Anna

Going back on topic, (of a post that hasn't been on topic, lol) in reading everyone's comments I see the reasoning behind both the against and the for blood. Personally I can see why someone would abstain (which means both eating and transfusing). My main issue is that the organization says this is a conscience matter, whereas in practice this is not true. It is the societies conscience we are told to obey. We were always taught to tell the doctors that our conscience will not allow us to break God's law on blood. But what if someone's conscience did allow them, for whatever reason? This is why I think the blood issue (whole blood) should be something between them and Jehovah only. (Someone said well then we could say the same about fornication. Well, if no one in the congregation finds out about it, then it will still be between them and Jehovah, and they will have to answer to Jehovah for it in the end.
In line with this, I have noticed that elders on the HLC no longer "interfere" or are privy to a person's medical decision. In the USA hippa laws are strict, and absolutely no one should be able to find out if someone has had a blood transfusion, even relatives. So if someone does get a blood transfusion, it remains between them and Jehovah.
I think Tom's handling of the situation with the young brother in hospital was very good. No elder should be persuading another person to follow his (the elder's) conscience, or anybody else's conscience for that matter. The conscience is each person's their own. (This is why the conscientious objection to alternative service was a farce because the brothers who objected, for the most part, didn't know why they were objecting, they were just following the societies conscience). 
The stance now is we do not fight the Superior Authorities when it comes to transfusing children. Which makes me wonder where the principle "obey God as ruler rather than men" went to? Did we decide this because we do not want to make a spectacle of ourselves, fighting court battles and making it look like JW parents want their children to die? Don't get me wrong, I am glad about it, but where in truth does it leave  "obey God as ruler rather than man?" It seems like the organization has compromised... or not? Same with the fractions becoming  a conscience matter. I get why this was so, they "didn't want to get "dogmatic" (a phrase we will probably be hearing a lot more). But how much of this was also for practical reasons? The guidance about blood fractions itself says that people should realize that many vaccines (which members of Bethel used) and other therapeutic medicines contains blood fractions. So the person who says no to blood fractions should realize this, and then make an informed decision. I wonder if the covid vaccines had been based on blood fractions, or contained blood fractions, how would the organization have handled that? Probably they wouldn't have been able to "push" it like they did, and would have just had to say it's each person's decision, based on their own conscience. 
For me, when it comes to the question of blood, we don't want to be putting our life at risk just for man made rules. We have to be sure it is Jehovah's law, and by the looks of it this camp is split into two. Some say yes and some say no. 
I feel like we should apply Occam's razor and go with the simplest and clearest explanation. 
It's all giving me a headache...
 

Going back on topic, (of a post that hasn't been on topic, lol) in reading everyone's comments I see the reasoning behind both the against and the for blood. Personally I can see why someone would abstain (which means both eating and transfusing). My main issue is that the organization says this is a conscience matter, whereas in practice this is not true. It is the societies conscience we are told to obey. We were always taught to tell the doctors that our conscience will not allow us to break God's law on blood. But what if someone's conscience did allow them, for whatever reason? This is why I think the blood issue (whole blood) should be something between them and Jehovah only. (Someone said well then we could say the same about fornication. Well, if no one in the congregation finds out about it, then it will still be between them and Jehovah, and they will have to answer to Jehovah for it in the end.
In line with this, I have noticed that elders on the HLC no longer "interfere" or are privy to a person's medical decision. In the USA hippa laws are strict, and absolutely no one should be able to find out if someone has had a blood transfusion, even relatives. So if someone does get a blood transfusion, it remains between them and Jehovah.
I think Tom's handling of the situation with the young brother in hospital was very good. No elder should be persuading another person to follow his (the elder's) conscience, or anybody else's conscience for that matter. The conscience is each person's their own. (This is why the conscientious objection to alternative service was a farce because the brothers who objected, for the most part, didn't know why they were objecting, they were just following the societies conscience). 
The stance now is we do not fight the Superior Authorities when it comes to transfusing children. Which makes me wonder where the principle "obey God as ruler rather than men" went to? Did we decide this because we do not want to make a spectacle of ourselves, fighting court battles and making it look like JW parents want their children to die? Don't get me wrong, I am glad about it, but where in truth does it leave  "obey God as ruler rather than man?" It seems like the organization has compromised... or not? Same with the fractions becoming  a conscience matter. I get why this was so, they "didn't want to get "dogmatic" (a phrase we will probably be hearing a lot more). But how much of this was also for practical reasons? The guidance about blood fractions itself says that people should realize that many vaccines (which members of Bethel used) and other therapeutic medicines contains blood fractions. So the person who says no to blood fractions should realize this, and then make an informed decision. I wonder if the covid vaccines had been based on blood fractions, or contained blood fractions, how would the organization have handled that? Probably they wouldn't have been able to "push" it like they did, and would have just had to say it's each person's decision, based on their own conscience. 
For me, when it comes to the question of blood, we don't want to be putting our life at risk just for man made rules. We have to be sure it is Jehovah's law, and by the looks of it this camp is split into two. Some say yes and some say no. 
I feel like we should apply Occam's razor and go with the simplest and clearest explanation. 
It's all giving me a headache...
 

