It should come as no surprise to anyone that with each new year at my age of 67, I attend more funerals than weddings. In fact, I don’t remember the last wedding I attended, another sign of my own advancing mortality. I just read that if I lived in the state of Mississippi - the State with lowest average life expectancy, I can only count on another good four years for myself.
Speculation aside, here are three things I know for certain. First, I am dying like everyone else. For some the end comes as a surprise, unexpected. For many others it is a longer process of months, weeks, years but as the writer of Ecclesiastes quips “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven; a time to be born and a time to die.”
Well, truthfully, he was only half right. There is no guarantee to be born or to put it in another way you did not have a right to be born but there is a guarantee that once born you will die, and not necessarily in an appointed time and place…but it will happen. We have some agency involved in this end, but age, environment, genetics, access to medical care and can I say fortune (luck) all have their say.
Second, the mortality rate of Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists, pagans, good people, bad people, the deserving and the non-deserving, leaders of nations, and those who live homeless is the same. At its very best even divine curing is at best remission. Lazurus may have been raised from the dead, but in the end death caught up to him like everyone else.
Third, death is a thermodynamic necessity. The only way life can be sustained on earth as we know it is through death. That is true for every living thing in our biosphere.
Famously Steve Jobs of Apple fame, was quoted on his impending death. “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
At this point for those who ascribe to the biblical story, it makes little difference whether you prefer a more literal reading of Genesis 1-3 and conclude implicitly that humans (Adam and Eve) in their pristine state were immortal, then something happened, and death became a reality. Or you read Genesis 1-3 as a way of Israel trying to make sense of both their existence and the presence of good and evil in their lifetime. Or you have found some middle ground that seems satisfying, immortality in this biosphere is not sustainable.[1] You will leave this earth so others can come in. Death is normal. It is the natural order of things as God created it. It may have been misconstrued at a point in time that the Christian tradition calls the fall, but it doesn’t find its origins there. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit. (John 12:24).
These points are incontrovertible.
Some object. Bob’s death was imminent. I visited Bob hooked up to tubes at his home shortly before he died. Bob had a big Bible. It was well underlined and worn. In Bob’s reading, death was a curse, and the Bible promised him threescore and ten years.[2] Cancer, however, did not care about his theology and would have the final word. I suggested to Bob that this might be an opportunity to reconcile with his estranged family. But in the end, in his spiritual worldview, he failed. He was not cured and died alone well short of his age target.
Unfortunately, such weaponization of “healing promises” has long been a thorn in the side of Pentecostal theology.
“Healing in the Atonement’ was one of the key platforms from which the Pentecostal movement branded itself. Disease and suffering were tagged as consequences of the fall and could be overcome like the redemption from sin. As one early Pentecostal healing evangelist, Smith Wigglesworth, stated, “He Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses; and if I dare believe, I can be healed.”[3] And for early Pentecostals this often meant denying medical means and relying solely on faith.
A columnist for the Pentecostal Testimony in 1943 wrote: "When God gave Moses detailed instruction for every phase of life for the Israelites, He made absolutely no provision for doctoring the sick. For some the order was to thrust them out of the camp. Away from all comforts. Out where they would be forced to throw themselves upon God's mercy."[4] The article concluded that medical means, at best, are a poor second choice for unbelievers or anemic Christians, and at worse they are akin to sorcery. The perfect plan of God was said to culminate in a ripe apple, "mature, mellow and ready to fall without a struggle.” Unfortunately while all die few fall gently into the hereafter as a ripe apple.
For his part, R.E. McAlister the first editor of the Pentecostal Testimony offered a more nuanced and graceful approach. In a sermon McAlister preached and published in the Pentecostal Testimony in June 1929 he wrote, “Healing is provided in the atonement. We need not discuss that phrase of the situation. That is apparent to any thoughtful reader of the Bible (Isa 53:5; Matthew 8:16,17).” But then he also,
1. differentiated between physical healing, spiritual healing and the sovereignty of God. This later point became the catch-all explanation for the failure of desired results. The lack of ‘healing” may be God carrying out God’s purposes for the good of the person protecting the person from another unforeseen reality. “We know that there have been times when God would not heal a wife because of the attitude of the husband. She has been taken home to heaven rather than heal her and allow her to live with an unsaved wicked man.”
