as "good".
As we all know, the topics we deal with here on akc, are also exploited by fraudulent psychics, who are on  wealth's path.

yours sincerely,

pulsar

Hi all of you.thanks for your answers.      On my music centre which was tuned in to the radio station,they were talking about this mother who had died after refusing the blood and they asked if any other jehovahs witnesses would phone in and tell them what they thought of this,one man rang in and said he and his wife had been jehovah witnesses for 35yrs

He then said his wife had to have a hip replacement operation and she needed a blood transfusion and that she agreed as long as they put her own blood back into her what she had lost and apparantly the doctors did just that,im not sure but i think he said something like her blood was filtered and put back in her body and that jehovah witnesses will accept blood but only if its there own blood being put back into there body as they will not accept anyone elses blood and if this young mother had known this she would not have died.

Love and God bless  Love juditha

It's quite a tough one to bottom out. If you accept the need for some sort of body of teaching then it probably requires transmission, protection, interpretation and development.  

A monastic system or a priestly caste is a pretty useful way of doing this. But as Pulsar says it gets confused when ego, error and selfishness creep into the actions of those responsible.

It's very clear that it's very much a personal path we're all on, and that dogmatic teaching in switching off natural discrimination is actually a very big barrier to spiritual progress. 'YOU WILL BELIEVE THIS>>>'

The likes of UG Krishnamurti whom I've recently been quoting for example suggests that he can teach nobody anything, and that the greatest barrier to realisation that we all experience is the accumulated weight of social and religious conditioning and prejudice we all carry.

That if we could somehow be returned to a state where our natural discrimination was restored and replaced our fear (and hence ego) driven and habitual 'painting by numbers' inability to respond to realities that we'd make much better progress, and there would be much less pain, grief and suffering in the world.

He'd perhaps grudgingly have accepted that there is some very loose correlation between having engaged in spiritual practice and the achievement of realisation, but it's by no means very clear what the nature of it is....

It's a kind of a catch 22 problem that makes a mockery of the rule based dogmatic and absolutist 'OUR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY' approach adopted by many religions and especially the more fundamentalist tinged varieties - if we were selfless then we'd at least just be down to well meaning human error in transmitting teachings, and in deciding what was important and what not. And would have no difficulty with amending our positions as needed in the light of experience. But if that was the case then we'd not really need the teachings.

So somehow we're stuck with always needing a renegade establishment rejecting fringe that's as somebody has said already led by the heart - to create 'churn'.

Despite our almost universal hunger for rigid truths we can grasp on to and the dismissal of them as wackos by most on the conservative 'believing' fringe they are probably the only people capable of letting go their beliefs to respond to realities with love. (or you might say wacky enough to inject equally rigidly views but left enough of centre to create some turbulence) The only people capable (albeit through trial and error) of evolving the paradigm.

This is why so called new age (even if you feel its wackery - and much of the time I feel it's not, or at least it contains very important perspectives that can even if not wholly accepted be drawn upon) is so important, it makes change and improvement possible.....


But I suppose that in the end it's a balance - some conservatism is also needed so that what works is not lost. But much less I suspect than our societies demand - most of that is fear driven....

wrote on Nov 10^th, 2007 at 5:20pm:

then said his wife had to have a hip replacement operation and she needed a blood transfusion and that she agreed as long as they put her own blood back into her what she had lost and apparantly the doctors did just that,im not sure but i think he said something like her blood was filtered and put back in her body and that jehovah witnesses will accept blood but only if its there own blood being put back into there body as they will not accept anyone elses blood and if this young mother had known this she would not have died. Love and God bless  Love juditha

Well that's sounds rather complicated and impractical. I'm surprised they supposedly agreed to try it. How would you guarantee being able to retrieve and filter the own person's blood at the required rate etc? I think it is ridiculous if people allow some silly belief to get in the way of life and death matters like this. I don;t know why they think God is so bothered about this matter. Do they have some primitive idea that the blood contains your soul or personal life force or something and can;t be mixed with someone else's? Or is it (more likely) just down to some over-literal interpretation of some Biblical text about the sacredness of blood written in days when no one had heard of blood transfusions? If they don't want to benefit from modern medicine and so die young/can;t have hip replacements etc.. I guess they have to put up with it as "God's will". Tough on their children though

You can say this about any religion, not just the Jehovah's Witnesses. Why pick on them?

