Save Me!

It's in the hands of the jury now. Those poor folks must decide whether Marci and Jeffrey Beagley who are charged with criminally negligent homicide for failing to provide medical care for their son Neil. He was 16 when he died, and he had suffered from a urinary tract blockage his whole life. It could have been corrected easily when Neil was a youngster.

Neil didn't want to see a doctor. He said he'd put his faith in God instead.

OK, but what else is the kid going to say when he's been raised all his life to see going to the doctor as a slap in God's face? After all, he'd already seen his little neice die of easily treated conditions.

Always, the parents say, "We didn't think our child was going to die." That's not an explanation. The real question is, supposing they had known their child was going to die, would they have still made the same decision to pray but shun medical help? I hope that would be their answer. Otherwise, their faith is a very sadistic double standard, a complete hypocrisy.

I'm wondering a whole lot of other things about the Followers of Christ down in Oregon City. Such as:

Do they ever go to a dentist?

Suppose a family member was choking on food and couldn't breathe. Would they do the Heimlich maneuver, or would they just pray and let the person choke and die?

Suppose they are at their friends' swimming pool watching their 10-year-old kid jumpoff the side and into the pool. All is fine until the kid hits his head on the concrete ledge as he jumps in. He's unconscious on the bottom of the pool, so someone jumps in to haul the kid out of the water. Do they begin CPR, or do they just pray and let the child die? If the latter, then why haul the kid out of the water in the first place?

Does faith only work in air but not in water?

Suppose the above scenario happened at a public pool and the lifeguard began CPR and handed the kid over to the paramedics when they arrived? Would the parents sue for violation of their faith? But the lifeguard would be fired and charged with a crime if he didn't do his duty. The pool's liability insurance would be dropped.

Could a member of the Followers of Christ render first aid to an accident victim? Could they apply a tourniquet to stop a person from bleeding to death?

Could they get emergency surgery for appendicitis? What if the surgeon was a born-again Christian whose life had once been saved by a Good Samaritan who found him by the side of the road and got professional help while praying for the victim?

What would a reasonable person do?

A reasonable person does not attempt to do the work of a 1.5-inch socket wrench and breaker bar by using a pliers instead. A reasonable person uses the best tools available and doesn't insist that it's a rejection of God or a sign of weak faith by realizing that there is a better tool than the pliers.

But even the reasonable person who chooses the socket wrench wears gloves, uses eye and ear protection. They don't just rely on the tool alone.

I'm glad I'm not on the jury. Neil Beagley's parents can be glad also. I'm glad they aren't my parents. I'm glad I'm not their son. Their grieve and mourn a death because of their beliefs. May our beliefs lead us to life, not the opposite.

Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Pray for the Followers of Christ. And all their children.

Shalom,

Roger

Half Staff

The rain has stopped long enough to put out my flag. It's at half staff, the way it flies more frequently than it does at full staff.

We mourn the loss of life and the deeper tragedies at Ft. Hood, Texas.

Nidal Malik Hasan. Officer. Mental health professional. Major. Member of our armed forces. U.S. citizen by birth just like most of us. Muslim, unlike most of us.

I'm glad I have known other Muslims besides those seared into the minds of most Americans by 9/11, homicide bombings, interfaith sectarian bloodshed, honor killings and forced marriages of young daughters who seem to barely qualify as property.

I'm glad that Jean and I lived for 2.5 years at the very beginning of our marriage as tennants of the generous and loving Aydogan family: Muazzez and Ali and their three kids: Esen, Ali and Sedat. Ali was a farmer just like my Dad, but he lived in town. And they opened their little apartment building to us and, before us, to other GI's who didn't live on base. They didn't rip us off by jacking up the rent. They welcomed us and respected us, as did countless merchants who often insisted that before we did any business we first have tea.

Then there were the two Muslim Turks who helped me out of the ditch after a motorcycle accident in August 1972 as several carloads of Americans passed by. I know the parable of the Good Samaritan from the ditch-level view, not that of a spectator two millennia removed.

Likewise, I am glad that I know Christ followers other than the KKK, slavers, the IRA and the Orangemen, the popes and kings and armies of the Thirty Years' War, the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials and the Crusades, apartheid, the 1990's bloodshed between Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs who spoke the same language simply written in different alphabets.

May I never be judged by them. May our faith lead us only to humility, forbearance and compassion. Not to judgment but to new resolve.

A trail of bread crumbs, the agonizingly clear signals in hindsight, so often have us asking, "Why didn't we heed the warnings given by this person?" A legitimate question. Too easily we deny because the person is an active church member or occupies a position of authority.

How much of the buildup to the Holocaust was rationalized, ignored or just plain denied?

Now, shall I be judged by the Holocaust because the blood in my veins is 100% German? And will our president be blamed for this tragedy because of his absent father and his middle name Hussein (blessed)? Already, in the minds of many, I'm sure that connection has been made.

That's how the Holocaust started. And spread among literate, educated Christians.

But not all lives giving warning signals of potential tragedy actually end in tragedy. There are countless stories of signals heeded, help offered and received, healing experienced, lives rebuilt and restored. Mental health victories are the great unrealized and unexplored frontier of our lifetime as a civilization. Some of them are on the streets of downtown Portland, and I am blessed to know and to pray with some of them on Sunday evenings. Their lives make no headlines and attract the hot breath of no cloistered pundits far away.

But they are banner headlines in heaven causing the angels to sing.

Lord, give us wisdom, humility, compassion and your peace. Amen.

Roger

Puppeteer. Or...?

So what do you think, King (or Queen) Solomons out there? Are the parents innocent or guilty? If guilty, of what?

I'm talking about the Worthingtons who are on trial in Oregon City following the death of their toddler who had a large cyst on her neck. The cyst was benign and could easily have been drained and treated. Instead, it swelled when the child developed a cold. It closed off the airway and she essentially died of suffocation. The parents and family prayed and laid hands on the girl. They say in court that they did all they could. They don't believe in doctors or medicine. They believe that their only recourse in the face of illness and disease is prayer.

And if the child dies (doctors say she could easily have been saved, even on the day of her death), it must be God's will.

But if it's God's will--and the faith and earnest prayers of loving family who have thrown all other sources of help overboard can't or won't change God's will--then why pray?

Is God the great puppeteer? Is it all predetermined, choreographed, cast in something harder than diamonds, more durable than titanium, more eternal than gravity? Or does God give us prayer and then some? Does God give us the tools of healing to free us to serve other people? Or does God only tell us to pray faithfully while perpetually taunting us with random answers? Is God the Great Physician and Healer or the Great Arbitrary Manipulator?

Does God give some people insight and make other people blind? Is God constantly playing games with us, constantly changing the rules and the scores, so that even when we think we have enough faith we end up hearing God push the buzzer and chant, "Ennnhhh! Sorry! You lose. Shoulda prayed HARDER and it might have worked out. Your fault."

Or does God want us to get off our buns and use every tool and opportunity for healing to the max? What does it mean to pray, "Thy kingdom come; they will be done?"

Last October we took Jean up to OHSU to have her head taken apart and put back together. We prayed for healing before, during and after the surgery. We prayed for the team while the work was going on. We used every tool God gave us. I don't trust or love God less because we had one of the very best neurosurgeons in the country working inside her skull. I thank God for the abundance of the gifts we were given.

I think God has cut the marionette strings and wants us to stand on our legs like the people he made us to be.

Shalom,

Pastor Roger