TrueTomHarley

10 hours ago, Anna said:

I just found the remark about keeping up with Jehovah's chariot a little strange,

Sometimes I think we overuse the chariot illustration. 

Recently my wife and I were invited on a KH remodeling project. At my age and non-skill level, I am not going to be any major player in anything, but I appreciated the invitation and accepted a two-day stint along with my wife.

Safety training is required—a lot of it before you even set foot on the project. For one session online that I was informed might take up to three hours—several videos followed by answering questions off the master safety document, I found myself beating back the cynical thought that some too-starryeyed artist might insert God strapped into his chariot in one of the videos. But it did not happen and I could not help but think that the quality of training would be the envy of any construction organization. The way scriptures were interwoven was masterful. Even the verse of the ‘overconfident one who comes to ruin’ was applied to the experienced worker inclined to blow past safety regulations because he is so experienced as to think himself immune. Nobody blows past anything when it comes to safety, experienced or not. You’re dismissed from the site if you do, but I didn’t see anyone coming even close to grumbling over such rules of safety, which are iron-clad. Zero accidents is the goal.

Not just the training, but the project itself. The people skills on display far outshone what would be found on any secular construction site. The abilities of volunteers, some experienced and some not, was harnessed to an astonishing degree. Always, there was a brother with oversight to accommodate any skill level and to break any task into doable steps—and always with the safety and overall well-being of participants placed even ahead of the job itself. First of all, they are shepherds, I am told—that is incorporated into their training. In short, I’ve never seen anything like it—even if the chariot was not on visible display.

15 hours ago, Pudgy said:

No, I have never, to my rememberance, used the word bankrupt here on the Archive before. I have never once said that before.  
 If you can show I am wrong, I stand corrected.

No. You did not use the term bankrupt in connection with 1975. You used terminology that meant the same thing—massive upheaval in your life. Whereas you were an engineer for many years and thus are accustomed to being precise, I am not. I am stuck with common sense and knowing a synonym when I see one.

Are you even sure ‘bankrupt’ is the proper word in this connection? Did you file for Chapter 7? If anything, the word would have been more appropriate for your job change back in 75, when it appears you took a certain financial hit.

22 hours ago, Pudgy said:

I am happy the Brotherhood, and my sons, are now free of this tyranny.

It would have helped,  had there been an apology for all the ruined lives.

I’ve no patience for calling this sort of thing ‘tyranny.’ It’s not important enough. Moreover, given what you have written about your sons in the past, they appear to have no issue with it. Save your ‘tyranny’ for occasions in which to resist will cost you more than hurt feelings.

Everyone must pick the hill they will die on. I like the expression not only for its surface value, but also for its acknowledgment that you will die on one. So make it count, son. Don’t die on a stupid hill. Don’t leave your epitaph to say: “Here lies Pudgy. I guess he told those elders a thing or two, didn’t he?”

5 hours ago, xero said:

It turned out my answers in the meeting suggested I relied on "Worldly Wisdom", my shoes weren't shiny enough and I walked funny when I went up to the podium.  So I thought to myself that I want this elder to feel good about this counseling session so I asked him to watch me at the meetings and let me know if I was slipping in these areas. I told him that when conversing w/the friends I would mention where in the Societies pubs I read whatever it was I was commenting on, so they wouldn't get the idea I was pushing some novel idea unique to me as well. He seemed pleased with my responses. My thoughts were that as an elder you can do some damage, so if I make this elder happy about giving counsel he'll do a better

Exactly. You do these things. You don’t make an issue over such things. You say to yourself, ‘Well, this is dumb,’ if you think it is, but you do them anyhow. Or not. Don’t do them if it is important enough to you, but then don’t cry if this or that privilege doesn’t come your way. 

We forget what stubbornness is. Because people are stubborn, persons are literally sent to their deaths, their lives are actually ruined. Compromises are not reached today in Ukraine and Israel because people are both truculent and stubborn. There they literally die on hills—they don’t just get their feelings hurt.

