JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES WILL SAY they refuse blood transfusions because it displeases their God Jehovah, due to transfusions being condemned in Acts 15:29. In other words, it’s their love for God that motivates them to die rather than break one of His laws. On the surface, this might appear to be a principled decision to be admired, but it’s really not.
Putting aside the fact that Acts 15:29 has been wrongly interpreted by their governing body, on whom they rely for their understanding of what their cruel God demands of His worshippers, and whom they are indoctrinated to believe are worthy of total obedience, or even the reality that their God only exists in their imaginations, the actual reason JWs don’t take blood is that they think they will suffer consequences if they do, namely:
a) They will face a judicial committee and at the very least be publicly reproved and lose any “good standing” or “privileges” they may have in the congregation;
b) If deemed unrepentant for not dying, they will be viewed as voluntarily disassociating themselves from the organisation (not disfellowshipped to avoid legal reasons);
c) Their entire network of friends and family will shun them;
d) They will miss out on eternal life on a paradise Earth.
At its core, their decision to refuse blood is neither principled nor brave. It’s not fundamentally about pleasing God or “doing the right thing”. It’s primarily selfish. It’s about what they will lose if they accept a blood transfusion. The imagined loss, it seems, outweighs life in this world, such that it becomes merely a numbers game—a few years of this life now in exchange for “100 billion years” in the next (to quote Gerrit Lösch). Is it any wonder Jehovah’s Witnesses are quick to give up their lives when they spend every day wishing for the world and their non-JW “enemies” to come to an end? This life, it seems, has no real value to them, despite them referring to it as the #bestlifeever. They live for the “real life” in a future Earthly paradise that will, sadly, never come.
Worse still, it’s tragic because none of the “reasons” they give for refusing a life-saving blood transfusion have any validity. They’re just doing what the governing body tells them to do, and what they think they have to do in order not to lose their friends/family/future life prospects. Unquestionable allegiance to a group of men presuming to speak for God as “the voice of Jesus”, is not brave. It’s stupid, like the proverbial lemmings who throw themselves over the cliff for no real reason. They say their refusal of blood is a “personal decision” and that they sign their No Blood cards “without duress”, but is that really the case when they know they would face severe sanctions for accepting a blood transfusion? I don’t think so. They are motivated not by love of God, but by fear of men. I wonder how many JWs would accept blood if the governing body told them it was a “conscience matter” (as they did in the 1940s), or came up with a new interpretation of Acts 15:29 that excluded transfusions. Would individual JWs breathe a sigh of relief and start taking blood transfusions, or would they stubbornly cling to the current Acts 15:29 interpretation and be disfellowshipped for apostasy because “the Bible says so”? My guess is they would drop their “principles” pretty quickly and adopt the “new light”. The original poster (
It’s also worth remembering that Jehovah’s Witnesses will accept certain blood fractions that have been made available by non-Witnesses donating blood. Yet they themselves will never give blood to save others. They’re not brave. They’re selfish, misled, and in the case of withholding life-saving treatment from their children, even abusive.
Jehovah’s Witnesses refusing blood transfusions is not something to be admired.