I haven't been paying much attention to the news lately but I had heard about the sextuplets that were born recently into a Jehovah's Witness family in a BC hospital. I was saddened to hear the other day that two of the babies had died. I know its not uncommon for one or more babies in a multiple birth to not survive but that does not make it any easier.

Today Charmaine sent me a news article about how the BC Government has stepped in and temporarily removed three of the four remaining babies in order to ensure they received blood transfusions.

If you are not aware, Jehovah's Witnesses consider blood transfusions, and subsequently organ transplants, to be against God's commandment in Genesis 9:4. There are many stories of Jehovah's Witnesses refusing transfusions and some court cases around this issue have made it to the supreme courts of Canada, the United States and a number of other countries.

I have largely ignored these cases in the past but having recently become a parent myself I was a little concerned about government getting involved in and violating the religious beliefs of its people. It is obviously a slippery slope which is why I struggled a bit with this particular instance. I believe strongly in the freedom of religion and that the government should not interfere with those rights, but should parents be allowed to deny medical treatments that could save the life of their child?

I do not profess to have the answer to that question. I do believe that each situation is unique and should be treated separately and independently from all other similar cases. In other words legal precedents should not apply here.  In this specific instance I am in support of the decision of the government to intervene and of the courts ruling to allow it. What I want to explore a little more in this post though is the issue of religious beliefs that surround this story.

For starters, Jehovah's Witnesses profess to read and believe the same Bible that I do. As far as I know their Bible is unchanged from mine however they are admonished that they cannot correctly understand the Bible without the Watchtower. Now when I read the verse in Genesis 9:4, in any number of translations (or interpretations), I see it telling Noah and his family not to eat un-bled meat. That verse is not about the blood, it is about the meat. It is my feeling that, given the lack of knowledge of germs and bacteria at that point in time, God gave this commandment for health reasons, not spiritual purity. Remember, they would have had very little in the way of refrigeration and other means of keeping meat. Ensuring that meat is fully bled is an important step in keeping it safe for consumption. (May I point out that the nicely aged steaks and other cuts of beef have been bled and hung in your butcher's freezer for upwards of three weeks.) At the time I doubt God went into a lengthly explanation of this and even if He did it obviously did not make it into the Bible many years later when Genesis was written. Thus that verse is somewhat open to interpretation.

That is not really the issue though is it? For the sake of discussion, lets assume that their interpretation is correct and that God did not intend for us it ingest blood either via eating un-bled meat or through transfusion. If we accept that, then we are in agreement that ingesting the blood of an animal or another person through any means defiles us.

So the goal here is to not be defiled, but are we not already defiled? The Bible teaches that we are all sinners and that it is our sin that makes us unclean.  Interestingly, there are no degrees sin. If I have sinned once or a thousands times (and trust me, its probably a lot closer to millions) it does not matter.  Any way you look at I have sinned and am dirty. To put it another way, if get a blob of mud on one corner of a white t-shirt, the t-shirt is dirty. Regardless of how much mud is on the t-shirt, the whole thing will get thrown into the wash.

It turns out that even if I had never sinned, I would still be unclean. Think about it for a second. What are the chances that both my Mom and my Dad made it all the way to adulthood without sinning? The same as two wrongs cannot make a right, two unclean parents cannot produce a clean child.

So if you are in the same boat as me, you are probably wondering about two things right now. The first is how can I get clean and the second is what has this got to do with babies and blood transfusions. I cannot believe you have actually read this far but since you have, please bear with me a little longer and I will try to make it all clear.

The Bible teaches in order to become clean we must accept God's forgiveness and allow Him to wash us with the blood His son shed when he died on the cross. (That probably sounds pretty hokey to those of you reading this who do not believe as I do. I do not want to delve into that particular topic here though so let it suffice that being washed by blood is a metaphor and then ask me sometime and I will explain why Christians talk like that.) The point is that we cannot get clean through our own actions but that we must allow ourselves to be washed and made clean.

Back to the t-shirt for a second. Its got mud on it, but on its own that mud is not going to come off. Someone has to throw it in the wash. This is where the metaphor breaks down though. The t-shirt does not have free will can cannot choose when it will be made clean. I on the other hand do have free will. Free will is what allows me to choose to tell a lie. Free will is what lets me break the law.

Free will is also what allows me to be made clean through the acceptance of the forgiveness offered by God. God freely offers forgiveness and cleansing to anyone who will accept it but will not force it on anyone. However, apart from accepting His forgiveness, there is nothing that I can do on my own to make myself clean.

The key here is that I must make that choice. No one can make it for me or request it on my behalf. And I have made that choice. Many years ago I became a Christian when I asked God to forgive me and cleans me. Both my Mom and my Dad have made the same choice and so has Charmaine. We each made that choice freely of our own will and I hope that someday Shyloh will make the same choice, for himself. Until that time though, he too was born a sinner and is unclean. I know that sounds crazy, especially when you consider that he cannot possibly have sinned yet, but how could he be clean when he came from two unclean parents?

Let me bring this back around to the sextuplets and the Jehovah's Witnesses stand against blood transfusions. First of all, like my son Shyloh, the babies were born unclean with the same need for forgiveness that I have. As they grow through childhood and into adulthood I know that their parents will teach them the beliefs core to Jehovah's Witnesses, the same as I will teach Shyloh the beliefs of Christians. At some point the babies will gain self awareness and eventually free will and soon after that they will be able to make their own choice. At that time they can choose to be forgiven and made clean, or they choose to refuse forgiveness and remain unclean.

So the real question are these:

• Can a blood transfusion make those babies more unclean than they already are?
• If so, is there a point at which God would refuse to forgive them?
• Would God refuse to forgive them when it was not through their own free will in which they accepted the transfusion?

I hope that I will never find myself in a comparable position to the parents of those sextuplets. I cannot bear the thought of choosing to let my child die because of my own beliefs, especially when a full life would otherwise be possible. Who am I to choose life or death for another person without allowing them to exercise their own free will?

Ultimately though, I cannot help but wonder what Jehovah's Witnesses would do if Jesus showed up their doorstep and offered them (more of) His blood for their transfusions. Would they be so quick to refuse it?