Child's faith healing death investigated by US police
CHICAGO - THE parents of a girl who died of a treatable form of diabetes are unrepentant in their belief that their prayers were of more use than a doctor, police said.
Eleven-year-old Madeline Kara Neumann died at about 2.00pm on Easter Sunday after she slipped into a diabetic coma and stopped breathing, an autopsy found.
Police were already on their way to her rural Wisconsin home after receiving frantic calls from her aunt in California asking them to check on Madeline when a call came from the girl's home saying she'd stopped breathing.
'Their faith is such that they believe praying would heal her, so they chose to do that rather than take her to a doctor,' said Everest Metropolitan Police Captain Scott Sleeter on Thursday.
'They seemed pretty calm,' he said in describing a recent interview with the parents.
'They weren't very emotional. They were pretty steadfast in their belief that they did what was proper.' The parents told police they were not aware their daughter was diabetic.
She had been sickly and fatigued for several weeks and then became quite ill in the days before Easter.
'They realised it was bad because they were calling for prayer help from other relatives and other prayer organisations,' Mr Sleeter said.
'We'll confer with our local district attorney and try to determine whether any criminal charges are appropriate. Right now we don't know yet.'
Madeline's three older siblings - aged 13, 15, and 16 - were taken away from their parents by social services and were to be checked by a doctor to ensure they did not have any untreated health conditions.
The death shocked the rural community.
'Those that believe in prayer as healing would see nothing wrong with this,' Mr Sleeter said.
'But most of us around here, I would be confident in saying that the majority of the people don't follow that kind of logic. They would take their kids to the doctor. I know I would.'
The parents, who run a coffee shop ministry in the town of Weston, Wisconsin, were not immediately available for comment.
An online ministry which had been contacted by the Neumanns issued a statement protesting the 'persecution' of 'a very loving family who want to walk in the steps of Jesus'.
'They don't investigate the people who put their trust in doctors whose family members die,' the Unleavened Bread Ministries said.
'We know that the doctors do the best they can with what they have and we do not condemn them. We would like the same consideration.' -- AFP
I do hope Christians around me belong to the more sensible camp.
Friday 28 March 2008
Monday 24 March 2008
Mongolia
Mongolia, where the world is made up of two planes.A infinite layer of blue, gently floating over the sparse and boundless grasslands of overflowing green.
Alas! How my grounded being answers your call!
Wait for me... For my feet will soon encounter your solid, rooted ground and my soul soar in your vast sea of blue.
Thursday 13 March 2008
Musings from a fallen world
Deeply disturbed by a recent article i read in the news,
Palestinian gunman kills eight in Jerusalem school. A Palestinian gunman opened fire in a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem on Thursday, killing at least eight people and wounding about 10 in the most lethal attack in Israel in two years, emergency services said."It was a slaughterhouse," said Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, head of the Zaka emergency service after surveying the scene at the Merkaz Harav seminary, one of the most prominent Jewish educational centres in Jerusalem.Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco said a lone gunman carried out the attack and was killed by an Israeli army officer who lives nearby and ran to the school after hearing gunfire. Police had said earlier there were two gunmen.There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which was greeted with celebrations in the Gaza Strip, where a recent Israeli offensive killed more than 120 Palestinians, about half of whom were identified as civilians.An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said "terrorists are trying to destroy the chances of peace but we will certainly continue peace talks" with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian leader condemned the Jerusalem attack.Witnesses said the gunman entered the crowded seminary and fired an automatic weapon at students in its library. Franco said the attacker killed eight people, and emergency services said about 10 were wounded. Police said it appeared most of the dead were in their 20's."He hid the weapon in a cardboard box," Franco said.It was the highest Israeli death toll since April 17, 2006, when 11 people were killed and over 60 wounded in a suicide bombing during the Passover holiday in Tel Aviv.Yitzhak Dadon, who told reporters that he shot the gunman, said the attacker, wearing torn jeans, fired at the students with a Kalashnikov assault rifle."I saw the gunman and he fired a long burst in the air. But then he disappeared. I saw him again when he approached the door of the library. I shot him twice in the head. He started to sway and then someone else with a rifle fired at him, and he died," Dadon said.Some 50 ambulances raced to the area and police held back worried parents searching for children who had been attending a study session marking the start of Adar, the most festive month of the Jewish calendar. Outside the school, a crowd shouted "Death to the Arabs".In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, gunmen fired in the air to celebrate the attack, three days after Israel ended a ground offensive it said was aimed at curbing cross-border rocket fire. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, said the group "blesses the heroic operation in Jerusalem, which was a natural reaction to the Zionist massacre".A loudspeaker in Gaza City blared the message: "This is God's vengeance."
