Politics of Fear ...

Heaven is not a fire escape.  But from time and memorial, stark messages of fear have been used to gain the attention of audiences to effect a result.  In the case of religion, fear has been used to call you to repentance.  In the case of politics, fear has been used to assert control over you.  Both may prove temporarily effective, but both reveal that “fear” as a motivator cannot sustain itself, unless it is constantly fed and able to grow and grow in your mind until … I would suppose you reach the point of insanity.

When unable to reasonably threaten your physical security, politicians use fear as their preferred tactic on losing what little you have.  Take the current Health Care reform debates, the subtle messages of fear intended to stop reform include … “why should you pay higher taxes to support illegal immigrants, and other poor people to get coverage” or “you could lose ‘control’ over your own doctor” or “rationing due to high costs could wind up killing grandma”.  All of these assertions have a mild basis in truth (in that they are not beyond the laws of physics), but none of them even begin to reflect the intent of reform, the current bills under discussion, or answer the key questions that must be addressed for any kind of health care reform to be successful.

The real key question we should be asking on Health Care is … “why do costs continue to rise faster than inflation every year in Health Care for the past 10 years.”  The reason is simple but affects us all – it is because our entire Health Care system is driven on a for-profit basis.  Positive aspects of this include: Health Care careers are considered stable with high earnings potential; unlimited funding allows for advances in research in both pharmaceutical and medical practice industries; most people’s 401k retirement accounts include Medical stocks or Bio-Engineering firms in order to share in the financial gains made from this setup.

But the downside of for-profit medical care is everything Christians should stand against: we currently seek for “treatments” not “cures” as treatments are lifelong income streams whereas cures kill profits; those who cannot afford healthcare do not receive any outside of an ER room; and where money motivates everyone wants a piece.  The insurance companies are motivated to deny coverage for treatments a doctor requests in order to reduce pay-outs (i.e. costs).  Lawyers are motives to sue hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies for any perceived injustice or mistake (real or imagined).  Pharmaceuticals can set prices for life-prolonging drugs at whatever they want, and we are forced to pay them.  All of this leads to insurance rate increases, which leads back to increasing the cost of health care once again.  And while we are increasing prices why not build a little extra “profit” in there as well.

When Christ walked our earth, His idea of Health Care was complete cures for whatever was wrong with the “patients” he encountered.  He healed them completely.  He did not setup treatment programs that were dependent on them coming back to Him over and over to insure they maintained their new found cures.  He healed anyone in need, whether rich or poor, and in point of fact, He came across more poor people in need, than rich.  He healed people who did not know who He truly was, and people who did not even believe in Him prior to meeting Him.  It was unconditional life-lasting health care He provided at no cost to anyone.  Talk about reform.

After His ascension His disciples carried on this kind of Health Care work in His name.  Current Christians have lost all sight of this idea, and the power of healing has all but gone out of the world.  Now the idea of “faith healing” is done largely by charlatans and money-grubbers more interested in their own fame than the true work of healing the sick.  And so Christians in the US are content with allowing their Health Care to be provided to them on a for profit basis … until they personally get bitten in the process.

So why keep things the way they are?  Because there are millions of dollars to be made in a business you cannot refuse to take part in.  When you get sick, really sick, you have no choice but to seek Health Care even if it results in your bankruptcy or financial ruin.  That alternative is better than death.  The kind of money that is made from this business is self evident by the level of furor and advertising to convince you that nothing should be done.  Only the mildest reforms will be proposed and only after the number crunchers angle a new way to make even more money from the new regulations.

And how do you go about trying to convince people of something that defies common sense?  You strike fear into their hearts.  Fear that they may lose grandma.  Fear that they may lose what little money they have in new taxes to support “poor” people.  Fear that they may lose their doctor or ‘control’ over their health care to a government run bureaucracy.  Forget the fact that for-profit insurance companies would gladly kill grandma to cut costs, they do it to moms, dads, and kids today.  Forget the fact that not keeping poor people healthy costs more in tax dollars now than would covering them and preventing the spread of disease.  And forget the fact that government is supposed to have the protection of its people as its motto, whereas for-profit-industry cares only for the bottom line financials generally at the expense of the people.  But forgetting the facts, and even the debates, it is the fear that is the preferred tactic in this fight.

