Following on from this morning's post, the issue of healing appeared on the radar in to form of a conversation with an extremely experienced nursing type (been a midwife tutor and worked in a mil' setting for much of their career) regarding God and healing. Their view was (and always had been) that God healed through the skills and expertise of the medical types and not by any divine act.
This raised a whole raft of issues for me, namely (in a nutshell):
i. If God can heal but doesn't, does this make God wicked, uncaring or just plain mean?
ii. If God can't heal, then surely this means He isn't God, for everything should be possible for the Absolute God.
(Note the parallels here with the issue of evil - does it work if we substitute evil and suffering for healing?))
But what about times when God does heal, physically, when, how, who and where and why did it happen?
I struggle because I have prayed for (me, not a story from another person) physically blind people (yes, more than one) and they saw. Before I prayed for them, they didn't. Simple in an extremely complex and unsettling way. (I'll give an account of this later)
I struggle because having prayed for a man regarded as a 'demoniac' and seeing him stripped naked, shaved, hosed down and returned to his family who had long back assumed he was dead, I know the power of God's healing (again, I'll tell the story some time soon).
So why did God heal them (and many others) from discernable medical conditions and yet not heal others? I prayed for a child with cerebral malaria and buried her the next day and less than three days later prayed with, and for, another and never realised that I'd passed her playing outside the house when I returned the next day. Both had the same illness and yet one lived and the other died. "All the days numbered," had been reached for one and yet still ran for the other.
So here we are. The ASA want 'robust proof' and many will offer up headaches and inner peace as examples of this (which indeed are evidence of healing). But what of the robustness of dead raised, deaf hearing and the lame dancing? Is seeking evidence 'putting God to the test' or is it merely satisfying the need for empirical evidence and right (after all, we are told to 'test' aren't we?). Are we too content to praise God for what isn't there or are we too lightweight to shout about what is and take on the skeptics?
One of the most important roles I have as a dog-collar is that of helping people to die well. I start working with people on this as soon as they become Christians, for we only get one go at dying and there are no resits - but what of healing before death comes a knocking?
Pax
3 comments:
I tend to think that healing comes in two places. Healing of mind and spirit by acceptance of Jesus into your life and living with and in him.
Secondly, when we die and pass to the promised new life 'All will be well' as Julian of Norwich received her divine revelation.
The 'Physical' healing seems to me to be one where sometimes a prayer might be appear to be answered, when a purely physical recovery from natural healing takes place. This might be judged a miracle, but how are we to know the unknowable? How are we to second guess God's will and intention for any single event.
I judge the miracles done by both Jesus and the disciples in his name to be there to show the divinity of Jesus to the gentiles, when the Jews couldn't or wouldn't believe that he was the Son of God.
No prayer is wasted, prayer is received but not always answered or answerable, or at least in any discerable way by us. Being human, we cannot discern it.
Human suffering is not caused by God, it is caused either by our own deliberate actions, or accidents of the infinite variety of nature and creation. When it happens, it can either separate us from God or bind us to him. I read a book last weekend, written by a former Japanese POW, Bill Rose, who I had known before his death. Bill suffered mightily during his imprisonment, but had survived, sustained by his faith in God.
Even in his most desperate situations, he had kept the faith and lead others along with him. That blessing, that gift seems to me, more of a miracle than any other I've seen or experienced to date.
It's so hard to define healing in terms of God's works, but I believe he does contribute through medical interventions, by inspiring and sustaining those delivering care, whether they know it or not. I also believe that he delivers it through inspiring and sustaining those who suffer and who call on his name for relief. Just how it works is beyond my ken.
This all drives one towards the utter sovereignty of God. Either he is incapable of healing all (in which case he is not much of a God) or he is perfectly capable but chooses not to. That is to say, he is utterly sovereign in choosing to heal and utterly sovereign in choosing not to.
Indeed it does and hopefully we will be driving to that general location over the next few days so we can take in the view and worship :)
Thanks for the comment,
V
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