Going back on topic, (of a post that hasn't been on topic, lol) in reading everyone's comments I see the reasoning behind both the against and the for blood. Personally I can see why someone would abstain (which means both eating and transfusing). My main issue is that the organization says this is a conscience matter, whereas in practice this is not true. It is the societies conscience we are told to obey. We were always taught to tell the doctors that our conscience will not allow us to break God's law on blood. But what if someone's conscience did allow them, for whatever reason? This is why I think the blood issue (whole blood) should be something between them and Jehovah only. (Someone said well then we could say the same about fornication. Well, if no one in the congregation finds out about it, then it will still be between them and Jehovah, and they will have to answer to Jehovah for it in the end.
In line with this, I have noticed that elders on the HLC no longer "interfere" or are privy to a person's medical decision. In the USA hippa laws are strict, and absolutely no one should be able to find out if someone has had a blood transfusion, even relatives. So if someone does get a blood transfusion, it remains between them and Jehovah.
I think Tom's handling of the situation with the young brother in hospital was very good. No elder should be persuading another person to follow his (the elder's) conscience, or anybody else's conscience for that matter. The conscience is each person's their own. (This is why the conscientious objection to alternative service was a farce because the brothers who objected, for the most part, didn't know why they were objecting, they were just following the societies conscience). 
The stance now is we do not fight the Superior Authorities when it comes to transfusing children. Which makes me wonder where the principle "obey God as ruler rather than men" went to? Did we decide this because we do not want to make a spectacle of ourselves, fighting court battles and making it look like JW parents want their children to die? Don't get me wrong, I am glad about it, but where in truth does it leave  "obey God as ruler rather than man?" It seems like the organization has compromised... or not? Same with the fractions becoming  a conscience matter. I get why this was so, they "didn't want to get "dogmatic" (a phrase we will probably be hearing a lot more). But how much of this was also for practical reasons? The guidance about blood fractions itself says that people should realize that many vaccines (which members of Bethel used) and other therapeutic medicines contains blood fractions. So the person who says no to blood fractions should realize this, and then make an informed decision. I wonder if the covid vaccines had been based on blood fractions, or contained blood fractions, how would the organization have handled that? Probably they wouldn't have been able to "push" it like they did, and would have just had to say it's each person's decision, based on their own conscience. 
For me, when it comes to the question of blood, we don't want to be putting our life at risk just for man made rules. We have to be sure it is Jehovah's law, and by the looks of it this camp is split into two. Some say yes and some say no. 
I feel like we should apply Occam's razor and go with the simplest and clearest explanation. 
It's all giving me a headache...
 