And Christians think this technique is only for politicians?  Think again.  The term “Hell Fire and Brimstone” preacher comes to mind, or how about “Evangelist”?  How many times have Christian leaders spoken from the pulpit about Hell to motivate people to seek God, or more accurately to “listen and agree with whatever the preacher says next”.  Fear has been a central tenant of the Christian religion.  Those that believe fear has merit often quote the text “Fear is the beginning of wisdom”.  The rational is that fear gets your attention, and then you learn about love.  This idea reminds me of the Southpark cartoon where gnomes developed a 3 step program to make money: Step 1.) steal underwear; Step 3.) make profit.  The gnomes had no idea what to do in Step 2.) but they believed strongly in the program.  How a new believer is able to get love out of a message of fear designed to control, is no different than the underwear gnomes dilemma.

And what about all the messages of death and destruction in the Bible like say the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of the entire Assyrian army, Nineveh, not to mention the setting up and taking down of worldwide kingdom after kingdom from Egypt, to Assyria, to Babylon, to Medo-Persia, to Greece to Rome?  Like doctor Phil is often quoted as saying … how did that work out for you?  None of these real events have changed the motives and hearts of man to become better and seek the true God.  That is because none of these events were designed to spread the gospel of love.  They were designed to stop, contain, or cut short the spread of evil.  God has throughout history shown by example that evil will eventually be extinguished for all time in the universe.  Not through an eternally burning fire of Hell, but through the eternally consistent choices of the saved and redeemed to never seek evil again.

The destruction of evil in the Bible is not designed to instill love or fear.  It is a cause and effect, matter of fact display of the results of evil within the universe.  It will only be tolerated for so long, and then extinguished.  When using fear to motivate along these lines the entire point of the gospel is lost.  The truth is that evil is itself the punishment.  Evil is the cancer, it is the pain that ripples through your life and the lives of others.  Evil is the condition from which God wishes to redeem us.  Love is the relief and removal of evil, not the prolonging of it. 

The devil does not mind when a leader or speaker uses fear to point people to God, as he knows as soon as the fear wears off, they will leave God again.  No immediacy, no fear, no reason to stay with God.  But when someone realizes what Love is, and how their lives can be so much better without the pain of evil – that person is lost to the devil forever in the palm of our God.  Understanding love is the definition of wisdom.  The wisdom that fear should bring should only be attributed to the consequences of embracing evil.  This fear-based-wisdom is merely a factual look at the results of evil, nothing more.  Love based wisdom is learned over an eternity and enriches your life everyday you experience it.

Christ came so that you would no longer be a slave to fear.  You need fear nothing for the God of the Universe loves you personally.  Do not fear the sharing of your wealth with others, or the sharing of your love with your enemies.  Do not let messages of fear inspire hatred within you, but rather let them inspire pity and patience and charity.  Most of all submit your will to Christ, and find the change that will make your life one worth living …

God's Diet Plan ...

There are many who profess to know precisely the right diet plan to be in accordance with Biblical guidelines.  Some even believe that a choice in diet reflects the measure of a relationship with God.  And still others believe that eating some foods will result in going directly to hell (well I guess not directly, you do have to die first, according to these folks anyway). 

So what to do about diet?  The kosher dining enthusiasts would have us abandon unclean meats, or particular meats that are not prepared, cooked, and stored properly.  The vegetarians among us would advocate abandoning all meat clean or otherwise.  The vegans would take this a step farther and abandon all animal by-products including dairy, eggs, etc..  There is after all a small tribe in the Andes mountains in South America that eat only fruits, grains, and nuts (the Eden diet plan) and continue to live to well over 100 yrs old.  Of course this tribe lives in a remote area and probably does not suffer with as much pollution, sedentary lifestyles, or 21^st century stress either.

The Christians who support eating anything poo-poo the Kosher ideas of clean and unclean meats as being from Mosaic law, i.e. ‘nailed’ to the cross at Christ’s death.  They also take the vision Peter had about God directing him to eat unclean meats (meaning go tell the Gentiles about the Gospel) as being literal permission for Christians to eat anything now.  Strictly following Christ’s example however would take us back to eating only kosher meats such as fish, lamb, and perhaps beef.  Not being a rich man, Christ would have dined mostly on breads and vegetables, but the periodic introduction of kosher meat in his diet (near temple ceremonies) is likely.  And as we have pointed out earlier, God does not seem to change His requirements of us all that often.  The separation of animals into clean and unclean was reflected as far back as the flood (thus predating Mosaic law).  And the guidelines seem to be for us to remain healthy, therefore not likely to expire over time.  Sorry bacon fans …

Vegetarians and vegans with religious inclinations point out that animal meat was only introduced into our diets AFTER the fall of man, and that all such flesh foods (even the clean ones) will no longer be provided in heaven.  And frankly they have a point.  Death is scheduled to end.  Therefore animal death will end as well, and meat will not be a meal served throughout eternity.  However I do not believe the verdict is in on animal by-products such as milk, cheese, butter, ice-cream or eggs.  Although I suffer from a dairy allergy here on earth, I hope to enjoy some of these heavenly produced products without the ill effects.  Who knows?

