Another Ode to Doctors

I remember a humorous story told by a pastor who was very sick with malaria. Very seriously sick. He stood on faith for his healing but did not make a connection. Finally, his loved ones dragged him to hospital. As he tells it, on catching sight of the nurse filling up a big, fat syringe and preparing to stick it in him, he wept, crying “Lord look at me, a man of God, and I’m not healed!” It’s OK, said the nurse, with a wicked smile, “I’ll give you this injection and you’ll be healed.”

Many have this dual attitude to doctors. I, on the other hand, am quite thankful for medical science. Why? Well, for the reasons I mentioned in an earlier post-they can do a lot of good and can often help get you healed when you don’t make the prayer connection. They can also keep you alive in many cases, until you can develop your faith for healing. I appreciate every new discovery that leads to disease eradication and applaud those telethons where they come together to “fight cancer” or “fight muscular dystrophy” and so on.

Actually that is another paradox. To these non-Christians, disease is a mortal enemy, to be fought to the last man, with all of our might and dollars. Yet, when many Christians encounter sickness, the begin to warble on about “this is the will of God” and other such nonsense. If you would never give your child cancer or inject them with Ebola, it is ridiculous to infer that God somehow explicitly or implicitly had a role in a person’s sickness. Do you see how ridiculous this is? “Oh”, they say, “he just permitted it”. Yep, with a wink and nudge to the devil, yes? The unredeemed have enough sense to recognize sickness and sisease for what it is-a mortal enemy to the human race, and Christians, with their manmade theology, put it on God. What a contrast.

Every good and perfect gift comes from God, not every bad and dreaded disease. In fact, I have heard Christians attribute their illnesses to God, with no mention of the actual culprit, the devil, or their own abuse of their bodies. Do we ever need wisdom! OK, I’m off my soapbox now, but will continue in my next post. Perhaps I’ll move on to ‘Paul’s thorn’… Meanwhile, do share your thoughts on medical science.