[From ws15/09 for Nov 1-7]
“The objective of this instruction is love out of a clean heart
and out of a good conscience.” – 1 Tim. 1:5
This study asks us whether our own conscience is a reliable guide. One would presume that by studying this article, we will be able to answer that question.
Learning how the conscience works and how to train and exercise our conscience is a good thing. It is the trained conscience, not the commands of men, that tells us what to do when there is no direct scriptural rule governing an action or regulating a choice. For example, we might reflect on Matthew 6:3, 4.
“But you, when making gifts of mercy, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, 4 that your gifts of mercy may be in secret; then your Father who is looking on in secret will repay you.” (Mt 6:3, 4)
Bible study will have taught us that a gift of mercy is a gift that alleviates the suffering of another. It may be a material gift to one in need, or the gift of an understanding and sympathetic ear in a time of distress. It may be the gift of knowledge freely imparted that helps people to resolve one or more of life’s problems. In this regard, we are told that our preaching work is an act of love and mercy.[i] Therefore, we could rightly consider that expending our time, energy and material resources to preach the good news amounts to making a gift of mercy to those in need.
Further to that, we might reason that providing details of the time and activity we devote to this merciful work would amount to disregarding the clear direction of our Lord Jesus in Matthew 6:3, 4. By letting our right hand know what our left is doing, we would be in line to get accolades from men. Men might look up to us, put us on convention platforms as examples of zeal in the ministry. We might get greater “privileges” in the congregation based partially on the amount of activity we report. Our conscience might warn us that in so doing we are imitating the pseudo-righteous men Jesus warned us about when he said:
“Take care not to practice your righteousness in front of men to be noticed by them; otherwise you will have no reward with your Father who is in the heavens. 2 So when you make gifts of mercy, do not blow a trumpet ahead of you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be glorified by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” (Mt 6:1, 2)
Not wanting to have our reward paid in full by men, but preferring instead to have Jehovah repay us, we could decide to desist from handing in our monthly Field Service Report.
Since there is no Bible requirement to report one’s preaching time, this becomes a strict matter of conscience.
What would you expect the reaction to be to such a conscientious decision?
This week’s study article gives us this sage advice:
“If we cannot understand the conscientious decision of a fellow believer on some personal matter, we should not quickly judge him or feel that we ought to pressure him to change his mind.” – par. 10
Imagine telling your congregation secretary that you’ve decided not to report your time anymore. When asked why, you simply state that it is a personal decision made in good conscience. You might expect that the counsel not to judge nor pressure someone who makes a choice based on his or her conscience would apply, especially from those charged with obeying the instructions of the Organization.
From personal experience, I can attest that the opposite will be the case. You will be invited into the back room of the Kingdom hall and two elders will ask you to explain yourself. If you stick to your guns and decline to provide an explanation other than to say it is a personal decision based on your conscience, you may well be accused of being rebellious and of failing to obey the direction of the “faithful slave.” They may even suggest that your attitude indicates you are weak or possibly engaging in secret sins. They will then surely pressure you by telling you that after six months of not reporting, you will be considered inactive and therefore no longer a member of the congregation. Since we are taught that only members of the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses will survive Armageddon, this is substantial pressure indeed. (The fact that these same brothers will continue to see you attending the service groups and going from door-to-door will carry no weight in their decision to consider you as an inactive “publisher of the good news.”)
The foregoing scenario is not the exception. It indicates an attitude which is systematically fostered in the training of elders.
Ignoring Our Own Counsel
The fact is we give mere lip service to the idea of a Christian acting conscientiously. In reality, we only support a decision based on conscience if it does not violate any of the man-made rules and traditions of the Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses. We need go no farther than paragraph 7 of his very article for evidence of this.
It opens with the disclaimer: “Neither a branch office nor the local congregation elders are authorized to make health-care decisions for a Witness.” Yet, the removal of the individual’s right to conscientious self-determination is immediately introduced by these words: “For example, a Christian needs to remember the Biblical command “to keep abstaining from…blood.” (Acts 15:29) That would clearly rule out medical treatments that involve taking in whole blood or any of its four major components.”
Clearly, the Organization would have us believe that “medical treatments that involve taking in whole blood or any of its four major components” do not constitute a matter of conscience. There is a rule here, and a Biblical one at that.
This may seem obvious to you if you are a tried and true Jehovah’s Witness. I found it so myself. How can I be abstaining from blood if I take a blood transfusion? However, I found a very reasonable and scriptural counter-argument in the article Apollos wrote which you can view by clicking this title: “Jehovah’s Witnesses and the “No Blood” Doctrine”. (Read it before making a final decision.)
