Spiritual Healing

Working with the Spirit for Bodily Health

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"I am the LORD who heals you" -- Exodus 15:26 (NRSV)

Healing In the Bible

Anyone who's paying any attention while reading the Gospel accounts of Jesus has a hard time missing that Jesus healed people of physical illnesses. Not only did Jesus do it early and often (so often that during His life, His healings were seen as a trademark of His work), but He is reported in Scripture to have given his followers the ability to do the same, and more. As to the church actually following through on that promise, see .

From the point of view of the Bible as a whole, healing happens whenever harm or damage is made whole. This broader view of healing needs to be kept in mind when you think Christianly about politics, society, interchurch relations, decision-making methods, and questions of racism, sexism, or classism. Yet, the Bible usually means something more specific and earthy than that when it speaks of healing. It tells the story of specific people being healed of their specific physical illnesses. If we over-emphasize the broader vision, we can quickly lose sight of the specific usage. Thus, in this chapter I'll stick to the primary meaning of healing, that of physical restoration of health, and leave inner healing to another chapter.

The early church understood this, and not just in the era of the Apostles. Throughout the first two centuries, wherever Christian witness went, physical healing went too. It would perhaps be helpful to mention a saint or two who healed, but the fact is, faith healings may well be the most common miracle ascribed to those the Roman Catholic Church honors as saints, famed and forgotten saints alike. While it became much less common after the time of Constantine, it did not nearly vanish like most other miraculous acts and signs. Instead, nearly every era has some Christians who touched and healed people, right through to our own times. It goes hand-in-hand with a deep spirituality and an even deeper love of God and other people -- when the Spirit is there, healing happens !

Healings are a sign of the day when all illness and unease is healed. It is actually one of the actions of that kingdom asserting itself, the beginning of the healing process for all of creation. (Only a beginning. It is no substitute for the completed Kingdom. The healed will eventually die, just as the raised Lazarus died again. So getting part of that wholeness through healing reminds us of what it is to have the whole thing someday.) In spiritual healing prayer and healing work, we can all be a part of God's holistic overall work of healing. Christians don't worship health. We don't call on God to remove all suffering from life. What we do is ask God to fulfill the divine purposes, and trust God to give us health where it helps and suffering where that is needed. This goes well beyond just 'spiritual' healing.

One Out of Ten - Luke 17:11-19

Ten men came to Jesus. At first, at a distance, as they would with anyone, so that their skin disease wouldn't scare them off. But then, they made their plea for help. Jesus sees this, and gives them instructions, which they follow: show yourselves to the priests, you'll be clean before you get there. Result: all ten left to do as required, and as they were leaving, all of them were being cured of the disease.

However, one of them turned around (Greek hypostrephô). No little term here: in Acts 22:13-17, the apostle Paul uses it to describe his own change of life direction. The one leper came back to thank Jesus, throwing himself at Jesus' feet. That's not just thanks, it's worship; it's not just that, it's touch. It's a level of closeness that the man hadn't experienced since getting the disease. Jesus then says, "Your faith has made you well".

What did Jesus mean by that? All ten were cured, made clean of the disease. No small act for even a celebrated healer, and no small thing for any of the ten men, a turning point in their lives. But only the one who turned away from everything else and gave full-out praise, only that one was declared "well". By way of his worship of Jesus, he opened up to God's wide panorama of what it means to be made whole. Notice that he's not thanking the other nine lepers, nor was he heaping praise on the strangers around him, not even of the disciples who were with Jesus - the ones Jesus originally was addressing at the start of this healing. No. He went back 'praising God', and 'thanked' Jesus - to him, the two things were pretty much the same. This now ex-leper saw, and understood. He was no longer one among the label 'the sick', no longer one of ten in misery that was company. He was himself - finally! And he knew who he belonged with. The act of returning to Jesus was an act of faith, and that faith made him "well" - wholly a part not only of the society around him, but also the Kingdom of God, which is the very definition of what it means to be "well" and whole. God is not just paying attention, but is hard at work all of human life. The ex-leper now knew this from his own skin. There was no separation of being healed of a medical illness and spiritual healing, to him it was all just healing, and he was joyous over it. He goes, but not just in a self-beneficial obedience like the other nine. He goes as living, breathing evidence of Jesus' ministry and work on earth and beyond.

This sense of being "well" comes in the context of the kingdom. In the immediate case, it means that in the context of core matters and acts of faith, such as confession and forgiveness, bearing one's cross, and self-giving to others.
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Why Am I Ill?

All that said, the question most of us are most interested in is not the mushy general question of why there is illness. The questions that count are "Why am I sick?" and "How do I become whole again?"

