The danger of Jehovah: dying by the good book
I read a very sad story today. A young man died following an accident, because he refused the blood he needed to survive (Jehovah’s Witness teenager dies after refusing blood transfusion)
He preferred to die because to accept blood would have meant exclusion from his social circle, his “family” of Jehovah’s Witlesses. To accept blood would have meant excommunication and to live the rest of his days feeling tainted, dirty or somehow diminished in the eyes of his “god”. So he preferred to die.
I hardly know what to say about this. One’s initial reaction is to seek a remedy, to prevent lives being wasted like this ever again. But we can’t police everyone, or everything. Perhaps we should congratulate ourselves for having a society that allows us to die, so long as we claim it’s what our god wants.
But this boy, Joshua McAuley, was just 15. He could not vote, or drink, or smoke or have sex. But he could die for a fiction. Should we allow children – no doubt infected with the lies of their parents – to die in this manner?
When it comes down to it, most of the concepts we are familiar with are fictions. This in no way diminishes our willingness to kill or be killed for them.
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[...] But this boy, Joshua McAuley, was just 15. He could not vote, or drink, or smoke or have sex. But he could die for a fiction. Should we allow children – no doubt infected with the lies of their parents – to die in this manner? – Wordsbyme [...]