Home > Gifts > Health and Healing
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 Acts 3:1-16.
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.
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Jesus did his healings in the context of Isaiah 53:5 (according to Matt 8:17). That's an atonement passage. It's tempting to simplistically link all healing with the Lord's Supper, and treat healing as a fait accomplice, as if it's already there for the asking. But the Eucharist is about Jesus' presence, which is not only an 'already', but a 'not-yet'. The body and blood 'already' were shed to save us, and believers in Christ are 'already' a part of the Kingdom of God, but we await his 'not-yet' return ( 1 Corinthians 11:26). That's why there isn't perfect healing in this life, any more than there is perfect living. The Christian faith does not deny brokenness. It denies that brokenness has the last word. Healing is a foretaste of a Kingdom that has not yet come in its fullness. |
"God heals the sicknesses and the griefs
by making the sicknesses and the griefs his suffering and his
grief. In the image of the crucified God the sick and dying can see themselves,
because in them the crucified God recognizes himself." |
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, 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 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.
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"We are all healers
who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant
need of help." |
God HealsAll healing is, in some way, divine healing. We can speak of 'natural' processes for healing, but who created nature? Who set its rules, gave it its direction? God, of course. So when body tissue repairs itself and the immune system works, it is doing what God intended it to do. We can also speak of 'medical' healing. But medicine is rooted in the understanding of how nature works. It gives a boost to the systems for healing that we already have within us, clearing away roadblocks to restoring health, and does some things that nature does not have the ability to do on its own. Medicine itself has no ultimate healing power. All medicine can do at its very best is to delay death's inevitable arrival. Even medicine's ability to delay death is a great gift from God. The Holy Spirit is, according to the Nicene Creed, the Giver of life. The Spirit is also the sustainer of life, the breath you keep drawing in as long as you're alive. Just as the Spirit can heal your soul, the Spirit can work within you to heal your body. |
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 using healing (like Simon Magus may have done), or to fake it in order to become famous. The real gift may be hard to find because so many are claiming to do it.
In today's world, many people turn to healing ministries and faith healers for many of the same reasons they use for turning to alternative medicine, unusual therapies, and New Age healing:
It's best to address these needs without letting them overwhelm the healing task at hand. A congregational healing ministry is not a shrink's couch or a medical practice or a weekend with a guru. It 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. Miracles show who's really
in charge. Thus, the Christian's prayer is not just that the ill be comforted, but that they may be healed. When healing occurs, 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."
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 miracle 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 (Matthew 6:19-33).
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.
The problem is that many Christian churches teach this backward: 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' (sometimes called 'original sin') has put us all out of kilter and made us un-whole. That's why we all break down and eventually die. Our state of sin is what makes it possible for us to become ill. But all the confession in the world has never once gotten rid of that state of sin within earthly life. 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. That's usually a matter of germs or conditions or bad genes or accident, the result of this world's 'fallen' disorder.
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 real 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.
a letter on not being healed
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go here for more on the history of Christian healing, and on a more holistic approach.
People report that they go through strange things when they are miraculously healed:
There's a lot of dispute as to whether the 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 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. 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 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, no more 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 within it who take on these tasks.
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 occurences, 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.
Your touch has still its ancient power,
No word from You can fruitless fall;
Hear, in this solemn evening hour,
And in Your mercy heal us all.
----- "At Even, Ere The Sun Was Set", last
verse, by Henry Twells
Questions for Further Study
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