This weekend at a Jehovah’s Witness regional conference, Governing Body member Tony Morris shared a story with the audience that provoked quite a chilling reaction.
Morris told the story about a little boy named “Josh,” who was in the hospital because of medical emergency. According to his story, the doctors, knowing his parents’ religious beliefs that forbid blood transfusions, waited until the parents were out of the room to tell the boy that he needed a blood transfusion or else he would die.
“You know what Josh responded? … ‘Then please respect my wishes about blood.’ He says, ‘I told one doctor who tried to get me to take blood, you may think I’m crazy, but I have all my thinking abilities. I just want to live by Jehovah’s law on blood. He knows what’s best for us.’”
Morris added that the story was a “good example of faith in the face of incredible stress and persecution.”
“And when he’s resurrected, you’ll hear more from him, because Jehovah loves that little fella.”
Lloyd Evans, who monitors JW activities, said the convention in Knoxville, Tennessee “set a new record for the most disturbing and distasteful Sunday-afternoon motivational experience.”
[The audiences applauded] despite the fact that a young boy, clearly a product of childhood religious indoctrination, is now dead because of the Governing Body’s stubborn prohibition of a medical procedure on which the bible, for all its prodigious rule-making, is silent. After all, how could bible writers ban something centuries before it is invented?
There is no way of knowing how many Jehovah’s Witnesses, like Josh, have had their lives tragically abbreviated by Watchtower’s blood stance, which only dates back as far as 1945. Though the likes of Morris show pride and enthusiasm in sharing these anecdotes before doting audiences, they are curiously less eager to release official statistics indicating the global yearly death-toll resulting from their teachings.
As Hermant Mehta of The Friendly Atheist pointed out, there’s no way to know if the story Morris told is from an actual account or is fictional, but real stories of children’s lives being put at risk – or losing their lives altogether – because of this horrific religious practice are plentiful.
Watch the video below:
Featured image: JWHelp.org
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