Faith and Healing, Part 2

We have begun exploring faith and healing, but more broadly, this little series is about faith and miracles (healing being a prominent sort of miracle, in terms of significance if not frequency).

Before looking at the questions we raised in our last post, perhaps we should define miracles.  I am sure you know the well-worn quote, which was or was not spoken by Albert Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is.”  We can begin here, but it’s not exactly a definition.  It is, in fact, a philosophy, an a priori philosophical commitment that miracles are possible or they are not.  If you want to discuss miracles and the role faith plays in them, you first must acknowledge their possibility.  As CS Lewis writes:

“Whatever experiences we may have, we shall not regard them as miraculous if we already hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural.  Any event which is claimed as a miracle is, in the last resort, an experience received from the senses; and the senses are not infallible…

“The experience of a miracle in fact requires two conditions.  First we must believe in a normal stability of nature, which means we must recognize that the data offered by our senses recur in regular patterns.  Secondly, we must believe in some reality beyond Nature.  When both beliefs are held, and not till then, we can approach with an open mind the various reports which claim that this super- or extra-natural reality has sometimes invaded and disturbed the sensuous content of space and time which makes our ‘natural’ world.” (“Miracles” from God in the Dock)

Miracles are, by definition, a suspension of what one might call “the law of nature” – or the normal order of things, as they are customarily experienced.  As the dictionary has it: “an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.”  Thus, Jesus walking on top of the water of Galilee or calming the storm with a sharp word or causing to see a blind man are all labeled “miraculous” because they are contrary to what we would call “normal” and “natural”.

Now among the various reactions to reports of this sort are two which deserve some special mention.  One reaction might be to doubt the veracity of the event itself.  The other is to assume that a perfectly naturalistic explanation lies behind the event (one recalls Arthur C. Clarke’s saying that magic is just science we do not yet understand).  I think this inherent skepticism reveals more about the presuppositional baggage of the reactor than it does about the event to which he is reacting.  If one presumes a naturalistic explanation to everything, one will never see miracles.  There are probably hybrid forms of this, even among my tribe of Christians.

Let me lay out my own presuppositional baggage by articulating the two extremes of the miracle spectrum in the Church.  On one end, we have cessationists, those who assert that the Age of Miracles has passed.  When I was a young Fundamentalist, we often quoted the verse from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “When that which is perfect has come, that which is imperfect will pass away.”  In that thinking, the Holy Bible (only the 17^th Century Authorized Text, by the way) was the perfect which now superseded the imperfect.  There are probably other, more robust arguments for cessationism, but that was the one we yanked from our argument supply.

At the other end of the Miracle Spectrum as the Charismaniacs, of which there is not a monolith, but more of a mosaic.  They are at the far end because of their willingness to believe in the likelihood of the miraculous in everyday workings.  Not “wrong”, just at the extreme end.

And all along this Miracle Spectrum are various hybrids.  C’est moi.  I am not a cessationist.  At least, I am not one any longer.  Something about being baptized into the Holy Spirit and witnessing the supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit will change all that.  My bias is that the gifts Paul describes in his letters are gifts still for today.  Un-explainable healings still happen.  Words of prophecy (future telling) still happen.  The Holy Spirit is alive and well and active and working in God’s people.  But I greet news of healings with a seasoned skepticism.  Miracles are NOT normative; they are exceptional.  They were when Jesus lived; they are now.

So where does this leave us?  It leaves us with questions, which we will answer posthaste…

• Do miraculous (or difficult-to-explain) healings happen today?
• What role does faith play in the seemingly miraculous occurrences (such as healings)?
• If healings happen, how and why?  That is, is it the faith of the one being healed or the faith of the ones praying for healing?
• If healings happen, is faith required?  That is, if neither the receiver of the healing or the “giver” of the healing have faith, will that prevent healing?
• Is healing only given to some select people, or is it universally given to all in the Church?  In other words, is Paul’s choice of words (i.e., “to one”) merely an expression to be taken loosely (as in “everyone is going to see that movie”) or to be taken literally?