Quote:

Those jehovah wittnesse have got a lot to answer for and as usual they are giving out the wrong messages about the love of God to other members of there so called religion.

What is the right message about love? If God's love can do all things then surely it can heal, and to teach people to turn to medicine, which is based on things that are not absolutely true, instead of to turn to God, must surely be a false teaching. There must be some other motive than love in insisting that people turn to something that is not absolutely true.

Hi Lucy I am not just picking on the jehovahs wittnesses,who in my opinion have always given out the wrong messages but im saying this about most religions and i will  say this, that the two best religions i've come across is the christian spiritualist, the reason i say this is because the right messages are given about the true love of God and the fact that he is not a vengeful God or a God who trys to put you into submission to beleive in him,he leaves it up to you as he gave us all freewill so we could decide for ourselves whether God exists or not and the spiritualist church only talk about the love of spirit and the love of God, who is just as the indians quoted "The Great Spirit in the sky" which is what we are spirits, only spirits but with a body,while on this learning school"The Earth Plain".

Christian spiritualists have got it right about God and so did the indians get it right about God and there the only religions i take any notice of,the rest can go swivel.

God is love and thats all anyone on this earth needs to know about and the fact that Jesus was the son of God and Gods word was made flesh through his beloved son Jesus,no more needs to be said,because these words say it all.

God love and bless the world.

Love from someone,who loves God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit very much  Juditha

There's a lot to be said for faith healing, even if it doesn't work in every case. On the other hand, Ernest Holmes, founder of Science of Mind church (similar to Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science) took a very realistic approach. His suggestion was, "If an aspirin can heal your headache, then take an aspirin."

Looking back at the indcidents of healings that I recall, the emphasis seems to be more a matter of personal values and outlook than having to do with anything like belief in this or that, although the idea that God loves, nurtures and re-energizes us seems to be a useful component. The example that comes to mind is a man wirth cancer of the pancreas who had been given up by his physicians. So an enterprising healer announced that he had acquired a new Mexican anti-cancer drug called "Kreboizin" (there is such a drug, made from apiricot pits, that has little effect on anything). He assured the patient that this would be effective. In fact, the "drug" was simply distilled water.  But after a few injections, the cancer went itno remission.

The story continues, unfortunately. Someone leaked the awful truth that it was only a placebo, and the cancer promptly returned. So the same technician went back to his initial plan and announced that he now had "the real thing", and that this time it was immensely more powerful. Again it was distilled water. However a few injections proved effective and the cancer again was back in remission.

There always seems to be a spoil sport who wants to inflict the truth (as they see it) in the most damaging manner. So again, someone told the patient that it was still nothing but distilled water. The cancer returned and promptly killed him.

There are numerous cases in which people have been healed of terrible conditions where there seems to be little evidence of biological reasons. This was true of Mary Baker Eddy, and there are endless tales of healings through divine interventions. The Catholic rite of Extreme Unction (the last rites given to the living) is essentially a laying on of hands and faith healing, and occasionally it is effective. It seems to me that the problem seems to be that people who believe in faith healing often seem to have withdrawn their belief in personal responsibility. Getting over an ilness or injury does, in general, require a certain degree of personal involvement.

To my mind, failure to use proven methods to solve problems may appear gloriously bold, faithful or heroic, but it makes poor sense. After all, the same God who made diseases also made antibiotics. Who are we to discriminate against God's gifts?

dave

Juditha
I don't doubt for a second that you are concerned about this because you are a compassionate loving person.  I don't know exactly why JW's don't accept blood transfusions. I hope she achieved what she wanted to learn and is finding some peace.

