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This article originally appeared in the November 25, 1983, issue of Christianity Today.

For six years author and speaker Joyce Landarf has endured an overwhelming and paralyzing kind of pain. It begins in her jaw and spreads across her face and head, its severity ultimately bringing on nausea and diarrhea. The medical diagnosis is TMJ, for temporomandibular joint dysfunction, and the affliction has caused her to curtail public appearances drastically.

The ailment persists despite the efforts of many specialists using all known methods of treatment. In talking about her situation, Landorf describes the physical pain and the feelings of failure and alienation that came as she must cancel engagements and withdraw from social settings. She also wrestles with God over the reasons behind a physical problem that disrupts her ministry. And yet as Joyce Landorf reflects on all aspects of her suffering, she mentions one source of pain more troubling than any other: judgment from fellow Christians.

A large and vocal branch of the church, it seems, holds that it is never "God's will" for a person to suffer. Following that dictum, these Christians presume all suffering to derive from one of two flaws in the afflicted person. Either the sufferer is being punished for some sin, or remains unhealed because of a lack of faith. "Confess your sin!" they tell Landorf, and also "You simply must exercise more faith." In truth, says Landorf, their haughty condemnation, coming at a time of such vulnerability, hurts worse than the physical pain itself.

In May of this year, the Chicago Tribune ran a story on a young father from North Manchester, Indiana. He had just agreed to talk to a Tribune reporter about an incident that happened in 1978. An accompanying photo of him shows a slim man in his early twenties, with neatly trimmed hair and a burgeoning moustache, standing in front of a building at Grace Theological Seminary, where he takes evening classes.

David Gilmore told about an illness of his 15-month old son, Dustin Graham Gilmore, that began in April of 1978. At first the child came down with flu-like symptoms. The Gilmores took him to their church and the pastor prayed for him. Members of that church believed that faith alone heals any disease and that to look elsewhere for help—for example, to medical doctors—demonstrates a lack of faith in God. Gilmore and his wife followed the church's advice and simply prayed for their son. Over the next weeks they prayed faithfully as his temperature climbed, prayed when they noticed he no longer responded to sounds, and prayed harder when he went blind.

On the morning of May 15, 1978, the day after their pastor preached an especially rousing sermon about faith, the Gilmores went into their son's room and found his body a blue color, and still. He was dead. Again they prayed, for their church also believed the power of prayer can raise the dead. But Dustin Graham Gilmore stayed dead. An autopsy revealed the infant died from a form of meningitis that could have been treated easily.

Gilmore decided to make his story public after five years of silence because he personally knew of 12 other children who had died in similar circumstances. Beneath the article on the Gilmores the Tribune printed a map of five states (Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky) where people connected to Gilmore's former pastor now live. Superimposed on the map were tiny tombstones marking where people had died after refusing medical treatment in accordance with church teaching. The number of deaths in all five states totaled 52.

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July (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47