Faith and Healing

Faith is described many times and in many ways in the Biblical Text.  It is impossible to please God without faith.  If we have even so small an amount as to resemble a mustard seed – really, really, really tiny – we can bring about the End Times (the moving of the Mount of Olives promised in Zechariah (14:4), which perhaps Jesus was referencing in his oft-quoted “make this mountain move” statement (I think it’s less about the power of faith, incidentally, than it is about Jesus pointing His followers back to the waited-for Great Day).

The myriad ways in which “faith” is used in the Text do present some challenges of intererpration and applicaiton.

In Hebrew, the word most often translated as “faith” or “faithful” is the Hebrew “emunah” (אֲמָנָה), form its root word “aman” (אָמַן), which most often is rendered as “believe”, “confirm”, and “support”…Can I get an “Amen”?  (Same word.)  Emunah was used to describe Moses’ raising of his hands “steadfastly” all day long while Israel defeated her enemies.  In Deuteronomy 7, God is described as “faithful” – the God who is faithful.  And Abraham (in Genesis 15) is described as having “emunah”, which God credited to him as righteousness.

The Greek word translated most often as “faith” is “pistis” (which apparently looks like this in Greek: πίστις, εως, ἡ).  The commentators (I think there is consensus) tell us that “pistis” is always a gift from God, and not something we may produce on our own.  To add to this a bit, “faithfulness” is one of the fruits of the Spirit.  And though we cannot “MAKE” fruit grow by a force of will, we can create ideal climatic conditions for it to be produced by God.

So, let’s return to the title of this piece, and some of the questions which sparked it.

• Do miraculous (or difficult-to-explain) healings happen today?
• What role does faith play in the seemingly miraculous occurrences (such as healings)?
• If healings happen, how and why?  That is, is it the faith of the one being healed or the faith of the ones praying for healing?
• If healings happen, is faith required?  That is, if neither the receiver of the healing or the “giver” of the healing have faith, will that prevent healing?
• Healing is named as one of the gifts given by the Spirit.  The verse (1 Corinithians 12) seems to indicate that it is given to “some” (in fact, the verse specifically says that it is given to “some”, just as “working of miracles” and “the ability to distinguish between spirits”, and “interpretation of tongues”).  So, is healing only given to some select people, or is it universally given to all in the Church?  In other words, is Paul’s choice of words (i.e., “to one”) merely an expression to be taken loosely (as in “everyone is going to see that movie”) or to be taken literally?

I do not know all the answers to these questions.  I think I am content with not knowing answers to them.  Some might call my mental shoulder shrug a cop out, giving up the intellectual struggle when the going got tough.  Maybe they are correct.  Maybe it is a cop out.  But perhaps it’s also a realization that there are some questions which will elude answers this side of eternity and about which sincere Christians everywhere have always disagreed.  And quarreling about such things where answers are ambiguous at best, contradictory at worst, would seem to produce not harmony and love, but division and animosity, about which things we are warned.  See what Paul advised Timothy (2 Tim 2) and Titus (Titus 3).

Even so – even granting my skepticism at finding answers which satisfy all parties – I am approaching these questions with some Socratic thinking.  That is, I am going to attempt to answer them or work toward some answers.  Stay tuned…

Our Redeemer

Our Redeemer

The Hebrew word goel or gaal ( גָּאַל) means “redeemer”.  It occurs in the Hebrew text over 100 times.  The most famous use of the term is the story of Ruth and Boaz, where Boaz acts as Ruth’s kinsman redeemer.

The story is a beautiful and romantic tale of love and character and honor (a sort of Rom-Com of the Biblical variety: boy meets girl, girl pursues boy, boy purchases girl (and her mother).  Anyway…

The whole “redeem” part gets lost, I think, in not so much the translation as in the passage of time and the change of culture.  It’s perhaps worth taking a stroll through the ancient near Eastern (ANE) cultural landscape to look for meanings which have been obscured by our modern Western filters.

