Purgatory : Healing - a sign of the Kingdom.
This is an offshoot from the RHB thread...
My view is that God heals, that healing is one sign of the coming of God's kingdom, and this includes physical healing I.e. isn't limited to just spiritual or emotional healing.
I was getting some pushback, if I understand correctly, on the basis that this theology leads to cognitive dissonance, isn't biblical, results in people who are already suffering being made to feel guilty, and doesn't accord to real life.
I therefore wanted to explore this further...
My view is that God heals, that healing is one sign of the coming of God's kingdom, and this includes physical healing I.e. isn't limited to just spiritual or emotional healing.
I was getting some pushback, if I understand correctly, on the basis that this theology leads to cognitive dissonance, isn't biblical, results in people who are already suffering being made to feel guilty, and doesn't accord to real life.
I therefore wanted to explore this further...
Comments
Good luck with this thread!
Be prepared for...umm...divergent views - and you may wish to define exactly what you mean by 'healing', just so that others are clear right from the start.
Why? Because he misses quite a lot of people who should be healed and people who deserve to die screaming in pain recover apparently miraculously.
And, IMO, "mysterious ways" just does not cut it.
There are only a few logical reasons:
God is not loving.
Or God cannot heal.
Or there is no such thing as God.
I do think God heals on rare occasions (I mean the extraordinary healings, not the ordinary type).
I also think that he chooses those occasions for reasons that have nothing to do with how good the person was, or their level of faith, or any such blahblah.
The New Testament calls these "signs" (along with other miracles). Signs are meant to point to a reality--here, I suppose, to God himself and to some particular point that he's trying to emphasize in that particular case of healing. I would not expect people outside the situation to be always capable of explaining to outsiders what it was all about. Some divine messages are private.
I do think that the message (if there is one) usually goes beyond "Hey, I feel sorry for you, so just this one time I'll make you better, see, isn't that great? Okay, go on your merry way." Because if that was all it was, why not heal everybody?
I think the only thing you can do if you want one of these miraculous healings is to ask for it (pray) and then sit back and see what happens. Brutal as it may seem, God's going to do what is best for his kingdom--that is, for the welfare of all humanity, and in particular the little bit of it you happen to be embedded in--and his idea of "best" may not coincide with yours. And if healing fits into it, he'll do it, but if not, he won't. Not that he doesn't want to (while on earth Jesus did usually clear the area of sick people, though not always). It's more a priorities thing (sickness and death are not the most awful thing that exist, though they come close). It's also probably a clear-headed realization that if God heals everybody, there will be a short-lived rush for the churches that will totally overwhelm all teaching, formation, growth in discipleship, etc. and then a rush in the opposite direction as people convince themselves that it was just a coincidence after all (Yes, I've seen this) and end up in a worse case than before they were healed.
Tl;dr version: Yes, God can and does heal, when he thinks best. But it's really hard figuring out if and when he's going to do it from a human perspective. And he thinks some things are more important than physical healing.
"... even among people of great faith and commitment..."
especially so, in some people's way of thinking. Those with great faith can tolerate greater tests of it. In the Christian way of thinking, God let Jesus suffer without intervention until he was cold stone dead. Why would we expect anything less for ourselves?
Disagree.
If this were true, one would expect far more healings, and an increase in them, as the church grows and expands. This is simply not the case, and far too many of the healings that are alleged prove to have no basis in fact.
The assumption that physical healing is a sign of God's coming kingdom puts ridiculous pressure on leaders of churches who espouse that view to produce healings, and overlook, deliberately or otherwise, any failure to heal - or worse, blame the sufferers for lack of faith etc.
Thirdly, such theologies have no place for suffering or indeed death, both of which are a part of human experience, as evidenced by the madness surrounding the death of Olive Heilgenthal previously referred to. Even Lazarus ended up dying (again).
God is not our puppet, or a genie in a lamp who we can invoke on a whim, to cure those we want to get well and let the others die. Or perhaps to stop anyone from dying, if we called for it. Even if they recklessly put their own lives at risk. Except that there would be no risk. And they couldn't get run over if they ran in front of a car, as any damage would be instantly healed, if we so desired. None of us could do harm to anyone else, whether physically, mentally or emotionally.