But what about today?  Unfortunately, this is one of those topics which can only be discussed in the forum of guidelines not in absolutes.  With the proliferation of food allergies, and pollution in every substance we consume, it is difficult or nearly impossible to talk in absolutes.  However there are many principles the Bible espouses which can be considered when formulating the diet God would be proud of for you.

First, in all things be temperate.  This advice applies to more than simply diet, but the concept of placing limits on yourself, and trying not to ‘indulge’ wildly is a good first step.  The mere act of over-eating is responsible for the massive weight gain we see around us.  Add to this a sedentary lifestyle, and propensity to avoid cooking and get ‘fast’ food and we doom ourselves to an existence in the ‘fat’ chair.  Temperance in our diet would go a long way in developing temperance in other aspects of our behavior and would do us a world of good in general.  Self-denial after all is a Christian principle.

Second, balance things out.  Self-denial is not the same as self-torture and self-suicide.  There is no need to cut out all good tasting food for the sake of self-denial.  Rather balance everything you eat between the major food groups, and be temperate about the amounts and no one food is likely to hurt you.  Notwithstanding formal diagnosed food allergies, a balanced diet is the answer to many questions of health we ask today.  It provides us with the best chance we have to get ALL the vitamins and minerals we need in a format we can utilize.  Pills seldom accomplish the same thing.  Natural diet is always best at nurturing our bodies.  If you find yourself eating the same food several times a week, change things up some more.  You need a good variety to keep healthy.

Third, watch out for harmful things.  Black pepper tastes great, but can be harmful to your body.  So can high quantities of salt and sugar.  While trying to be temperate and balanced you do need to keep an eye out for any substance that may be slipping into your diet unawares (i.e. pre-salted foods – then adding more table salt for example).  No-one can satisfy me that genetic manipulation of plants or animals is a good thing, so I tend to look for organic when possible.  I avoid using pesticides in a home garden where I can.  I wash my vegetables when possible before cooking them.  I clean cooking surfaces so raw meats do not touch other foods during the process of preparation.  Cooking meat well done helps.  There are so many new germs, and bugs of various harmful effects, one must take precautions no matter what the actual food you consume.  I prefer the natural to the chemical substitute like butter to margarine, eggs to egg-beaters, sugar to saccrine.  Seems to me chemical substitutes are more likely to cause harm than the natural substances they are designed to replace (especially when consumed only in moderation as outlined above).

Fad diets that eliminate carbs, fat, or proteins and focus on a small subset of foods, or no food at all (merely shakes) are probably not the answer for you.  Remember that diet is a part of life.  It does not seem reasonable that you are going to spend the rest of your life drinking shakes alone.  You may think you only need this radical approach while dieting to lose weight.  But in fact you are dieting to live all the time.  If your natural diet is leading you to gain weight you need to adjust it, or the trend will continue until it kills you.  Age and bad dietary habits can form a lethal combination.  Inviting God to be a part of this process is an excellent solution as well.

Those who equate diet with salvation have a self-reliant sense of works-based gospel (i.e. a false one).  The correlation between dietary habits and salvation works this way.  When God is allowed control in your life He begins to make changes.  Maybe even in the things you eat.  Maybe even in the things you like to eat.  You may find yourself liking foods you previously would have discarded.  This could be God’s work in your life.  Helping you acquire a taste for food your body is in desperate need of.  Or the opposite may apply; you may lose your preference for a food that was in fact killing you.  The beauty of having God involved in your diet plan is that He is able to customize one just for you.  Like everything else about the process of salvation, it is not your job to beat up someone else with truth revealed to you – it is your job to love others and introduce them to the source of your truth – then let them have the chance to get their own.  Besides what is good for your diet might actually kill somebody else in today’s world, so let’s give up the whole judging thing.

And for those purists of self denial who believe food is entirely irrelevant, I have a little news for you.  God has chosen to make what we eat the mechanism of our eternal life in heaven.  In fact heaven will continue to have a tree-of-life from which 12 different fruits will grow, a new one each month.  We will eat from these fruits and continue living forever.  So eating and food are not something scheduled to pass away.  The really good news is that what we do eat in heaven will be converted completely into energy our bodies and minds need with zero waste by product.  No more 2 hours trips to the little-boys-room for me J  And no more waking up in the middle of the night for all you ladies out there to … well you know.  From then on, what we eat becomes fully utilized.  Wish it was that way now, don’t you …

Bio-Ethics and Playing God ...

