This religion regards attending church meetings as an extremely integral part of their faith; to remain in full fellowship, all adults (and only adults) must attend daily evening meetings in local congregations.

It’s not a problem for the wealthier SDM members with small children, because they can hire a babysitter during that time. Poorer SDM members with small children, however, are in a bind: if they don’t go to their evening meetings, they don’t qualify for the blessings of the full-fellowship-only SDM Tentpool, and Jehovah H. Watchtower won’t shine his heavenly methods upon them. But if they attend the meetings, they may have to leave the little kids unattended at home, where all kinds of things can go wrong.

The Cordon-Bleu family decides to set the faithful example and leaves the little kids at home alone while both parents are attending their meetings. “Miraculously”, nothing has gone wrong yet in the parents’ absence. Maybe the kids are just low-maintenance and not accident-prone. Maybe they know how to work the TV and it’s more interesting than scissors and matches. Doesn’t matter; the kids are fine and the parents have obeyed the strict commandment of their faith.

But a concerned neighbor, aware of what’s going on and worried that the lucky streak of child safety might not continue, puts in an anonymous call asking the local authorities to just make sure everything’s OK.

Is everything OK at this moment in the scenario? Maybe so. Is there reason enough to suspect that it might not stay OK, enough to justify a deeper investigation, perhaps even in front of a judge? That probably depends on national and local laws, judicial roulette (unfortunately, just as much a real thing as religious leadership roulette), and like it or not, whether the state the Cordon-Bleus live in is majority-SDM.

Judge for yourself. But I’m personally very concerned for these hypothetical children.

And I’m even more concerned when, 40 years later, one of these children is now an upper-level SDM authority who delivers a talk to millions of faithful Seventh-day Methodians extolling the virtues of his parents’ decision to leave him and his small siblings alone in order to dutifully attend their meetings.

He says things like, “You, too, will be blessed with the generous methods of Jehovah H. Watchtower as you attend your nightly meetings. Even if you must leave your small children unsupervised to do so, He will protect your little ones from harm.”

SDM leader Cordon-Bleu promises them this in the name of their god. But when tragedy does strike here and there, and the consequences of child neglect must be faced and grieved for, whose fault do you think it will be? In the eyes of the leaders and the faithful, it won’t be The Church of Jehovah Watchtower of Seventh-day Methods’ fault, because it never is. To them, either the parents suffering the loss brought it on themselves with some other form of unrighteousness, or Jehovah H. Watchtower is testing and refining them with trials.

They better still go to their meetings every night, though.