The entire tort system of law thrives because people are stubborn—1/3 of our wealth ends up in the pockets of barristers because people are stubborn and refuse to compromise. 

You don’t cheapen words like ‘tyranny’ and ‘ruined lives’ by using them in this context. Our ‘tyranny’ and ‘ruined lives’ is child’s play to that of the greater world. All a person would have to do to avoid it (in Xero’s situation) is to shine your shoes. I’ll shine mine as brightly as the expanse of the heavens if I have to; it’s not a big deal—and to make it such says as much about me as it does them. (As it turns out, I don’t have to. I haven’t worn shineable shoes in 20 years at least and nobody cares.)

On the one hand, it all seems pretty silly. The greater world solved this beard issue decades ago: 

And the sign said
"Long-haired freaky people
Need not apply"
So I tucked my hair up under my hat
And I went in to ask him why
He said, "You look like a fine upstandin' young man
I think you'll do"
So I took off my hat and said, "Imagine that
Huh, me workin' for you"

There. Done. Settled. Back in 1990. Whereas, we don’t settle it till 2023. But, in fairness, it ought be remembered that the overall world is going down the toilet and Jehovah’s organization is not.

More than once the Bible says that those drawn to the Lord must become like young children. And indeed they have proved to be that way, not just in the good ways but also the not-so-good. 

Paul said: “Brothers, do not become young children in your understanding, but be young children as to badness.” (1 Cor 14:20) Why did he say this—because they never became young children in their understanding?

So it has proved today, with issues taking longer to resolve than you might think would be the case. Those the Lord can work with are like ‘young children.’ Those whom he cannot are ones too insistent upon their rights to be molded. They are left to the reward of whatever their discord can produce. In short, “they are having their reward in full.”

6 hours ago, Thinking said:

Your looking at it the wrong way…you are victorious…..but no one’s going to admit it…..the stupidity of man made rules…is being uncovered….

years ago we had a young brother who was 6’5 and he was a pioneer….and he had a ned Kelly beard..( long one ) don’t know how he got away with it.

He stared them down.

Seriously. I think that’s what happened. Stared down the local elders, that is, not the GB who apparently didn’t have a problem with it, willing to completely defer to the local BoE, though it may have been a Branch thing. 

It was not in the Bible. It never appeared in Watchtower print. (other than many examples of ‘shaving one’s beard’ listed in the changes made on the road to baptism) The reasons for it, association with beatniks and hippies, disappeared decades ago. We’ve had articles to the effect that we don’t do rules, but primarily principles. And yet, no rule was a firmly enforced as the unwritten no-beard rule.

But—with no documentation behind it—you could stare them down. That’s what I imagine this Kelly beard brother did. I did sort of the same thing with blogging, which may be why I see it this way. He stared them down, not defiantly, but by being such a good example that, even while holding his ground on this matter, they couldn’t tell him no.

If an entire Update dedicated to beards being now okay seems like overkill (it did to me), one might recall that they tried underkill and it didn’t work. From the Sept 2016 Wt: “Does Your Style of Dress Glorify God?”

What about the propriety of brothers wearing a beard? The Mosaic Law required men to wear a beard. However, Christians are not under the Mosaic Law, nor are they obliged to observe it. (Lev. 19:27; 21:5; Gal. 3:24, 25) In some cultures, a neatly trimmed beard may be acceptable and respectable, and it may not detract at all from the Kingdom message. In fact, some appointed brothers have beards. Even so, some brothers might decide not to wear a beard. (1 Cor. 8:9, 13; 10:32) In other cultures or localities, beards are not the custom and are not considered acceptable for Christian ministers. In fact, having one may hinder a brother from bringing glory to God by his dress and grooming and his being irreprehensible.—Rom. 15:1-3; 1 Tim. 3:2, 7.