Going back on topic, (of a post that hasn't been on topic, lol) in reading everyone's comments I see the reasoning behind both the against and the for blood. Personally I can see why someone would abstain (which means both eating and transfusing). My main issue is that the organization says this is a conscience matter, whereas in practice this is not true. It is the societies conscience we are told to obey. We were always taught to tell the doctors that our conscience will not allow us to break God's law on blood. But what if someone's conscience did allow them, for whatever reason? This is why I think the blood issue (whole blood) should be something between them and Jehovah only. (Someone said well then we could say the same about fornication. Well, if no one in the congregation finds out about it, then it will still be between them and Jehovah, and they will have to answer to Jehovah for it in the end.
In line with this, I have noticed that elders on the HLC no longer "interfere" or are privy to a person's medical decision. In the USA hippa laws are strict, and absolutely no one should be able to find out if someone has had a blood transfusion, even relatives. So if someone does get a blood transfusion, it remains between them and Jehovah.
I think Tom's handling of the situation with the young brother in hospital was very good. No elder should be persuading another person to follow his (the elder's) conscience, or anybody else's conscience for that matter. The conscience is each person's their own. (This is why the conscientious objection to alternative service was a farce because the brothers who objected, for the most part, didn't know why they were objecting, they were just following the societies conscience). 
The stance now is we do not fight the Superior Authorities when it comes to transfusing children. Which makes me wonder where the principle "obey God as ruler rather than men" went to? Did we decide this because we do not want to make a spectacle of ourselves, fighting court battles and making it look like JW parents want their children to die? Don't get me wrong, I am glad about it, but where in truth does it leave  "obey God as ruler rather than man?" It seems like the organization has compromised... or not? Same with the fractions becoming  a conscience matter. I get why this was so, they "didn't want to get "dogmatic" (a phrase we will probably be hearing a lot more). But how much of this was also for practical reasons? The guidance about blood fractions itself says that people should realize that many vaccines (which members of Bethel used) and other therapeutic medicines contains blood fractions. So the person who says no to blood fractions should realize this, and then make an informed decision. I wonder if the covid vaccines had been based on blood fractions, or contained blood fractions, how would the organization have handled that? Probably they wouldn't have been able to "push" it like they did, and would have just had to say it's each person's decision, based on their own conscience. 
For me, when it comes to the question of blood, we don't want to be putting our life at risk just for man made rules. We have to be sure it is Jehovah's law, and by the looks of it this camp is split into two. Some say yes and some say no. 
I feel like we should apply Occam's razor and go with the simplest and clearest explanation. 
It's all giving me a headache...
 

Take two of whatever makes you feel better, and call me in the morning. 

It's because I believe that if a non-Jewish person could eat an unbled animal that died naturally, then they could also trap or hunt or net an animal (mammal/fish/bird/etc) and eat it unbled. But even if it were only animals that died naturally, which might have been ideal, then it was still OK for people of the nations to eat unbled animals. Narrowing it down to distinguish which kinds were OK doesn't change that overall fact.
With the Jews, they had Moses read in their synagogues week after week so they would know the Mosaic Law. Did all the nations have Noah (Gen 6-9) read to them every week, so they would know the Noahide Law?
(Acts 15:20, 21) . . .but to write them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from what is strangled, and from blood. 21  For from ancient times Moses has had those who preach him in city after city, because he is read aloud in the synagogues on every sabbath.”
 
Also, the lines can get blurred. If I create a grazing path for bison at a precarious edge of a cliff, is it NATURAL that one might slip and fall to its death now and then? If a dog is trained to bring back a duck that I didn't quite kill when I hit it with a slingshot, but the dog kills it by holding it by the neck, did it die naturally? What if the dog brings me one that it caught on its own? What about the chipmunk the cat brought to my doorstep that dies after several hours of torture by the cat? If I take an animal from the mouth of a lion that just killed it by chasing away the lion, did it die naturally? 
I don't know the taboo you mean, but the above could just as well mean that Noah could NOT eat carrion. He could not eat an animal found dead of natural causes. And he couldn't eat an animal that still had blood (or breath) flowing in it. So he could only eat meat he purposely killed. He just couldn't eat it with the blood.
Blood made it taboo, and therefore blood WAS considered a sacred substance by decree of God himself. 

