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...

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.

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

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

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

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

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....