Church prays to bring child back to life

[Overdueleaf]

I understand the grief of losing a young child and that denial/bargaining (etc. etc.) is a part of that grief, but when does it go a step too far? Adding false hopes and delusions of granduer to already fragile mental states (of the parents) is a disaster waiting to happen if you ask me. Perhaps I am just blinded to their thought processes and actions as I do not share in their faith/beliefs (but to my defense, when has prayer and worship ever brought someone back from the dead?). 

 

 

https://www.hometownlife.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/18/california-family-church-try-bringing-daughter-back-life-through-prayer/2687060001/

[Piney]

Sickening......

[+and-then]

I believe that the author of life can return physical life if it is His wish.  That said, I have always believed that no soul leaves this earth before its time.  The only possible exception are suicides.  Most believers that I know believe as the pastor points out:

"it is more common to view death as the next step in life, he said, quoting from 2 Corinthians, which says, "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."

[Jodie.Lynne]

No parent should ever have to lose a child. Their grief is inconsolable.

 

Now, what will happen to the parents faith, when this effort fails? According to belief, Jesus rose after the third day.... this is the end of the sixth for this poor unfortunate child and her family.

 

And people wonder what the harm of religion is..... 

[+Not A Rockstar]

It is not like they harmed the child nor neglected her care to result in the death. If they want to pray, it harms nothing. 

Not for me to have an opinion on them. My prayers are with them to come to terms with her death as constructively as possible. Losing a child is terrible.

[+and-then]

Just now, Jodie.Lynne said:

No parent should ever have to lose a child. Their grief is inconsolable.

 

Now, what will happen to the parents faith, when this effort fails? According to belief, Jesus rose after the third day.... this is the end of the sixth for this poor unfortunate child and her family.

 

And people wonder what the harm of religion is..... 

Jodie, it may harm their faith or it may simply cause them to accept that sometimes the answer is no.  I pray for them that it's the latter.  For all of our beliefs in this life, faith in a God we can't prove exists or faith that man's technology will someday find all our answers, not ONE of us can empirically prove that we KNOW for a certainty what lies beyond that last breath.  Each person has to make the choice they find best for them.  FTR, I agree that religions have caused terrible suffering in the world.  I'd also point out that much good has come from believers as well.  There isn't a single human construct that doesn't have flaws, because humans have them.

[Jodie.Lynne]

1 minute ago, and then said:

There isn't a single human construct that doesn't have flaws, because humans have them.

I agree, but... Did you see the Instagram post cited in the article?? "Day 4 is a really good day for resurrection!"

 

I actually can understand and sympathize with people who are praying for a loved one to recover from an illness, or life threatening injury. What can it hurt? and it gives the family a sense of hope.

 

But this? This is just ghoulish, in my opinion, 

And what I meant about the parents faith is... imagine you are a devout follower of god, you doing everything your holy book and preachers tell you. You live a good life, according to your beliefs. And then a tragedy like this occurs. You, your family, friends, and the devout across the planet pray for this horrible event to be undone. And it isn't...

Was it because the parents weren't good enough? They didn't pray hard enough? They didn't tithe enough?  We've all heard the the soft sell adage of "sometimes the answer is no", but in reality, how many times is the answer no?

 

[Golden Duck]

1 hour ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

I agree, but... Did you see the Instagram post cited in the article?? "Day 4 is a really good day for resurrection!"

 

I actually can understand and sympathize with people who are praying for a loved one to recover from an illness, or life threatening injury. What can it hurt? and it gives the family a sense of hope.

 

But this? This is just ghoulish, in my opinion, 

And what I meant about the parents faith is... imagine you are a devout follower of god, you doing everything your holy book and preachers tell you. You live a good life, according to your beliefs. And then a tragedy like this occurs. You, your family, friends, and the devout across the planet pray for this horrible event to be undone. And it isn't...

Was it because the parents weren't good enough? They didn't pray hard enough? They didn't tithe enough?  We've all heard the the soft sell adage of "sometimes the answer is no", but in reality, how many times is the answer no?

 

We all have our cross to bear; and, God must have plans for this family.

[freetoroam]

3 hours ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

what I meant about the parents faith is... imagine you are a devout follower of god, you doing everything your holy book and preachers tell you. You live a good life, according to your beliefs. And then a tragedy like this occurs. You, your family, friends, and the devout across the planet pray for this horrible event to be undone. And it isn't...

exactly my thoughts too.

This kind of thinking and hoping can not be good and can only do more harm mentally in the long run. 

I do not understand why,  if they believe in god and heaven,  why they do not accept the idea that their child is with their god in a better place and in peace?  

 

Quote

the child's parents asked that "friends, family, and others from the church gather to pray for a miracle of resurrection

Sorry,  but although I can understand the pain they must be going through,  this idea of praying for a resurrection is only adding to that pain.