This paragraph was a big deal at the time, at least in my area. I never look at articles until just before we are to cover then at meetings (unlike when the magazines came in the mail and I read them through promptly), but this paragraph I knew about up front because brothers were talking about it seemingly the day after it was written. When that Watchtower Study finally came, that paragraph was like the elephant in the room that everyone was awaiting, and then Yessss! paragraph 17 finally arrived and you could talk about it. Some congregations spent extra time to ‘explain’ it.

I thought that would be the end of it. I thought at long last the issue had been laid to rest. I thought beards would soon be showing up—at first in publishers and then in MS and elders. Instead, it seemed like congregations doubled-down, as if with the attitude: ‘Well, okay, they can wear beards if they insist, but no way will they ever be appointed.’ A few publishers grew them, but nothing more.

’Look, we don’t have an issue with it,’ is what the GB finally said in this latest Update. It’s not new. It’s what they said 7 years ago only it didn’t take. This time, to make sure it wasn’t another misfire that didn’t take, they made it a big production, brought in bells and whistles, the chariot, and disclaimers for guys like those here who say, ‘It’s about time!’ and for the more rigid guys who drew a line in the sand and are now aghast to see it erased.

Old habits die hard. It may be that circumcism was once biblical whereas no-beards was not. The two customs don’t parallel in that regard. But in the regard of ‘old habits die hard,’ they parallel exactly. 

For me, it is like when the man who invented AI died. ‘Restaurant in peace’ the obits read, though there were a few harsher ones that said, ‘May he rot in hello.’

2 minutes ago, xero said:

My mother used to say whenever anyone would say "Small things for small minds", "Small pants fit small behinds"

I would have liked to have met your mother.

5 hours ago, Pudgy said:

…. but I look at the price I paid, and it bankrupted me.

I thought it was 1975 that bankrupted you. You have said that often enough—quitting that fine job in Africa and all.

15 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

More has been accomplished in this discussion than meets the eye. Maybe there's more life to it yet. We'll see.

Oh yeah, it happens all the time. A thread will deteriorate into a bunch of ‘treading water’ remarks, then a new wave comes along and everyone washes off in a new direction—must to the consternation of The Librarian (that old hen) who cries about her card catalogue and how it exists to keep separate topics separate. 

Sometimes a thread even deteriorates into, ‘You’re stupid!’ ‘No, you’re stupid!’ ‘When you were born the doctor probably slapped your mama and not you!’ and so forth. You come along with your shovel to bury the thread, then it catches another breath and it is Game On again in a new direction.

26 minutes ago, Pudgy said:

… just waiting for the blockbuster movie “Adam and Eve vs Australian Aborigines”.

I’m on it. It will be a fine successor to ‘TrueTom vs the Apostate!’

7 hours ago, Thinking said:

Being the oldest should mean more wisdom and respect wouldn’t it…🤭

Well, in that case she would be ancient.

2 hours ago, Pudgy said:

I developed this understanding when I started integrating information from all sources, and STOPPED ignoring hard evidence.

It explains who Cain was afraid of and why they would want to kill him on sight, even if he wandered a thousand miles away.

It even explains who Cain “married” in exile.

It even explains the Aborigines in Australia, whose culture is 60,000 years old.

It would also rescue me from the young earth creationists. I’ve always been leery of these guys. As speculation goes, I kinda like it. 

X

3 hours ago, Many Miles said:

If x then y

Not x then not y because of x

Next, I will ask the Librarian how she feels about algebra. (that old hen)

12 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

I prefer enchiladas.

How to you feel about gin?

(private joke—if you get it, I will KNOW you are—hic—the Librarian)

1 hour ago, Pudgy said:

Before that, people were living all over the Earth, before God directly created a NEW specis, in Eden, that had an opportunity to live forever.

I have never heard this before? Where did you?

”Where did this pooch get his wisdom? Is this not Pudgy, who we used to walk every day?”

3 hours ago, Many Miles said:

My buttered popcorn is good!

How do you feel about tacos?

9 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Mom is JW, father is not JW. Is the teenager JW?

Nominally, he was. I didn’t get the impression his heart was in it. The mom certainly was and I was there as much to support her as her son. Sometimes people just like an ally, regardless of how things go down.