Stem cells, cloning, and genetic manipulation top a list of bio-ethical dilemmas we face now that our technology has outpaced our moral compass.  But take it a step further; what about transplants, artificial insemination, abortion, and chemical treatment of mental disorders.  At what point do we transcend from helping our fellow man with the best tools at our disposal, and move into the areas of playing God?

Sometimes these are questions in which Christians try to shy away from, since they are so definitively in the realm of science.  But there does not need to be contention between our scientific advances and our ethics if we follow a few simple guidelines that mimic how God has revealed Himself to us.  First, and most importantly, we must ALWAYS preserve the right to choose.  By this I mean, we should in no way compel another human being to conform to our own sense of right and wrong.  Even when we know their conduct is against what God would have them do, He does not force them to comply, we should not attempt to do so either.  Christians tend to hate this idea (another oxymoron if I ever heard one).  Christians now made free by accepting Christ, turn right around and attempt to place non-believers in a subjective bondage to their newly found sense of morality.  Instead of leading others through example, they want to compel others through legislation.  This is wrong.  It is against the principles of the very God they claim to serve.  However, it is completely in line with how Satan governs his kingdom, he is the master of compelling the choices of others (or so he would have you believe anyway).

Bearing this in mind, we should try to limit our legislative tendencies based strictly on our own moral interpretations and attempt to preserve the right of the individual to determine morality when possible.  The next principle to observe when confronting bio-ethical situations is both the value of life, and the priority of life.  By this I mean, each human life is unique and precious to the Universe (as we discussed earlier).  Each one of us is created for a specific purpose; to fulfill a unique mission that no-one else is capable of doing.  This makes every life precious to God, and ideally to each other.  So sacrificing one man to save five, is not a viable option.  You can up the odds all you like, it does not ever negate the value of the one.  If that man could be sacrificed and save 10,000 it is still not acceptable.  Even to save 10 million, a single human sacrifice is not ethically viable.  Let us say for example that the single man to be sacrificed to save 10 million others, might otherwise have gone on to have a family.  His child, a random genius prodigy, discovers a cure for AIDS, Bird-Flu, TB, pick your earth ending disease here.  The lives saved by allowing the man to live may well far outweigh killing him in the first place.  You may have saved 10 million now, and in so doing killed 200 million later (perhaps including your original 10).  Therefore the idea of killing, in order to save someone else is inconsistent with God’s character.

Here is another area where God takes a bad rap.  Organ donors are folks who realize the value of their bodies after their own demise; they know what it means for someone to receive this precious gift.  Yet people, including many Christians, fear to become organ donors thinking as soon as they do, “God” will kill them off to save someone else.  This thinking is warped and completely misrepresents the character of God.  You will not die one day sooner because you sign up to be an organ donor.  Your death will occur no matter what, the concept of when is not altered by a decision of ultimate charity.  And since an organ donor is already dead, there are no moral implications in using their organs to save another person except ‘good’ moral implications. 

But how do you define life and death?  Today we define death as the cessation of heart beat, and brain activity.  It gets a little more gray when a machine can prolong both these activities indefinitely.  And therefore we fall back to our earlier principle of allowing the individual to determine if this condition is death, or artificial life, and how they would wish to handle it.  Suffering is not an excuse for suicide, however, not all suicide is considered a ‘sin’ (check out the story of Samson in the Bible, God gave him back his strength knowing he would commit suicide with it bringing down the Philistine temple, and God did not intervene to save him).  Dr. Kevorkian sees his role as relieving pain and allowing terminal patients to determine how they exit this world (in dignity).  I cannot say if he is right or wrong, nor would I ever presume to judge his patients.  How could I?  I am not in their position, neither are you.  This must default back to the rights of the individual to determine.

Defining life becomes an even more gray area.  Does life being with the splitting of cells as they replicate?  I submit it does not.  I submit that until an organism “draws its first breath on its own” it is not yet “alive”.  My belief stems from the idea that God breathed into man the ‘breath of life’ and man became a living soul.  Now, what does that mean in terms of a fetus, and the highly controversial practice of abortion?  To me, it means that the time when ‘life’ occurs is when baby draws his first breath.  But that does not mean I would opt to terminate a pregnancy and prevent life from occurring.  But again that is my choice.  And my choice is not centered around the idea of whether or not it is murder.  It is centered around the idea, that pregnancy in and of itself, should be one of God’s blessings to us, and therefore something we take extra care to preserve and protect.  There is no murder in abortion, unless your referring to the murder of an early stage organism.  The idea that life begins at conception then becomes mass murder since the woman’s body rejects massive amounts of this ‘stuff’?  Would not spermicide, and even condoms then be considered a form of pre-emptive murder?  The problems become staggering.  We don’t typically hold funerals for pregnancies that end naturally in the first trimester, we call that a miscarriage.  Is the mother then a murderer? 