Quote

Kalley Heiligenthal, a Bethel Music singer and songwriter, also posted her beliefs on a GoFundMe page set up for the family over the weekend. As of Tuesday evening, it had raised more than $36,000.

https://eu.hometownlife.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/18/california-family-church-try-bringing-daughter-back-life-through-prayer/2687060001/

JEEEZE! WHAT?  This is getting sicker! 

What the heck has money got to do with this?  Does their god have an account you pay into before you get your dead back ( or rather not get them back).

This is crazy. A go fund me EFFING page?  

Why would the family need that money?

This is religion at its worse. 

False beliefs and false hopes and   making big money out of it.

 

[+Not A Rockstar]

I would hope this church handles this right for the family and helps them with the grief. I also do not often go on any sort of warpath about practices which are not actually damaging to the public or innocents directly (I mean anything taken in excess can be damaging so, you know what I mean, I hope). I hope the money is used for the funeral and they help the family ease into grief and acceptance and feeling supported through this tragedy. Maybe that will happen... 

However, I do have a serious issue with one revival I knew about which affected people I loved, which I went to and observed myself on a few occasions and saw the mess going on there. That was the "revival" at Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola. I have wrestled with even mentioning it here, I was reminded because they also had a baby incident there, then decided I was being mean, so did not mention it, but I did look it up and found out it has been scoured from the net almost completely... so naturally I need to mention it and link it here  If I have a hard on against something religious, it would be Brownsville and the things I saw there going on. 

Maybe someone can find more, this is a full page of trash about that revival, and number 49 down the page talks a bit about the baby incident, though that link is also now dead. I mean, I wanted a direct link, and so sad it has to be a full disclosure of trash talk to cite it ya know? (sarcasm. I really still find that revival horrifying). This was an outsider who went there for prayers. The baby died and he put her on ice and drove 350 miles to them believing they could raise her from the dead because they claimed it happened all the time. These huge mega churches do claim that sort of thing, which is what no doubt inspired these parents to hope for a "Yes".

http://deceptioninthechurch.com/pensacola.html 

[Rlyeh]

6 hours ago, and then said:

I believe that the author of life can return physical life if it is His wish.  That said, I have always believed that no soul leaves this earth before its time.  The only possible exception are suicides.

So it was just coincidence that infant mortality rates dropped with improved medical practices?

[+Not A Rockstar]

1 hour ago, Rlyeh said:

So it was just coincidence that infant mortality rates dropped with improved medical practices?

Yikes! Who said something that loopy?

That is the mentality that allows for anti-vaxxer nuts and worse  

[XenoFish]

Prayer does nothing. 

[Rlyeh]

31 minutes ago, Not A Rockstar said:

Yikes! Who said something that loopy?

That is the mentality that allows for anti-vaxxer nuts and worse  

Well if you believe we all have a set time to die then medical science has done nothing in reducing fatality rates. 

[+Not A Rockstar]

When my Dad died of cancer it never crossed my mind to wish him back. His road had been hard enough that "medicine" to help was as bad as the disease itself. When he died, it was his time. 

Knowing what he suffered, I am not sure it was worth it. If I ever get diagnosed with that, I may not even tell the family and just let it run its course. But, in any case, I will die in my own time, too.

Two people get chemo, one goes into remission and one dies. Science is fickle, it has favorites! OR, it is self evident that for one it was "not their time to die" and for the other one, it was.

Science does what it can. It is apart from our understanding and emotions as we stand over a casket of a loved one that it was, or was not, the right time to die. 

You seem to want to take offense on behalf of science that @and then believes we die when we are supposed to, when our number is up, when our clock runs out. But science has no feelings. It doesn't care. It is also not subjective and so cannot fit into those holes of emotion and trying to understand death. It answers some, but not all. 

Twisting a euphemism into a mortal insult to medicine isn't really workable. Turning a person's inner faith that there is a System underlying the seemingly arbitrary cruelties of life where things make sense into ignorance is not really workable either. 

[XenoFish]

So pretending that god cares makes it all better. 

[+Not A Rockstar]

25 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

So pretending that god cares makes it all better. 

For some it does, yes. 

Different strokes and all that. 

[SoWhatNow]

Spend every Sunday building faith in heaven and the afterlife and then end up devestated when someone dies like those with no hope. Strange.

If there was any good in jesus's message of spirit it is lost on these fleshly churches. 

[UFO_Monster]

I'm going to ignore the GoFundMe part of this and explain the fallacy of prayer. According to every Christian I've ever met, the idea has been that the Abrahamic God is an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient being.

When you pray to God for something, you're asking him to make a decision that has already been pre-determined. God would have known that this child was going to die. He also did nothing to stop it, despite having the ability to do anything, which would have included keeping the child from dying in the first place.

