Faith and Folly (2)
Today's post is my last comment (expanded) from yesterday's conversation. I want to make sure that those who may have missed the comments interact with these thoughts.
Any more thoughts?
I think that it is commendable to have strong faith and trust in the healing grace of God and I would even commend making prayer for healing a matter of first resort (yes I wrote "first" so that we show by our actions that we trust God more than doctors, or whatever our own traditional or alternative treatment of choice may be).
But the great concern I am expressing is over the very bad theology that treats medicine as if it is bad or healing by miracle in this life as if it is an absolute birthright of every believer. To treat medicine as bad is to deny both the goodness of God's creation (which provides cures for disease) as well as the creation mandate of Genesis 1 (which commands us to have dominion over the earth--which includes dominion over disease through whatever ethical means we may discover). Those who despise medicine unwittingly disobey that mandate.
And to treat healing by miracle in this life as an absolute birthright in this life is to confuse the "not yet" (what is a birthright to be given us when heaven dawns) as a "now" (something we can name and claim for here and now all the time). This confusion has led countless sincere but misguided Christians into grave disillusionment and doubt when their namings and claimings have not materialized.
Such teachings are usually what is behind the tragedies such as we're talking about here. The ideas that we can name and claim such things, that we can create miracles by "word-faith", that to go to a doctor when prayers for direct healing have not rendered healing is an evidence of unbelief--are all ideas that are serious distortions of the Word. And they have led to untold grief.
I saw a short video recently by John Piper--(google John Piper, prosperity gospel video)--in which he expresses his very strong feelings against the prosperity gospel (which is part of what we're talking about here). He despises these false teachings because they are misleading and destroying souls. Evangelists and missionaries are promising health and wealth to get converts. In so doing they are not offering people God, the Giver of Life and Savior of souls. They simply are offering people an idol: good health and wealth. This destroys souls in the name of faith.
In this particular case it destroyed a body too.
I admire the faith and the apparent sincerity of this man; I simply grieve the error, ignorance, and irresponsible shepherds that lead people to pursue folly in the name of faith. The costs are catastrophic, both for this life and the next.
Tim
Any more thoughts?
Labels: Dependance on God, Doctrine, Faith, Healing, Persecution
posted by Tim Shorey at
7:37 AM
5 Comments:
I have seen the extreems of both and I suppose that at times I have wondered about both. I was miraculously healed of a cervicle spine contraction when Marybeth decided to pray for me. I was taking 4 NSAID's per day and the next morning I woke up and it was as if my neck was "like new". I wonder if I should have prayed first before I went back to Lenscrafters last week to get my myopia, presbyopia, and astigmatism "treated" or corrected by an opthamologist? I have seen parents take their children to the MD every time they had the sniffles. I suppose that there is so much that we are ignorant of. I have seen obese diabetics whose shopping carts are filled with "junk food, ice cream, (no offense Tim) cookies etc. When they go to church and ask for healing, is it possible that their diabetes is God ordained "reaping of what they have sown"? I was in the joint replacement business for 18 years. I have a friend who is in the "pacemaker" business. My brother in law, a professed believer, has an artificial mechanical heart valve. He is 45 years old and will now live to see his 5 daughters get married, God willing. People are walking, their hearts are beating, their blood pressure is under control, their allergies no longer hinder. Tim, I truely believe that your chronic headaches have worked a level of Godliness, humility and thankfulness in your heart that would not be there were you to be miraculously healed. One of my hero's, John Calvin, suffered all of his adult life with over 5 major maladies, without healing. When these diseases finally brought him to his deathbed, he said to his assistant and Physician, "I kiss the rod that chastens me".
Tim, your reference to the "cultural mandate" of the opening chapters of the book of Genesis is very relevant. When we are freezing to death, do we pray first or simply turn up the oil or gas or electric furnace? These are as equally a provision of God as a miraculous fire would be. Are all who wear glasses to see, guilty of unbelief? These are obviously rhetoricle questions. I am left with this resolution. With a multitude of counselors, there is safety. We must take responsibility for our actions. This sad case in the mid west of the father with the diabetic daughter (I am aware of the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes) probably had a "multitude of counselors" also. Perhaps my first response to yesterdays blog was a bit harsh. I was at first very angry when I heard the story. After a day to think about it, I am now very sad. Needless to say, this is a much larger issue than I first apprehended. If the goal of this blog is to make us think, then I confess, it has served me well. Perhaps this is an emerging theme for Nil Nissi Verum?
JR
Thanks John for your reflections,, insight and humility. Yes, to make us think and then come to clear and humble insight is the very purpose for these exchanges.
Through them I have found myself affected in feeling a need both to grieve and to register a strong, urgent, even humbly indignant call to leaders and Christians to take greater care.
Thanks for your passion to think it through and to adjust along with me (us) in the process. These things are good and sweet.
Tim, your recent post (which I read twice!) is quite balanced, and I am in agreement. Truth usually lies between two extremes, and so it is with this.
It seems that Asa with his foot disease, did not lean FIRST toward the Lord, but put all his confidence in the physicians (such as they were in his day). When we pray, and seek medical care together, I think we act with both faith and prudence.
This is somewhat off the point; but I have a relative, 40 years old, who just this week had an operation to prevent him from having any more children. They have two children now. This to me is a clear misuse of the medical possibilities available to us today. The Catholic Church calls it "self-mutilation." Why do some evangelicals not observe what to me appears to be a clear abuse of medicine, and of the body?
There is a fine and careful biblical balance between extreme positions on almost everything. I might even suggest that it is so with the matter you bring up at the end of your comment.
It may interest you (and other readers) to note that I am in process of writing a fairly substantial paper on what I think is a biblical and balanced view of the question of babies and birth control.
Once again, it would be my take that there is a very careful middle rgound that needs to be staked in this issue, one which I'm hoping to articulate in my paper.
Pray for me that I will be biblically faithful and bold in my conclusions and in what I write. For I strongly suspect that I will offend people on both sides of what is a very emotional and profoundly human issue.
Hello Tim,
I wonder if this might be of any interest as you compose your paper?
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul06/p6humana.htm
Petros
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