Just to show that we shouldn’t jump to an easy conclusion, we have to look at Acts 15:29 in context. The Jews didn’t eat blood, or things sacrificed to idols, and sex was not part of their worship. Yet all of these elements were common practice in pagan worship. So the use of the word “abstain” went beyond the specific injunction given to Noah not to eat blood. The apostles wanted Gentile Christians to keep far away from all these practices because they could lead them back into false worship. It was like telling an alcoholic to abstain from alcohol. It could lead to sin. But such a prohibition would not be understood as a medical injunction precluding the use of alcohol as an anesthetic in the case of emergency surgery, would it?
By overextending the application of a simple dietary injunction, Jehovah’s Witnesses have created a tangled web of rules. God’s law is simple. It takes men to complicate it.
Please understand that the question before us now isn’t whether it is right or wrong to take a blood transfusion or medicine that has blood fractions in it, or whether it is right to store blood or allow it to be circulated by machines. The question is, “Who should be deciding this?”
It is a matter of individual conscience, not something that anyone else should decide for us. By surrendering our conscience to others, we are submitting to them and allowing them to usurp the authority of God, for He gave us a conscience by which to rule ourselves guided–not by men–but by his word and spirit.
The Organization should follow its own advice and remove all doctrinal injunctions regulating how blood should be used in medical procedures. Our implementation of this doctrine mimics the oral law of the Pharisees who sought to regulate every action under the Mosiac law down to ruling whether killing a fly on the Sabbath amounted to work. When men make rules, it often starts out as a nice little idea, but before long it gets silly.
Of course, they cannot back off this injunction now. If they did, they would open themselves up to millions of dollars in wrongful death litigation. So it ain’t gonna happen.
The Article’s Real Purpose
While the article promises to teach us about the Christian Conscience, its real purpose is to get us to conform to the Organizational standard regarding health care, recreation and entertainment, and zeal in the preaching work. This drum is beaten on a regular basis.
Going back to the article’s title, the answer we are expected to arrive at is that our conscience can only be considered a reliable guide if its decisions conform to those the Organization is directing us to accept.
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[i] See w14 4/15 p. 11 par. 14
I would like to share with you an interesting and tragic story related to conscience and blood transfusions. As recently as November 2015, Georgiana, a JW woman aged 20, was involved in a train accident. She was a beginner driver and, when wishing to cross the railroad, her engine stopped and the car remained still on the rail. Her father got off the car and started to push the car. Within seconds, the trained appeared out of nowhere and hit the car (the woman was in the car). The collision was disastrous, leaving the girl with multiple and severe spinal,… Read more »
Something I wanted to add, imagine if elders were told they could count their time while doing shepherding calls? Just an educated guess….. but I’ll bet there’d be a lot more shepherding calls going on. Some years ago, the CO was visiting our congregation and it was Saturday morning. During the meeting for service, he picks the brothers to work with him, in this case there were six of us. I had the van, so all squeezed in and away we went. When arriving in the territory he said “who needs a shepherding call that lives nearby?” There happened to… Read more »
We have been hoping that the org will allow the counting of time, not only on shepherding visits (because then they will get done and the elders will do what they should be doing, i.e. shepherding) but also to allow it for the visiting of the elderly. It is really sad to see how the elderly are neglected by most in the congregation but that won’t happen anymore if the pubs can count the hours spent visiting and helping them. All the comments on the way field service is being done around the world and the lack of care in… Read more »
Perhaps if the hours start to decline, they’ll make that change. They love their statistics and depend on them as a means to verify God’s blessing. They’ve made changes over the past 15 years to shore up the numbers, so if the field activity starts to decline, they very well might allow shepherding and even visits to the elderly to get the numbers back up. A decline in our field service, bible studies, and worst of all, our publisher numbers would be viewed as a disaster since there is no other basis for the claim that Jehovah is blessing the… Read more »
OOA & Meleti, Don’t you feel that If they allowed time to be counted in shepherding and calling on the elderly (which I agree is very important and is seriously lacking), where would they draw the line? What about upkeep around the KH? Creating schedules, attending elder meetings that can last for hours upon hours caring for the flock? What about judicial matters, and elder schools lasting an entire week? Are not all these areas sacred service where the elder is sacrificing his personal life (and family), to give to Jehovah? If counting shepherding time was allowed, I think this… Read more »
Hi Sopater You are right about the organisation never changing the way they report FS, but to my mind for a totally different reason. I was reading this post today http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayanti-tamm/the-c-word_2_b_848340.html on what is a cult. It says that “Recruitment is purposefully subtle; the pull is gentle, gradual. Events are welcoming; attention is lavished on the visitor with the intention to create an environment that feels inclusive, nonthreatening, and safe. The visitor is warmly encouraged to return, to step in closer. It is not until later, often much later, that one may look around and, with great surprise, discover the… Read more »
Very good point OOA. Sadly, you are absolutely correct that attention from pioneers and others all but dries up after their student becomes baptized. At this point, its move on the next student where time can be counted. This is an unfortunate by product of the time counting scheme. Again, the prime purpose in requiring time is that it provides a basis to remove a potential dissenter from a position of respect. If not for claiming the brother is disqualified because of low hours, it would be very difficult to disqualify him based upon the scriptures. Much more difficult. Then… Read more »
Sopater that is true. In our case my husband’s hours were very high, and he was told by a brother that they can’t find fault with him, so they proceeded to attack me as his wife and our 18 month old baby for viciously pushing a child in the kingdom hall. The fact that the baby wasn’t ours but was a sad story of abuse and neglect until we took him in at 12 months of age didn’t matter. And any 18 month old baby is uncoordinated, and we never found the victim.