By praying to bring her back to life, these people are essentially asking God to divert from the course that he has already set, so it is inherently pointless to ask such a being for anything when he already knows what happened and what is going to happen, and therefore chose to do nothing to prevent it from happening.

This is assuming that God exists, of course. I have no reason to believe that such a deity exists. People only do these things because they're afraid of loss. This is a natural fear. But prayer is an irrational response.

The child is dead, and can never come back.

Edited December 20, 2019 by UFO_Monster

[onlookerofmayhem]

I pity these types of people. 

[Rlyeh]

17 hours ago, Not A Rockstar said:

When my Dad died of cancer it never crossed my mind to wish him back. His road had been hard enough that "medicine" to help was as bad as the disease itself. When he died, it was his time. 

Knowing what he suffered, I am not sure it was worth it. If I ever get diagnosed with that, I may not even tell the family and just let it run its course. But, in any case, I will die in my own time, too.

Two people get chemo, one goes into remission and one dies. Science is fickle, it has favorites! OR, it is self evident that for one it was "not their time to die" and for the other one, it was.

Science does what it can. It is apart from our understanding and emotions as we stand over a casket of a loved one that it was, or was not, the right time to die. 

You seem to want to take offense on behalf of science that @and then believes we die when we are supposed to, when our number is up, when our clock runs out. But science has no feelings. It doesn't care. It is also not subjective and so cannot fit into those holes of emotion and trying to understand death. It answers some, but not all. 

Twisting a euphemism into a mortal insult to medicine isn't really workable. Turning a person's inner faith that there is a System underlying the seemingly arbitrary cruelties of life where things make sense into ignorance is not really workable either. 

When someone refuses treatment, was it their time?

When a drunk gets behind the wheel and wipes out a family, was it their time?

Really I want to know how you determine it's their time.  Your entire reasoning here is that of ignorance.

[+Not A Rockstar]

5 hours ago, Rlyeh said:

Your entire reasoning here is that of ignorance.

LOL, well just rock on and ignore me then. Your inability to understand what I am saying doesn't make me ignorant, it just says you do not understand where I am coming from. It is mutual, though, as I have no idea what you are persisting in for a point. So, I am done here. 

Death is a bit of a trump, you know. When it comes, it is time to cross over. It is said to be your time to die. If one ceases to live at some time other than their time to die, I am not sure when that might be. It is the culmination of many decisions and seeming chance sometimes, and tick tock, we die. Good-bye.

I have no idea why you decided anyone insulted modern medicine or claimed it had not resulted in longer lives. Usually, you are really on top of topics and interesting to read. I am not feeling it here, though. Hope your holidays are as you wish them this season, and that the New Year is good for us all. 

[+Liquid Gardens]

44 minutes ago, Not A Rockstar said:

Your inability to understand what I am saying doesn't make me ignorant, it just says you do not understand where I am coming from.

With all due respect, and Happy Holidays!, I don't think you are understanding the point, which from what I have seen has nothing to do with 'insulting science'.  It has to do with the idea that 'no soul leaves here before their time' and how that is coexists with science.  By saying 'soul' and 'their time', it implies that God is ultimately behind this decision of when our time to go really is.  Yet something objective like medicine clearly has a major impact on when most people's 'time' actually is; without it, people would die sooner and that would be 'their time' and with it, some people instead live on longer than they would have and that would be 'their time'.  It's almost like God is superfluous to determining when someone's time is in the first place, and thus is where the incongruity is (to me).

[Duke Wellington]

8 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

With all due respect, and Happy Holidays!, I don't think you are understanding the point, which from what I have seen has nothing to do with 'insulting science'.  It has to do with the idea that 'no soul leaves here before their time' and how that is coexists with science.  By saying 'soul' and 'their time', it implies that God is ultimately behind this decision of when our time to go really is.  Yet something objective like medicine clearly has a major impact on when most people's 'time' actually is; without it, people would die sooner and that would be 'their time' and with it, some people instead live on longer than they would have and that would be 'their time'.  It's almost like God is superfluous to determining when someone's time is in the first place, and thus is where the incongruity is (to me).

God obviously gave us medicine and everything else.

[XenoFish]

11 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

With all due respect, and Happy Holidays!, I don't think you are understanding the point, which from what I have seen has nothing to do with 'insulting science'.  It has to do with the idea that 'no soul leaves here before their time' and how that is coexists with science.  By saying 'soul' and 'their time', it implies that God is ultimately behind this decision of when our time to go really is.  Yet something objective like medicine clearly has a major impact on when most people's 'time' actually is; without it, people would die sooner and that would be 'their time' and with it, some people instead live on longer than they would have and that would be 'their time'.  It's almost like God is superfluous to determining when someone's time is in the first place, and thus is where the incongruity is (to me).

It was god that inspired the creation of medicine and medical treatments, duh.