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Visions of Glory Series
with Barbara Grizzuti Harrison vignettes of this famous author's life, as reviewed from
her out-of-print book, Visions of Glory--A History and a Memory of
Jehovah's Witnesses |
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Transfusions |
Vaccinations, transfusions, and the grief of a parent losing her children, then viewed as "apostate" for that grief. |
An absurdly literal reading of the Mosaic injunction not to "eat blood," together with Paul's instructions (Acts 21:25) for Christians to "keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication," is bolstered by the Witnesses with the declaration that blood transfusion dates back to the ancient Egyptians (anything pagan is sinful) and by the seemingly contradictory fact that "the earliest reported use was a futile attempt to save the life of Pope Innocent VIII in 1492." [Yearbook, 1975, p. 222] (If the Church—whose genius it is to absorb and assimilate pagan practices so as to make Christ accessible to all people— does it, according to Witness logic, it can't possibly be right.)
It cannot be said that the Witnesses are not willing to endure grave discomfort, or to die for their beliefs. I have known Witnesses who scurried frantically from doctor to doctor, postponing vital operations in an often futile attempt to find a practitioner who would agree to operate without transfusing blood. (I have also been told, in confidence, by doctors that they did at the last moment—when it was apparent that the patient's life was at stake—administer blood transfusions unbeknownst to the Witness, in default of the agreement not to do so.) On the other hand, Watchtower publications are full of testimonials of people who were told that they would die without transfusions—and who, refusing transfusions, nevertheless lived. The 1975 Yearbook [pp. 22-25] cites the case of a woman with an aneurysm in a main artery leading to her spleen; she lost 70 percent of her blood, but survived without a transfusion. The Witnesses, she told her doctors, do not believe in divine healing. However, "because we obeyed Jehovah's command concerning blood, all of us have been blessed." This is a wonderful example of having it every which way: If you are a Witness and die because of refusing transfusions, you will live forever after your Paradise resurrection; the chances are, however—and the Witnesses bolster this with pseudoscientific evidence as to the efficacy of saline transfusions—that Jehovah will "bless" you and you will survive without a transfusion.
During World War II, male Witnesses imprisoned under Selective Service draft laws went so far as to refuse to be vaccinated, regarding vaccination, not illogically, as being no different from blood transfusion. Hugh Macmillan [Faith On The March, pp. 188-90], the elder assigned to visit and counsel imprisoned Witnesses, set them straight. He told the young men in solitary confinement that "All of us who visit our foreign branches are vaccinated or we stay at home. Now, vaccination," he said, with dubious logic, "is not anything like blood transfusion. No blood is used in the vaccine. It is a serum." He advised the jailed Witnesses to act as the prophet Jeremiah had. Jeremiah had told the governmental authorities of his time, "I am in your hands; do with me as you wish; if you put me to death, innocent blood will be on your hands." "They have you where they could vaccinate an elephant," Macmillan said, "and they will vaccinate you all" whether you agree to it or not. "If evil resulted," he told the prisoners "the government would be held responsible" by God. The blood of the innocent would be on Caesar's hands. The Witnesses agreed not only to accept transfusions, but to write a letter of apology to prison officials "for the trouble they had caused." (As one draft resister said to me about Witnesses in prison, "They were the good niggers.") My sympathy is with the Witnesses who were willing It; endure solitary confinement and withdrawal of all jail privileges and who listened to the voice of their conscience. Individual conscience, however, was overruled by the voice of authority. The jailed Witnesses were forced to violate their consciences, which told them that vaccine would pollute the bloodstream they had been taught to regard as sacred.
I grudgingly admire the brave silliness of adult Witnesses who are willing to risk the consequence of death by refusing to receive blood. They are analogous, in my mind, to would-be assassins of bad men—who are just as brave, just as silly, just as futile, and whose orientation is similarly futuristic. But how can one admire an adult who makes that life-or-death decision for a child? It is apparently a monstrous, unnatural act. But one must remember the brainwashing to which the Witnesses are constantly subjected; they are not monstrous child-haters; they are sad men and women with a mission and an obsession that overrules natural necessities and concerns.
They are surgically prepared by their overseers even to amputate their grief: "Because of the wonderful hope of the resurrection, a Christian is not overwhelmed with tears and grief. His sorrow is not as great or as deep as that upon those who have no knowledge of the hope the Bible gives." [Awake!, May 8, 1975, p. 23]
To suppress natural grief is to invite disaster. The Witnesses are psyched up to deny their grief. But I have seen Witnesses give way to an excess of grief that was terrifying. I knew a young mother who lost two small children in one year—one was run over by a car; the other died of pneumonia. The child who was struck by a car might have been saved by blood transfusions. In her fear and terror, his mother—who had been taught to make use of the world, and who could not make sense of this senseless slaughter—held him dying in her arms while she argued with doctors about blood transfusions. When her daughter died, six months later, she entered an unnatural calm, a false and dreadful stillness. She began to tell fellow Witnesses that she was sure her children were in heaven, that they visited her comfortingly in her dreams. The Witnesses, frightened by her apostasy— she could reasonably expect, according to their dogma, only to see her children resurrected to an earthly life, heaven being reserved for 144,000 older Witnesses— chided her for expressing heretical views. They scolded; they did not comfort. And yet many of them, many of the people who withheld comfort from a woman driven mad by grief, weren't monsters either. They were afraid of her because her grief threatened the security of their belief. She wasn't supposed to abandon herself to grief. So they chose to see her grief as Devil-inspired apostasy.
(p.98-100)