On September 18th, 2008, eight days after Leanora Elise Shockey was born, Lauren experienced Postpartum Psychosis and severely injured Nora. The doctors told me Nora probably would not make it, and the courts proceeded to charge Lauren with a felony and several misdemeanors.
There were plenty of anonymous comments in the articles surrounding the incident which called for Lauren's head. However, almost everyone who knows Lauren at
all understands that Nora's injuries were entirely a result of
Lauren's psychotic state, over which she had absolutely no control.
The problem is, secular
courts do not handle these cases very well. After all, there is
public outrage and future elections to consider. District Attorneys
run their campaigns based on how many convictions they have gotten,
not on whether or not justice was actually served. Judges are elected by that same public who, on the whole, knows nothing of
Postpartum Psychosis.
Furthermore, Bucks County
has had exactly one (1) case in its history where the defendant was
granted a verdict of "Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity",
that is to say, the only verdict that would have averted a felony
record for my wife. Due to the extremely long odds, we had little
choice but to plead "Guilty but Mentally Ill" in order to
hopefully - and, as it turned out, successfully - avoid jail time.
Therefore, Lauren is a felon, which has serious and lasting
ramifications, especially as a result of the Patriot Act.
In spite of all this, I
do find peace in God's sovereignty as laid out in Romans 8 and
elsewhere. I am also deeply grateful to God that our situation did
not turn out even worse than it did.
So what does God's Word have
to say about what happened on September 18th? Exodus 21:28-29 (ESV)
reads thus:
When an ox gores a man or
woman to death, the ox shall be stoned and its flesh shall not be
eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable. But if the ox has
been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned
but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall
be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.
I posit
that Lauren's psychotic state is the ox, and Lauren and I are the
owners of the ox.
Not
everything about this application of the passage fits perfectly.
First, Lauren's ox cannot be stoned, nor should it be, as Nora
survived (and is a wonderful daughter!). Second, if Lauren were to
have another psychotic episode in which she injured or killed
someone, a secular government should not have the authority to carry
out capital punishment. However, the rest fits very well...
Prior to
this incident, Lauren and I had zero knowledge of Postpartum
Psychosis - somewhat amazing, given Lauren's zeal for research and
desire to learn EVERYTHING! We also had zero knowledge of anything in
Lauren that could possibly lead to any sort of psychotic state. That
is to say, the "ox" - her psychotic state - had not been
accustomed to "gore" in the past, and we, as its owners,
had never been warned to "keep it in".
Now that
Lauren and I have been made aware of this ox, and that it is
accustomed to violence, we would be fully liable were she to injure
someone during Postpartum Psychosis a second time.
We must,
then, consider the treatment of Lauren in the first incident as
compared with what God's Law commands. God's Law demands justice.
Man's laws seek vengeance, and have little to do with justice at all.. If God's Law had been applied, Lauren
would have been fully exonerated, while she and I would have been
put on notice.
'Notice',
in this case, does not mean surveillance, supervision, nor any other
Nanny conditions the government loves to employ. Instead, it simply
means that Lauren and I would have had to pay in full with our own
bodies should any incident like this ever happen again. This solution
is simple and just, and completely hands-off should a second incident
never occur. GOD'S LAW DEALS WITH WHAT HAPPENS, NOT WITH WHAT
MIGHT HAPPEN.
Unfortunately,
our society - and its government - is not interested in justice. In
the first place, government jobs are maintained PRECISELY BY
mishandling cases like this, and they therefore have a vested
interest in mishandling them - District Attorneys, social workers,
counselors, psychiatrists, and probation officers, all of whom have
made tons of money from us and the taxpayers thanks to the "Guilty
but Mentally Ill" plea (alongside countless others' pleas).
Unfortunately,
most US citizens, even most fellow Christians, believe in trusting
our government, in spite of passages like the Apostle Paul's warning
to Christians in I Corinthians 6 to avoid the courts of unbelievers
in disputes between believers.
God's
Law has made provision for us in every way. If we would be willing to
search out His Word for answers instead of turning to the fallen
logic and special interests of man-made laws, we would finally be
pursuing justice here on earth as it is in heaven. I am not
suggesting I see God's Law as becoming the law of the land any time
soon, nor do I know exactly what that would look like. However, I am
making an earnest plea to my fellow Christians to turn to God's Word
for truth and justice before bowing to these United States of America
and their extremely fallible Constitution as canon.
Were
Lauren's case handled properly, as God laid out in Exodus, justice
would have been done.