If we want a world with no pain or suffering, that's the world we are promised when the world as we know it will end, it's not now.
To say that if God heals one person and not another God is evil is simply not true. It's like saying that I am evil if I give a gift of a gold watch to whoever I choose without giving one to everybody else who asks.
To address the op, I see the whole area of 'healing ministry' as fraught with danger. Some people like to see themselves as having healing hands and put themselves in danger of becoming sick - I've seen this all too often.
And then there are those who convince themselves that if others have sufficient faith they will be healed, and absolve themselves of any responsibility having loudly declared that God will provide healing at their behest.
Healing is a gift we may or may not receive. It's worth asking, and trusting in God to see us through whatever suffering we go through. But if Jesus suffered, why wouldn't we? Or are we to say 'If you're the Son of God, come down from the cross! '
I'm not bothered by Our Lord's having healed people, but there is a strand of belief that implies failure to be healed is either down to lack of faith or "part of God's plan". While the latter may be true, (a) we can't know, and (b) for people to posit this to the bereaved is cruel and un-Christian.
I think Job made the same accusations, in effect saying: "If God is God he is not good. If God is good, he is not God."
I have seen healings, but I do not think they are out of the ordinary external interventions--more like events I cannot explain, only experience.
Is it in Ecclesiastes that the writer says he realizes rain (which is a good sign for him) falls on the good and the bad all the same?
As pointed out above. God is not there to do our personal bidding. In the end, I will let God be God.
If you have a limitless supply of such watches? And you have promised "ask and it shall be given to you"?
Yes, it seems arbitrary to give a watch to Jim and not John, if I have an infinite number of them, and infinite generosity. Why not John?
So this is interesting. It is apparently preferable to have no healing at all, than to have healings that fail to conform to one’s ideas of justice.
Justice is justice. You know like love. You know it when you experience it, when you see it.
So much snark.
Tricky answer: if the primary purpose of giving the watch is not to get Jim all excited over his new Rolex.
If you theology says that healing should occur and you are not seeing them it may put some pressure on some leaders to fake healings but I think this pressure should be possible to resist if they have integrity...truthfulness is a higher value in the kingdom. And many churches believe in all of the gifts of the spirit in theory and rarely use any of them in practice so they are certainly resisting the pressure of faking.
In terms of theology of suffering I can't see any reason why this can't exist alongside a theology of healing , even a theology of healing as something to be expected rather than something very rare. Jesus did loads of healings but still taught his disciples that they would face suffering; Paul heals in the book of acts and references healing in his letters but also boasts about his sufferings.
In terms of organisations Iris ministries are an interesting example as they have close relationships with the controversial Bethel (although I think some differences in theology) In their five core values as an organisation they have relying on miracles as one of the five and suffering for the gospel as another so they clearly see these as complimentary rather than contradictory.
Ah, so Bethel and its ilk are actually "walking the talk" are they? Read the above link and tell me that with a straight face. Don't mix up actually using the gifts of the Spirit with broadcasting their alleged use and making that alleged use a unique selling point compared to all the poor dumb churches "rarely using" them.
Can you point to where in the Supernatural School of Ministry syllabus it deals with suffering and death? The overwhelming message at Bethel is that healing is the norm if one is properly walking in the Kingdom of God. Tell me it ain't so.
What the Bible says and what the likes of Bethel teach are two different things.
I'm sorry, I think if there was much substance to the many miracles I hear attributed to Heidi Baker, we'd be hearing a lot more about them. Can you cite any independent testimony as to their authenticity?
I suspect also that we're caught in an excessively individualistic age where we too much focus on ourselves. The difference between the personal saviour way of thinking and the saving of all people. The first leads to expecting personal intervention. Unlike, for example, Cuius regio, eius religio (whose realm, whose religion**), which collectivized religion of people to follow the faith of their leader. God might give a miracle to the realm but not to me as person within it.
** institutionalized in 1555, Peace of Augsburg
It's hard to counter all that without sounding patronising. 'We used to be like you but we grew out if it ...'
I'm just glad we weren't into all that when my wife was dying of cancer. I've seen dreadful things at charismatic conventions. People pulled out if wheelchairs and pushed and man-handled around by zealots gabbling in tongues and proclaiming healing only for them to tire of it in the end and dump the poor unfortunate back in the wheelchair afterwards.
