Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum's three-year-old daughter, Bella, has been taken back to the hospital. She suffers from the genetic disorder of Trisomy 18. It is a chromosomal defect with a high mortality rate.
This is a very sad situation. My thoughts are with her and her family.
There can be some important positive results from Bella's situation. As a leading figure in the religious right, Rick Santorum always promotes Christianity and the Bible. He believes in mixing religion and government as he made clear when he said President Kennedy's statement in a 1960 speech of, "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. ... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish, where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source, where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials . . . " makes him "want to through up."
As a staunch leader of the religious right Santorum shows his religious hypocrisy through his sick daughter. If Santorum really believed in the Christian Bible and in Christianity he would not rely on doctors and medicine. Instead, as a believing Christian, he would rely on prayer and faith as the Bible instructs all Christians to do.
Mark 16:17-18 says that Jesus said, "And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." (Some Christian apologists insist that this part of Mark is not in the oldest copies of this chapter of Mark and therefore should not be in the Bible. However, this only serves to open up a whole new can of worms for Christianity since if it is true for this, what about other parts of the Bible?)
Add to this John 14:12-14 which says that Jesus said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it." This makes it very clear that Rick Santorum, who believes in Jesus, can heal his daughter based on this Bible promise. Not only can he heal his daughter, since Jesus promised that Christians (those who "believeth on me"/Jesus) can not only do what Jesus allegedly did such as walk on water, heal the blind, deaf and the sick, and raise people from the dead, but believers can do "greater works than these"! So, based on this Bible promise which Santorum as a Christian believes, Santorum can heal his daughter.
Since our God-given reason tells us these Bible promises are completely empty and are a fraud, Christian leaders like Santorum and faith healers like Pat Robertson do not rely on these promises from Jesus. Instead, they and their families go to the best doctors and hospitals their overflowing amounts of money can buy. Pat Robertson, for example, went to heart specialists and the hospital for 10 hours of heart surgery. Yet, they continue to encourage their followers to not do as they do, but to do as they say -- or as the Bible says. This causes the unnecessary deaths of innocent children every year in the U.S. alone.
If Santorum's hypocrisy in this matter can be given enough attention perhaps it will make some sincere Christian parents who are currently deluded by the myth of faith healing realize that it is a real danger to them and their children and not something that should be practiced. Perhaps Bella's sad situation can save the lives of other innocent children.