The biggest problem with abortion is the reason why we seek it, not the practice itself.  We use abortion in the most self-centered way imaginable – to undo our lack of planning, to protect our greed and style of life, and to remove the consequences of having casual meaningless sex.  It is far less likely to be sought between a couple who have committed themselves to each other for life.  For those folks, pregnancy is referred to as, having a family.  But for single women, and single men, who did not think enough to plan to protect themselves from natures consequences, abortion is used as a restart button.  There are times when protecting the life of the living mother, or removing the product of rape & incest, that our reasons for seeking an abortion are understandable.  This is not to say, that a woman who chooses to carry the product of rape or incest is wrong either; nor is the woman wrong who chooses to risk her own health for the sake of trying to have a family.  But these are deeply personal choices, and should be spared the indignity of third-party-judging.  Why not allow people in these precarious positions to seek the council of God for themselves; and simply be supportive of whatever decisions they reach.

Life with ‘breath’ removes the morality of stem cell research as well, in the sense that it does not kill a living thing to preserve another.  However, the practice of starting the process of pregnancy only in order to stop it prematurely and cash-in on a crop of potential stem cells, seems to me based in greed, and unlikely to be the best ethical decision to be made.  Utilizing all those artificially inseminated early stage organisms, that are otherwise scheduled for termination anyway, seems to me to be more akin to organ donation than murder.  Cloning looks to me like playing God, and I doubt we will progress enough to see it succeed, but who knows.

We have so far been discussing the ‘value’ of life, the ‘priority’ of life refers to the food-chain view of living things.  We commonly eat plant life in the form of fruits, vegetables, and nuts without a second thought.  This is because since plants are devoid of ‘feelings’ and ‘thinking’ we consider these forms of life moot in the context of our survival.  Animals however begin to present another dilemma, they are capable of ‘feeling’ things, as well as limited ‘thoughts’.  We seem content to eat some animals, but begin to feel wrong about it when it comes to torturing them.  When scientific torture of animals is done to research a cure for cancer, people feel bad about it, but don’t jump up and demand a stop to it.  However, when torture of animals is done by cosmetic companies to only promote our vanity, that seems to cross the invisible moral line and demand action.  I guess it comes back to what the animal is being sacrificed for (all too common it is to fill my stomach), we seem to accept true medical research, but not unnecessary vain pursuits. 

In the end, I look at it this way.  I have no problem swatting a mosquito, or killing the bugs in my house.  I would work very hard to wipe out every virus or bacteria that plagues mankind with disease.  I do eat too many animals (much to my own shame).  But I think perhaps I should be doing more to preserve animal species, and work to save them, since they were given into our care at the origins of our earth.  They may not understand everything we do, but isn’t that how God compares against our poor limited capabilities, and He shows us a tremendous amount of care.  The bottom line when it comes to facing bio-ethical questions comes down to how you formulate your opinions, and how you share them with others – not really whether you are right or wrong – only God truly knows this.  Only God should be allowed to judge …

Healing for Dummies [part 2 of 2] ...

Opportunity abounds.  Pretend you were a doctor for a few minutes who had the ability to cure something, anything.  No matter what you picked, the results of curing any one thing would affect at minimum thousands of people across the globe to as many as millions.  So where have all the cures gone?  Could it be that the business of medicine has discovered the profit in treatment and decided to forego the business P&L risk of cure?  Fine, that is the nature of greed.  But where is God in all of this?  And for those who claim His name, where is the ‘power’ that is supposed to accompany your belief system?

We touched on it briefly in our last entry, but well before Christ left this earth He distributed His gift of healing to his followers (70 of them at one point).  Those servants went through the towns and villages healing all manner of disease.  There is a subtle premise here which is often ignored because of focus on the healing itself.  By distributing His ability to heal over His servants, Christ was to able to reach many more people in a short period of time.  In point of fact, they healed anyone; they healed everyone.  Entire towns and villages were made well with every single citizen healthy before they left town.  Only those cities who refused them access, who repelled their efforts, were left untouched.  Ever wonder why so many people hailed Christ as the King on His donkey ride into Jerusalem?  Many had been healed.  Many had been fed.  Many had personal experience.