Life was hard for our ancient ancestors.  Go back even two generations and life was orders of magnitude harder.  Throw in the absence of electricity, running water, sewage, etc. and you have a potentially brutal life.  What made matters worse for anyone was isolation from your community, your tribe, or your family.  Your whole identity was tied up with who you belonged to: your tribe.  This fact of life was true for all cultures in the ancient days, and it was certainly true in the ANE, where Ruth’s story takes place.

There’s a famine in Israel.  Elimelech (his name means “God is the King), a man from Bethlehem, decides to load up the family and move to Moab, like the Clampetts.  He takes his wife Naomi (her name means “pleasant”) and their two sons.  Tragically, Elimelech dies leaving Naomi a widow.  At least, she is not left destitute because she has her two sons to care for her.  Her boys marry Moabite women, outside their own tribe, because that’s all they had around there, and I suppose the Naomi family set up shop in the land of Moab, foreigners in a foreign land.

Then, the wheels come off: Mahlon and Chilion (Naomi’s sons) die.  Now, Naomi has a real problem.  Whatever land or possessions she might have acquired during her family’s sojourn in Moab were now forfeit.  Woman could not own land.  Her only choice was to return to Bethlehem and beg for food.  Surprisingly, both of her daughters-in-law decide to return with her.  Naomi, bereft of husband and sons, and therefore bereft of protection and provision, encourages these girls to stay in Moab.  Orpah decides to stay in Moab, but Ruth makes a profoundly moving alternative decision: “Where you go, I’ll go.  Where you stay, I’ll stay.  Your people will be my people.  Your God will be my God.  Where you die, I will die.”

Did Ruth understand the implications of her decision?  What could have possessed her to express this loyalty?  (All the daughters-in-law everywhere are aghast, no doubt.)  But Ruth is also prophetic in the sense that she truly became entwined into Israel.

But they are two poor widows with no prospects and no protectors.  Naomi is so bitter at what’s happened to her that she says even her name is Bitter (Mara) from now on, not Pleasant.  Hard to condemn her for that: she literally had nothing.  But God the Provider (Jireh) offers unexpected hope for them both through the hands of Naomi’s relative, Boaz.  Read the whole story for context, but here’s the gist.

Boaz and Ruth meet.  Boaz redeems Naomi, his kinsman, by buying Elimelech’s field (Naomi could not own it because of that whole woman-not-owning-stuff rule).  When he buys the field, he buys Ruth, who becomes his wife.  Boaz redeems Ruth (and Naomi).  By law and custom, when a poor relative is redeemed by a rich relative, their relationship changes.  The Redeemed does not become slave, but they “belong” to the Redeemer in a special way.  Not property, but especially close family and in some way beholden to the Redeemer.  So, Ruth “belongs” to Boaz.

Boaz and Ruth have a son they name Obed.  If you’ve been following along, you know that Obed’s son is Jesse, the father of Israel’s King David.  And down through the years, along comes Jesus, the son of David.  Jesus, the Redeemer of mankind.  As we are in the place of Ruth, the redeemed bride, we belong to our Redeemer.

Love Your Neighbor

Love Your Neighbor

We may learn quite a bit about how to answer the famous question, "How then shall we live?", by understanding Jesus in His original context, as a First Century Jewish Rabbi.  Placing Jesus in His historical and cultural context may or may not change your theology -- your beliefs about WHO God is -- but it will certainly take the black and white words of the Biblical text and render them into vivid Technicolor®.

When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he was being asked to do what contemporary rabbis were often being asked to do: teach me how to live in a way that pleases God and ensures me a place in the world to come.

Anyone who has read the story knows how Jesus answered: love God with all your heart, soul, and might (from Deuteronomy) and love your "neighbor" as you love yourself.  His interlocutor, either a wily lawyer or an inquisitive teacher of the Torah (depending on your predetermined biases about the pharisees), asked Jesus who should be regarded as neighbor.

It seems an odd question.  To our ears, our neighbors live next door or around us.  Of course, we know who our neighbors are.  They are the ones who lend a helping hand or who borrow tools or who come to our cookouts.  Some we like, some we don't.  But we do not need to know who they are, do we?

