Free at last

The headline reads: Praying Parents Get Jail for Child’s Death.  A Wisconsin couple who prayed rather than seek medical care for their 11-year-old daughter were sentenced this week to 6 months in jail and 10 years probation in the girl’s death. Madeline Neumann died of an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes. The parents were convicted of 2nd degree reckless homicide.  In sentencing the couple, Judge Vincent Howard said the Neumanns were “very good people… who made a bad decision.” Prosecutors said the couple had a legal duty to take their daughter to a doctor but relied totally on prayer for healing.

The father told the judge:”I am guilty of trusting my Lord’s wisdom completely…  Guilty of following Jesus Christ when the whole world does not understand. Guilty of obeying my God.”

He believes when he says, “I am guilty of trusting my Lord’s wisdom completely.”  But he does not realize that the Bible he trusts likely has less to do with God’s wisdom than it does with man’s editorial revisions throughout the millennia.  After all the politicians got through with their slicing and dicing at this council or that, who knows if the bibles we know today bear any resemblance to God’s word.  So his error was not in trusting the Lord’s wisdom completely, but in trusting whoever interpreted for him the Bible in his hand, to read that he should keep a sick child from medical attention.

The father said he was “Guilty of following Jesus Christ …”  When in fact the issue was not with him following Jesus Christ.  The issue was with him believing that whoever instructed him in his faith in fact accurately imparted the teachings of Jesus Christ. But wait, didn’t Jesus tell His followers to not make a religion after Him? But I digress…

Dale Neumann, who once studied to be a Pentecostal minister, said he was “Guilty of obeying my God.”  When in fact the issue was not in him obeying his God, but in having misplaced faith in someone who led him on a course of events contrary to man’s law.  That someone being whoever it was who taught him how to interpret whatever bible he read.  Whoever taught him right from wrong.  Whoever taught him to operate outside of man’s laws.  Who was that?  His own father? A minister? Here we have a Bible of questionable accuracy, and a handing down of traditional knowledge that may be faulty at its origin, all to the detriment of one child’s life.

So what can we trust if we can’t trust the bibles we grew up with nor the interpretations of the local minister?  “Go inside,” we hear, “meditate on the God that resides within you.”  What on earth does that mean anyway?  There’s nothing inside my head but a bunch of jumbled thoughts. If that’s the case, then a good start would be to begin to cultivate the inner experience, quiet the mind chatter, spend more time in silence, less time in idle talk, less time complaining, less time criticizing, more time appreciating, more time forgiving, more time allowing.

In time, the mind chatter begins to quiet down enough that you can begin to intuit with increasing accuracy.  You may begin a prayer and meditation practice.  You may spend less time in the old church, you may visit new churches, you may decide to visit with God in your garden some Sunday mornings, alone, instead of church at all for awhile.  Because God is not about church.  God is beyond church, beyond space and time.

And once you feel your direct connection, you can walk into any church or any place, and it won’t matter what words they use, you will know God’s word for yourself.  With no middle man.  No interpreter.

And the Neumanns?  It’s not too late for them.  In fact, they seem to know that if we’re indeed, as we are, in the midst of God’s will, how can we not rejoice?

And for Madeline Neumann? Yes, she lost her Earth life in this go round, but what a caterpillar calls death, we call a butterfly.

,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ :¦:- Visit www.horizonsmagazine.com