1. I'm a human, and humans are a fell kind, a broken people in a broken world.
   Thus : If I am ever to be whole, my wholeness must be firmly based in what God has done and is doing about that situation.
2. I'm ill right now, in this moment, because this out-of-kilter body has left me open to the rest of out-of-kilter things in this out-of-kilter existence -- the germs, viruses, war wounds, accidents, fights, brain chemistry, and such, in the world around me.
   Thus : if I am to be whole, I must be so within that world and that ecosystem which I'm a part of, and deal with it in every moment.
3. I'm sick within the community, tradition, and identity group of which I'm a part. That community has its own way of envisioning the illness, placing it within a narrative context or 'story'. This in turn helps me listen for how I, and also the God of this real-life story I'm in, can speak through it.
   Thus : if I am to be whole, I must learn the framework that holds together such a varied wholeness, a framework that will help lead me through my life during, and hopefully after, the illness.
4. I'm ill. ME! I'm not quite like anyone else. I have my own identity. I have my own consciousness which, in a way, is the community of all that is 'me'. I am the main context of my own illness, and it is my life that's at stake.
   Thus : if I am to be whole, I must be honest with myself. Because the stakes are so high for me, I cannot afford not to listen for the words of others who know how this illness operates, those who can name it (diagnosis) and then hopefully map out with me a course of action (treatment) for both the medical and non-medical aspects of the illness. I am responsible for me.

By looking at these parts of the illness, we can envision for ourselves what it means to be both cured and healed/made whole.

The kind of healing that the Bible talks about also takes place today in our day and time. It is real. It's in the toolbox that the Spirit has given Christ's followers. As we do with many of those tools, we try to be in control, to manipulate people using faith healing, or to fake it in order to become famous. That is the human way. The real gift may be hard to find because so many are claiming to do it.

In today's world, many people turn to spiritual healing ministries and faith healers for many of the same reasons they use for turning to alternative medicine, unusual therapies, and New Age healing:

• spiritual hunger;
• meaning in life;
• direction for life.

It's best to address these needs without letting them overwhelm the healing task at hand. A true congregational healing ministry is not a psychiatrist's couch or a medical practice or a weekend with a guru. It is neither modern therapy nor another way of saying 'salvation', though it is related to both. A congregation's task for health has a different task. It must not try to imitate them.

Faith healing is not there to replace medicine or the body's healing processes. But Western civilization has gotten even most Christians to look to medical science as their only source of healing. When the Bible speaks of healing, it is speaking of God's stepping in to bring about healing by divine power rather than mere medicine. The natural processes obey God's command rather than operate as they normally do. What we call 'miracles' are simply the loving response of the One who's already driving those processes. Thus, the Christian's prayer is not just that the ill be comforted, but that they may be healed inside and out. When healing occurs, whether miraculous or not, we are not to ask what we did right, but to ask what God is up to.
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From a church bulletin:

"Due to the Rector's illness, Wednesday's healing services will be discontinued until further notice."

God-Talk About Healing

Healing is a divine mystery. God does not provide the same things to everyone, nor the same thing all the time to any one person. The gifts are measured according to the Kingdom's standards, not our standards, and are given entirely for God's purposes. It's not a 'health and wealth' thing where one presses a prayer button marked 'gimme' and out pops a new Mercedes or a faith healing. The idea of automatic blessing is presumption, not faith. Yet, charismatic Christians take issue with the church in general for not seriously believing that God will lead, heal, or empower. They believe that God can and DOES step into our lives. They trust that God will do right by them when they are ill ().

However, there's a serious problem among some churches. It's especially severe among fundamentalists and fringe Pentecostals, but the problem can be found in members of just about any church. The problem starts with a simple idea: that unconfessed sin can cause illness. The Bible teaches that (; ). Life experience teaches that. I myself have gone through serious physical distress because of what an unconfessed sin did to me from inside, twisting me into such knots that I developed itchings and sores and headaches and bodily weakness. I knew it, too. I confessed it, then started doing something about it, and indeed, it went away.

The problem is that many Christian churches teach this in reverse: if you're ill and it doesn't go away with prayer, then it must be caused by unconfessed sin or the absence of faith. Baloney! It usually isn't caused by unconfessed sin. Illness is made possible by the sinfulness which comes with being a part of this created world -- the sort of sin which Christians mean when saying that all human beings are 'fallen'. This 'fallenness' (having to do with 'original sin') has put us all out of kilter and made us un-whole. Our state of sin is what makes it possible for us to become ill, and guarantees that we will die. But all the confession in the world has never once gotten rid of that state of sin. It's with us till the Kingdom comes. Specific sins are usually not what gives a specific person their specific illness at a particular time. You may make the causal connection that sin A led to illness B, but the logic does not hold in reverse - illness B can also be caused by germ C, or gene D, or accident E, or someone else's sin F, or other things G through Z.