The cultural stew into which this question was cast makes this a more interesting topic.

The translation of the Jewish Bible being read at the time of Jesus was a Greek translation of the text called the Septuagint.  The Septuagint uses the Greek word “plesíos”, which is derived from “pélas”, a word which means near or close.  The Hebrew text of Leviticus 19 has the word “rey’akha”, which is most often translated as “friend” or “companion.”  This is obviously a different connotation than neighbor, which is someone who lives near you.

So what do we make of this?

The Jewish sages are pretty clear about the implications: Leviticus 19:8 commands the faithful Jew to love his fellow Jews, and only them.  Not so fast.  Jewish teaching on the command in Torah is more nuanced and includes both narrow and expansive interpretations of who our neighbor is.

Which brings us to Jesus and his questioner.  He asked Jesus who is his neighbor, and Jesus tells one of his most famous parables: the story which has come to be known as the good Samaritan. 

Anyone who’s read outside the text knows that the Samaritans and the Jews in Israel inhabited a mutual hatred society.  To the Jew, Samaritans were half-bred pagans whose forefathers abandoned the faith years before, and with the abandonment, abandoned the spark of divinity which lay within every human.  In other words, Samaritans were animals to most Jews, less than human and worthy of contempt.  Some commentators have suggested that a member of either community wandering alone through the land of the other was likely to be the victim of murder.

It is therefore more than remarkable that Jesus chose as his model neighbor a member of the most-hated class of people.  Moreover, Jesus tells us he was more neighbor than the others.

How then shall we live?  We shall live by loving those among us who are the most un-lovable.

Welcome back.

Welcome back.  What's been happening?

So, in the years if hiatus, a few things have changed and a few things have not.  A hotelier-cum-reality show star has become the most powerful man in the world.  Homosexual marriage is now the law of the land.  Celebrity culture dominates the landscape, from every corner of the globe.  Terrorists and their sponsors (same thing) use every means at their disposal to disrupt normal society.  And free speech is now illegal in its birth country.  

But some things do not change.  Unborn babies are still being murdered at an astonishing rate.  Un-hinged gunmen are still shooting up gun-free zones.  And arguments around these divisive topics seem to generate more heat than light.

So why come back to this little, un-visited corner of the blogosphere?  Good question.  Perhaps we need to vent, some place other than Facebook.  Perhaps in a form that requires longer word structures than 140 characters.  Perhaps there is something worth saying which will be said...at least occasionally.

This blog is named for the Second Thief, crucified with Jesus, traditionally known as Saint Dysmas.  Like our namesake, this blog knows his abject humility before God's Righteous Lamb.  He knows he is justly condemned for his crimes, while Jesus is innocent and un-stained.  And like Dysmas, he prays that his Lord will take him up into Paradise at the renewing of the world.

And this Dysmas will have things to say...at least, occasionally.

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary

We Protestants seem to be more uncomfortable with Mary the mother of Jesus than centrist Republicans are with Sarah Palin.  We cannot criticize her because that would be risky, but we certainly cannot praise her because that is too close to worship.

Okay, so the comparison breaks down pretty quickly.

But it seems to be the case that we talk to each other about Mary at very specific times and in very specific ways.  We use carefully chose words so as not to cross the imaginary line between “respect” and “worship”.  I read a blog post from a sincere and well-meaning Baptist pastor (I am presuming that he is) about Mary.  He asserts that we should “venerate (or worship) her but that we should hold her memory in great honor” (sic).  This view is not dissimilar from what many of my fellow-traveler evangelicals would also hold.  But it seems to me that a confusion reigns in the minds and hearts of Protestants over this Mary enigma.  Perhaps some discussion is in order.

In the first place, what is the difference between “honor” and “venerate”.  Several versions of a typical thesaurus list them as synonyms, close cousins with “revere”, “cherish”, and such.  What practical difference is there for the believer?

