Making God Holier Than God

I had an interesting, I think that's the right word, thing happen to me on Facebook.
I was blocked and banned from someone's page.
What made it so interesting is how it happened.

This person had written an intriguing book about his relationship with Jesus and where it had led him. In the course of the book, he said that he had a stroke and was completely healed through prayer.

Since I have known a few people who have been healed through prayer, I certainly don't discount it. My mother was in the hospital, with all of her systems shutting down, and the doctors told me that she was dying. She received the Last Rites and went on to live another 10 or so years. What was the miraculous part was that literally....and I mean literally....immediately after being anointed, her vital signs stabilized and everything restarted.  So I do believe in the healing power of prayer.

Back to the man and the stroke. Later on in the book, he said he had a second stroke and again was completely healed.  And again, I was ready to accept him at his word since I know that people often have a second stroke soon after a first on.

All of this took place about nine months to a year ago, I'm guessing, from the time frame in his book. Last week, he put up on his Facebook page that he had been completely healed from what he seemed to be saying was a third stroke. So, being a journalist by trade, I asked two questions: one, had he had any underlying medical conditions checked out and two, if this was the same incident as the double stroke or a new one.

His reply to me was that I was playing Devil's Advocate and wasn't willing to give God the glory, so he banned me. Without answering either question.

I tell this story because I've been reading and pondering a good deal about prayer and healing the past few weeks and in the accounts I've read, there is a tendency to make God holier and "gooder" than God is. I'm not saying that the people don't tell the truth about being healed.  It's more that they exaggerate their stories so that God appears to have done something really really extraordinary.

It's almost as if we want to be sure that people know that God is really really awesome, so we feel the need to "defend" him, make his actions better than they really are. I think it stems from the fact that we want to believe that God will part the Red Seas of our lives.

As I said, I do believe in the power of prayer to heal. It's just that most of the time, healing is a process that occurs in tandem with medical treatment. And when it happens that way, God doesn't seem quite as "holy," so people tend to embellish their stories, just a bit, to be sure that God gets sufficient glory. 

As the Church's canonization process shows, true miracles can withstand any amount of Devil's Advocacy. In the end, a rigorously examined miracle actually gives more glory to God than anything we can say or do.

As for the man with the strokes, thanks be to God for his healing. And to God be the glory.

On healing

I've been thinking a great deal about healing the past couple of days, partly because I've been working on a project that talks about how Jesus healed the sick in his day and partly because I've been thinking about how healing happens...or doesn't happen...in my own life.

One of the insights that has come to me is our assumption that for healing to be miraculous, it has to be instantaneous. A prayer, an anointing and Voila! The cure is complete. It's how we tend to assume all of Jesus' miracle cures happened.

While many of his cures did seem to occur at the speed of the spoken word, others didn't. Take the story of the blind man who first saw men like trees. Jesus had to apply the mud pack a second time before his sight wasfully  restored. And then there are the 10 lepers who were cured somewhere on their journey to see the priest. We don't know how long it took for their healing to show up, but clearly it wasn't right away.

As I've said before, since my mother died, I've battled anxiety and panic on a near-daily basis. I've done all the "right" things, all the medical and psychological things one does to combat these problems. I have also prayed until I feel like I've battered the gates of heaven as well as had the anointing of the sick. While I am gradually feeling more like myself, there are days, like today, when for no good reason that I can discern, the sensations well up and I feel like a deer caught in the headlights of life. And the headlights are attached to a semi going 75 miles an hour down a one-lane road.

On days like this, even the hope of healing feels like a bad practical joke.

I have an acquaintance who has been involved in healing prayer and ministry for several years. We prayed together about my anxiety and afterward he said to me, "healing itself is a journey...remember that there is still part of the road left to journey on."  Then he added, "the reality(is)  that healing is possible and Jesus longs to pour that healing out on your life."

I've been pondering his words as I've been reflecting on how Jesus cured. I don't claim to have the answer to why we are sometimes healed and why we are sometimes left in our illnesses. Much better minds than mine have grappled with that question. But it has come to my thoughts that our belief, our faith plays a role, perhaps even an essential one, in how we experience healing. Believing that we are being healed isn't any guarantee that we are being healing. But doubting that healing can take place seems to effectively block any possible healing.

So I ask myself, do I believe that the combination of medicine, psychology and faith can really remove the burden of panic? Do I truly believe that healing is possible? Do I actually think that Jesus wants to pour healing on my life.

Do I believe?

"Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief."

Third times the charm?

This is the third post I've tried to write today.  The other two just went so far and then slumped like a punctured popover.

I tried to write about how much I've journaled since Mother died, but it just sounded silly.

I tried to write about how much fear I've experienced these last two months, but it sounds rather whiny and self-indulgent.

So this time I'm just going to say that while I still want a bona fide miracle like I wrote about yesterday, I'm more resigned to the idea that, for whatever reason, a bona fide miracle isn't going to happen...at least not anytime soon.

There still are two major areas in my life where I can do absolutely nothing to affect the outcome.  All I can do is wait on someone else's free will.  And that just plain sucks.  Not only the waiting, but the fact that the other people involved have free will.  They can do whatever they want and I have no choice but to accept their decisions. Did I mention how much that sucks?

In both cases, I do believe that what I want is in God's will.  Both involve restoration, a giving back of what the locust has eaten.  In both cases, I've done my best to say, "Your will, not mine," to God and mean it.  But I could be deluding myself that they are what God wants for me.  I've deluded myself before and I probably will again.

But I continue to pray that if these really are God's will that he will enter in and create the miracle that seems the only way out.

But nonetheless, having the decision lie in someone else's hands and having to wait and see what they decide sucks.

Yes, it really does.

A Bad Example of Faith

Sometimes I feel like I'm a bad example of what a person of faith should be.

I read other people's inspirational works...heck, sometimes I even reread things I have written in the past...which are filled with positivity, faith, hope and a "Isn't God GREAT!" attitude, and think, "Is that what it means to be a person of faith?  To pretend that things are just spiffy whiffy wonderful when it's patently obvious that they aren't and things are pretty sucky?"   And because I'm not feeling like I can be all happy and perky and cheerful about my life, I'm a bad example of what a person of faith should be.

Now I do believe that God is Great.  I do believe.  I do have faith...waxing and waning, stronger at times and weaker at others, but I do have faith.  However in this season of my life, I am finding it extraordinarily difficult to be gushing about miracles in my life and how I sense God's presence with me all the time.

Because I don't.  

That's why I say I'm a bad example of what a person of faith should be.  Take today for instance.  I suppose I could write about how I saw a lovely flower in the median strip as I was waiting for a red light and how overcome I was with the absolute miracle of life springing up in the midst of concrete and lifelessness.  I could wax poetic about the sweetness of the blossom amid the pain of life and go on about how it was such a profound example of looking for miracles that I was moved to spontaneously sing songs of praise.

I could, but I won't because that's not what happened.

I saw the flower--a dandelion--and thought, "Why is it that 'weeds' are more tenacious than flowers?" and then the light changed and I was on my way.

What it comes right down to is that I want a realio, trulio miracle in my life right now.  Not one of the "if you look hard enough you'll see a miracle" kind of miracles, but one that makes my heart stop with the sheer shock of it all.  Not a small, everyday, seek and ye shall find miracle, but the kind of miracle that makes me say, "Wow! Nothing is impossible with God!!"

I know I should be content with the miracle of dandelions in concrete, but the truth is I want more.

I can't help it.  I just do.

I want a miracle.