I turned towards God and Church for an answer.
My answer was given firmly, backed by great faith and an unrefutable testimony.
Christians all around must know it. The age old answer to the well worn question of suffering.
Such an answer! Such hopelessness! Such indolence!
Dearest God, with all your wisdom and love, i never did expect that you would coin my beloved world, centre of my existence and being as a "fallen world". To leave us all, ravaged by pain, poverty and disease. Watch us turn into depraved, ridiculous animals! I rail at you! I resent you! For you, my god, a god that is too wise, too loving and too far seeing. I cannot wrest the roots of my narrow human perspective from the ground of my very nature and twist it to fit your oh so far seeing glory! Forgive me, a mere human being of your construct as i resent you for not meddling, for not stooping down from wisdom's infinitely high pedestal to help this world that i so dearly love. For i care about the people around me. I care for my fellow beings. We are all here, together in this world you have forsaken till your coming.
God, you let the rain fall on both the righteous and non-righteous. What happened to this?
If there be but ten righteous, let the city be spared.
Palestinian gunman kills eight in Jerusalem school. A Palestinian gunman opened fire in a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem on Thursday, killing at least eight people and wounding about 10 in the most lethal attack in Israel in two years, emergency services said."It was a slaughterhouse," said Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, head of the Zaka emergency service after surveying the scene at the Merkaz Harav seminary, one of the most prominent Jewish educational centres in Jerusalem.Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco said a lone gunman carried out the attack and was killed by an Israeli army officer who lives nearby and ran to the school after hearing gunfire. Police had said earlier there were two gunmen.There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which was greeted with celebrations in the Gaza Strip, where a recent Israeli offensive killed more than 120 Palestinians, about half of whom were identified as civilians.An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said "terrorists are trying to destroy the chances of peace but we will certainly continue peace talks" with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian leader condemned the Jerusalem attack.Witnesses said the gunman entered the crowded seminary and fired an automatic weapon at students in its library. Franco said the attacker killed eight people, and emergency services said about 10 were wounded. Police said it appeared most of the dead were in their 20's."He hid the weapon in a cardboard box," Franco said.It was the highest Israeli death toll since April 17, 2006, when 11 people were killed and over 60 wounded in a suicide bombing during the Passover holiday in Tel Aviv.Yitzhak Dadon, who told reporters that he shot the gunman, said the attacker, wearing torn jeans, fired at the students with a Kalashnikov assault rifle."I saw the gunman and he fired a long burst in the air. But then he disappeared. I saw him again when he approached the door of the library. I shot him twice in the head. He started to sway and then someone else with a rifle fired at him, and he died," Dadon said.Some 50 ambulances raced to the area and police held back worried parents searching for children who had been attending a study session marking the start of Adar, the most festive month of the Jewish calendar. Outside the school, a crowd shouted "Death to the Arabs".In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, gunmen fired in the air to celebrate the attack, three days after Israel ended a ground offensive it said was aimed at curbing cross-border rocket fire. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, said the group "blesses the heroic operation in Jerusalem, which was a natural reaction to the Zionist massacre".A loudspeaker in Gaza City blared the message: "This is God's vengeance."
I turned towards God and Church for an answer.
My answer was given firmly, backed by great faith and an unrefutable testimony.
Christians all around must know it. The age old answer to the well worn question of suffering.
Such an answer! Such hopelessness! Such indolence!
Dearest God, with all your wisdom and love, i never did expect that you would coin my beloved world, centre of my existence and being as a "fallen world". To leave us all, ravaged by pain, poverty and disease. Watch us turn into depraved, ridiculous animals! I rail at you! I resent you! For you, my god, a god that is too wise, too loving and too far seeing. I cannot wrest the roots of my narrow human perspective from the ground of my very nature and twist it to fit your oh so far seeing glory! Forgive me, a mere human being of your construct as i resent you for not meddling, for not stooping down from wisdom's infinitely high pedestal to help this world that i so dearly love. For i care about the people around me. I care for my fellow beings. We are all here, together in this world you have forsaken till your coming.
God, you let the rain fall on both the righteous and non-righteous. What happened to this?
If there be but ten righteous, let the city be spared.
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