Should Spiritual Healing be Illegal?

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from World Magazine, March 10, 2001 with a headline: “Deadly Religion.”

The Colorado House voted 36-26 on February 23^rd to repeal a twelve year old exemption to the state’s child abuse law that permits parents to withhold medical treatment for religious reasons. Observers expect the senate to approve the bill and Governor Bill Owens has indicated he will sign the measure.Once it is adopted, Colorado will join 14 other states that since 1990 have tightened laws on withholding medical care in the name of religion.The House acted after the outcry over the February 6^th death of a 13 year old diabetic girl whose parents opted for prayer alone instead of prayer and medicine.A MesaCounty coroner ruled the death a homicide and said Amanda Bates died a slow and agonizing death from complications from diabetes.Charges were pending against the girl’s parents, Randy and Colleen Bates.They are members of the General Assembly Church of the First Born, a small Christian sect that teaches reliance on prayer alone for healing.At least three children of church members in Western Colorado have died unnecessarily in the last three years, authorities allege. Opponents of the bill argue the change would violate the religious freedom rights of groups like Christian Science to practice their faith fully.Christian Science leaders claiming spiritual healing is an integral part of their faith had helped to defeat two previous attempts to repeal the exemption.

Tom:

Dave, for those who have just joined us, in our earlier segment we had talked about who is God and Dave we encourage people if they want to know who God is to seek him out in his Word.I think this is the problem here.We have people who are practicing something in the name of God, but I find no basis for it with regard to God’s Word, with regard to his revelation.

Dave:

Yes, revelation is the key here.We talked about knowing God.We can know something about him is power, his greatness, his wisdom, that he is infinite and so forth from the Creation around us.Where does God tell these people, the God they believe in, and they would claim to believe in the God of the Bible, I am sure.Where does the Bible tell you that you should not use any physical means?It’s like blindfolding yourself, or closing your eyes and walking across a busy highway in the midst of traffic and saying I am going to trust God to take care of me.There are certain things that we should do, that we can do.And whatever we can do to prevent a death, to aid health, whether it’s eating properly or whether it’s taking medications—of course you get into a whole problem now, what medications are good?Some are not so good, some doctors are really competent and so forth, but no where does the Bible say that you just pray and trust God.The Bible would call that tempting God.In other words, you are putting God in a position where he either has to answer your prayer—

Tom:

Your way.

Dave:

Your way, right, or you will die, in this case, this child will die.Now Paul spoke affectionately of Luke the physician.The Bible never gives you the impression that you shouldn’t use a physician.Now it does say that there are some things that physicians can’t do, and Jesus did heal some people that suffered from the incompetency or the inability of physicians.At least they were getting all the help they could.

Tom:

And Paul, the Apostle Paul gave Paul some medicinal advice for something that he was dealing with.So again this is missing, in the name of Christianity, and that’s the rub here.Because now we’re going to have the legislature that’s going to restrict certain practices and beliefs.Well look what we’ve mixed in here which makes it difficult for everybody.

Dave:

It’s a terrible tragedy that the parents out of a mistaken idea that they are being faithful to God would withhold medication from a child that could have allowed that child to continue to live a productive life.But they were just led astray in thinking that they were being true to God, by withholding this and supposedly, you know were just relying on God.Well Tom we could liken it to this.Why don’t I just rely upon God to feed me?Why do I ingest food?Why do I sit down to three meals a day?Why do I wash—in fact I am a fanatic about washing my grapes.I put them in detergent to get rid of that insecticide or whatever.Why do I do anything that would help avoid germs for example?Why don’t I just drink bad water, or whatever?Why should I care?I wish we could have talked to these dear people, these parents.I don’t know what they are thinking now.Maybe they feel that it was God’s will that this daughter die and they were being faithful to him, but it really is irrational.It’s not biblical, it doesn’t make sense, but there are numbers of people who do this.You could take the snake handlers for example, because it says you will be immune to snake—well that’s if you would be immune to venom, but that is if you were in a situation where you are serving God and then a snake bites you.It doesn’t say that you are to pick up and handle snakes and so forth.So there is fanaticism, Tom.There’s a failure to rightly divide the Word of truth, that’s what it’s called.And in this case it is such a tragedy.But don’t let it turn you off, if you are listening out there, about God.Because there are people who do things in the name of Jesus Christ, who do things in the name of God that are not what he would do.They have perverted his teachings.So let us seek the true God and his Word and his truth.