Our church supports many missionaries. We often have the chance to meet them, see photos of the ministry that they have been called to. It’s an amzign thing to hear them speak. Just this last week, a family came back to the States from Chihuahua, Mexico. They’ve got an amazing little church. On May 3, the Mexican government shut down everything in light of the swine flu scare. Well, I should say that they intended to shut down everything. Wait, let me say that again. All the churches were told to shut down. And threatened with permanent closure, and huge fines if they didn’t do it. Our missionary friend said that May 3, 2009 would be the day the churches closed in Mexico. Meanwhile, because his church had been registered as a private residence, they continued to have services. And after they met to share the word of God, he went for a walk. And was saddened to see that the grocery stores were open. The restaurants were open. The bars were open. The public continued to meet and laugh in the streets, yet the churches were silent. Score one for the government.

Then, as this family came to visit back in the States, their oldest son was told that he couldn’t come in. Um, but he’s an American citizen, born in the United States of America. The border officials insisted that he coldn’t come home without a work visa, issued by Mexico, to enter the US, and he HAS to return in 6 months to renew his visa to be in the United States.

When his father asked why, he was told………………….
“Ask Washington D.C. Everything we do here is linked to Washington.”
The father pointed out that they were still IN Mexico, that his son was a US citizen, and that they people doing the paperwork were in mexico, on Mixican soil, doing Mexican governmental work.

“Yes, I know. But everything we do here on the mexican side of the border is linked to Washington.”

Kind of telling, in and of itself, is it not?

I’m not as stunned as I wish I could be. A Minneapolis judge has ruled, despite a family’s objections, that they must allow their son to be evaluated to see if he would benefit from chemotherapy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090515/ap_on_he_me/us_med_forced_chemo

This is just insane. A parent chooses(in the best of cases-I’ll admit there are some parents who don’t give 2 hoots for their child’s welfare) to give the best to their children.
If my children were to ever be diagnosed with cancer, I would fight tooth and nail for the treatment *I* saw to be best for them. The bad thing to chemotherapy is that it’s a poison that you hope kills the cancer before it kills you.
This family’s religious rights are being violated. The courts will rule that because they allowed one treatment, they violated their own religious rights. Perhaps this family had no knowledge of the dangers or the exact nature of chemotherapy. The hard reality is that most doctors have a “I’m the doctor and I know better than you do” mentality. They frequently assume that people know without question what all the treatments entail and when they are questioned, talk down to them.
My family uses naturopathic and holistic treatments almost exclusively. We do use allopathic treatmetn when it’s become patently obviuos that I cannot treat it myself. But to know that a judge might order me to hand my children over for poison just infuriates me.

When did we abdicate our authority as those that deem what’s best for our family and how can we get it back?