My husband comes from a very religious family. They are fervent believers in prayer.
However, they are also fervent believers in medicine. Several family members have suffered serious illnesses over the past decade and in each case, while they prayed fervently for healing as well as courage, they wasted no time in seeking medical help to treat their conditions. They are all doing well now, having been the recipients of some of the most advanced medical treatments available.
I can't imagine any of them ever believing that prayer alone would cure or successfully manage their illnesses. They believe that medicine is part of God's world and is there for all of us to utilize.
Once again, though, we read the story of a family that refused medical treatment for a child because of their belief that God alone would provide a cure. An eleven year old girl is dead today because instead of seeking treatment for their daughter's highly treatable diabetes, a family chose to stay home and pray for direct divine intervention.
How sad it is to me that any parent could put any belief – religious or otherwise - over the well being of their own child. And how foolish it is for anyone to believe that God only works through direct intervention as a result of someone's prayers, rather than indirectly through medicine.
Are some people really so naïve that they can't see that all medicine is the result of discoveries made by the very human beings, with the very exceptional brains, that they also believe were made by God? Do these believers think that human beings were all put here to live in isolation and not help each other with scientific and medical advances?
I have never seen a contradiction between religion and science, between prayer and medicine, or between the possibility that God created the world and the probability that he did it slowly, through evolution. But others, apparently, insist on creating that divide, even when the consequences are deadly.
How about this for a possibility? What if God created the world, and specifically created intelligent human beings to preserve creation, make the world a better place, manage resources, provide for the needs of all the creatures on the earth, heal illness, mediate disputes and create a prosperous and peaceful planet? What if he did this so that humans would turn to each other for solutions rather than expect him to intervene individually in each isolated case? If this was indeed God's plan, then human beings who reject that plan are really rejecting God.
Whatever the theology, I think it is time we hold parents like these criminally responsible for the unnecessary deaths of their children. If a parent had a chance to stop a child from running into the street and stood by and simply prayed that the child would stay put, and then that child was run over by a car, we would hold the parent responsible. This seems no different to me.
Prayer can be a great comfort, and an adjunct to medicine, but it is both stubborn and stupid, in my opinion, for any parent to believe that when simple medical care is available to save their child's life, they reject that medical care and expect God to intervene directly in their child's condition. It seems to me God already answered their prayers when he created human beings who developed life saving medicine. To insist that God save your child the way you want them saved, and not in the way that is already provided, is the height of arrogance.
