I've got mixed feelings about this post, but it is an important CU issue, 
cross-posted twice over, last from the Full Communion list at egroups.  
Please read and/or comments?

Subject: The Hindrance of Healing

From the Ship-of-Fools Rant of the Month Archives comes Stephen
Ford's rant from April 2000. This article suggests another topic for
this forum. How do we differ on the issue of healing? Has anyone ever
experienced it? What form did it take? Spiritual? Physical?
_____________________________________________
HOW IS IT that the Church has turned one of the hallmarks of the
kingdom of God into another hindrance? How has one of God's most
tangible mercies become another burden for those who can least bear
it? How have we become complicit in making the most vulnerable even
poorer in spirit?

I'm referring to healing and the Church's current practice of it. Now
before anyone classifies this as another sneering derogation of
cerebrally challenged charismatics, I'll state categorically that it
isn't. Recovery of healing in Protestant circles is a well-overdue
event: among other things it is, after all, one of the signs of the
kingdom of God (Luke 7:22), so the cerebrally gifted amongst us will
surely welcome it. At the very least we should acknowledge its place
in Christianity (it's interesting that Catholics have always believed
in supernatural healing in one form or another).

So how have we converted a mercy into a burden? By the usual method:
the surreptitious incursion of cultural values into our thinking,
blessing them and naming them "faith".

THE FIRST WRONG attitiude towards healing is peculiar to the West in
recent times – the belief that suffering has no rightful place in
the
world and certainly no place in the redeemed order of things. Such
complacency is surely one cause of the spiritual poverty of the
western Church. Jesus didn't have that view, the writer to the
Hebrews didn't either – nor C.S. Lewis or John Donne. Suffering
has
its place and value in this life, no matter how much we yearn for its
absence in the New Jerusalem of the next.

Instead of fully understanding and redeeming suffering – praying
for
its removal but harnessing it to become more Christ-like – we've
ignored it and impoverished ourselves, and virtually reduced the onus
to make practical steps towards its amelioration.

The second idea is that preacher's cliche – instant
gratification. We
all know about this and yet continually diminish our capacity for
perseverance by accepting it. This is especially true when we have
minor afflictions, and might be excusable if we actually did anything
worthwhile with our lives. Instead, we can't wait for our flu to
disappear by the natural healing process God has given us, because it
interferes with our TV watching.

The third attitude suffused in the Church is a kind of voyeuristic
laziness derived from experiential poverty. It's the spiritual
equivalent of celebrity-watching while lacking lives of our own. I'm
told that when doctors tell their patients they need to lose weight,
the patients ask for dieting pills or machines to attach to their
limbs to remove the fat for them.

Our equivalent spiritual is watching others who suffer being healed,
while not making ourselves vulnerable. "But it's for the edification
of the Church," I hear. Rhubarb! God rewards those who seek him, not
those who get others to do their seeking for them.

AT A RECENT healing service I witnessed, a string of people went up
to the front and gave testimony of how God had healed them of a sore
back, a broken leg, or honeymoon hayfever (if they were lucky!). The
service leader then asked people to come forward for healing, and a
man – virtually paralysed – hauled himself to the front on
his
crutches. He wasn't healed.

This demonstrates perfectly the lazy voyeurism of many of us. If we
ask for God's healing for a cold, it's not exactly faith-crushing
when he declines. We risk nothing. If we are paralysed or have
multiple sclerosis or cancer, then we risk immensities by asking for
healing: the knock-back from God's inaction is enormous, no matter
how rational we endeavour to be. The congregation, however, loses
nothing, although if healing does occur then it experiences ecstatic
edification.

So the vulnerable pay the price for our gambling with their faith,
and are inevitably made to feel downcast and deserted. Ever wondered
why there are so few disabled people at church services? By our
mistaken practices we hinder the progress of God's kingdom.

So what are we to do? Firstly, some serious heart-searching and
repentance. Then let me suggest the abolition of "healing services".
Instead, let those who want healing be visited at home after a time
of reflection, or prayed for in private. This is surely what James
chapter 5 says. Let all prayers for healing be preceded by
disclaimers that non-healing is no reflection on the faith of the one
prayed for. And let us examine ourselves to ensure that we do not
supplement the curses of this world borne by those who are supposed
to be the main beneficiaries of the kingdom of God.
_______________________________________________


Benny Hinn, are you listening?



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