Actually a check of the web shows that this is a controversial issues among JWs. I see a quote from Leviticus (17:10 or 14?) that must be the foundation for this practice of denying use of blood:
"You must not eat the blood of any sort of flesh."
I don't know how accurate Wiki is on this but it is interesting.

dear sweet Dave
I'm not so good with words as are you but I think you have thought about some of the same things I have and I think you also know how to fill in the blanks with some of this stuff. Some of my resistance to the conventional approaches comes out of having wanted to use science to find absolute truth, which of course turns out to be bunk, but I still have that pattern. If the truth is that reality conforms to out beliefs and to the emotions we put into them (the emotional component seems to be important) then would it not be closer to living "absolute" truth to use faith healing than to rely on the descriptions science provides? There is a catch 22 written into our reality...what we believe, manifests. So if we believe science works, that is what we see. The observer is part of the experiment. It is difficult to get to a meta level to see how the process works.

Actually, sometimes what gives me comfort is that incident you related about some of your regression work...did I recall it correctly? Someone was a civil war soldier and died in battle and then related how the people from both sides, on dying, were expressing relief: Wow we don't have to do that any more! we don't have to be enemies fighting any more ...(we can be friends again?). I wonder if the dead mom feels that way.

Don
the mention of the herbs reminded me of something inMichener's novel Hawaii. He had one of the missionary women bleeding to death in childbirth and the Hawaiian ladies upset because the white folks wouldn't let them use the herbs they knew staunched the bleeding.

Orlando
Autologous blood transfusions for a variety of reasons are not totally unusual.

Hi Lucy-  I recall a story about a physicist who, upon discovering that atoms are just empty space with probability fields circulating in them, began wearing monstrous padded slippers so that if the world opened up into a chasm he would not fall through and be lost in it.

Our direction in life is either theoretical or pragmatic. Theory comes from projections from experiences etc, but is never real. Pragmatics come from heuristic analyses of day to day events, our personal history, and thus are always playing "catch up". In both cases, we are going forward in life by looking in a "rear view miror", and often with only partial clarity.

I find it difficult to fault people who want to play the hero and reject material means to health or lifestyle, but I find it equally hard to justify what they do. The wretchedness of the Spanish Inquisition was based on very good and holy men - at least to the best of their abilities to be such. Suicide bombers who blow up school buses filled with children are very good and holy people in the same sense. So are their innocent victims. We have people who seem to believe that with great effort and self sacrifice they can wage war in a manner that will bring peace - and we have many others who see only pieces.

Within my own lifetime the world has grown a tiny bit wiser in this regard. I recall that in the 1950's era most people sneered at the idea that "what goes around comes around", but now we find that this has become an acceptable way to view what we do - unless it is too inconvenient to our ulterior purposes.

This doesn't shed much light on the JWs and other sects with similar views, since they, as us, do the best they know. And if they knew better, they'd do better - whatever that might mean.

dave

dave said: Hi Lucy-  I recall a story about a physicist who, upon discovering that atoms are just empty space with probability fields circulating in them, began wearing monstrous padded slippers so that if the world opened up into a chasm he would not fall through and be lost in it.
____
hi dave, I haven't tried the slipper idea, hmm. I'll have to try that. but I think wrapping a pillow around one's posterior would be much better idea.
____

btw I thought of u the other day as I read a book or two from a regressionist fellow, name of Weiss.
He is interesting as he said it took him four years to publish his works because he was thinking they would possibly make him resign his position from his discoveries.

also, it took even more years for him to admit publicly that he is regressing, no, wrong word, he is projecting his clients into the future now as well as backwards, this has been known to help them clear up some aches and pains on the body from which they didn't know the cause of until regression, not to speak of a great lessoning of their anxieties which they bring to him to get help.

anyway, I thought of your work.

JW religion. one time I let one in the door. spirit said to. I had something to learn. After I was done learning it, he started chasing me in my dreams.  [smiley=lolk.gif]

alls well that ends well.

love, alysia

Alysia, both my partner and I found all five books by Dr Brian Weiss truly fascinating. We use the technique set out in one of his books for undertaking past life regressions on each other with great success. She was a little mortified to find in one of her past lives that she was a black pygmy living in a forest. Later her son returned from a holiday with a little statue of one. We still laugh about it, but hey, what the heck. We are both true believers in having had past lives.

roger :)

