Board index ‹ The Problem of Evil and Suffering

[Jiggle]

why is there not a single documented case of an amputated leg growing back, thru the healing of jesus?

[jimwalton]

This question has been around for a long time. Here are my answers to it:

The definition of a miracle is a very wide spectrum of possibilities, ranging all the way from a verifiable dead person coming back to life, to (flippant things such as) "I got a green light just when I needed one!"

The kind miracles where people are genuinely healed are quite rare. The truth is that God hardly ever interferes in the circumstances of our lives. As you read the Bible, you discover that God's normal m.o. is to let cause and effect run their course, and then He comes behind to redeem whatever it was that happened. Most of the work He does, by design and according to what the Bible teaches, is inside of people, not messing with cause and effect. Which leads to my second observation:

Most of the prayers God answers are about inner things, not outer ones. A detailed study of the Bible reveals that almost all the prayers God answers in the Bible pertain to people's inner lives (courage, spiritual life, strength, spiritual insight, understanding, etc.) and not to circumstances. And while the Bible has stories of God manipulating circumstances, you'll read that most of the time He doesn't.

The primary piece of evidence (and rebuttal, I guess) is that God hardly ever heals. God is not so much in the business of healing. Aside from about 10 occurrences in ALL of Scripture (excluding Jesus), there are no recorded healings. He is not in the business of healing any more than He is in the business of making people float in the air. In the entire Old Testament, there are, what, maybe 4 people who ever got healed (the son of the Shunammite woman, Naaman, Hezekiah, and Miriam). That's four people over a period of 2000+ years. Of course, during Jesus there are hundreds, or thousands. Then after Jesus, only a handful.

God is in the business of healing souls. That's what His goal is. On (rare) occasion he heals a body miraculously. There is no record of Jesus restoring a limb or body part that was missing, but silence is no argument. He healed many people who were crippled in their legs, and many lepers, who often had lost body parts to injury. No specific mention is made of a restored missing body part, though for all we know that may have happened.

In conclusion, according to Scripture, God isn't primarily in the business of healing (for the most part) and it's not something He does (generally, or even anything but occasionally). God is in the business of souls. A more productive conversation would be to your openness to God healing your soul and restoring your amputated God-awareness.

[Purple Owl]

> The primary piece of evidence (and rebuttal, I guess) is that God hardly ever heals.

True, but I think it's worth pointing out that questions like this are usually asked in the context of faith healing, to peoples and groups who do believe that God heals and heals frequently.

[jimwalton]

Sure, I get that, but even in faith-healing circles, the number of healings in proportion to the number of people who need to be healed is quite small. Even if there are hundreds who are healed (big "if"), the number who are sick is in the billions, if not trillions.