Nice people indeed!
OoA Your experience validates my point. His solid hours jammed the critical signal….. your husband was flying “under the radar”. So in your husband’s case, they had to find something else to disqualify him. It would have been much easier (and less difficult) had they simply deleted him due to his low hours. This demonstrates how important the number on the card is. But it can go both ways….. if the brother is active (i.e. finds creative ways to count his time) he can stay under the radar….. perhaps for years. I’m living proof. What happened to you sounds very… Read more »
🙂 Unfortunately it is too late for all of your very good advice, Sopater. My husband has already stopped attending and I’m about to stop giving in a Field Service report. And I very wickedly did not go to the meeting last Sunday as I am tired of being completely ignored by all the loving brothers and sisters in our new cong (we had to change congs twice already and our boy is now 7!), Oh, and I have stopped commenting as well. So we are no longer under the radar, but I hope we can fall off it entirely.… Read more »
Remember the FS numbers are really not a true report on actual hours spent preaching and teaching. When I was a pioneer we could count up to 40 hrs. Working on Kingdom Hall construction projects….because it is considered part of the theocratic ministry. Plus all the wasted time that has been pointed out here. I had a discussion once with a CO about “time” counting and of course he pointed to the record in the Bible of counting those who received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost , how many Jesus feed etc. to justify counting and reporting time. I pointed… Read more »
Que hermoso hermano!
I will be the first one to point out what is wrong with the methods used by the org when it comes to the ministry and it generally starts with time keeping and status titles like pioneer and of course the general message. But let us not be harsh with our comments about our brothers and sisters who engage in the preaching, remembering many of us were “whole souled “in the same system at one time. Let us “hate” the system not the participants much as we should be like Christ and hate the sin not the sinner. Most of… Read more »
Gogetter, you are quite right about this. I have to say that when I was in, I sincerely believed I was doing the right thing. I had nothing but contempt for “apostates”, and did several TMS talks about apostates. I even had a saying: “When Armageddon comes, God should throw His lightning bolts at the apostates first.” How time has changed my perspective! I now see that the constant labeling of people as “apostates” is a name-calling smear tactic, used primarily to isolate the R+F JW from the truth about their faith. What I find notable in all the WT… Read more »
I remember a few years ago all that me and my son would speak of while out on the ministry was jesus christ and when asked who we were we replied christians . There were those in the congregation that did not seem to like that at all . I had a brother correct me in front of the householder when i said i was a christian he said actually we are jehovahs witnesses. As for preaching the christ they didnt like that either because we were ignoring the kingdom ministry suggestions designed to place books and magazines with people… Read more »
Youve certainly got it worked out TRA . Sounds just like here in the UK field . When i was an taking a group we had a vote about when to go out i had been running an arrangement for FS on wednesday evening and were getting at least 50 % of people home . The group voted against it and wanted to go out instead in the morning when we were getting very few in . I had 4 pioneers in that group one of which was also an elder . I carried on with the evening arrangement with… Read more »
Thank you brother, I thought this only happened in my cong in the UK!
This was another well-written and thought provoking article. I do feel, though, that by combining two major topics (the blood issue, and reporting field service time) it makes this less effective than if you had treated these topics separately. Perhaps you might deal with these issues separately in future essays. Otherwise, you have done a fine job here
Thing is, with a WT review, I’m pretty much restricted to the material at hand. However, we will revisit these topics again for sure.