Ok, most charismatics don't go to such extremes but you've got to have a short memory to knock around in charismatic circles for any length of time. All those duff prophecies and unfulfilled promises. The cognitive dissonance becomes intolerable after a while.
Good luck with it.
1) Its possible to believe healing is a sign of the kingdom coming without believing either that everybody will be healed and without coming under irresistible pressure to start faking miracles.
2) Its possible to combine having a theology of healing where healing isn't so vanishingly rare it never occurs for any practical purposes and a theology of suffering. I think Jesus's and Paul's ministries as recorded in the New Testament clearly demonstrate this and I gave an example of a modern day organisation that includes both within its core values (and pointed out that that organisation while clearly in close relationship with Bethel held a different theology).
Now a discussion of whether specific ministries are exemplary, good but mistaken in a some areas of practice and theology, mainly sincere but mistaken in many areas to the point of being dangerous, or totally fraudulent with no redeeming qualities is a different matter entirely.
Independent testimony wise I could speak to the experiences of friends and acquaintances (one friend who isn't a close friend who attended Harvest School in Mozambique); another friend who strikes me as more honest about his own faults than almost anyone I know who has seen significant numbers of healings when he has prayed for others over the years (and a few impressive clusters at one time), while experiencing illness and suffering in his own family which his prayers have done nothing to change. However the plural of an anecdote is not data....and the anecdotes of people I know while impressive to me are hardly going to impress people who don't know me or those people.
Eutychus - I would like to hear your explanation of Jesus at the pool of Bethsaida, he was definitely very selective at that time which conforms to the view that healing is something that might be rarer; although there are also passages where Jesus healed or the sick. In any case I don't know why that suggests either that healing can't be a sign of the coming of God's kingdom or that it is impossible to hold together a theology of suffering and a theology of healing.
No, not really. It was intended as a pretty flat summary. At any rate, it's very flat, compared to what went before.
But it's perhaps more fairly put as a question: is it better to have no healing at all, or healings that fail to conform to one's ideas of justice?
Yes it is, but I think contemporary healings are vanishingly rare (my rule of thumb is that in any church congregation, they actually occur in inverse proportion to the numbers of claimed healings...). As @Martin54 will tell you, Paul heals orders of magnitude fewer people than Jesus. Why is that? I've heard plenty of people rave about all the miracles Heidi Baker allegedly sees, precisely none about their teaching on suffering.
The explanation Jesus gives (as pointed out by John Wimber when I heard him on this in nineteen mumble mumble) is that he does only what he sees the Father doing. And as elsewhere in John, this healing is above all a sign. And like all the other healings in John, it points to something far more important than physical healing.
If I were a Bethel team at the pool of Bethesda, I'd have 1 healing and one multitude minus one of failures. I don't think that's an MO Jesus would approve of or endorse. I think the trick, if one can call it that, is to learn to do what we see the Father doing, which on the basis of this passage is not to attempt healing in 99.9% of all cases. Which leads one to consider what role or place it should have in our theology, practice, and mission statements... (and why one would set up an entire school just for the 0.1% to the exclusion of all else...)
I see a tension, if not an outright contradiction, between two strands of healing at the hands of Jesus. In one strand the healing is very definitely for a symbolic purpose that reaches beyond the recipient (Lazarus. Really, what did the guy gain by being resurrected other than having a contract out on his head and having to go through all the horror of dying - again?).
In the other strand, the healing appears more to be born out of Jesus' compassion for the sufferer. In the instances I have in mind Jesus leaves the scene as soon as is reasonably possible, or enjoins the beneficiary to keep schtum (with a failure rate close to 100% in this respect). I think he is concerned that the spectacular and immediate miracles may end up distracting people from his key message.
As evidence of this I give you John 6:26-27 when people follow him after the feeding of the 5000: "you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life". This is admittedly about food not physical healing but I discern a similar kind of exasperation on Jesus' part with respect to this second class of healings.
Well, I'm not so sure about that, on two counts.