You are flat wrong.
This proves it.
 
 

First she gets perceived condescension from MM, and now you are going to give her a superiority complex.

Adding to Thinkings list, of which each item is different, so that I think that would have answered your question, is just plain ‘ol human error. Anyone who has ever worked in healthcare (my wife is a retired nurse) knows there is plenty of it. 
In my area, hospitals laid off nurses who would not accepted the Covid shot. This led to collapse of the hospital system, as there were a lot of them, not easily or affordably replaced, so largely not replaced, making the remaining staff take up the slack over which they protested and went on strike. Do you think this worked to increase the safety of transfusion protocol?
Just recently local hospitals were found to be in severe violation of a law that they must not be understaffed. It’s a LAW—how could that have not fixed the problem? It’s as though administrators say, ‘If our nurses quit, the very stones will take care of you!’
Everything is collapsing. And whereas JW’s stand on war, tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, and compliance with safety laws, place them BY FAR among the safest religions out there, you keep flailing a on a number so relatively tiny that neither Thinking nor myself can think of an example we personally know of. And neither of us are youngsters, especially Thinking.
In a revolving population of several million you are going to find countless examples of anything. But there is such a thing as focusing on the trees so minutely as to not see the forest.

Well … for me … I’m gonna go with the comprehensive integrated context I have … not guess that God changed his very character.
As I said before, it’s not REALLY about blood. It’s about respecting what God specifically says BELONGS TO HIM.
If I should say “You have permission to use my drafting tools, but if you touch my Hewlett Packard HP-41CX Calculator I will kill you …” it would be wise to take that at face value, and not look for “loopholes”.

Are we still under the full text in context of “Abstain from blood”?

True. It says something more like "flesh with its nephesh,blood" where "nephesh" can often mean breath/life/self/being).
I tried to overstate the point as part of the odd "kill-it-first" interpretation that says they could not eat living, moving, breathing animals that still had breath,blood flowing in them. So when verse 4 mentions "flesh with its soul,blood," that's the reason that if you go here, for example, https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/gen/9/1/t_bibles_9004 you only see the word life [that is] blood and life-blood as a translation of nephesh,blood. (Except one of the Spanish translations has "alma [o vida])."
You had said: "Animals" are like "man". Each is "soul".  That is not the meaning in the context of Genesis 9. Verse 4 is not using "soul" [nephesh] in the same way that Genesis 2:7 and the most of the Hebrew Bible uses the term. (Even the NWT stopped using the term "soul" as a consistent translation for "nephesh" in the 2013 NWT.) 
We are always taught that the living animal or human does not HAVE a soul but it IS a soul. It is different here. Here the animal is not a soul, but it HAS a soul.
(Leviticus 20:25) You must make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean and between the unclean bird and the clean; you must not make your souls loathsome by means of an animal or a bird or anything that creeps on the ground that I set apart for you to regard as unclean.
Or "psyche" (soul) in Greek:
(Acts 15:24) Since we have heard that some went out from among us and caused you trouble with what they have said, trying to subvert your souls . . . [NWT leaves out the term souls, here and just says "trying to subvert you."]
(1 Thessalonians 5:23) . . .And may the spirit and soul and body of you brothers, sound in every respect, be preserved blameless at the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
It's similar to the term "spirit" here in Ecclesiastes:
(Ecclesiastes 3:21) Who really knows whether the spirit of humans ascends upward, and whether the spirit of animals descends down to the earth?
 
So, I'm arguing, as most translators also do, that this is a special case of "nephesh" just as the NWT often treats special cases of nephesh and psyche without translating it as "soul."

Miles himself raised that objection. But I told him to suck it up. He’d already gotten his licks in. Time to move on. I knew Pudgy would back me and the card-catalog Librarian would be too tipsy to notice.

