Oregon faith-healing baby-killing couple get six years in jail

Before I turned chuchless, I might have said "There is a God!" when I saw the Oregonian's front page headline: A 'justly earned' sentence -- A couple who stood by as their baby died get six years in a Followers of Christ case.

How these Christian faith-healers maltreated their newborn got my blood boiling back in September when the case was being tried. So I liked reading in the Oregonian story about Judge Herndon's sentencing of the oh-so-guilty couple.

The Hickmans received the mandatory minimum prison term under Measure 11 sentencing guidelines, even though defense attorneys argued that their clients qualified for little or no prison time. Once released, they will be on post-prison supervision for three years. 

"This is a sentence you have justly earned," said Presiding Judge Robert D. Herndon. He called incarceration "a modest penalty for causing the death of a vulnerable person. ... This was so preventable." 

..."As the evidence unfolded and the witnesses testified, it became evident to me and certainly to the jury that this death just simply did not need to occur," said Herndon, noting that the jury reached a unanimous verdict in a "stunningly" short time. 

As noted before, the big theological issue in this case was what God's will is all about. Here's one of my favorite Meister Eckhart quotes:

Now I hear you ask, 'How do I know that it is God's will?' My answer is that if it were not God's will even for a moment, then it would not exist. Whatever is must be his will. If God's will is pleasing to you, then whatever happens to you, or does not happen to you, will be heaven. Those who desire something other than God's will get their just reward, for they are always in trouble and misery.

Now, I don't believe in God (so the Republican House of Representatives can take their recent reaffirmation of "In God we trust" as the national motto and shove it in whatever bodily orifice is most pleasurable to them).

Thus I mentally substitute "reality" for "God's will" in the Eckhart quotation. This makes the notion pretty close to a bumper sticker philosophy: Whatever is, is. But, hey, there's nothing wrong with that. Simplicity can be sweet.

The Oregonian story ends with:

Recent juries have seemed generally unsympathetic to the Followers. Jurors displayed a clear-eyed focus on the legal question underlying all the cases: What would a reasonable person do in the same situation? 

Their short answer: Call a doctor. 

So far, all defendants have said that was something they never considered. That admission, perhaps more than any other piece of evidence, sealed the Hickmans' fate. "For me, that was the bottom line," jury foreman Collin Fleming said. "They didn't do anything" 

During the trial, the Hickmans testified that God determines the outcome in all matters. 

"Everything that happens, whether it's good or bad, it's God's will," Dale Hickman told jurors. "If it's not God's will, it wouldn't be done." 

This is crappy theology, even though superficially it sounds akin to Eckhart and whatever is, is.

The Hickmans could have called 911, or a doctor, embracing this as God's will. But instead these Followers of Christ devotees believed that doing nothing was God's will, which ignored the reality of a newborn who desperately needed medical care.

Why do faith-healers limit their faith to healing? If God can cure the sick without any human help, then why can't God get us out of bed in the morning, make us breakfast, and do our jobs for us without any human effort?

Likewise, why did the Hickmans hire a defense attorney and testify in their own behalf at the trial? They could have done nothing -- the non-action supposedly demanded of them by God when their newborn baby had a problem -- and accepted that whatever the jury and judge decided, that would be God's will.

Yet this was the reaction of fellow church members to their six year prison sentences:

After Herndon left the courtroom, about 100 church members remained, sullen and many sobbing, as deputies handcuffed the Hickmans and led them away. 

Hey, what about baby-killer Dale Hickman's theology, "Everything that happens, whether it's good or bad, it's God's will"?

You and your wife will spend six years behind bars for letting your child die needlessly. Since you believe in God, Dale, for you this is God's will. Deal with it. Heck, if you actually lived your religion rather than just spouting platitudes, you'd embrace your sentence happily.

Comments

[Willie R]

Don't forget, Blogger Brian, that your personal disdain for the beliefs of true believers is also God's will. I can't say that I am in exact alignment with Judge Herndon's rather condescending comments on the case, but hey, I guess he is entitled to his opinions. As nihilistic as I am, I still find life rather compelling.
I wonder if I would be prosecuted if it were discovered that I willfully refused to render CPR to a person who subsequently died and who might have survived if I had actually performed CPR. Actually, I wonder if I could live with myself if I got away with such a thing....

[cc]

Can you be prosecuted for not knowing CPR? My religion dictates that CPR is Satanic, contrary to God's will, and that those who learn it go to Hell.

[Randy]

I'm wondering how many people died as the result of faith healing last year as compared to death by doctors

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/07/30/doctors-death-part-one.aspx