On 12/7/2023 at 1:01 AM, Pudgy said:

… I was just getting ready to reply something I thought was profound, wise, insightful and wrong.

…. but then the idea occorred to methat we have never seen MM and the Big L in the same post….

Coincidence?

Oh, it is hardly proof positive, but both have been around for a long, long time. Both respond to me in more or less the same way. Both are avante garde about respecting the GB’s wishes—MM has made it clear, and the Librarian just for hosting such a site. Both have a fixation on order—concerned when a thread wanders. Both respond to challenges with snippets about food—‘I like tacos’ for the Librarian, ‘pass the popcorn’ for MM

I mean, I wouldn’t stake significant sums on it, but no way is it an absurd speculation.

8 hours ago, Many Miles said:

I was really looking for a view from a casual observer. It means something to me.

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.

7 hours ago, Many Miles said:

The question of fractions harvested knowingly and purposely from blood to take what we want is like asking God if it would have been okay for Adam to knowingly and purposely harvest what he wanted to eat from the tree of knowledge and throw the rest away without eating it. And what response do you think that would have evoked from God? Who knows, maybe Adam didn't like peelings.

Seen in that light, it is. Seen in the light of ‘drained animals yet retain traces of blood’ it isn’t. I’m not sure why you’d have to be a microbiologist to serve God. Blood is recognizable, even broken into packed red, packed white, etc. Fractions are not.

Nor did you answer my question, even to say ‘I don’t know,’ about percentages at the Bethels.

At any rate, the problem’s been effectively solved, as you indicated and I responded about that draft letter to be kept top of the chart. It is plain that you’re not going to be satisfied without things going down 100% your way, but nothing in life is like that.

9 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

And why is the blood topic in a discussion that started out about Malawi anyway?

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.

4 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

If you had to name a primary medical issue leading to mortality related to blood, what would be your top five?

I would leave the question for someone who has better data at their fingertips and instead ask this one:

The notion that fractions might be viewed differently than blood, some feeling ‘it’s not a cake until you mix the ingredients,’ and so we hear of persons urged to make their own conscientious  decisions . . .I wonder how they turn out at the Bethels. The two poles regarding fractions are accept them all or reject them all, doubtless with some picking and choosing in between. How does that go down in Bethel? Roughy equal, or is the majority toward one pole or the other?

We did come to learn how they are with vaccines. I wonder how it shakes out with fractions. It is possible, even likely, that nobody knows, that it is not something tracked. But it still makes me curious.

36 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

But you characterized the occurrence as "occasional". How many times need I ask to get an answer of what you mean by that? If you can't quantify it then how to do characterize it as you have? So what does your characterization mean? 

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.

1 hour ago, Thinking said:

My goodness that would have been so hard to do with that young lad with an unbelieving dad…so happy you didn’t try to persuade him in any way

Some expected me to. I caught some flak next morning from one of the boy’s hometown elders. I didn’t answer then as I would today—that they should have been there themselves if they were concerned about his outcome. I just knew at the time with this unknown teen that if he hadn’t formed a stand by now it was a little late to start just then, or for me to encourage that.

Then, of course, adding to my prior answer to Many Miles, there was the time I was admitted myself for a sudden onset of pain and they advised surgery come Monday morning. I made clear at least twice how I felt about blood and was told, ‘Not a problem, easily accommodated, we do it all the time. Just sign here and here.’ Then, on the operating table, in comes the anesthesiologist who says, ‘I see you’re a Witness. If it should turn out that you need a transfusion, will you accept one? Or would you rather die?’

The experience is in ‘Tom Irregardless and Me,’ where it was attributed to Wayne Whitepebble. But it was really me.

2 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

How can you realize something you've never personally known of?

What kind of a silly question is that?

Come, come, Many Miles, you’re picking a fight. Everyone knows how you can learn of things that you don’t know from personal experience.