When the org encourages bible study they mean choose a topic and read what a awake or a watchtower says about that topic.end of bible study
Also One of the major problems with our time keeping requirements, is during the service meeting following the CO visit the part on “How did we Do? ” Presented by the Field service overseer sounds like a typical “sales” meeting you would find at any company that has a sales force, it’s all about numbers and increasing them, with hours, magazines, studies , RV’s etc. being the focus in place of dollars. This places a guilt trip on the publishers with the fear of not pleasing Jehovah and ultimately losing out on everlasting life, much in the same way the… Read more »
This pressure is seen by the fact that many don’t really want to do field service, but just seem to be out there to count time and be seen. I once had a householder stop his car and tell me that it seems as if our people don’t really want to do their work as he could see them milling around between the houses. But at the meetings we’re told it is a search and rescue work, urgent as lives are at stake. It is also indeed sad that field service results, however contrived, are used to judge people. We… Read more »
You mention how “many don’t really want to do field service”. In our congregation, there was a saying, “most publishers do field service just enough to hate it”. That was true for me. I had utterly no interest in field service, and the more I did it, the more pointless it seemed. Here is a typical Saturday morning of field service. People shuffle into the KH, half of them late. A perfunctory discussion of the daily text drags on, far longer than necessary. People barter and jostle for car group assignments. The late-comers have to get fit into the initial… Read more »
This is probably the most accurate description of the field service attitudes and activity of Jehovah’s Witnesses which I’ve ever read. Thanks, Real Anonymous.
I forget to mention, when the car group sits around a coffee shop for 45 minutes, that time always seems to get rolled into the elapsed service time. The fact that counting time drinking coffee and engaging in personal chit-chat as “service” time is unethical and not really “serving Jehovah” is conveniently ignored – because the desire and pressure to get “two hours” of “reportable” time on a Saturday is so great. So, a “nominal” two hours of service are in actuality more like this: 2 hours – 45 minutes for coffee break – 15 minutes wasted by late-comers and… Read more »
There are those who don’t treat it that way, however there the few, Well said twice, well After all that, can I get you a coffee
Ha ha, AR, I am having breakfast out, and I am drinking coffee this very moment as read your comment. If we were ever to meet, the first cup’s on me.
TRA – My wife and I had a jolly good chuckle at your portrait of the typical morning in service. Isn’t it sad it’s so spot on? I can add that there have been occasions where I have been able to count 2 “honest” hours in service, though never having said hello to a single soul. One suggestion I can give is to avoid ringing the bell….. knock quietly, and only once. And don’t dilly dally at their door, move along. When they see you walking away, they rarely answer. I check out territories that are seldom worked, rural when… Read more »
So, Jehovah requires the appearance of faith, but not the reality of it? Oh, that’s what WT requires. But then, WT equates themselves with Jehovah, so in their eyes its the same thing, right?
Haha, awesome, it will have to be virtual coffee for now, but will never say no to that offer
TRA it sounds just as if you are talking about FS here in our part of Africa. You’re right that it is a reproach on Jehovah – the brothers are making a spectacle out of themselves. No wonder I didn’t fit in the congregation – I would rush into the territory to get started in the field. And if they were loitering from house to house I remedied it by doing every house myself as I wanted to reach people and do my work, get finished and go home. I found the local attitude to FS so irritating that I… Read more »
I have my own map, if that helps. Have your own map, invite who you want to work with you, at a time that suits you.
Brilliant comment, such an accurate description. This is all classic avoidance behaviour. Also cognitive dissonance as a result of the sense of obligation to do a life saving work commanded by Jesus (and our own guaranteed survival at armegeddon into a paradise earth) on the one hand, and the “demoralising burden” you describe on the other – preaching a false message that nobody wants to hear in the most ineffective way possible. One Cong I was in was semi-rural. Everybody would trip over themselves to do the rural territory because it meant cramming five people into a car (when two… Read more »
Spot on brother
Top 8 things that is what a Bible {Obey the Organization] trained Conscience is for . 1.Can we drink alcohol, sure we can, you know Jesus did, awesome, should we get to the point of drunkenness and start acting foolishly, no of course not, but wait in the Recent November broadcast they had a photo of people at a get together drinking, and talking nothing wrong, but they sure said it was wrong. 2.Reporting time, we know Jesus always told his disciples that…. wait he did not. Woops, wait the aka Governing Body { back in thd book of Acts… Read more »
Thank you Meleti for your perspective on this lesson. After reading the lesson this morning, I would like to share my perspective. I think the “meat” paragraphs are 7-10. Paragraph 7 opens by saying: “Neither a branch office nor the local congregation elders are authorized to make health-care decisions for a Witness, even if he asks what to do.” This sentence is a legal ploy to attempt to absolve liability should death be the result of a Witness patient refusing a blood transfusion. In the future litigation, branch lawyers can refer to this sentence as a reference. No, the organization… Read more »
I appreciate the analogy with the apple. It really puts our official position into perspective and shows just how silly and Pharisaical we have become. Thanks, Sopater.
