Posted by Ellen on October 15, 2002 at 12:29:14:
Years after son's death, man explores faith
Parker re-examines beliefs that led him to refuse medicine
KELLY DONOVAN/Staff Writer
BARSTOW — For Larry Parker, the price of presumption was his son’s life.
In 1973, Parker and his wife believed that God had healed 11-year-old Wesley of diabetes after an evangelist prayed for the child during a church service. The Barstow couple decided to stop giving their son his insulin shots, an act that led to his death three days later.
In a case that attracted the national news media to the High Desert, Parker and his wife, Alice “Lucky” Parker, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse. A judge overturned the conviction in 1978.
Today, the couple’s notoriety has faded, and they no longer receive dozens of icy stares on trips to the grocery store.
Parker, a former engineer at Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, and his wife are now retired. Their lives are focused on family and faith.
Their neat living room is filled with family photographs, and they get excited when they talk about their children and grandchildren. He reads the Bible daily and often studies verses that interest him in-depth, consulting different translations of the Bible for insight.
They attend church services weekly at Victorville First Assembly of God, where Parker sang in the choir, acted in plays and sang as a soloist before he started having problems with his vocal cords.
Tim Schoch, the music minister at the Victorville church, said he knows the couple because of Parker’s involvement with music and drama at the church.
“(Parker) is a very genuine person,” Schoch said. “He would impress you with his sense of warmness. He’s just got a great heart.”
In a recent interview, Parker discussed his new book, "Assumptions About Faith and Tradition,” in which he writes that if he and his wife, Alice “Lucky” Parker, had studied the scriptures more closely in 1973, the tragedy of their son’s death might not have happened.
He said his primary goal with the book is to warn people not to blindly accept what others say about Christianity.
“I want you to come to your own conclusions,” he said. “Look up the scripture yourself, and see what this says to you.”
The church at which the Parkers believed their son was healed was First Assembly of God Church of Barstow. After Wesley’s death, the church’s pastor told the Desert Dispatch in Barstow that he did not approve of the couple’s decision not to give the boy his insulin.
“We do pray for the sick, and we have known of many cases where sick people have been healed,” Pastor Gary Nash said at the time. “But ... the methods which were used in endeavoring to secure healing for Wesley Parker were not in accordance with our church’s beliefs.”
Parker said he recognizes the mistake he made in 1973 that led to the death of a son he and his wife loved, a loss that caused the couple tremendous suffering.
“You can’t just presume that God wants you healed,” he said.
A 1980 book about the Parkers’ experience is titled “We Let Our Son Die.” Parker said the publisher insisted on that title, and he would like to have it renamed “The Price of Presumption” to more accurately represent the way he feels about his son’s death.
“No matter how much we believed Jesus could heal our son, it was wrong to confess and claim he had healed him when we had not yet received ‘knowing-faith’ from God,” he wrote in the new book.
Such faith requires the believer to receive a message from God, Parker said. The message could be sent via thoughts in a one’s head that are not his own, an audible voice, suggestive circumstances, God’s word in the Bible or through visions and dreams, Parker said.
Schoch said members of his denomination believe that God heals people, but people should not act presumptuously.
“If a person is reliant on medication for their life, then we would not say, ‘You quit taking that medicine,’ unless there’s a very clear message from God that he has healed this disease,” Schoch said.
Kelly Donovan can be reached at kelly_donovan@link.freedom.com or 256-4122.