Roger, so nice to see you here again, it's been awhile images.bravenet.com/common/images/smilies/wave.gif  I think I would be a little surprised to find out I was a pygmy too. I was myself mortified to discover I had been a man before, but now I know this is a common sort of thing, just to get in balance you know. Yes Mr. Weiss is amazing with 1,000's of regressions he has done, successfully, most of them were healing journeys, getting rid of knee problems, back problems, just from realizing what happened in another life on that part of the body, this relieves the person of the pain. A cure basically.
and how about the soulmates who were meeting in his office different times of the week, having the same type of past life journey and not even knowing their long lost soul mate would be seeing Dr. Weiss on the following wednesday. Then he arranged for them to meet in the hallway, that way he didn't break confidentiality. they later got together on their own and compared notes hitting it off immediately, or clicking.
She even knew his name from the other life and the fellow remembered his name also.
He also has instructions how to do a self regression.

I like the title "only love is real"  isn't it amazing that we meet the same people life after life? different face, same soul.

well I suppose I'll get a good bashing after this!  :D  thanks for posting! alysia

I have been pondering in the back of my mind the question of what might lead someone such as this young mother to want to be a JW. So last night, I had the radio on very late and woke to hear the end part of a live interview with Susie Scott Krabacher. The part I heard was of her being abused by her grandfather whe she was about 4 and that she had looked in the mirror and still recalls the way her face looked. And about 12 or 15 years ago she was in Haiti and saw a child whose face reminded her of the way her face looked in that mirror. Now identifying herself as a Christian, and one who attributes some of the problems in Haiti to the prevalence of voodoo and calling on the "bad" spirits and Satan, she mentioned her transformation from Playboy bunny sex and drugs and rock and roll type to her current status. So the connection was that...I'm not into the forms of Christianity that allow for attributing problems to Satan, but maybe that was something she could hook in to to be able to transform herself from sexual toy to her current status. Likewise, maybe the JW mom needed a strong hook to change something in her life and maybe being a Jehovah's Witness gave it to her.

I imagine lots of people will buy the book just to read the parts about Hefner, but the proceeds go to fund the organization for kids in Haiti. Hey, whoever thought Hugh Hefner would help abandoned children in Haiti? If anyone is interested in the organization SSK started for the children in Haiti, here is a link to her site:
http://www.haitichildren.com/index.html
Some of the pictures in the slideshow are pretty brutal. So is the excerpt from her book at S&S.

you bring up a good point Lucy that there can be a silver lining around a cloud and that if her religion got her out of drugs, sex and all that, who are we to sit in judgment of the religion she chose? the spirit can work through any belief system which is just one of many roads all leading back to the starting point.
and money is not such a bad thing when it helps a child out to have a full tummy.

thanks for reminder no religion is better than another, it's the reaching out that counts.

roger prettyman wrote on Nov 17^th, 2007 at 5:11am:

She was a little mortified to find in one of her past lives that she was a black pygmy living in a forest. roger :)

Why is being a Pygmy living in a forest especially mortifying? If you consider that undignified, well, Dave was a tube worm.. now, that's somewhat less dignified, but we all have to start somewhere I guess

I was going to mention about Dave's former existance Oliver, but I have been teasing him too much so I thought I'd better lay off when he mentioned I was right there with him in the mud  :) so anyhoo, I see you remembered!

I've been wanting a friend of mine to give me the details about her mermaid life, but she just mentioned it casually one day in passing that she was this too.

I do believe spirit fits itself in many containers briefly in terms of eternity overview. all I know I'm glad I'm not wearing that corset I used to wear in the southern states..oouuu it was tight!

Worse yet, Orlando, now that the world has developed television I again seem to be becoming a tube worm.

I think that in my former muddy state it was more dignified to cruise along sucking up slime. But nowadays we have popcorn and beer, which is almost as good. ;-)

d

Very good, Dave. Really made me smile.

My partner was a little mortified at having been a pygmy in a previous life because it was so unexpected. Still, much better than being a tube worm - old or modern!

roger :) :)

dave_a_mbs wrote on Nov 17^th, 2007 at 7:59pm:

Worse yet, Orlando, now that the world has developed television I again seem to be becoming a tube worm. I think that in my former muddy state it was more dignified to cruise along sucking up slime. But nowadays we have popcorn and beer, which is almost as good. ;-) d

;D