1 hour ago, Many Miles said:

What, in your experience, does "occasional" mean? … I'm curious what your experience is… I understand you'd only be speaking of one man's opinion and experience

I have known three people in my lifetime who were told, point blank, and without much empathy, that they would die without a blood transfusion. None agreed to one. None died. One of them was a teen backed by her parents. 

I realize that some persons have died, as you’ve indicated. I have just never personally known of one.

I also recall being asked to visit a teen from some rural congregation who had been in an accident and was being advised a transfusion was necessary. His mom was a Witness, his dad was not. I went with the idea that if this lad, who I did not know, wished for no transfusion, I would back him in his wish.  He did not indicate any such desire and he was transfused. I do not know what became of him afterwards. The experience was awkward and uncomfortable for me, not knowing any of the people involved. 

The closest experience with blood that I know, not exactly what you have asked,  is of a nearby couple whose son had a defective heart from birth. The local hospitals would not agree to operate without blood. His parents took him to a hospital out of state that specialized in bloodless medicine, where the heart was repaired without incident. Several years later the problem (or a new one) returned. This time, neither the local hospital nor the bloodless one held out much hope. Parents took him to the hospital that had operated the first time, and he died. Sorry, I don’t have the specifics of exactly what his defect was.

The husband was not a believer when these trials began. He acquiesced to his wife’s stance. The support he received from the friends at the faraway hospital made such an impression upon him that he later became a Witness, and was one at the time of the child’s second operation. He has remained steadfast in the faith and serves as an elder today.

Another elder who I don’t know well—his youngest suffered some malady and hospitals wanted transfusions. They held firm and the boy is well today, with what treatment I forget, but the man recalled to me his anguish at the time that his son might die “to no purpose.”

It is too easy to take the JW blood transfusion stand as an arbitrary concoction of their ‘top brass,’ imposed on everyone else for—who knows what reason? In this crazy world of ‘anticult activism,’ it can be spun as a technique of ‘controlling people:’ Lay a few conditions on others and there is no question as to who is boss.

That is why I like this quote from Professor of Anatomy at the University of Copenhagen, Thomas Bartholin. (1616-1680) Yes, it was a long time ago. Does that make it irrelevant? If anything, it makes it key. 

“Those who drag in the use of human blood for internal remedies of diseases appear to misuse it and to sin gravely . . . Cannibals are condemned. Why do we not abhor those who stain their gullet with human blood? Similar is the receiving of alien blood from a cut vein, either through the mouth or by instruments of transfusion. The authors of this operation are held in terror by the divine law, by which the eating of blood is prohibited,” he writes.

It is key because it shows the stand educated people took, at least some of them, before the occasional price that has been paid caused ‘the faithful’ to go all weak in the knees. Did Jehovah’s Witnesses make this stuff up about blood transfusions just to be ornery? No. Their stance was once the stance that immediately occurred to God-fearing persons such as this professor. I’d take him over that smart-ass GC philosophy professor any day.

The smart-ass philosophy professor—no question about it—leans heavily toward atheism, if not embracing it entirely. He consistently insists that ‘rationality’ must define all. He consistently insists that belief in God is ‘irrational.’ You can do it if you want—he gives his permission—but just don’t imagine you’re being ‘rational.’ To be sure, there are philosophies that would prohibit you, but they are as logically inconsistent as the ones that allow you, so he doesn’t know what to do until he has rationally settled the problem, a project that isn’t going too well, though that doesn’t phase him.

It makes a difference if you are atheist or not. Leaning toward atheism means that any loss of life is permanent and therefore must be averted at all costs. Exceptions are made for loss of life due to war, due to scientific or other exploration, even for extreme sports. For the latter, the deceased is likely, not to be derided as the idiot everyone else thinks he is, but to be lauded for having ‘lived life to the full,’ ‘following his dreams’ and so forth.  But if that dream has to do with religion—then and only then is such loss of life deemed near-criminal.

