Jehovah's Witness's and smoking

[kestrel]

Someone I know is a Jehovah's Witness, he's married with three adult children and for most of his working life he has owned a Tobacconist selling cigarettes  and associated paraphernalia, tobbacco, lighters etc. They have all been involved in 'knocking doors', promoting their religion which includes telling people that it is wrong to smoke yet this particular family lives on the proceeds of smoking ie profit which equals Mortgage, bills, lifestyle etc. Is this right to tell people that in the bible it say's it's wrong to smoke yet this individual can profit financially from smoking. Any thoughts. PS. I am a non smoker

[gypsy]

merlin..just a point i dont know how anyone could not save their childs life..if you look on the  silence of the lambs web site you will see that their are a lot of court cases against jehovah witnesses for such barbaric acts and worse,,i had to have 4 pints of blood after having my daughter otherwise i would have been seriously ill,,and uncapable of looking after her..it doesnt bear thinking about that you could just watch your child die when they could be saved,,,gypsy

[Merlin]

gypsy

Quite right. I was shocked to see how much blood was on the floor after my wife had our second!

If anyone could stand by and let a child die, knowing that they had the means to save them and it would cost them nothing at all, they can never call themselves Christian, right, good, moral, kind or anything like that.

[Iknownothing]

  Contrary to many peoples perception few of the monotheistic faiths consider that the act of sinning excludes the sinner from receiving gods grace. This Jehovahs Witness may be a poor follower of the truth but that does not necessarily allow the the church to exclude him from worship. The anglican church is at great pains at the moment to point out that homosexuality does deny anyone the love of Christ, who hates the sin but loves the sinner. No catholic is obliged to follow Papal law. Their choice to do so or not to do so is a matter of conscience and ex communication can only exclude them from the church not the the catholic faith or their own communion whith christ through the virgin mother.
I think that sometimes people who dislike a religion or religions in general choose to infer from their teachings values that are not the religions or fundamental to the religion, in order to justify their own judgemental position. I do not know if this is the case with kestrel.
In response to barrymonkey's assertion, as an agnostic I do not know if there is one god or many gods or any gods, and I don't think that he is in any better state of understanding than I am. People who believe have no more proof of gods existance than their faith,
People who deny god have no more proof than limits of their knowledge allows and then they must rely on faith that there is no knowledge to be had beyond those limits, or that if there is it still does not allow for the existence of a god. Ultimately believers
can never answer the question "what was there, before god?" and science can never answer the question "what was there, before the universe, the multiverse or nothing?".   

[Iknownothing]

In response to merlin, the ability to stand by and watch your child die knowing you had the means to save the is fundamental to the christian faith. God gave his only son. Christ said " father why have hve you forsaken me?".

I'm agnostic by the way.

[Merlin]

iknownothing

"the ability to stand by and watch your child die knowing you had the means to save the is fundamental to the christian faith. God gave his only son. Christ said " father why have hve you forsaken me""

It is simply nonsense to use the crucifixion to justify a refusal to save a child's life by withholding blood for a transfusion.

Jesus was an adult and knew what he was doing and knew that it would lead to his execution.

God and Jesus were one and the same entity (so we are told), so there was no sacrifice of a child there.

There was, in any case, no sacrifice at all as Jesus was resurrected and sits at his father's right hand - doesn't he?

We mere mortals don't have those luxuries and there is simply no analogy or justification there at all.