Yeah. That's why I said earlier that I believe in evolution! lol

I've weighed in on the blood issue discussions before, but I don't feel competent to add anything of value. Just opinions. Miles seems to have given it more thought and had more direct experience with it, so I'm glad to hear him out.
It happens too rarely these days but now and then someone stops by ready to share and discuss information in more depth on a topic. I'm always happy for that even if I end up with nothing to offer, or end up being unconvinced about a position, because I always learn something.
I'm not sure exactly what Miles' position is but I'd like to go back and catch up with what's going on in this topic.
And why is the blood topic in a discussion that started out about Malawi anyway?

When Jehovah’s organization was confronted with Covid and the vaccine campaign, and all the controversy generated, they tracked those whom they found easiest to track—those among their worldwide circle of full time servants. This informal survey indicated to them that any risk of vaccinate was quite low, acceptable in view of the risk of Covid which seemed quite high. Soon we began hearing of how most of those at Bethel had gotten vaccinated. 
Since then I have read, from the worldwide population, how ‘died suddenly’ is now a thing. Did they always?  A book by that name charts insurance company data to discover a significant, statistically most unlikely, spike in sudden unexplained deaths in otherwise healthy people, often the young, which coincides exactly with the time period in which vaccines began to be mandated for those employed in large companies.
There is no doubt that the worldwide statistical pattern shows this. Yet I look around the congregations and circuit and if it shows up, it is not so marked as to be noticeable to me.
It is probably similar with blood transfusions. You asked my personal experience. I gave it. I don’t know the overall pattern. I accept when you and others say some have died that you are not lying. As with Thinking, however, there does appear to be a lot of “fearmongering” (her word) to make the situation appear worse than it is.

No..by Christ's Law.
What you are doing here is clouding the blood issue in tangled webs and murky water with the fog of words so as to mislead.
Your arguments don’t make sense Miles….its and emotional issue in modern days times but it’s not all that hard to work out.

Oh my goodness…..it is a fear of all parents and surgeons and all medical people put such fear into such parents…what a calamity….i hope the recovery spiritually as I know they won’t ever recover from her death,
But Jehovah shows great love and mercy such one's just as he did to Peter..I sincerely hope the elders dealt with them in as Jesus would have…what a sad sad story.

Sometimes, when you read something, or somebody tells you something, it makes perfect sense. Other times you get the uneasy feeling it’s somewhere somehow you were being observed through binoculars by a duck.
…. there is an actual Latin word for this, but it escapes me at the moment.
You probably remember the scripture that says, paraphrased, “… you must not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk .…”.  The instant I read this scripture, many years ago, I understood why God would command such a thing, and I wholeheartedly agreed with it at the same level of seriousness that I instantly understood that it was intended.
Occasionally over the past 50 years, in discussing other subjects, I would mention that commandment, and was genuinely stunned that others did not also instantly “get it”. It made no sense to them. If you are going to KILL an animal for food … what’s the big deal how you cook it?
The younger animal is food. The mother’s milk is food. What’s the big deal? Neither one knows or is capable of comprehending WHAT is done with their being a resource.
Just as soldiers become soldiers for dozens of different reasons, even among soldiers, sometimes what is a moral necessity for one is incomprehensible for another.
The SYMBOLIC (  … if you will, the SPIRITUAL …) value of blood is unique, because by example and by edict from God, it is a common theme that runs throughout the whole Bible. It’s clear that we have permission to use as food anything that walks, crawls, swims or flies, including (if you can overcome the strong CULTURAL taboos, like when Jerusalem was under siege) people … presumably bled out from war wounds. Some people would rather starve to death …. and have.
The prohibition against blood is consistent in principle throughout the entire Bible, but what convinced me was the example of King David, a soldier who slaughtered men and animals by the thousands … himself … personally … in hand to hand and eyeball to eyeball combat. When he in laying siege to a city remarked he was thirsty, and the only close by water was in a well near the city walls, two of his men risked their lives in a hail of arrows, spears, and rocks to bring him back a bucket of water. 
David did NOT drink the water. He poured it out on the ground, not because it was blood, or even blood fractions, but because it REPRESENTED the lives of his two soldiers, the EXACT same way that blood represents all air-breathing (pneuma=air) souls. 
In 1960, when I first read that, I instantly “got it”, the same way I instantly understood about the “boiling a kid in it’s mothers milk”.
That’s why, for me, it is just as much respect for the IDEA, or SYMBOLISM of respecting that which Jehovah God has clearly stated is his jealously guarded personal property, as well as actual blood.
Some people “get it”.
Some people don’t.

