A few days ago, in Wisconsin, 11-year-old Madeline Neumann died from undiagnosed diabetes. Her parents prayed over her as she deteriorated, instead of taking her to the hospital.
According to most reports, the Neumanns are a normal American family. They are not members of some weird death-cult. They didn’t show up at military funerals with signs that read “God Hates Fags.” This is, in a way, all the more troubling.
My initial response to this story cannot be published here on account of the vast number of obscenities it involved. I was shocked, and outraged, and demanded immediate removal of the Neumanns’ other children from their home. While breaking up a family in the wake of a tragedy is grim business to say the least, one does hope that law enforcement will keep an eye on the Neumanns. Imposing probation and ordering counseling is the least that can be done.
The fact that the Neumanns’ other children have indeed, for now, been removed from their home may ultimately serve to educate the parents on the fact that their actions, or, rather, their inaction, was indeed wrong.
I am not Christopher Hitchens, and do not wish to use this death to score a point. Let’s put it this way, most parents, religious or not, would take their child to a hospital at the first sign of serious trouble. When it comes to religion, the Neumanns are the exception, not the rule.
As a person of (some) faith, I find that the Neumanns are the perfect illustration to the saying that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Clearly, the Neumanns “knew” certain passages from the Bible concerning God’s omnipotence and power to heal, etc. And yet did they also not realize that if God allowed His or Her children to create life-saving penicillin, He or She might just want us to use it? Considering that life is a gift and all?
My atheist friends often shrug and say, “well, how can you argue with the crazy crazies?” I consider this position to be defeatist. Why, you can argue with them in all sorts of ways.
The Neumanns, by all accounts, lived a thoroughly modern life. They ran a coffee shop. I’ve worked in several coffee shops, and I can tell you that human invention is a staple of coffee shop life. Your beans won’t grind themselves if you shut your eyes and pray really hard. Neither will your milk steam itself, or your iced drinks blend themselves.
It can be said that the human spirit operates on faith – the same cannot be said for the human body or, for that matter, a 21st century coffee shop. Coffee shops have safety regulations. For example, employees must wear close-toed shoes while at work, so that if they do accidentally spill a giant hot mocha, their feet won’t get scalded. I seriously doubt that the Neumanns would tell a barista, “honey, it’s OK to wear sandals, God’ll heal you if anything goes wrong.”
Likewise, the human body also comes with a safety instructions. Lethargy and vomiting are code-words for Big Trouble- Let’s Go To Hospital Now, for example. So why follow one instruction and not the other?
Human anxiety over medicine is as old as medicine itself. And hey, we have reason to worry. Centuries ago, unscrupulous physicians used the poor as lab rats. Nowadays, unscrupulous drug companies push potentially dangerous products onto an unsuspecting populace. This is all besides the giant farce that HMO’s and other such abominations have made out of American medicine in general.
Like all things in life, medicine can be a double-edged sword. And yet, the medical establishment is a cornerstone of any society that wishes to survive. If you read the Bible and, instead of cherry-picking quotes for your own self-rationalization or, for that matter, amusement, you may notice that God steps in with medical miracles when human innovation fails. Jesus didn’t elbow some midwife out of the way, for example, yelling “I can do it better!”
Is there a lesson in that? Perhaps.
And as for young Madeline, did she die as the result of someone else’s malicious intent? No, she died because her parents were ignorant – not only of health issues, but of their own faith. I can only hope that someone will be able to help them educate themselves on the matter.
Social ostracism is the worst thing that can happen to the Neumanns right now; it will only serve to radicalize their position even further. Remember, they have three other children, children who ought to be able to live out the rest of their lives to their fullest potential.