Jonathan Turley has a piece condemning faith-based medical neglect in yesterday’s Washington Post that is certain to provoke a lot of discussion. Michael-in-Norfolk jumps in here. I’ve written about the same subject previously.
As infuriating as these things are, I don’t think prosecution and prison are the answer. The parents who do these things are themselves severely damaged human beings and out of touch with reality. They may be generally functional and not meet the legal criterion of mental illness, but they are not fully competent adults.
As delusional as it is, they honestly believe they are doing the right thing; that if Jesus wants their kid to live he can be trusted to come galloping to the sickbed; and they can point to the verses in the Inerrant Bible that tell them so. Their grief at the death of the child is authentic and, often, exacerbated by the belief that the death of their child is punishment of themselves for some offense or another.
All of this, y’all should know, is the shrink-wrapped, direct-from-the-warehouse-to-you teaching peddled in churches all across the land every Sunday morning. The enemy is unreasoning belief itself — not the idiot parents who are just another class of its victims.
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