What about the recent revision regarding blood transfusions—that it will no longer be a matter the congregation gets involved with? It’s not as though any view has changed with regard to the prohibition of blood stated at Acts 15:29. It’s just that the congregation will no longer get involved in how people navigate it. Two of the “four basic components of blood: white cells and platelets, make up less of a percentage, than some fractions: albumin and immunoglobulin that it has already been acknowledged Christians may have no problem with!
Is this new adjustment wrong? Or, is it a correction of something that was wrong before? Will there be hell to pay, one way or the other, with regard to the ones who made the revision? It certainly has impacted some lives.
It’s not the best question to ask, methinks. However, if one presses ahead to ask it anyway, surely the answer is “I don’t know.” You could build a case for unbraiding. Such as the harshness proclaimed for “whoever stumbles one of these little ones who believe” is suggestive. (Matthew 18:6) And, “Everyone to whom much was given, much will be demanded of him, and the one who was put in charge of much will have more than usual demanded of him.” (Luke 12:48) Is someone due for a thrashing?
Isn’t one presuming to speak for God with a question like that? Who can say what that One will do? But I tend to think that in the overall picture, they will make out okay. I tend to think that with them it will be: ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. I put you in charge of one mina. See, you have gained ten more. Sure, you stepped in it a few times but, Hey—who’s keeping score?’
An examination of the first century reinforces this gut feeling. They didn’t step in it back then? Or—to put it more precisely—they didn’t do things that could have been spun that way by their detractors? Even Peter and yes, Jesus himself, did. They both provided ample opportunity for detractors to take shots at them.
The trick lies not in sanitizing the present. The trick lies in desanitizing the past. It is relatively easy to do. Peter, for example, gets all balled up over something Jesus directly told him. Consequently, an untruth spreads among the disciples that who knows took how long to correct:
“Peter turned around and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, the one who at the evening meal had also leaned back on his chest and said: “Lord, who is the one betraying you?” So when he caught sight of him, Peter said to Jesus: “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him: “If it is my will for him to remain until I come, of what concern is that to you? You continue following me.” So the saying went out among the brothers that this disciple would not die. However, Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but he said: “If it is my will for him to remain until I come, of what concern is that to you?” (John 21:20-23)
It was Peter himself who messed this one up, not one of the “rank and file.” Were there an internet back then, enemies would be insisting that he can’t possibly be led by holy spirit to make such a blunder as that. Yet the Bible record itself says that Jesus entrusted the keys of the kingdom to him.
He did it again when he withdrew from gentile Christians out of fear of displeasing Jewish Christians—to the extent that Paul called him on it at Galatians 2:14: “But when I saw that they were not walking in step with the truth of the good news, I said to Cephas before them all: “If you, though you are a Jew, live as the nations do and not as Jews do, how can you compel people of the nations to live according to Jewish practice?” Who knows how many gentile believers were stumbled due to Peter having caved? (which he previously did in denying his Lord three times—though to his credit he was the only one to follow closely enough to have been put in that position.
This opens up the possibility that when someone says something before a Royal Commission that isn’t what you would expect him to say, he might have just caved. If so, he finds plenty of common ground in Peter.
Jesus himself made a move that you know internet critics would be up in arms over. They’d be outraged even more than with Peter, for this latter move involved lives more dramatically than did Peter’s blunders. They’d be demanding apologies. Were they to get one, they would take it as an admission of guilt:
Jesus said (John 6) that disciples must “drink his blood and eat his flesh.” Even then many walked away: “This speech is shocking! Who can listen to it?” Can you imagine their reaction years later on the internet when a frequent charge against Christians, fueling much hate and persecution, was that they practiced cannibalism? Would not they have insisted that Jesus directly stated that they would? You think they would have picked up on the spiritual nuances of Jesus’ words? I wouldn’t hold my breath. They would have misconstrued it—in some cases, even deliberately, as happens today.
So I think Jehovah will go easy on Christian headship. I don’t know that. But a consideration of the first century written record strongly suggests to me that it will be so. When you see an issue whose time has come, for whatever reason, to make a change over, make the change. Know that your enemies will lambaste you for it. But they were lambasting you before, so it hardly matters.
****** The bookstore
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