Eight-year-old Elizabeth Rose Struhs was a priceless, beautiful and intelligent little girl living in Queensland, Australia. She suffered from type 1 diabetes. Her parents, unfortunately, were Christian Bible-believing people of faith, not people of God-given reason. They valued the superstition/"revealed" religion of Christianity more than they valued their gift from God of innate reason. This belief caused them to withhold Elizabeth's insulin from her, which caused the death of their daughter, Elizabeth, on January 7, 2022. Their trial has just started, and it is expected to last for several months.
Elizabeth's parents and adult brother belong to a Christian sect called the Saints. As Christians, they falsely believe the Christian Bible is the Word of God. This bogus belief that the Bible is the Word of God causes them to truly and sincerely believe the empty and false promises the Bible is overflowing with are true and are from God. This belief is why they withheld Elizabeth's insulin from her, as is evident by a statement Elizabeth's mother, Kerrie Struhs, made to police. She said, "...I believed that God would heal her. I thought maybe this is what God planned so everyone gets to see his power."
Brendan Stevens is the leader of the Christian sect Elizabeth's parents and brother belong to, the Saints. He made a telling statement when he said, "the Bible is filled with Jesus Christ working miracles, including raising the dead. We are within our rights to believe in the word of God completely as we do."
Stevens' wife, Therese Stevens, told police,
"We are Christians, so we believe that God raises people from the dead. No one said 'She's dead'. It was more like 'She sleeps now', because we believe that it is only sleep. And at some point, God will rise her again in this lifetime because that's a promise."
Prosecutor Caroline Marco told the jury that Elizabeth was dead for 36 hours before her father, Jason Struhs, called police. Jason Struhs said, regarding his calling the police, "Even though God will raise her again, we couldn't leave a corpse in the house."
The reason they waited 36 hours until they called authorities is because they believed promises in the Christian Bible such as John 14:12-14 in which the anonymous author of the Gospel of John wrote that Jesus promised people who believe in him will be able to do all the things he did, which includes bringing dead people back to life, plus "greater things than these". They gathered around Elizabeth's dead body and prayed that God would bring it back to life. "They believed, following Elizabeth's passing, God would raise her from the dead so she could walk amongst them again in this worldly existence," Ms. Marco said.
One probable reason they did not go beyond 36 hours is because of the science of death. A few hours after a person's body dies, their body goes into rigor mortis, which causes the muscles to contract and tighten. By the time 36 hours has elapsed, a body begins to decompose and begins to bloat and to smell. This reality probably inspired the Christians to end their faith-based efforts and to call police. (By mentioning the real-world reality of this, I'm not trying to be crude, I just want to make the reality of what happened comprehensible so we can better understand the importance of beliefs, and the consequences the actions based on those beliefs lead to.)
Christians who rely on Bible-based faith healing are too often referred to as extremists. Relative to the Christian Word of God, the Christian Bible, they are most definitely NOT extremists. The Christian Bible has multiple promises of faith healing in addition to John 14:12-14. For example, James 5:14-15 teaches Christians:
"Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him."
When we reach religious people with Deism, we are empowering them to realize the "holy" books of the man-made "revealed" religions are NOT the Word of God, and that the Creation IS the Word of God. This, in turn, empowers them to break free of the falsehood that a man-made book is the Word of God, and to begin to appreciate and use their gift from The Supreme Intelligence/God of innate reason. And this, in turn, makes beautiful and priceless children like Elizabeth safe from being victims of religious nonsense.
Knowledge is power. If you're interested in gaining knowledge about deadly faith healing, listen to this two-part interview with Rita Swan, the founder of Children's Health Care is a Legal Duty, conducted by our fellow Deist Tim Wingate. Both Rita and Tim have since passed on after doing much good in the world. Here is the link to part one, and here is the link to part two.
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