2. accepted in some cases medical means as an extension of God’s working.
The tension inherent in this question still haunts Pentecostalism. When Healing is framed in reference to the fall it has the double of effect of putting the root cause of suffering illness on humanity and at the same time shields God from any culpability for God’s non action. If one has enough faith or is void of hindering sin, God would be free to act or so the narrative goes.
To that end celebrity peddlers of "faith healing" continue to make a substantial living on the backs of suffering individuals. Although there are variations of this strategy, the faithful are told “Suffering is not the fate of a true Christian and can be conquered or rebuked in the name of the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit. Keep on believing like the persistent widow. Healing and health are the will of God for humankind. Anything short of this is allowing oneself to fall prey to Satan’s lies.”
And unfortunately, there is still today no shortage of desperate people who will fill stadiums waiting for someone to pray health into their ailing body. They will endure long tirage lines, as only a few get chosen, to advance to the main stage. It is an industry, and the celebrities know how to milk the vulnerable for profit.
Some may object that I call them peddlers of health. I am trying to be kind. At some point I suspect their motives were sincere. But somewhere they began to believe in their own press. For many they are now looked upon as genies/healers dispensing miracles. And again, if the desired result does not happen, it is the sick who are at fault from either a lack of faith or sin in their life. As for the evangelists they are shielded from criticism insomuch as they have convinced themselves that all they can do is show the pathway. And it is now up to the earnest seeker to push through with faith. And if all else fails it is the sovereignty of God for the greater good.
It was probably for good reason that Jesus caught in public displays of curing would often tell those impacted, “don’t tell anyone.”
Full disclosure. I have never stayed overnight in the hospital. Until Covid I was running marathons and triathlons but age and two knee surgeries and arthritis in both knees have put an end to my "Iron Man" dreams. I have been a patient in the ER on a few occasions but I was patched up and sent home.
I only mention this because I feel a bit sheepish talking about illness and healing when I have lived a relatively sickness free life. Notwithstanding the social, (aging population) institutional (limited beds, caregivers etc.) professional (modern medicine) ethical (allocation of resources) economic (funding) environmental, and spiritual (value we put on life) dilemmas, here are four observations for moving forward.
First, it is okay to be finite. A few years ago, while I was still teaching, I made a silly joke about my failing eyesight in class. I remembered my optometrist’s quip: “There is nothing wrong with your eyes that youth can’t fix.” A student asked, in all sincerity, if I had ever prayed for healing. The question caught me off guard momentarily. “No,” I replied, “in this case, I would no more pray for my eyes than I would pray that wrinkles would go away. In both cases my failing condition has nothing to do with sin or the fall; it has to do with living in a finite, mortal body that God thought was pretty good when He made it.” Reflecting on my answer, I might have explained that though the fall had serious consequences, suddenly becoming finite was not one of them. Hardship may become our daily bread. But we should not see finiteness—being in time and space—as a product of sinfulness. It is who we are. Our bodies are a creation that, in the incarnation, Jesus reaffirmed as good since He lived, ate, and grew tired in a human form.
My second observation comes by way of medical anthropology. For some time now, medicine has made a distinction between disease and illness. Disease is an abnormality in bodily function caused by a specific agent, such as a bacterium or virus, while illness refers to the accompanying social, cultural, spiritual and emotional effects of the disease on the suffering individual.
Some theologians, such as Pentecostal scholar Amos Yong, have picked up on this distinction and submit that we should also distinguish between curing and healing. Curing, Yong says, addresses disease, and healing addresses illness. Writes Yong,
In relational perspective, healing takes place in community, sometimes including cures, but more often reconciling lives who were formerly strangers to one another.[5]
Perhaps this is why when the Apostle Paul writes about healing, he writes about gifts of healing in the plural not the singular.
