“And as Jesus passed by, He saw a man which was blind from his birth.”

(John 9:1)

 

One of the dreadful destroyers of life is sickness. Walk along the corridors of our magnificent Memphis hospitals and look through the open doors on either side at the multitudes of sick people. See for yourself how pain, weakness, or crippling has removed these sufferers for a time or permanently from their normal pursuits. Visit the invalids in their homes and see them sitting wistfully by their windows looking out on the busy world in which they can take no active part. Make a call at LeBonheur Hospital or go see a very sick child and observe that it is not just the mature and aging who are struck down by this destroyer, but sometimes the very young. Who can refrain from uttering Masefield’s prayer:

God give to men who are old and rougher,

All the things that little children suffer.

Sickness, illness, disease, crippling, what a grim destroyer of life!

As we read our gospels, I dare say, none of us is surprised to find Jesus busy early and late doing what he can for the sick. He had compassion on them for the pain they were suffering, the attendant anxieties they endured, their loss of the good life because of being shunted to the sidelines. Yes, it is characteristic of the compassionate Christ that He throw himself with enthusiasm and determination into the battle against sickness and disease.

The gospel story tells us of one occasion after another when great numbers of sick people came to Him, or were brought by their friends and He healed them. All manner of diseases and infirmities He cured: paralysis, leprosy, insanity, epilepsy. He gave sight to the blind and made the lame walk again.

Furthermore, He sent His disciples out commissioning them not only to preach the good news of God’s Kingdom and to teach the divine truths He had imparted to them, but also commanding them to heal the sick. The Book of Acts of the Apostles records many instances of healing by the members of the New Testament Church. So often, in the Biblical record, the one essential which is stressed as a requirement for healing is faith in God. “If only ye believe, all things are possible.” “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to that mountain be removed.”

So, when the persisting grievous problem of illness stays with us across the centuries and when we read the clear record of Jesus’ passionate concern for the sick and His healing of them and His emphasis upon faith as the prerequisite for restored health, we cannot be too surprised to find faith healing cults springing up within and about the church.

The Roman Catholic Church has long had its healing shrines, such as Lourdes in France, and various repositories of relics of the saints reputed to have healing powers. Oral Roberts has been attracting international attention in his faith healing missions. Dr. Tolly Thompson, our church’s moderator who was here in Idlewild just two weeks ago, spent several months in England four years ago, and on his return talked to the Richmond, Virginia ministers’ group about his impressions of British church life. The thing which most strongly impressed him was the church’s interest in health and divine healing. Not just in the new sects and cults along the so-called lunatic fringe of Christianity did he discover this preoccupation with faith healing, but among the Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches he found great crowds flocking to public gatherings held in the interest of healing by praying for the sick with living testimony by the cured of how they had been restored by God in response to faith and prayer. American Protestant Christianity has not been untouched by this interest. Our own General Assembly in 1954 appointed an Ad Interim Committee to study and make recommendations on the relation of faith to healing.

Now all this has conspired to make some groups believe and teach a few very dogmatic things about sickness, its cause, its possible cures, and the mission of the church in sickness and health. Here are some of these doctrines which now are bandied about as gospel truth.

First, it is often stated that sickness is always evil and therefore against the will of God: that it is God’s will that all His children enjoy uninterrupted good health. Leslie Weatherhead believes this and writes: “The primary will of God, His ideal intention, is perfect bodily health, and anything else is a temporary victory of evil.”

Second, it is frequently taught that all sickness is the result of sin, or Satan, or wrong thinking. Glenn Clark says: “Selfishness or the thought of self was the old, evil grandfather from which all our brood of diseases spring, and anger and fear were the father and mother.” Oral Roberts preaches that “the Apostle Peter specifically referred to sickness and disease as the oppression of the devil.” And Christian scientists hold as one of their basic beliefs that sickness and pain are unknown in the Eternal Plan and plague mortals only as a result of error in thinking.

Third, many now believe and teach that faith and obedience and prayer to God can cure all human ills. Mrs. Agnes Sanford, daughter of Presbyterian missionaries to China, wife of an Episcopal minister, and who practices faith healing, “blames all failure to receive healing upon sinful lack of faith.” A former parishioner of mine who was gravely ill with T.B., who all her life had been a faithful Christian, was greatly troubled in spirit when her son-in-law, a Presbyterian minister, counseled her to search her own soul for any resentment or unconfessed sin, either as the root cause of her illness or the spiritual block which was preventing her receiving the healing God wanted her to have.

A fourth doctrine now proclaimed by the faith healers is that the great business of the church is to continue Christ’s healing ministry, depending upon faith and prayer alone, and either refuse all medical care and use of  drugs, or brand these as a lower, unworthy method for regaining health for the faithful. Of course, Christian Scientists “are taught to regard themselves as in open antagonism to the best medical knowledge, to refuse competent diagnosis, to believe that one disease is no worse than another because all alike are due to errors of mortal mind, and to give no attention to sanitary or hygienic measures, and to decline to use drugs and medicines.” A.B. Simpson, who had quite a reputation as a faith healer several generations ago, used to advise: “If you can’t trust the Lord, then call the doctor. If you can’t take God’s best, take God’s second best.”