After His departure, the healing gift remained.  Not just with His immediate disciples whose stories begin in Acts and continue throughout the New Testament; but with those who came to believe in Him.  Those who had never met Him one-on-one were given abilities – Gifts – of the Spirit.  The ability to heal was among these Gifts given to His church by Christ.  It was arguably the oldest gift given to the servants of Christ, by Christ himself.  It predated Pentecost.   Healing it seems, was to be a hallmark of the believers of the church belonging to Christ.

The numbers of those who claim to be Christian have certainly multiplied over the years.  And what God has done for the church has certainly been well preserved.  Insuring we have a Bible, a written testament to rely upon, was in itself an act of God.  The Catholic church would have gladly suppressed the publication of this book during the dark ages were it left up them.  But this is typical behavior of all those in power, they wish not to lose it.  The Catholic church was right about one premise that accompanied the release of the scriptures in the common languages, we now have as many denominations of Christians as we have groups of people anywhere.  Ignoring our doctrinal distinctions for just a moment however, we all claim to be Christian.  We all claim to follow the teachings of Christ.  And therefore in some ways we all represent His name, and His character to others in this world. 

Healing was a big part of the ministry of Christ here on earth, so what are modern Christians doing to propagate this ministry?  We open hospitals of course.  We train our young to become medical professionals.  We open missions to feed the poor, and educate those in need.  Modern Christians have done MUCH to improve their communities and world around them through these outreach programs.  But they all share one other common thread; they are based on the best science, and business models of the day in which we live.  Don’t get me wrong I am not advocating we give up the advances we have made in medical science, or abdicate modern medicine in any way shape or form.  I am simply pointing out, we do not base our efforts to heal on miracles.  We base them on models of predictability.

The idea that miracles related to healing even exist anymore is now HIGHLY suspect.  Why?  What is it about healing in the Bible that has become so foreign to our way of thinking?  Have we become so ‘educated’ now that these stories must simply have been in error?  I mean, let’s be real for a minute, they did not have MRI machines back in Christ’s days.  Maybe as diagnostics goes, things were not as bad as they seemed in some of those stories right?  Wrong.  But this entire line of thinking has diluted the faith of Christians, and placed believing in Miracles as now akin to fundamentalist thinking, i.e. extreme.

But whether Christians have completely abandoned the idea of miraculous healing altogether, or just put it in the back burner of their minds near the remainder of their skepticism; they do not practice this gift any longer on any sort of wide scale.  To be blunt, we Christians have given up wide scale thinking entirely.  No one even imagines healing every single person in a town or city anymore (like they did in the Bible).  No one even imagines healing every single person in just one hospital anymore (nor would Hospital administration allow it to go on).  It has gotten so bad among Christians, we doubt even the healing of a member of our own families.  We may pray for it.  But we doubt it.

This is the condition of the church today.  Not just of my church, but of all churches; not just of my faith, but of all Christian faiths.  Our pragmatism has replaced our idealism.  Losing faith in the literacy of scripture has lead to many reportedly Christian believers thinking we have only to lean on ‘good concepts’ of the Bible, not literal stories.  We treat the Bible as a Chinese menu, to pick and choose what we will be willing to believe in.  Healing and the miracle related healing stories inspire our idealism, offer us hope perhaps, but have decidedly NOT infected us with a change in how we approach this topic.  Our missions continue, our miracles do not.

In this degraded state we have had to alter our prayers as well, to reflect our lack of faith, and new found pragmatism.  When we do actually offer a prayer for the sick, we couch it in language of “if it is God’s will”.  As if, our default posture is one where God sits up there thinking, I wonder who I should make suffer today.  Or at the least, whose prayers I should ignore or answer no, in order that the suffering may continue.  Truth is, our language is merely a testament to our own lack of faith.  We have seen too little miraculous healing in our own experiences so we have come to believe it is a rare thing, almost unheard of.  We must then pray in a way that might preserve the faith of others when the healing does not come (as we expect it will not in our heart of hearts).

Wake up Christians.  It has never been God who desires and wills that we suffer.  It has ALWAYS been His will to relieve and end our suffering.  It is our God who is desperately trying to SAVE us.  Does this sound like the kind of God who ‘wishes’ for people to hurt?  It is inconsistent with His entire character. 

It is perfectly in sync however with the nature of evil.  It is EVIL that wishes us to suffer, both from our choices, and those of others.  It is EVIL who wishes us to lose all hope in our prayers, and avoid believing in the truth of the power to heal.  It is EVIL who tries to distract us from what we might become, from what power we might connect to if we were to change how we think.  This is the action plan of EVIL, not of God.