To be sure, atheists are not glib about loss of life. They endorse efforts to make war safer, for instance, by sending in drones to do the bombing, rather than soldiers who might get hurt. They make us all wear seatbelts when we drive. No spouse has ever nagged so much as my car nags me if I ride unbuckled—the alarm starts pleasantly enough but soon escalates to nuclear war alarm level that is well-nigh unbearable. Protective equipment, even concussion protocol, is devised for football athletes—no, not that silly game where you kick the ball around but can’t touch it with your hands, but the one where you can manhandle it and anyone with it pretty much anywhichway you like—violence comparable to rugby, I am told. They’ve made it safer. They even stopped the game when the Bills players dropped on the field and the ambulance came out to administer CPR before taking him away. It took about an hour, during which teammates crowded around so fans could not see the fellow being worked on, an hour during which the sports broadcasters had to uncomfortably tread water, but they did afterward call off the game and all the fans went home. They didn’t do as in Ancient Rome: ‘Another one bit the dust! Bring out the next combatant!’

Jehovah’s Witnesses have also made their Bible-based transfusion stand ‘safer’—not directly they haven’t, but by spurring on the advent of bloodless medicine, they have made holding fast far ‘safer’ than it used to be. From Tom Irregardless and Me: 

“The Watchtower organization never meant to kill a god; Witnesses just wanted him to leave them alone. We initially assumed when doctors told us we were crazy for refusing blood transfusions that we were, at least insofar as the present life is concerned. But each passing year has revealed our position to be more sound medically, and the transfusion god’s less. We never imagined doctors would ultimately expose transfusion as a sham and kill the god. It wasn’t our intention for that to happen. We don’t gloat about it. 

“To be sure, it hasn’t happened. The god of blood transfusion is not dead. He’s alive. But he’s not well. He’s limping where he once walked tall. He is like the god of churches that Sam Harris boasts he has killed. He’s respected so long as he stays in his place. But his place used to be anywhere he wanted it to be. He’ll be around for a long time because too many incomes depend upon him. But he’s not the god he once was.”

So the Witness transfusion policy on transfusion, like the above policies on other secular matters, is much safer than it once was. It is certainly far ‘safer’ than it was in Bartholin’s day, back when a godly person would instantly recognize that to misuse blood was to “sin gravely” and be “held in terror by the divine law.”

On 12/4/2023 at 9:55 AM, Many Miles said:

This is a document that is signed by treating doctors and the child's parents and is "TO BE PLACED IN THE FRONT OF THE CHART". (Upper case in original document) The primary language reads:

"In an emergency, where your child is apparently experiencing severe suffering or is at risk, if the treatment is not administered promptly, of sustaining serious bodily harm, medical staff will provide treatment that is allowed by the law, which may include blood transfusion."

This document was put together just for JWs, and it was drafted with full support from the society's hospital information services department. When JW parents have minor children in other hospitals HLC members have initiated inquiries as to whether the institution has such a letter of understanding, and if they do not would they consider using one.

To the extent that this is true (I’m pretty sure it is, but I just don’t want to rubber-stamp it), it has not become a situation in which the prevailing view of transfusion has changed. It has become a situation in which HQ says it is not for them to enforce one’s compliance or non-compliance. They are moving more into the arena of ‘each one must carry his own load’ as opposed to ‘You’d better carry it; we’re watching you.’ It would be in perfect harmony with the revised stand ‘over counting time.’ It might be okay for the enforcer to verify that you count time, but not the shepherd. 

To the extent it is true, if someone caves on the blood issue due to cowardice, like Peter caved in denying his Lord and then later in the matter of partiality, it is between them and Jehovah. If someone ‘caves’ on this issue due to conviction, it is also between them and Jehovah. The shepherding organization may well assist, healing in the instance of cowardice, educating in the case of possibly misplaced conviction, but will otherwise stand aside and not meddle in the affairs of the ‘house slave’ of another. It is a win-win. Being a win-win, to continue to rail over transfusion beliefs begins to smack of ‘fighting against God.’ There they are, plain as day, according to Bartholin. The support organization has fixed the issue. What more could you ask for, other than usurping the power to resurrect? You’ll just have to wait on that for a while.