In the second place, why the cautionary tone?  About what are Protestants in a dither?  Perhaps a little reflection on the Great Commandments might be in order.  The LORD gave Israel Torah.  Prominent in Torah are the Ten Commandments, of which we find the first:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  You shall have no other gods before me.

Exodus 20:2-3

Jesus taught that the Shema captured the Greatest Commandment:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Deuteronomy 6:3-4

So, an aversion to false worship is well grounded in our Hebrew roots heritage, and also affirmed by our LORD Himself (Matthew 22:36-40).  And if someone were to worship the created thing (that is, Mary) rather than the Creator (the Almighty One) he would be engaged in false worship (perhaps it could be called “idolatry”, but this would be a loose definition).

But what then do we make of Mary?  How should we regard her, if we want to give her the respect, honor, veneration, etc. she is due, without veering into idolatry?

The reasons for giving this consideration are significant.  Firstly, she is the very model of the humble follower: “I am the LORD’s servant.  May your word to me be fulfilled,” she said, foreshadowing her son’s words in the Garden (“not my will, but Yours be done”).  Her character and submission are exemplary for all Christians since then.

Perhaps most obviously, she is the very first human to be “Christ-bearer”, a calling we are all asked to undertake.  Hers is a literal bearing of the Messiah.  And as such, she is Mother of God. 

This one, I think, gives us Protestants some trouble.  “Wait a minute, Dysmas,” they might say to me.  “Nobody gives birth to God.  He is the uncreated one who existed before all things.”  To which I will answer: was Jesus not born?  And is Jesus not God?  “But Dysmas, she gave birth to his human nature only.”  And I will reply, humbly but firmly, mothers do not give birth to natures.  They give birth to children.  Is Jesus fully God and fully man?  (This was settled way, way back in church history at the Council of Ephesus – yes, THAT Ephesus – when Nestorius’s heresy was refuted.)  Mary is the Mother of God, a role she took on and carried willingly and humbly, perhaps even with the knowledge that He was born to die (Luke 2:35).

So, how then shall we live (with regard to our treatment of Mary)?  I agree with the blog writer who says we should honor her (without the Protestant condescension which seems typical).  And as “honor” and “revere” are really the same, I am going to go so far as to say I will revere her.

After all, Elizabeth gave us the model, when – filled with the Holy Spirit – she proclaimed upon greeting the God-bearing Mary: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!”

Saved from Death, not saved from sin

“Jesus came not to make bad men good, but rather to make dead men live.

This phrase is often said by many Christian teachers (Fr Stephen Freeman, Ravi Zacharias, Rev Robert A Connor, Leonard Ravenhill, etc.).  According to Zacharias, this is a fundamental difference between the Way and other moralizing religions: it is about conquering DEATH (as St. Paul writes in 2 Corinithians: “where is your sting, Death?”).

The Orthodox takes this underpinning a bit further, or rather, carry out the theological implications to their ends.  Our disease is not sin; that is merely a symptom (perhaps the chief symptom).  Our enemy is Death. 

In meditating on this premise, I have been brought to consider the Jewish feasts which Jesus and His followers celebrated year-by-year for all their lives.  As Christians who have been adopted into – grafted into – the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we do not usually keep those Feast Days in any religious way.  And we tend to read about them as facts of history.  Some of us may read of them as symbolic types which have their true fulfillment in Messiah.  Okay.  Good enough.  And I am not writing to complain about “Judaizers who want Goyim to become Jewish” or “anti-Nomians who reject any rules”.  Rather, this is a narrow consideration of the meaning and significance of Passover.

The story of Passover is God’s deliverance from the Angel of Death who afflicted the firstborn of all Egypt (and anyone who did not shed the lamb’s blood and decorate their doors with it).  Passover did not forgive their sins or atone for their sins.  Passover’s sacrifice delivered from Death.

Jesus died on the Cross at Passover as our Sacrifice Lamb.  His shed blood is our escape from Death, just as the blood on the first Passover was Israel’s escape (Israel and anyone who came under their tent).  The angel of Death passes over us because of what Jesus did, as the one perfect sacrificial Lamb of God.

Jesus came to make dead men live.