Healing is real.  Healing is possible.  Healing can be permanent.  Just like Salvation it is a gift of our God.  I cannot save or heal you; but the God I serve can and more importantly WANTS to.  I cannot cure cancer, but the God I serve knows how to permanently remove it from your entire body, from every cell, no recurrence, no end to remission.  This is the kind of cure my God WANTS to offer you; not some namby-pamby, half-baked, piddley little treatment, that only reduces your pain for a while, until you pray again.  Total cure.  Total healing.  Extended life.  Those are the hallmarks of the cures my God WANTS and IS offering you.  It is we, His servants, that have botched His healing.  It is we, who have walked away from the gift He still WANTS to offer.  It is we, who no longer believe.  It is we.

But healing remains as God remains.  If you know someone who is sick; if it is you, if it is a loved one – take hope young Christian.  Do not abandon yourself, or those you love, to suffer at the hands of evil.  Do not allow the condition of suffering to go unchallenged.  Open your Bible and read what Christ did.  Look back to the author of Salvation and Healing, and ask for what He already WANTS to give you.  Don’t worry about the state of your faith.  Pray with boldness, knowing He already WANTS to offer you this healing.  If you can’t bring yourself to believing there could be healing from God through you for entire cities, or entire hospitals, then at least allow it to pass through your prayers for the one you care about.  Stop restraining God with your pragmatism, and throw open the door to miracles the likes of which you have never seen.  It is You He has been waiting for.  It is You who might change this entire world.  It is Your thinking He wants to change, and Your faith He wants to affirm.  Don’t just close the blog, open the heart, and watch the results; experience His healing …

Healing for Dummies [part 1 of 2] ...

Every so often when flipping through the channels on TV, I stumble across a ‘preacher’ who claims to heal people ‘live’ on his show.  Usually some guy dressed in a white suit, with a line of poor unfortunates waiting to be ‘touched’ so they can be made well from everything from paralysis to cancer.  If you pay attention to these shows for more than 5 minutes there is usually someone who gets up and walks after not being able to, and several folks who pass-out, but everyone seemingly walks away cured.  Is this real?  Is it just the cynics of this world who are condemned to suffer from sickness since by nature they would refuse such treatment?

The God we have discussed and logically examined throughout this journal is one of love, patience, forgiveness, and not the least of which healing.  In fact the act of salvation itself could be described as a spiritual healing of our souls; breaking the bonds of pain and replacing them with the freedom to be happy.  So knowing that the very nature of God is one of healing, does it not seem reasonable that His servants would also want to heal others?  Christ Himself gave His followers this ability well before He departed planet earth.  His followers (70 of them at one point) went out through the towns and villages healing people of all manner of diseases.

But it would be ‘unfair’ to tag the current crew of folks ‘performing’ healing as mere healers – they are ‘faith’ healers.  The difference is subtle.  A healer would heal whatever the disease no matter the condition or thinking of the patient.  In this way, Christ was a healer.  He offered healing to anyone; to everyone; they had merely to accept his offer and they were healed.  Today’s crew call themselves ‘faith’ healers because now you need to have enough ‘faith’ in order to be healed.  A lack of faith on your part, and the disease or infirmity might well stay with you, or ‘re-occur’.  In this way, the concept of real faith is poisoned, and made an excuse for suffering.  Natural human weakness defeats ‘good intentions’ and no real healing could ever be achieved under these terms.  So whose idea is this one; give you one guess.

When Christ was here, healing was different.  When He had pity on the lame man, He told him simply, “arise, take up your bed and walk”.  Think about this for just a minute.  He did not ask the man’s religious convictions or doctrines of belief (keep in mind there were 2 competing philosophies within Judaism of the day – Sadducees who did not believe in life after this one, and Pharisees who did).  He did not ask the man for an offering to support his ministry.  He did not ask the man to accept Him as his personal savior FIRST.  He did not ask the man if his condition was real or if he was just faking it (as his creator, He already knew the answer to that). 

Christ loved this man, and hated the suffering he was under.  Christ longed to give him the relief this man so desperately needed.  And at their encounter he offered it, “arise, take up your bed and walk”.  The paralytic obeyed.  Forget the fact that he could not obey, as up till now this was a physical impossibility.  He got up anyway.  He picked up the mats and carpets he had been laying on just a minute ago (the chains he was previously bound to), and he went away – praising God.

If there was faith in that encounter anywhere, it is the same kind of faith we have on a daily basis; the faith that comes as yet another gift of God.; the faith that requires us to merely do what we were asked.  This man did not know Christ before this.  I imagine he had heard about him, and hoped against hope something could be different.  I imagine he had sought out every prior ‘faith’ healer that had ever come along.  I imagine he had tried every ‘home’ remedy up to that point. 