hi sopaterofberoea, well analysed. Thanks
The reporting of time has always bothered me, and when I served as an elder I always refused parts that had anything to do with reporting hours or promoting the goal of reaching at least the national average or the magic 10 hours per month. We all know that the way publishers report their time varies from publisher to publisher and the fact that we rarely talk to anyone in most territories skews the numbers anyway. The pioneer arrangement is just another form of class distinctions that humans always fall into and just a means of marking someone’s spiritual progress.… Read more »
Gogetter, I appreciate your thoughts and fully concur. You are absolutely correct, the publisher card is essential to maintain control (and IMO is the key element for the continued existence and growth of the organization). Imagine a CO visiting a congregation for the first time and there are no publisher cards? He would be thinking, “I don’t know any of these Christians, I have no idea who is real, who can I trust, who is fake?” The card gives him a heads up. It is exactly as you say. A brother’s faith, his sincerity, his heart, his attitude, his love… Read more »
I too am planning to stop reporting my field service within a few months – I’m just waiting for my husband to successfully fade. I have put in a very good report last month (which it was, no dishonesty at all) to totally mislead the elders into his reasons and let them think that nothing is going on at home. What will make it more difficult is that our CO has just commended the elders for reactivating all the inactive ones, and now my husband and I are going to give them two embarrassments. For them it isn’t about the… Read more »
Counting is for some an obsession. I was attending a funeral recently. The husband (non-JW) of a JW woman died. The funeral was organized by the family and held at a funeral home. One elder during the service stood up, walked towards the back (where I was) and started to count. WHY? It is not an official WT meeting, not even organized by them etc…so WHY count. And as some on here already shared, it is all about numbers first as the vision is that numbers show who the people or members are, what they do, how they think. First… Read more »
The WTBTS view of blood is like the Atkins Diet. You can have the hamburger but not the bread. You can’t each the ketchup either.
There is also the obvious difficulty that the command to abstain from blood fundamentally cannot be fully obeyed, since we all have blood. Consider: Suppose an alcoholic were told to abstain from alcohol, but choose to ignore that advice, and consumed so much that their life was at risk. Let us assume that there was some medical procedure that could remove alcohol. Wouldn’t the doctors want to use such a procedures to alleviate the problem caused by failing to abstain from alcohol? If we are told to abstain from blood, and we assume this is a universal, absolute rule, then… Read more »
The irony in all the rules about blood components vs. blood fractions is that that there is no real rationale to distinguish the two. What is the difference between a component and a fraction? The medical profession doesn’t really treat these differently. But beyond that, consider all the blood “fractions” that WT views as matters of conscience. What would happen if you combined all these fractions together, and mixed them into saline solution (simple salt water)? You’d basically have just reconstituted whole blood, or a really close approximation to it. Notable is that WT prohibits the use of white blood… Read more »
Meleti this experience with the reports actually happened to me . When i was an elder when the circuit overseer came around the secretary did not include my report on the congregation list . He and the PO at the time noticed that i had no report for that month and insisted that i submit one . I had been thinking about the verse in matthew 6 and became very uncomfortable with the whole process . I asked the PO where was the scriptural precident in the bible for such a thing and he just said i had to submit… Read more »
The occasional rant is good for the soul. 🙂
Father Jack, I had a similar experience. Once, as an elder, during the CO’s meeting with the Elders and Servants, the CO printed up a list of average hours for the past 12 months to try to shame the entire servant body. Everybody’s hours were below the national average, and my name was at the bottom of the list despite the fact I had auxiliary pioneered three times during those 12 months. I put my hand up and pointed that out to him, and he replied that he had excluded pioneer months from the averages. Can you believe that? I… Read more »
I enjoy your articles Meleti. I like the alcohol used as an antiseptic illustration. Nice one. Where do you draw the line with some of this stuff? The four major components rule would appear to come from men, not God Almighty. Paul resisted and did not give in for a moment to those who came in to spy on the glorious freedom we have in Christ. (Gal 2:4-6) We strain out the gnat alright
The comment on the article echoes something I have observed in myself and others,is that in the JW religion there isn’t really such a thing as a bible trained conscience,it’s an organizationally trained conscience,which can only function around organizationally policy and procedures,without that it doesn’t work or requires OMG bible study to find out what to do !?