Board index ‹ The Problem of Evil and Suffering

[Newbie]

I work in an E.R., and we are about to get our Sunday-after-church rush because this morning's prayers for healing will go unanswered again.

(I will preface this with some scripture saying God will heal the sick when we pray)

James 5:14 - Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: 15 - And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.16 - Confess [your] faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

Matthew 18:19 - Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.

I work in an Emergency Room and Sundays from 11am until it nightfall is consistantly the busiest time of the week.

One thing that helped move me from very religious to atheist was prayer meetings where we prayed for the sick. The one that broke the camel's back was a 14-year-old girl with Cystic Fibrosis. She was the granddaughter of a lady in our prayer group and she was admitted to the hospital because her home pulmonary function tests were going down fast and she had developed a cough and fever.
One week the prayers were for her to have a quick visit and to get home quickly.

The next week the prayers were for a miraculous healing because she was getting worse.
A week later they prayed for God to guide the hands of the doctors becasue she was rapidly deteriorating.

The next week they thanked God for taking her to Heaven to live with him in His Glory forever.
It became painfully obvious to me that the prayers were crafted to paint whatever happened as God's Will and a Good Thing. If she had been healed, they would have thanked God.

The prayers were not efficacious in their petitioning for healing. They only were a balm to a people trying to make sense of a terrible situation.

I decided I wanted to face the world as it truly is, not drunk on prayers that comfort me like cheap wine would.

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So here I sit, waiting for the Sunday rush. They will come in dressed in their Sunday best, their prayers for healing again unheard. Their God again not delivering them from their pain or their suffering. In fact the stress of getting up to go to church when they are already ill leads many to these doors.
And then later the pastors will arrive. They will stride through restricted areas as if they had some special medicine to bestow. Alas all they have to offer is more prayers. Certainly placebos can have positive results, but only when the patient believes they are receiving a therapy that has proved useful. So the prayers will flow like so many sugar pills. Some will get better, some will get worse. Some will go home today. Some will die here today. Neither prayers or placebos will make a difference.

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As a result of seeing the prayers for that little girl with Cystic Fibrosis fail, I left Christianity. I also left my job as a banker. I am in school to be a Respiratory Therapist were I actually help people to breathe.

Even as a student, I have already helped more people than prayer ever did.

So my question for debate - God has promised to answer prayers for healing. Are these people just doing it wrong?

[jimwalton]

I think it's quite fair to say that Christians deeply misunderstand the teachings of the Bible on healing. If you read the Old Testament, there are only about 3 healings in the whole pre-Christ history that are recorded there. Three. Then during Jesus, of course, hundreds if not thousands. Then after Jesus, a few again (maybe less than 10), and on into history. Christians take some of Jesus' words, and Paul's teaching about the gift of healing, and, if I may be both respectful and blunt, misapply, misunderstand, and mislead about the "gift" of healing. I will say that maybe a few people in history have had such a thing, but the kind of quackery that goes on in the name of Christ is embarrassing to the cause.

Look at James 5.14, notice

1. Christians get sick

2. Call for the elders. Doctors were scarce. Oil was one of their primarily medicines, as generic as it was. They believed in the power of prayer. So the general principles are: get some medical care, and remember to pray. Notice that anointing with oil will not necessarily lead to healing. Nor is it implied that oil is necessary.

3. "And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well." Remember that the apostles themselves didn't have indiscriminate powers of healing. Paul didn't heal Epaphroditus (Phil. 2.27). He left his buddy Trophimus sick at Miletus (2 Tim. 4.20). James is obviously not meaning that the elders (or prayer) have unrestricted power to heal the sick! It's wrong to take this in an absolute and unconditional sense, or no one would ever die again.

But it is true that there is no circumstance of life where faith is impossible, and therefore no situation in which the Christian cannot resort to prayer. The idea is that we should always seek God for our physical needs, but there is nothing here to suggest that it is God's will that everybody should enjoy at all time perfect physical health, that no one need ever get sick, and if they do, it's an easy oil dump and prayer and you're on your way! That's just a total misunderstanding of the Bible.