Yet I can tell you of dozens of people I have met (and hundreds I have heard about) who were scolded, berated, shunned, shamed, and labeled as a grave sinner just because they happened to be ill and it didn't go away when they were prayed over. I've seen this happen with my own eyes more times than I care to recount. Most Pentecostalists I know of are aware of this, and say that they don't believe that the failure to be healed is always from unrepented sin. Yet, even for those people, old habits die hard. Often, the first thing that even those believers will do when someone isn't healed is to start interrogating the unhealed person about the parts of their life that personal sins are most expected to be found - usually involving sex. Tens of thousands of people every year are driven away from the church by this belief. They flee because instead of being loving people who gave grace to someone in need, the church was an angry, superstitious, bitter, legalistic, elite clique which showed no love at all, and indeed showed exactly the opposite of such love. This is not the way of Christ: Christ made contact with the ill, Christ treated them personally, Christ healed them, Christ showed them love. If your church doesn't do that, either change churches, or if possible, cause the church to change. It is a matter of the Gospel.
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go here for more on the history of Christian healing, and on a more holistic approach.

Catalysts for Divine Action

People report that they go through strange things when they are miraculously healed:

• -- shaking or shivering hands;
• -- heat where a healer and heal-ee make contact;
• -- a gift of being led as to what to pray for;
• -- the feeling of being 'bathed in prayer', a sense of peace and assurance that there are people really actively praying for the person's wellness, and that God is giving a positive response to their prayers.
• -- a 'parting of the fog', a sudden clarity of mind or return of awareness during illnesses or treatments that produce dizziness, extreme weakness, headache, or disorientation.

Pentecostalists dispute about whether the spiritual gift of healing is given to a 'healer' (so said Oral Roberts) or to the 'healed' (so said David DuPlessis). There's reason to suspect that the Spirit is giving matching gifts to both. There are some people who just seem to be able to bring healing with them wherever they go. They act as great catalysts for healing. Yet in order to do the spiritual healing, the Spirit must also be operating inside of the ill person to make the change happen, with or without someone else healing them. The dominant gift, I would think, would be the one to the 'healed' person, as they are the beneficiaries; however, that's by no means clear, and we don't have God's mind so we be certain of what's afoot. Whatever the case, one of the joyful rewards of being in a healing ministry is when you see the Lord bring healing in a way you didn't expect, especially when God gave you a part in what was done.

Someone can talk a lot about spiritual healing, share methods of healing, use anointing oils and liturgies at the scene, discover that they may have a healing touch, teach about intercessory prayer, and learn how to conduct healing services. That's all good, all important, and all part of a valid healing ministry. But, unless many actual healings come from that work, that person has less of an actual healing ministry than any of the tens of thousands who take part in prayer chains and hospital visitations for their congregations. Or for that matter, less of a ministry than the countless Christians who are doctors, EMTs, nurses, psychologists and counselors. These unsung heroes of the Christian faith look illness, insanity, human frailty and even death right in the eyes every day. Yet, how often is it that anyone calls big-time attention to them, or stages big church events to whip up a frenzy of praise for them, even after what they did on 9/11? How many Christian congregations fail to even acknowledge such ministries? These people are taking part in what is best seen as a 'Body' gift of healing -- the kind of gift not focused in a single person or moment, but given to Christ's followers as a group as well as to those people within it who take on these tasks.

Healing Thyself

While the Church has its part in healings, so does the sick person. For instance, you can take preventative measures -- proper diet, physical conditioning, and quitting smoking. Gluttony and laziness are sin, not because they make you ill, but because they undermine your sense of spiritual (and bodily!) proportion about yourself and show a lack of inner discipline. If your body is a temple for the Spirit, and is made to be that way by dint of God's creative hand, then it is an insult to God for you to lay waste to it.

Then, there is your devotional life. When you turn your attention to God, and open yourself up ever more to the inner work of the Spirit, it helps in every aspect of your life. Devotional disciplines like daily prayer, quiet time, and journaling help keep you in tune with God and helps you to turn over more of your life to God. If your illness is caused by a sin you're still holding onto, as it sometimes is, the disciplines help you find the sin, where its roots are, and how it can be ended. Also, the Spirit might bring you the gift of spiritual healing of yourself -- making you both the healer and the healed.

If this should happen to you, give praise and thanks to the God who made it possible. Let yourself go in the praise of God! It's fun, and it's right!
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It's not illness, faith healers, doctors, unusual occurrences, or even the sick person that merits our greatest attention. It is Jesus the Healer who merits it. This remains true even if health is not restored.