This is a good and just point…I do remember big question marks on this document and nobody really talked about it. I also remember asking the brother as to how I could have a study with someone and teach what I didn’t believe or was not sure of. He explained you could make the statement …this is what the society believes …which I did and obviously some would inquire as to what I believed ….then we hear instructions from the GB we are not allowed to say that or make that statement…
I can remember thinking…..yeah that’s just because they don’t want to be caught out if it was proved wrong….I still say it today…..
Unfortunately legalities often come into play.

Over the years I have immensely enjoyed the continuous religious satire of “The Babylon Bee”, as they have excoriated and sometimes figuratively disemboweled Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, and Mega churches, the idea of a burning hell, and doctrines galore.
Today, it was Jehovah’s Witnesses turn, and it was painfully funny!
I had to ask ChatGBT what a “J-Dub” was, because I thought it was an insulting term. Then I had to think about that answer until it made sense
ChatGBT:  “The term "J-Dub" likely originated as a casual and abbreviated way for people to refer to Jehovah's Witnesses. It's a combination of the letter "J" from Jehovah and "Dub" from the "W" in Witnesses, creating a more informal and nickname-like expression. Informal language and slang often evolve naturally within communities, and this appears to be an example within the context of Jehovah's Witnesses.”  
As a small boy I had an uncle always referred to as “DubaGee” and many years later I figured out it meant W. G. for William Garrison something, the W. being pronounced “DubbaYuu”
With that insight, I find the ChatGBT EXPLANATION very reasonable.

And there you have it. In a nutshell.

Gasp!!!!
A conspiratorially-minded person could take this confession for an admission that MM IS The Librarian!!!! Now, that would be a puzzle piece to crow about!
Just like I have progressed from being rebuked years ago for shamelessly promoting my first book, Tom Irregardless and Me, to participating here to such a degree that some think I actually own the site.
When the number of my comments surpassed those of the formerly dominating @Pudgy (under a different name) I said, ‘What’s wrong—cat got your tongue? I never thought they would surpass those of @JW Insider, but that too eventually happened.
A few dark and paranoid persons began insisting I was the owner. I denied it, but there is a certain type of person who once they get something into their heads, you can forget about ever getting it out. So I began to play along with the notion, and will continue to do so until this site shuts down, which you never know if that will happen or not. @admin was sweating it a while back about some proposed legislation that would make it hot for webmasters. Apparently, the storm blew over. Meantime, I put most of my writing on my own platform, so if this ever does go up in smoke, I go up to a lesser degree.
I dedicated In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction to @The Librarian. A writer needs more than a muse. He also needs a villain—and she has provided a playground where villains roam freely, as well as others falling in diverse places on the spiritual spectrum. It’s not always clear where they fall, but it sure is engrossing to put together the puzzle—just know, if you find you have stepped into it, you have to back out for a time. Not every one on a mission is actually on one. Sometimes, they just so closely resemble a person on one that you can’t tell the difference.
Avant-garde to carry on in this way? The entire system is avant-garde, from the slippery one who chuckles hehehe))))) as he is cast down from the heavens, to the brother who rebadges the WaPo byline as ‘Theocracy Dies in Darkness,’ to the brother who cries ‘There is not a righteous man, not even one; there is no one who has any insight; there is no one who searches for God—except me.’

Hey. I was just confessing!

I believe in evolution.
I know this will stagger the faith of some participants here. But I just have to say it.
Evidence:
This discussion started by asking the question "How many here have ever held an MCP party card to look it over and see what it is?"
Watching the subsequent path of this discussion has made me a believer. Oh, and we even have a talking beaver chiming in from time to time!