When 11-yr-old Madeline Neumann exhibited all the symptoms of diabetes her father wasn’t worried because he knew that God would protect her. When Madeline became so ill that she could not eat, drink or walk you’d have thought that her father might have called a doctor but he didn’t. Instead he summoned friends and relatives to her bedside at their home in the American Midwest and they all prayed as they watched her life slowly ebbing away.
Madeline’s father was recently convicted of her death but testifying in court he said that he had believed that God would cure her and that he never expected her to die.
He said:
“God promises in the Bible to heal. If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God…We figured there was something really fighting in her body. We asked people to join with us in prayer. I didn’t believe at all that the Lord would ever allow her to pass.”
He also said that he believed that “sickness is a result of sin” but that his daughter’s death had not shaken his faith.
Neumann’s defence lawyer claimed that he had not committed a criminal act because he truly believed that Madeline would be saved by prayer. Luckily the judge did not agree and neither did the jury which returned a guilty verdict after fifteen hours of deliberation.
So let’s see what we have here; an ancient book which supposedly contains God’s promise to heal, a God who apparently doesn’t keep his promises and a man with an Abraham-complex who has since stated that he will follow the instructions given in the book for the foreseeable future even though he was apparently lied to and who believes that his own daughter’s sickness, a treatable medical condition, was the result of sin, an intangible notion of morality that can be shown to be completely subjective. Mr. Neumann also seems to be blaming one of his three invisible imaginary friends, “The Lord”, for her death when he says he “didn’t believe..that The Lord would allow her to pass”. Have I left anything out? Oh yes, a poor little girl who was denied the chance to have a full and productive life by those whom she trusted most.
Filed under: Christianity, Death by Belief, Religion, Dale Neumann, Madeline Neumann
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