So today I read an article written by a priest that says that if you’re not healed of your suffering, you are….basically not doing Christianity well enough.
Ohhhhhhhhh I began to wail like an over-tired Patty when I read this.
I am linking to it, even though I don’t really want to give this article hits, because…..yeah.
Now, in fairness, I will note that the author says “possible reasons” at the beginning of his piece.
However it doesn’t cover the amount of sheer insanity that is spouted.
Here’s why you aren’t getting cured:
*You lack consistent prayer
*You lack faithful discipleship
*You lack complete trust
*You lack readiness to give total praise to God
*You lack the willingness to bring healing to all persons.
Do you notice a thread here? It’s all, you are not doing your part so you need to do more and then God, like. vending machine, will give you what you want. You need to do better.
At the end of the article the author says that well, God has his own reasons for doing or not doing things.
But look: This is dangerous garbage. To tell someone who is desperate for healing that they aren’t praying enough, aren’t trusting enough, aren’t doing enough—that’s crap! It’s like the people who have told me that the reason I have CF is because I haven’t prayed enough. It smacks of the attitude of “Oh, there, there, just do X and all will be FINE!”
What? No.
What, precisely, did Jesus “do” to “earn” his death? Did he not have total trust in God? Did Mary lack faith and prayer, or the willingness to give total praise to God, as she watched her son die?
Jesus says in the Gospel of John that the blind man is blind because that’s how he’ll glorify God.
In my book I write about this dangerous attitude. And I also write about how God uses suffering to draw us closer to him, deeper into prayer, and further into a relationship of trust.
Prayer is not magic. God isn’t a vending machine.
If you are suffering, do not believe that somehow, you are failing. Yes, through your suffering, God might be asking you to do more—to trust him, to enter into deeper prayer. But to enter into that with the goal of only gaining is not the right way to enter into deeper prayer. A real relationship with anyone isn’t about what the other person can give you or what you get.
Suffering can, certainly, be, as C.S. Lewis said, “God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” It can spark conversion, definitely.
But we need to be very careful when we talk about why God is permitting suffering. We need to step away from thinking that if we’d only do X Y Z that we’d be cured.
God’s ways are not our ways, and suffering is a deep mystery that we will never totally understand. Don’t try to provide facile answers.
