Last year an 11-year-old girl died in her parent’s living room during a prayer meeting. The meeting was called to ask God to heal the girl. It turns out the parents had decided not to take her to a doctor even though she was showing signs of sickness. They instead choose to rely on prayer and faith.
Today, a judge sentenced them each to 6 months jail time and 10 years of probation for letting their daughter die:
Marathon County Circuit Court Judge Vincent Howard told the Neumanns they were “very good people, raising their family who made a bad decision, a reckless decision.”
“God probably works through other people,” he told the parents, “some of them doctors.” […]
During the sentencing hearing, Leilani Neumann, 41, told the judge her family is loving and forgiving and has wrongly been portrayed as religious zealots.
“I do not regret trusting truly in the Lord for my daughter’s health,” she said. “Did we know she had a fatal illness? No. Did we act to the best of our knowledge? Yes.”
Dale Neumann, 47, read from the Bible and told the judge that he loved his daughter.
“I am guilty of trusting my Lord’s wisdom completely. … Guilty of asking for heavenly intervention. Guilty of following Jesus Christ when the whole world does not understand. Guilty of obeying my God,” he said.
From the Neumann’s perspective, they followed the only appropriate course. They took Jesus’ words about faith and attempted to put them into practice by trusting in faith alone to heal their daughter. After all, faith can move mountains, right?
In my family, we too pray for healing, except we also go to doctors. This morning I got a tetanus shot because if I step on a rusty nail in a few years I don’t want to die from it. Yet despite this fear, I’ve spent a grand total of zero minutes of my life praying that God would protect me from tetanus.
Likewise for any other ailment in my life: I have faith that God will heal me, but that faith is in God guiding the doctor’s hands.
In a lot of ways, the faith of the Neumanns is astounding to me. They’re clinging to their beliefs even when the judicial system has told them they seriously need to reconsider.
What about you, where do you draw the line between trusting in God and trusting in men? Are they even exclusive of each other?
And if you can keep it civil, what do you think about how the Neumann’s handled the situation?