Suffering as he did, he would have been a social outcast as well.  Jews believed you got was coming to you in this world.  If he was suffering, he must have been quite the sinner.  So his condition was blamed squarely on his own shoulders.  Even Christ’s own disciples echoed this sentiment in His day.  This man was no more or less a sinner than you or I, but he carried a physical disability he was taught to regard as his ‘punishment’ from an angry God.  Awe the insidious nature of evil; to not only cause him to physically suffer, but to tell him the suffering comes from God, along with the condemnation.

Christ disproved all of that in one simple, loving command.  “Arise” or get up.  I am ending this condition you are in.  Your time of suffering is over.  No long dialog or sermon before the healing.  No requests to pledge eternal allegiance prior to being healed.  This was an example of the kind of gifts God gives to His children; pure, no preconditions, no after-action requests or demands for payment.  Christ wanted to heal His hurting child and He did it.  Christ ached to put an end to both the physical pain this man was in, but also to the self-inflicted condemnation he had adopted as truth.  The character of God was in question for this man.  Was God truly angry?  Was God truly vindictive and responsible for this pain and suffering as a punishment for this man’s sins?  No. and No.  God and Christ loved this man and wanted ONLY to SAVE him from his pain, both physical and spiritual.  And in a single encounter, He did it.

Imagine the chagrin of the local ‘religious’ types when this obviously former sinner, was now seen leaping for joy and praising God in the streets of the city.  He would not have been clean or well dressed.  He would have smelled badly from lack of a bath (or the ability to bathe himself).  His clothes would have been tattered and worn as in his condition he was a beggar of barely enough means to feed himself.  He had no job.  He had nothing.  He had a mat and some carpets to lay on.  And in this condition, he was healed.  And in this condition, he was shouting praises to God in the streets of the city.  How could one so poor, seem so happy?  Because the chains that bound him to the ground had been completely broken.  The condemnation that had oppressed him his entire life was lifted.  He was free.  He was healed.  He was saved by grace.

This was the nature of the healing that Christ offered.  His stories were all consistent.  He fed people, more than 5,000 of them because they were hungry and He loved them.  Demoniacs attacked Him and his disciples on the shores of a lake.  His disciples did the logical thing and ran like the wind.  He did not.  He cast out the demons of these poor afflicted souls.  He did not ask them for ‘faith’ first.  He took action that resulted in establishing their faith in the first place.  He healed people who were powerless to ask for his healing.  He released prisoners of evil even before they could utter the words.  His healing was complete and unconditional; just like His love.  His healing on this earth is much like His salvation on this earth, a complete gift.  His healing broke the perceptions of current religious crowd’s thinking.

It was NOT God who caused all this suffering.  It was God who relieved it.  It was NOT God who punished man.  It was man and the evil one, who makes man to suffer.  God was not sent here to this world to pronounce a right sentence of condemnation that would be just what we deserve (as the Jews thought).  He was sent here to save a sick and diseased people from the agony of sin, from the pain of sin, from the addiction of sin, from the self-destructive desire of sin, and from the consequences of sin.  Christ offered complete healing which reaffirmed all these teachings, and restored a better image of the character of God.

But in our day, evil distorts the picture once again.  The gift of healing that Christ entrusted to His servants has morphed into a very select few who claim to be able to do it.  And of those, almost all base their own abilities on the faith of the individual being healed, rather than on the source of all healing power.  A true healer could heal the atheist, the agnostic, or like Christ – he could heal the true servant of Satan – the possessed.  A true healer would know the will of God is not to see His children suffer.  A true healer would not ask before or after a healing for money, offerings, or gratitude in any way to support his ‘ministry’.  A true healer would seek anonymity as they would not want the ‘glory’ of the recognition for this work.  The gift of a true healer is not his own, it is merely to reflect the will of God our Father.

Faith comes from being healed.  Faith comes from being loved.  Faith comes because of what God DOES for us, not just what He talks about.  Faith itself then, is a complete gift of the Father.  It is our antidote to the sickness of this world.  It is affirmed by our healing, both spiritually and physically, not required to gain either.  Salvation, much like healing, is a gift.  You do not have to have faith before you are saved, or before you are healed; your faith is born of these experiences.  It comes because of these experiences, not as a prerequisite to them.  How could you have faith in a God before you even know who He is?  The one comes from the other.  Faith is made in your life by your experience with God.   So knowing that Healing is a gift, why do we see so little of it?  We will discuss that further in our next entry …