In simple terms, when most people pray for healing, they are praying for a cure. It may or may not happen. In truth, experience suggests curing through the prayer of faith is an exception not the norm. But healing as in “the Lord is with me” can always occur. Witness the ten leppers who came to Jesus looking for a cure, nine went way with a cure, one returned and was both cured and healed.[6]
Third, in this last trimester of life I have come to appreciate that life is a gift not an
entitlement. I am not owed three score ten years. I am not immortal. My body is not so much a property to possess.[7] but to give out. We exist to the extent we sustain or suffer the existence of others. A few years ago I officiated the funeral of a dear friend. A rapid debilitating form of dementia took his life far too early. I would not wish that on anyone nor do I have an answer for it. But before he passed, on our visits he gave me the humbling gift of feeding him for which I have no words. Body to body.
Finally, there is strength in vulnerability. In a word, God became /vulnerable. Here vulnerability does not describe an act of God so much as God’s own ontology. God is vulnerable in God’s essence. Of course, the word ‘vulnerable’ is not readily accepted as a suitable attribute for God (if indeed we get to choose attributes). Historically the church has used words like ‘impassibility’ to counter any thoughts of vulnerability, which, at worse implied weakness and at best seemed to imply an unacceptable amount of risk on God’s part. Vulnerability has not been a poster attribute for God. And yet it is unavoidably here in the incarnation not as a stooping down to humanity’s level but as an act that fully manifests God’s divine self-revelation.
Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Ten years ago she began a research project that radically altered her work and life. She began by researching the impact of shame and she concluded that vulnerability is the ground for ‘wholehearted’ living. It is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. And apparently, she hit a chord with the public as her TEDTalks on this subject have been listened to by more people than any other speaker. To create, Brown says, ‘is to make something that has never existed before. There’s nothing more vulnerable than that.’ We may have some quibbles with that statement, but do we not witness in creation a God who in the act of creating opened himself to an unimaginable level of vulnerability. He did so by loving finite creatures so complex, as they themselves were made in the vulnerable image of God, that they might reciprocate God’s love in relationship. In the incarnation we encounter a God who, more than anything else, freely loves, and in that love is willing to be vulnerable and to risk suffering.
[1] Matt Haig, always entertaining and thought provoking wrote How to Stop Time. It is the fictional story of 41-year- old Tom Hazard who was one of a very few individuals who was born with the genetic defect that ages very slowly. Hazard is hundreds of years old. His job is to not fall in love and never stay in the same place more than 10 years because everyone else is aging around him. Living past your due date apparently is a big lonely problem. (Penguin books, 2019).
[2] Psalm 90:10 Threescore and ten = 70 years. So much for poetry. That leaves me with four years and for my beloved wife of 47 years, time is up.
[3] Until recent changes (2022) the Statement of Essential Truths for the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC) reads on the question of healing “Divine healing provided in the atonement of Christ is the privilege of all believers. Prayer for the sick and gifts of healing are encouraged and practised.” Matthew 8:1-17 was listed in a footnote as the justifying text where Matthew references Isaiah 53:4-5, a messianic passage that seems to causally link the work of atonement and healing. In 2022 the General Conference simplify and expand it to read, “Salvation means to receive the Spirit…and liberated from sin and darkness … Our experience of liberation includes healing whether spiritual, physical,, emotional or mental – as a foretaste of our future, complete restoration.”
[4] D.A Emmons "Is Pharmacy Sorcery," Pentecostal Testimony (Feb 15, 1943). I do not know where the author lived but hopefully it was not in a Winnipeg winter.
[5] Amos Yong, Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007), 247.
[6] For an indepth discussion on this claim see my article published in the Journal of Pentecostal Theologyhttps://www.academia.edu/28008940/Healing_in_Search_of_Atonement_With_a_Little_Help_from_James_K_A_Smith
[7] Not to get distracted from the topic at hand, but on this point the abortion debate could learn something. Most Pro-life individuals are really pro-birth. If you are pro-life you must take into consideration the life of the mother, extended family members, birth father, and so forth. It is not a simple equation. And as for pro-choice, we may inhabit our own bodies but are they uniquely for our pleasure? Are not our bodies what the Apostle Paul enjoins us to present as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God. In other words, on the question of birth, we again must take into consideration the interests of the unborn child, birth father, society and so forth. Our bodies are never entirely our own.
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