Oh Ye of Little Faith

Here’s a story on FoxNews that just ticks me off.  The headline reads: “Wisconsin Parents Didn’t Expect Daughter to Die During Prayer.”  Duh.

It’s a story about an 11 year old girl (I have two girls ages 10 and 11, so I can relate to the the parents) who hasn’t seen a doctor since she was 3.  She had a treatable form of diabetes, but the parents “did not know her daughter was terminally ill as she prayed for her to get better.”

Here are a few other quotes from the story – and my comments. 

Her mother, Leilani Neumann, told The Associated Press that she never expected her daughter, whom she called Kara, to die. The family believes in the Bible, and it says healing comes from God, but they are not crazy, religious people, she said.

Ah, that makes it all ok – her parents never expected her to die, because they beleive in the power of the Bible, and that God would take care of them.   Somehow they think that qualifies them as “not crazy religious people.”  Ok, I’ll bite – what does that qualify them for?  They’re certainly not rational, intelligent people.   Read this entry from the mother for proof.

Every time I hear about someone who believes that God will take care of them, I’m reminded of a joke I read in Readers Digest years ago.  It went something like:

Heavy rains came and the flood waters started rising around a house.  The police drove down the street in a boat and urged the family to evacuate, but they said they weren’t leaving, because “God will take care of us.”  The flood waters kept rising….  Soon the waters were up to the 2nd story of the house. 

Another boat came by and urged the family to climb in and get away from the danger.  Again they refused to evacuate, saying “God will take care of us.”  But the waters kept rising….

The family had to move to the roof of the house to stay above the raging waters.  A helicopter came by to rescue them, but again they refused to leave, saying “God will take care of us.”   A few minutes later the flood waters washed the family away and they all drowned. 

When they stood before God at the pearly gates they were upset.  They complained that even though they had great faith, God let them die in the flood.  They asked why God didn’t take care of them.

God replied “I sent you two boats and a helicopter – what more do you want?”

Of course the moral of the story is that God helps those who help themselves, and that we should use our God-given abilities as best we can. 

Humans are the only species on earth that NEED to make things to survive.  We survive by using our minds, our ability to reason, our ability to make the things we need to live. 

How did the family eat?  Where did they live?  What did they wear for clothing?  God didn’t give them any of those things – why would any sane person believe that God would cure their sick child?  If you believe in God, why would you not think that he gave us the ability to make medicines in order to cure disease?  (Of course that begs the question of why God would create diseases that needed to be cured, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Another quote from the story: “Officers went to the home after a relative in California asked police to check on the girl.”  A relative a thousand miles away knew something was wrong, but the parents were too stupid to know what was happening.  I’m sorry, but they need to be charged with murder, and their other kids need to be taken away from them immediately.

“Our lives are in God’s hands and whatever we go through we are just going to trust him,” she said. “We need healing. We are going through the healing process.”

No, your lives are in the hands of the courts now, and you’ve demonstrated that you aren’t able to make rational decisions.  We (as a society) will not allow you to withhold treatment (and the example of rational thought) from your other children, so you can’t keep them any longer.

Now I hate to say the above, because I absolutely despise government intervention in private lives, but children are considered children because they have not yet reached the age of reason.  They can’t decide things for themselves yet, so parents need to protect and teach them until they can make important decisions on their own. 

If you’re over 18, you can do whatever you want to yourself.  Don’t go to the doctor, go ahead and shoot up heroin, smoke crack, snort cocaine, starve yourself to death, drink too much, smoke all the cigarettes you want, or whatever else you want to do – as far as I’m concerned that’s your right.  But you can’t do that to others.

By the way, one of my favorite “more accurate than the dictionary” definitions is the definition of the word “believe.”  I don’t remember where I read it, but it goes something like “believe: to have confidence in the existence or truth of something despite any evidence to support the conclusion.” 

gk

Tags: free will, God, predestination, rational thought, Religion