The first is that in my experience, it's possible to know about love on several levels. So you might know when you're in love, but you might not appreciate the points at which it is deep and shallow until many years later. Or you might fail to appreciate love or how it is given without mature reflection; parental love is often like that. So it's possible to be ignorant about much of love even when in its most powerful thrall or receiving it in its most powerful form. And of course it's possible to extend this, if one is so minded (and I am so minded), to reflection upon the nature of divine love.
The second is that justice isn't like love, in that it's not really about personal feelings. Whether or not I feel unjustly treated has only a tenuous relation to whether my treatment is indeed unjust; my judgements of others are almost always based on partial perceptions and the part of the story I can see. It's true that there are some injustices that cry out; but these, I think, are few and far between, and they do not cry out to everyone equally.
So, no, I don't think one particularly knows justice when one sees it. And yes, I have lost people close to me who died in great pain and after great struggle. And I have seen some particularly awful - criminally awful - people flourish.
In the most momentous of these, my consolation, unexpectedly, was in the Book of Job. So perhaps I am gifted with a greater love of humility, and less of a love of justice, than is the norm.
But then, I'm not sure the norm is entirely a happy one.
FWIW I think it is possible vto combine a theology of healing - and healing as a sign of the Kingdom - with a theology of suffering. Sadly, very few outfits which make a big deal out of prayer and expectations of healing seem to succeed in doing so.
I don't know anything about that Iris Ministries you mentioned but these days I'm suspicious of most things with 'ministries' in the title and certainly of anything that puts miraculous claims into its mission statements. The very fact that they put it there creates a propensity to over-egg the pudding and to look for 'confirmation bias'.
I'm not saying your pal hasn't seen any apparent healings but I've been round the block quite a few times and I'd be a wealthy man if I had a fiver for all the anecdotal claims I've heard.
If anyone makes this sort of thing the focus of their ministry and attention then they are heading for disappointment and disillusionment unless they ignore reality and go off into hyper-spiritual dualistic cloud cuckoo land fantasy Island territory. I've seen it happen. Many, many times.
I thought this sort of thing was on the wane but from what I can gather it isn't and I've recent disturbing stories of clergy and ministers who are having to pick up the pieces.
I wrestle with this question because a lot of religion does consist of praying to God for healing, for blessing and for cure. If my partner or loved one is suffering or sick, I am going to pray to God for healing for them.
I do know intellectually, it is foolish if
1) Loved one gets healed--> therefore I am good, or my 'prayers work'
2) Loved one doesn't get healed--> I did something wrong or I'm not faithful
Still if (1) happens, I do think it is appropriate to show gratitude, while acknowledging that one is to keep quiet and not say anything hurtful or stupid for the people whose loved ones do not get physically healed.
Though I know of one priest who preached that even if one dies of a disease, he or she does get healed in the sense of entering into eternal life with God.
God's response to Job was "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the universe?" IOW, "Fuck off, worm." In the end Job's faith is rewarded, as far as I can see only because God is a capricious jerk who likes to show off. Job's first wife and their children don't get their lives back; their only role in the story is to give Job something to lose.
@Bullfinch, yeah, I haven't checked but this isn't your first outing is it? Or ours probably.
There are no healings.
That is just a simple, unquestionable statement of rational, statistical fact, with no caveats, no what abouts. None.
So there are no signs of the Kingdom.
Apart from us making them.
How about everybody being healed? Too generous really.
If I could remember the Augustinian line, it's that we are all fallen sinners who deserve nothing but divine justice, so whether blessing we may receive such as healing is purely gifts. If we complain that the deity is capricious, I think Augustine would respond with Isaiah 55:8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways may ways."
Well if you go with my priest who once preached that death is a means for healing because the soul enters into heaven after death, you could say that everyone does in a way, gets healed.
A week after I was ordained priest, I was mugged and assaulted on the way coming from the gym. While I fell on the ground, I heard a voice, got a feeling, had a vision, of someone telling me "This is not the end." As in, I will survive this.
From that experience, I have never wondered why God allowed me to get mugged and assaulted, all I can be is grateful that I survived and am alive today. Now I know there are people who do not survive such an experience, and I am not trying to explain their suffering, nor can I say that I am better than anyone else. All I can say is that I survived and am grateful that I am alive.