In the midst of this revival of interest in faith healing, in an age when the most popular purveyors of Christianity are promising, as the natural fruits of practicing religion, health, wealth and happiness, Dr. Wade Boggs, Jr. of our Assembly’s Training School in Richmond, has written an excellent book on Faith Healing and the Chrisitian Faith, which renders us all a distinct service, in that he examines the claims and charges of the faith healers in the light of Biblical teaching and Christian experience.

Dr. Boggs points out that the Bible has not just one doctrine of the origin of sickness and its cure, but a developing philosophy which goes through several stages. First, we find in the scriptures that men had the notion that God dealt capriciously with them and rewarded them with health and healing in proportion to the gifts or sacrifices they brought Him. Later, with the dawning consciousness of God’s moral nature, men made a connection between sin and sickness. So the old Deuteronomic idea developed that whenever sickness came it was the direct result of sin.

But from time to time men questioned this doctrine when they observed the prosperity of the wicked and their abounding health while God’s saints suffered. So eventually, in the Book of Job, Hebrew thought on this subject reached a third level when Job affirms that an innocent man may suffer.

The fourth stage is proclaimed initially by Isaiah in his great suffering servant passages where he advances the idea that sickness, pain, and suffering may be endured by God’s righteous servant for a vicarious purpose of bringing good, salvation, redemption into the world for others. And, of course, this magnificent doctrine reaches its supreme manifestation in the cross of Jesus Christ.

What then shall be our attitude toward sickness when it comes upon us, the members of our family, and lays waste beautiful life, young and old, all about us?

First, we will make use of all available helps a merciful God has put at our disposal, in Christian physicians, nurses, hospitals and healing drugs. Contrary to the teaching of the faith healing cults, the New Testament does not forbid the use of drugs or the practice of medicine. Neither does it relegate this to a lower level of divine healing. St. Paul had as his constant missionary companion, “the beloved physician,” Dr. Luke. And the medicinal use of oil and wine, common remedies of Jesus’ day, are not prohibited, but rather enjoined in Holy Scripture. The Good Samaritan bound up the wounds of the victim he found by the roadway, pouring in wine and oil, and St. Paul wrote Timothy to take some wine for his stomach’s sake. Saliva, which the ancients thought had medicinal value, Jesus used in His healing of the man born blind.

The spectacular discoveries of modern medicine in the realms of both the cause and cure of disease have resulted in healing and saving the lives of more people than ever the faith healers can claim: the antibiotics in the fight against pneumonia and Dr. Salk’s vaccine in humanity’s war against polio. Yes, the Christian uses what God in His providence has given and revealed to man as helpful in the great struggle against disease and sickness. Medical knowledge, drugs, Christ-like compassionate care of the sick, are all as much a part of God’s healing ministry as the most pious of incantations by faith healers.

Second, the Christian prays for the healing of himself, his sick relatives and friends, and for all sufferers everywhere. He recognizes that faith is an essential in all restoration. As one consecrated Christian physician said concerning his patient: “I tended him. God healed him.” Whether or not the physician is aware of his function as an instrument of the divine providence need not affect our understanding of his vocation. Benjamin Franklin adds this touch of humor: “God heals, and the doctor takes the fee.”

In the third place, the Christian when confronted with the terrible reality of illness for himself or in his family should ask: “What is God saying to me in this experience?” This is the unvarying Biblical injunction. Of course, we ought to ask ourselves, is this sickness a result of my sin which I ought therefore to confess? Or is it the result of my neglect of the laws of health which I must not transgress again? Or is it the result of a failure in my society which I and others ought to remedy that no one else may suffer as have I? Or is this sickness the result of some inscrutable, unknowable factor in human life, with which I ought not to bother myself further, just accept the fact of my illness and then listen to what God is saying to me about how this suffering can purify my soul and make me more like Christ and of how by His help I can make my suffering vicarious for the help, even the redemption, of other fellow sufferers in the world?

Dr. Frank Brown, a veteran missionary to China of our church, came back to America to spend the last years of his life in well-deserved retirement. He was suddenly stricken with leprosy. “Assuredly he did not become ill with this horrible disease as a just punishment for his sins. Even less than Job did he deserve such a misfortune. Sent to a leprosarium in Carville, La., he spent no time on self-pity. He wrote a book, about the missionary activity of his wife, designed to inspire other young women to such a career. He pointed out that the people in this leprosarium were lonely and in desperate need of a spiritual ministry. He affirmed his belief that, in this illness, God had perhaps given him the most glorious missionary opportunity of his life.” His dire illness became vicarious because of his faithful obedient spirit which prompted him to ask his God: “What art thou saying to me in this.”

Is there any better way for us as Christians to meet illness, that dread destroyer, than to pray as did Robert Louis Stevenson, “Spare us to our friends. Bless, us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors. If it may not, give us strength to encounter that which is to come, and in all changes of fortune, down to the gates. . loyal and loving one another.”